I’ve spent the morning looking at writers’ blogs. I’ve never paid much attention to blogs before because, I have to admit, the idea that somebody would think that they should virtually publish themselves on a daily basis, and that anybody would be interested in reading their musings, seemed wildly grandiose and self-indulgent to me. Now that I’ve started my own blog, of course, I have a much more evolved view on blogging. My new point of view is: Everyone else has a blog, why shouldn’t I?

After my first entry, however, I realize that I don’t really know what I’m doing. Is a blog entry supposed to be like an essay? A diary entry? A shamelessly self-praising endorsement of one’s own book? The writer’s blogs I’ve read this morning are all of these things and more. I’ve read an author’s nostalgic recollection of her lost womb after a recent hysterectomy - the reader is treated to photos of the “fruits” of said womb; her two teenaged children (I know, my cheeks burned with shame for them too), an author’s outrage at plagiarism, a tour of a writer’s office and a series of photographs of a chair covered in snow. I read about an author’s family trip to New York City and another author’s mother’s tuna noodle casserole recipe. I read mostly blogs of female writers and I’ve come to the following conclusions about blogs: First, most writer’s blogs have titles that involve writing. Titles like: A Writer’s Edge, My Literary Underworld, and Literary Dreamscapes. I really hate naming things and am awful at it. I have a horse named Mark and another named Snoopy. Horses are majestic creatures who often inspire names like Dante, Charlemagne, Lord Byron, Allegro White Lightning, Ruffian or Man O’ War. The best names I could come up with were Mark and Snoopy. Now I’m rethinking “Wicked Good Life.” It seemed great yesterday. I have a good life. It’s “wicked good,” I’ve been told, more than once (I’m from Massachusetts, still have family there.) The other thing that has me worried is that most of the blogs I’ve read so far seem to be devoted to one’s “journey” as a writer and to the craft of writing. I hesitate to write about writing, because, I mean, who do I think I am - Charlotte Bronte? That’s exactly what I imagine the blog reader asking: Who the hell does she think she is?

I had coffee with a friend yesterday, a friend with a blog. A literary friend. As usual she had great insight and useful suggestions. She said that it’s nice if a blog has a theme of some sort. I said that my blog will be all about the great life I lead. This friend knows me very well and she looked perplexed for a moment, because, in addition to being a quitter, I’m also a bit of complainer, and I guess she had to adjust herself to the new grateful, Pollyanna persona that I have adopted for the sake of my blog. I told her that I plan to blog not only about all the colorful characters in our little Connecticut community but also to blog about all the parties and premiers I attend (well, I’ll start attending premiers now that I have a blog, and the characters in our community will seem colorful, once I embellish them up a little) And I’m going to do red-carpet podcasts. That’s right - I’m going to do interviews whenever I go to any showbiz related events but I am going to mostly interview celebrity spouses who are usually far more entertaining than the celebs themselves and usually offer far more revealing information. So keep coming to my blog, and I welcome your comments. But only the nice ones, please.

My friend Wendy sent me this very amusing story. I guess she figures I need a plan B in case this book doesn't sell. I think I'd be quite good at this actually. It's hysterical that women do almost all the writing and men do most of the reading of this genre. At least I think that's what the story said. I was actually sitting in a cabinet, a tiny cabinet awaiting a mammogram when I read this story. At my radiologist's office, they file the women into adjacent, very narrow dressing cabinets and ask them to change into a gown and then wait quietly with curtains drawn. All the women sit in these cabinets. I don't know why. So I was reading my emails, snorting with laughter, and then, when I was summoned, I was chastised for having a cell phone on, which I guess is a big no-no in radiologist's offices. They want you to have NO human contact before mammograms. Maybe they think you are sending out distress signals. HELP, LOCKED IN CABINET. ABOUT TO HAVE BOSOM CLAMPED IN VISE.

Okay, so despite the breezy blog posts, I’ve actually been in a state of gut-wrenching anxiety about my forthcoming novel and how it will be received by, well, everybody. Sarah Breivogel, my book’s publicist, sent galleys out to reviewers and magazine editors many weeks ago and then she followed up with emails and letters. The response to my book’s announcement was …nothing. I understood this response to be, not an oversight, not an indication of how beleaguered-by-galleys magazine editors are. No, I knew it for what it was - an astounded, appalled silence. I imagined reviewers staring at the bound galleys in horror, thinking, Denis Leary’s wife tried to write what? A novel? You’ve got to be kidding me! I envisioned them trying to slog their way through the first chapters before finally giving up and writing their one-word review: “Unreadable!” and tossing it into the rubbish bin.

