Having published my memoir “Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex,Secrets & Sitcoms,” I’ve just returned from a mini book tour to cities that I have some connection to first.
I started in Sausilito, where my precious god daughter Ellie lives. Her mother, in an effort to help promote the book, which has a lot about the “Munch” as I call her, decided to invite all her classmates’ moms to the Book Passage Store on the pier.
Great idea, and yet…they brought the kids! So I had to do a quick adjustment on the SEX parts as a group of well behaved 5 and 7 year olds might have reacted to oh…say…the Vibrator Prologue! Books were sold and all went swimmingly…to continue the water metaphor.
Next on to Los Angeles, at Diesel Books, where another
former TV writer and now book writer, Bruce Ferber, interviewed me. It was outside and very LA. The few friends I have left in my old hometown came, and the
wonderful Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, author of “A Woman of Independent Means” was among them and wrote a super-wonderful blurb for the book for my website.
I hadn’t been to LA in ages, and sad to say, I’m glad I don’t
live there anymore. Bev Hills is like a tourist ride with little carts going through telling people what movie was shot on what corner. The Santa Monica Beach is now a home for the homeless and a little scary and sad as they are kind of agressive as you try to walk in the sand. Maybe you can’t go home again.
But, then on to my real hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This was a real treat. I had not been back for years and the city is clean as always and being built up everywhere. tons of construction, so it felt like NYC! Lots of my Whitefish Bay High School pals came, a couple even drove up from Chicago. It was a little strange talking to these old friends about my rather adventurous life since high school, but very warm and lovely to see them and boy did they buy books! They bought for other friends, who couldn’t come and I am so grateful, as was Boswell’s Bookstore, a lovely independent book store of which there are less and less.
And the value of media… wow! I did one TV Show (missed the second as my plane was cancelled) and it resulted in selling 160 books in the area!
Finally, Aspen. I go every summer and have more friends there then anywhere else. They showed up and the setting at Explorer Books was so intimate, I sat, instead of stood, at the usual podium, and felt like they were visiting me in my hotel room! So fun!
And oh yeah, this is really cool. Once and a lifetime occurrrence, The store publishes in local papers, a Best Selling list for each week and I was Number One! And to really add to the thrill, I beat my favorite top selling author of the great Gabriel Allon mysteries, Daniel Silva. I know it’s a fluke,but I’ll take it!
Me and my “family” in Sausalito Bruce Ferber and me in LA
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