Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
I’m trying to figure out a way to mention in my blog that I just got a very nice review from People Magazine, without sounding braggy. Well, it was People Magazine – they tend to be nice to authors. And it’s not like it was a 4 star review. I only got 3 ½ (out of 4) stars for my “sparkling debut novel…a bittersweet tale about love, marriage and the perils of fame.”
Well, the truth is it was a very nice review, even though I look like a tranny in the photograph they used, so thanks PEOPLE.
This is my 50th blog entry! To celebrate my sticktoitiveness (don’t know why spellcheck is underlining that – it must be a word, I use it all the time) I am not going to write a new entry, but instead, will bask in the sun in my insular Tahiti, while rerunning my very first blog, which was all about how I was not likely to keep up with the blogging.
Here it is:
APRIL 1, 2008
Big Plans
My book, Outtakes From a Marriage, comes out a week from tomorrow so I have been running around like a maniac, trying to get my life organized. I’m disorganized, to put it mildly, and now I’m trying to get one kid ready for final exams and another kid ready to graduate, while at the same time, trying to find something to wear for interviews and appearances and trying to not succumb to nervous exhaustion.
Remember when I was saying how much I love the country? Well, I take it all back. I want to live in a building. A building in a city with lots of other people in it. And no wild animals.
This is how my day began:
My dogs woke me up at 4:30 a.m, just as they have every morning this week, because there was a raccoon in our garbage. I decided to let Daphne chase the raccoon away. But did it run away? No, It climbed up our house and then stared at me with such pleading, terrified eyes, that I called off Daphne and was tempted to pack it a little “to-go” bag of garbage.
In an effort to create a stir about my forthcoming novel, Outtakes From a Marriage, I have spent the last 24 hours cruising around Facebook begging people to be my friends. I’ve turned Facebook inside out on this friends quest and the process has left me exhausted, humiliated, demoralized and with very few new friends.
It all began when my new cyber-friend Doreen Orion told me that she had heard that fellow Authorbytes author Chris Bohjalian (stay with me now), attributed much if his latest novel’s great success to Facebook. This puzzled me. How could my 12 Facebook friends help me sell my book?, I logged onto Facebook and after a little research, I decided that I needed some new friends…fast.
Meet Tim. Tim is a beloved toy from Denis’s childhood. Visitors to our home often comment on him because he’s displayed prominently on a bookshelf and because he’s a little spooky looking. I decided to do a blog entry about him, but then I realized that, although we have lived under the same roof for many years I don’t know very much about him. So today I asked Denis some searching questions about Tim.
Here is our groundbreaking interview in its entirety:
Recently, I attended a book reading and signing at our local independent bookseller, The Hickory Stick Bookshop.
Honor Moore was signing copies of her new book. The Bishop’s Daughter. If you haven’t read it yet, go buy it – it’s my favorite memoir in years. Honor is a poet and the memoir is about her father, a famous Episcopal Bishop who had a secret life. It’s beautiful and loving and riveting as all good memoirs should be. You might have read the excerpt that ran in the The New Yorker a few months ago.
Had some very exciting news yesterday about my book Outtakes From a Marriage. Although it doesn’t come out until June 3rd, it is already going into a second printing! And, in addition to appearing on The View that week, I’ll also be on Today and an ABC News morning show called What’s the Buzz?
I’ll post times and dates on my “News” page. Now what to wear? And I wonder what plastic surgery options are available that have a one-week recovery time? Would love to get the old eyelids done, but I guess there’s not enough time. If you see me on one of those shows, promise not to look at my eyelids. Or my man-hands. Look at my shins – I have very nice shins.
I feel that my blog needs some beauty today, so I’m posting a painting by my very dear friend Lindsey Brown. Lindsey is an artist and curator based in Brooklyn and Dutchess County, NY. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Portland Art Museum, is exhibited regularly in various New York galleries, and is hanging all over our house.
Yesterday morning I drove my daughter to school, and when I returned, these boxes were waiting for me on our front porch:
They were filled with the hard bound copies of my new book! The boxes had the name of my books on the outside! I opened the box and it was filled with shiny, fresh books with my name on the cover. I took one out and flipped through it and read a few of my favorite parts and cast an anxious eye on some of my not so favorite parts and I have to say, a book looks infinitely better when it’s actually a book, not just a printed out manuscript. I admit it, I cried.