Well, this morning, I finally got a review! And it was nice! It was a starred review from Kirkus reviews! I don’t think I can provide a link because I think you have to be a subscriber to open a link (shameful confession: I took out a month-long subscription in order to read my review, rather than wait until work hours when my editor, who subscribes, could email it to me), so you'll just have to take my word for it. Hmmm, maybe I'm onto something here. I could blog about all sorts of glowing reviews from obscure literary journals that can only be read by subscribers, knowing that my blog readers, most of whom are my own blood relatives, are never going to cough up the dough to open a subscription.

Last fall I began work on a new book and I ran into a little snare right at the beginning. I was describing the campus of a boarding school in September, in Connecticut, and I had all the trees aflame with bright russets and golds and somebody was raking leaves. It was still early in September when I was writing this and it dawned on me that the leaves might still be green well into October. I really had no idea. And I wasn’t quite sure when the first frost usually arrives. So I decided to start a journal to document the local flora and fauna as the seasons change. I also determined that since there is no better place to observe anything than astride a horse, I would trailer my horse Mark to Steep Rock Land Preserve every day, weather permitting, and that way I could see the exact same landscape as it changed with the season. I kept what I called my Steep Rock Diaries from September until December. Then I had to stop because the trails were too icy for horses. I've been hiking in Steep Rock this winter and spring, on and off, but am dying to get back there with Mark. My trailer needs a new tire but is being serviced on Tuesday and then I will start up with the diary again.

I don't even know where to begin to describe the beauty of Steep Rock. First, there's the winding Shepaug River that divides the preserve:

That's my daughter Dev on the trail. There's an old railroad bed that runs along the river's edge and it's great for riding.

In places, the roots of great hemlock trees have wrapped themselves, like tentacles, around the rock outcroppings along the river's bank. This one appears to be testing the temperature of the water with its root, although you can't actually see the water in the photo:

So we do this big loop, Mark and I. We go along the railroad bed and cross the river and go up to what they call the "clamshell" and enjoy the views and loop back around and across the river again. We go out in the early mornings and it’s often cold riding along the old railroad bed, but when we cross the river, if the sun is out, it shines down on us and sparkles off the rocks below. Mark always stops in the middle of the river at our crossing place and we stand there for a moment. The damp, dark smell of river always reminds me of my childhood, of a winding creek that ran behind a house in Michigan that we lived in. My brother and I spent our summer days wading around this creek looking for tadpoles and crayfish and watching muskrats glide just under the water (muskrats are cute, if you've never seen one - nothing like regular rats.) Sitting on my horse, at this point in the Shepaug River where the clear water rushes over the rocks, something always comes over me. The coolness, the washing, rushing sound, the smell of water and fish and wet dirt and something else – loam? Silt? It all makes my head light and my muscles - even my bones - seem to go soft. Everything in me seems to dissolve into the horse and the river below and once, when a Great Blue Heron soared above us on that very spot, Mark and I both stared at it, blinking, blinking into the dazzling sun and then the sky was made blurry by my tears and I thought, there is a God. There is a God. Because the bird seemed so hulking and primitive, yet it flew. And the horse, and the river...

But the thing I love most about Steep Rock, because it thrills me, and terrifies me, is this:

The dark abyss, not my sweet daughter about to enter it. But I will blog about that another day. I'm supposed to be working on a book.

In 1871 a tunnel was blasted into a small mountain in Washington, CT, to make way for the proposed Shepaug Valley Railroad line. The engineering of the tunnel was overseen by a local explosives expert known as “Glycerin Jack.” I’m writing this in bed and so cannot start searching my house for the book that told me about Glycerin Jack, but I really should because there is another interesting fact about this important person in our town’s history. Apparently, the man passed a tapeworm that was something like thirty feet long (will fact-check length when I find the book). The local doctor kept the tapeworm in a formaldehyde solution in a jar on his desk and all the townspeople came to observe it.

Anyway, the Shepaug Valley Railroad ran from 1872 until 1948. When the train stopped running, the tracks were pulled up, but the flat, packed stonedust bed remains and there is no better place in this area to gallop a horse. The old railroad bed winds above the Shepaug River, through groves of centuries-old trees, alongside the old carriage road, and eventually, after you come around a bend, you see in the distance, this:

The first time I saw this, I was alone, on foot, and I wasn't sure what exactly I was seeing. When I got a little closer, I saw this:

And then, finally, I was confronted with this:

Every time I approach the tunnel, whether on horseback or on foot, I become a little breathless with fear. First, once you step into the beginning of the blasted out area, before you even enter the cave, the temperature drops about five degrees. And there is sudden silence. The rushing sound of the Shepaug River, which had been a constant white noise, ceases. And the striations of the rock, the way it sweeps up gives the ledge a sense of rapid, upward motion, like a great wave rising up over you. But the most unsettling thing about it - and the reason my horse always balks here - is because there is no light visible at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel curves, so it's not until you are inside that you are able to see that there's a way out. A phrase from one of my favorite poems comes to my mind whenever I see the tunnel and it is this:

At the wood’s mouth,
By the cave’s door,
I listened to something
I had heard before.

