The process of selling a book once it is published was pretty much unknown to me except from romantic lore handed down from a now-distant time, when favorite old journeymen authors like Chris Morley, would go from smoking car to hotel room to book shop to chop house and then back to smoking car for weeks on end. The hours of genial, off the cuff chats on bookish matters delivered to mixed groups or lectures at "women's clubs"; always with fountain pen poised, ready to swoop onto a half-title page, leaving an effortlessly elegant "With the author's warm best wishes" in its wake.

I'm currently on a bit of a break from my book tour, promoting the publication of my memoir, "The Revenge of the Nerd, Or, The Singular Adventures of the Man Who Would Be Booger." The break was occasioned by the the college graduation of my beloved daughter Lily, who is leaving King's College, London, and moving on to Oxford University in the autumn. This is an occasion of mingled pride and fear and joy and melancholy which naturally and rightly overwhelms any mercantile adventures in bookselling, no matter how important or engaging.

But this morning, waking early on my second day in London, I find myself looking back, irresistibly, to the last couple of months and marveling a bit.

The first time I read an excerpt from my book in public--aside from a friendly gathering of kinsprits at my house in L.A.---was at Atlanta's 221-B Con last May. This was, as you may imagine, a Sherlock Holmes convention and the nerd quotient was plentiful. They were wonderfully supportive and generous, as nerds tend to be, and started this process off with waves of sweet encouragement. Then, appropriately, I went to the city of my birth--Detroit, Michigan. The occasion for this appearance was a two-day benefit for the historic Redford Theatre, which was including Revenge of the Nerds in its summer schedule of films. The book was not yet available for purchase, but friends known and never met before, bought bookplates signed on the spot to be glued into their pre-ordered copies.

The official tour began on publication day, July 11th, in Manhattan at the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca. Friends from my Sherlockian community, from Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Moonlighting, and from our TV show, King of the Nerds were all in attendance. This was an unforgettable night, for reasons obvious and inexpressible. The next night, Boston, at Brookline Booksmith, attended not only by Sherlockian and Wodehousian friends, but by my wife Elaine, dear friends of my wife's and family members, too. Then Portland, OR., and the world famous Powell's bookstore, where once again members of the lamented King of the Nerds show were among those in attendance. Finally, a few days later, Los Angeles: Vroman's, where an even larger contingent of nerds, from large screen and small, joined with many smiling strangers to celebrate the nerd community with one of its very fortunate members.

There are more dates to come, and I will post them here separately. In closing, I can only say thank you to those who ventured out over these last few months to lend their support and to the many more who I wish I had been able to meet and hope to in the future. It is common for authors, and actors, to say on occasions like this that the reception of their work has left them grateful and humbled. They may mean it, or they may not mean it.
I mean it.

love,

Curtis