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.

THE ANN INDEX
Days until Outtakes From a Marriage appears in bookstores: 3
Times I have opened my laptop this morning (It’s 7:30AM): 14
Amazon ranking: 7,548
Number of Facebook Friends: 81
Number of real friends: 2
Number of suspicious moles on my back alone: 9
Days in my cycle: 28
Current day: 26
Days since we last saw our cat Sneakers: 7
Feelings for Sneakers when he was around (1=hate,10=love): 4
Feelings for Sneakers now when I see his untouched food each morning: 11 (I miss him so)

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

I’m a famous quitter. Ask my family. They’ll tell you about all my big plans. If I had done half the things I planned to do, just in the last five years alone, I’d be a goat farmer, a maker of organic goat cheese, an organic poultry farmer, a volunteer EMT, an importer of Irish Sport Horses, a best-selling novelist, a campaigner for immigrant rights, a Labradoodle breeder, a teacher of English as a second language, a daily trampoline jumper, daily tread-mill jogger and the host of my own talk show.

Each of these grand plans was presented to my husband, children, and whoever else would listen, with the same degree of gushing exhilaration as the next, and there was a time when they, too, would get whipped into a lather of excitement over each idea. But no longer. Over the years, my family has learned that there’s no point in preparing the backyard for goats or fantasizing over puppies and sport horses because once I begin to process the actual details of each thing, it always seems easier to just hold-off.

“Really?” my daughter now yawns, “An EMT? Good luck with that.”

“Sure,” my husband will mumble vacantly, staring at the TV, “goats are nice. Why don’t you get started on that?” There’s no need to go into it further with me because they know that as soon as I begin to uncover the minutiae about goat stink, or nightly EMT training sessions, the whole thing will be pushed to the back burner.

So, when I told them that I was starting a blog to go on my new website, a website created to help promote my forthcoming novel, Outtakes from a Marriage, they had a good laugh at my expense. Even a friend with her own blog urged me to be realistic about it. “Everyone plans to blog daily, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up. You really have to commit to it,” she said.

“I’m committed!” I declared, and who wouldn’t be committed to the rosy future I envisioned for my fledgling blog. When I thought about my blog, I could see it, fully formed, a computer screen filled with thousands upon thousands of my very own witty observations and poignant reminiscences. I imagined people quoting my blog, stealing all my funny material from my blog, gathering around the office water cooler to talk about my latest blog. There would be controversies over my blog. When my audience grew, there would be advertisers, book deals. And of course, my own talk show…

That was a month ago. Every day since then I have not started my blog. Because, again, when I took a good hard look at the details – the logistics of blogging, I started to become a little more realistic about the whole thing, and honestly, my prospects as a successful blogger look bleak. First of all, in order to have a blog entry each day, one must write each day. Although I think constantly about writing, the truth is that I often don’t write at all, for days on end. Now, not only will I not be writing my new novel while I’m parked at Marty’s the local coffee shop, swilling coffee and gossiping with my neighbors, but I’ll also not be writing in my blog.

Well, I’m going to give it a shot anyway. I will write in my blog each day, even if it’s just a sentence. Then, when people ask that intensely annoying question – “Have you been writing?” I can, for once, say yes without lying.

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.

My house has no power. We were knocked out by an electrical storm hours ago. No power, no water, no phone. My dog’s kidneys are failing. My horse has thrown a shoe and our barn cat hasn’t been seen for days. Let’s see, what else? Oh, mice in the kitchen. They come at night, like fairies, but instead of sprinkling fairy dust everywhere, they leave mouse dung.

But I got another nice review today. This time from the Library Journal. It said, in short: “Verdict: Leary, wife of actor Denis Leary, follows up on her critically acclaimed memoir, An Innocent, a Broad, with this fun yet not too fluffy debut novel. This glimpse of Hollywood glitz and glamour, coupled with a dose of reality, is an addictive and delightful read.”

Well, gosh that was nice, thanks Library Journal!

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.

Now it’s 11:00 at night and I’m typing this in my bed with my sweatshirt hood pulled over my head. I’ve pulled the drawstrings of the hood so tight that I’m left with nothing but a tiny hole to peer out of. Why? Because this just flew past my head:

Okay, well is was actually almost an hour ago, and it wasn’t a vampire bat, but still – it was a bat, in my house, flying past my head. It flew a mission of terror through our house, provoking much hysteria and panic. It whizzed past my daughter’s head and she did what anybody would do in her position – she snatched up a rug from the floor, placed it on her head, and then she screamed and ran in circles. My son, being 6′5″, felt like an easy target so he assumed a squatting position and sped across the living room in a most comical crab-walk, bellowing about rabies. I chose to cling to my son, who, even squatting, is taller than me so I felt that he was a sort of human shield (I know, my maternal instincts could use some work).

Finally we decided to flee the house and we sat in my car, huddled together like three terrified, twitching rabbits. I’m usually brave about wildlife but I have a history with bats so I was freaking out. We left the door to the house open and from the car we watched the bat put on a show that was clearly meant to shock and awe. First it swooped back and forth through our living room, our dogs chasing it and leaping at it. Then it landed on our floor and staggered around, dragging it’s disgusting form across our rug with its winged feet. For some reason, when it did this the dogs stopped chasing it. In fact, they backed away from it and then began looking for us. Finally the bat found his way outside. But we’re still worried he might have a friend or two hanging around. I mean literally hanging around (I’m afraid to look at my ceiling for fear of seeing one.)

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.

My friend, author Dani Shapiro (she’s my real, very dear, flesh and blood friend), had 112 friends as of yesterday afternoon. Chris Bohjalian had 485. My teenage kids had hundreds upon hundreds of friends. I had a lot of catching up to do. I left no stone unturned. I peered into all my friends’ Facebook pages, scoured my school and community groups and when I came upon a name that even sounded slightly familiar, I clicked on their “be my friend” button.

I was surprised by the people I found on Facebook. I defy you to find a veterinarian who is not on Facebook. My horse vet was there, my dog vet was there. Every vet I’ve ever known was there. And I was equally surprised by who wasn’t there. My book publicist? Not there. Web designer? Nope. But Eddie Brill was there. I was tempted to call this blog entry “Six Degrees of Eddie Brill,” because his Facebook presence is huge. Denis and Eddie have been good friends ever since they went to Emerson College together. Eddie is a comedian who works on the David Letterman show, so he has Roseanne Barr on his list, Matt Dillon, even Deepak Chopra. Every stand-up comedian I’ve ever known is on Eddie’s list. When I found Deepak amongst Eddie’s friends he had 4802 friends. Now he has 4803.

I still have less than 50 friends, so if you’re reading this and you’re on Facebook, come friend me. I’m here

And I still have no idea how this will help me sell books.

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:

ME: Okay, so where did you get Tim?
DENIS: My Aunt Betty made him for me.
ME: I don’t think she made him. She must have bought him for you. Maybe she repaired him and you thought she made him?
DENIS: No, she made him. Look at him. Who would buy something that looked like that?
ME: Well, I thought maybe he didn’t always look like that. I assumed that he was like the Velveteen Rabbit …
DENIS: What Velveteen Rabbit?
ME: The Velveteen Rabbit was a book about a little boy who was given this beautiful stuffed animal rabbit. And the boy loved it so much that he rubbed its eyes off from cuddling it all the time and he made its seams split. And the rabbit loved him too…
DENIS: Well Tim’s no fancy-assed Velveteen Rabbit. Never was. He always looked like that.
ANN: Okay, So Aunt Betty made him for you. Now what was the name of her husband again?
DENIS: Uncle Aeneas.
ME: (fitful giggles)
DENIS: You came up with the idea of this interview just so you could make fun of my uncle’s name, didn’t you?
ANN: Well, it’s funny. And sad too, because it’s pronounced anus, so I imagine the kids in school must have treated him horribly.
DENIS: He grew up in Ireland. It was a common name there.
ME: Right. SO, anyway, Betty made Tim for you. Do you remember how old you were when she gave him to you?
DENIS: No, I was really little. It was probably that time I had to stay at her house when my parents went to Ireland.

A little history: Denis’s parents moved here from Ireland shortly before they were married. When Denis was five years old, his parents went back to Ireland to visit their families after being in America for many years. It was too much to take all the kids, so they took the oldest, John. Denis’s little sister, Ann Marie, got to stay with her fun cousin Noreen Lucey. And Denis got to stay with his father’s widowed, childless Aunt Betty. She was Denis’s great-aunt. This story always broke my heart, because Denis’s parents were gone for a month. His aunt had no idea how kids behave and she was constantly worried about him messing up the apartment and making him be quiet. She took him to church all the time. She made a big deal about giving him a gift and the gift was a white bible. She took him to visit his sister at his cousin’s once or twice and they were goofing around with all the other kids in their fun neighborhood, then she took him back to her clean, quiet apartment and made him wash up. She wiped his bible down all the time because it was white and she worried about it being smudged. She made him tuck in his shirt and pray. I think the first time he told me this story, I wept for him.

ME: Do you remember your parents leaving for that trip?
DENIS: Yes, I remember watching them walk out to the airplane, climb up the steps…
ME: Your heart must have been breaking!
DENIS: Why?
ME: Your parents were leaving you!
DENIS: No, I was all excited then. They had told me how great it would be to get to play with my toys all the time and not have to share them, and I could watch anything I wanted on TV and not have to fight with my brother about it. It wasn’t until I was actually back at her apartment that I realized now much it was gonna suck. But I did get to watch anything I wanted on TV. And she did really like me.
ME: I remember your cousin said she always doted on you.
DENIS: She did. She was my Godmother, and she didn’t have any kids. So…she really did like me.
ME: Oh, so there was something nice about the time you spent with her. She gave you a lot of attention.
DENIS: I guess.
ME: Well, I’m a middle child too, as you know, and it was often my fantasy to be the only child, so I can see where you might have liked having all that adult attention.
DENIS: Yeah, I would have like it for a few hours. It was a long month. But then my parents came back and we moved to a house from our apartment and then Tim fell behind some stairs that were being built and it wasn’t until I was an adult and they were fixing the stairs, that somebody found him. And that’s why I still have him.
ME: Awww. Look at him. It’s funny, I just always imagined that he was once this very very cute and cuddly plush panda bear and that he was just all worn out from your love. But now, you’re saying that he always looked like that, and you still loved him.
DENIS: I am?
ME: Yes!
DENIS: Okay, now can I watch the game?

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.

Anyway, I can’t recommend this book highly enough, so go buy it – but if you can, buy it at in independent bookseller, and here’s why -
Before the reading, a bunch of us stood around mumbling about the Washington Pharmacy, which used to be across the street from the Hickory Stick, and which had suddenly closed its doors two days before, with no warning. The pharmacy had been there, under one ownership or another, for over a hundred years. It looked like this:

The pharmacist knew all of his customers by their first names. Once I needed some antibiotics but couldn’t make it to the store before they closed and he left them in the mailbox for me. Now, all our prescriptions will have to be filled here:

So we were all talking sadly before Honor’s reading about how a town slowly loses its character when small shops are forced out of business by the giant chain stores. And we all vowed to order our books from the Hickory Stick, where lovely Fran Keilty knows most of her customers by name. Fran keeps her charming shop stocked with all the latest great books and has wonderful author events. Everybody from Frank McCourt to Henry Kissinger to … well…me has signed books there. Fran pointed out that it’s better for towns, better for the economy and better for the environment if we all remember to support local businesses.

So, to order Honor’s book – or any book – at the Hickory Stick, call: 860-868-0525.

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 <a href=”http://Today“>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.

Lindsey is my oldest friend. We’re from the same town, went to the same boarding school, and then we went to the same college. We both lived in Boston for awhile, and then we both lived in New York. She’s one of those friends that you can lose contact with for months, but when you finally hook up with each other, you pick up right where you left off. If I feel like making her spit out her coffee, or collapse to the floor like a rag doll, gasping with laughter (Lindsey does that – she will actually end up on a heap on the floor if you’re not careful), I only have to say one or two words that instantly conjure some past humiliation or gaffe that we experienced/committed together.

She can just say a name and I fully understand her sorrow or joy, because I know all about this name. And vice versa. It’s impossible for me to hear a Joni Mitchell song without thinking of Lindsey. Like Joni (whose music we listened to all the time, for years, in our bedrooms, in dorm rooms, in cars, bars), Lindsey is an artist with a poetic sensibility and a love of nature and color and beauty and light. Denis isn’t wild about Joni Mitchell music, and my kids have threatened to throw themselves out of the car when she’s playing, so I can only listen to her when I’m in the car by myself and I always recall my times with Lindsey, and all our dreams and schemes, especially when I hear the words, “I am a lonely painter, I live in a box of paints….” Because Lindsey and I really thought of ourselves as these lonely, tortured artists, though we were never really alone, ever.

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.

I decided to place it on a bookshelf to see how it looks among it’s peers.

I decided it looked a little…small. So I put it on a shelf with a bunch of paperbacks, and it looked giant. That’s Tim with the appalled expression. Tim is Denis’s beloved childhood …we think it was a bear. Now it looks like a germ or an amoeba or something. But I love Tim and have a very romantic view of him. I see him as a sort of real-life Velveteen Rabbit. Denis loved him so much that he rubbed his little nose, mouth and ears off! Denis’s mother embroidered his name on him and embroidered him a new mouth! Yes, the new mouth has an expression of horror, but still… it was an act of love! I don’t think this photo does him justice. I’m going to devote a future blog to Tim.