The poem is "The Lost Son" by Theodore Roethke. It's a rather long poem about nature and sexual longing and remorse and death and there's a sort of manic flight pattern and then, at the end, a stillness. The words at the end of this poem are taped above my desk now. I'm in a bit of a creative void (writer's block), and it feels like the task before me is daunting and dark and Roethke's words are meant to give me hope:

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.

Today I received a review of my book, Outtakes From a Marriage from Publisher’s Weekly, which said that I have “an eye for the comedy of manners of the rich and idle.” Well, thank you very much, PW. Now I’ll turn my eye on some of the less idle, like the participants in this past weekend’s Celebration of Young Writers in Washington, Connecticut. It’s an annual event in which famous actors and writers read the works of students ages 5-18. The readers have included Denis, Frank McCourt, Rose Styron, Mia Farrow, Peter Gallagher, Christine Baranski and many others. The event is a fundraiser for the After School Arts Program. Denis hosts the reading every year.

Here he is chatting with the lovely Rose Styron before the event:

We saw Rose again the following evening at the opening night performance of The Country Girl, starring Peter Gallagher, Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand, and directed by Mike Nichols. Such an amazing performance by Peter, and everyone. There was a press line as we entered.

And afterwards, a party at Tavern on The Green. Here's Denis with Peter Gallagher:

Denis is a little partial to that particular jacket, and that particular shirt, as you can see. If you saw us leaving for the play last night you would have thought I was going to the Oscars (I overdressed as usual, rube that I am) and he was going to a hockey game. I could blog all day about all the wrong outfits I've worn to events. Fortunately, I'm usually cut out of the photographs when they appear in print.

When I began this blog, just over a month ago, I made a commitment to myself to write in it every day. Of course, I had little confidence that I would actually do it. I even blogged about my lifelong habit of making all these big plans, and then not following through with them. But, with the exception of one or two days when I was either in the car all day or too busy to sit down and write, I have kept up with my blog. Recently another author asked me how I do it and I explained that I do it out of shame.

Every morning, I wake up around five (I have an old dog with bladder issues who must go out), make coffee, then nestle back into bed with my dogs and my laptop. Usually, the day before, I will have thought of something very clever to blog about, so I will quickly type up the blog – just as I’m doing now. Sometimes the blog was inspired by a photograph, so I will spend some time reformatting the photo. Then I copy the whole thing onto the blog page, and preview it. My blog software allows you to have a look at it all formatted along with the photo before you “publish” it onto the web, and I often chortle with delight at my own wittiness, or blink back tears reading my tender reminiscences. Then I click the “publish” button, and magically the blog appears on the web, for all the world to see. This is the exact moment that the shame sets in.

Immediately, I log onto my website and view the blog there. It always looks slightly better on the real blog page, for some reason and I breathe a sigh of relief until I start noticing all the typos. I fix these, which takes a little time, have one last look, and then get out of bed so I can drive my daughter to school (my son, who goes to a different school, drives himself). On the drive back from school, I worry that the blog was a little too _____ (fill in the blank: corny/dumb/incoherent/smug/other). When I go home, I log on again and decide that it is one or all of these things. But it’s already up. It’s on the World Wide Web. It’s like graffiti in the bathroom in high school saying, “Ann Leary Sucks.” It’ll stay there until the janitor cleans it up or until I cover it with more graffiti. Graffiti that says, “No she does not!” My next day's blog is the covering-up graffiti. In my mind, it will hide the shameful previous day’s blog. There have been days when I almost posted two entries in one day, so desperate was I too hide a bad blog.

So I go through all these mental contortions over the blog, feel exposed, de-gloved, humilitaed by my own self-reporting, until it dawns on me that, for all I know, nobody reads the stupid thing. I know my mother and sister read it, and I get the odd email from good friends saying they’ve checked it out, but even my husband and kids are too bored to log onto it on a regular basis. Mercifully, I have not yet learned how to see how many “hits” I get in one day.

So, my blog is a daily exercise in overcoming the fact that I’m an outrageous egomaniac with a staggering inferiority complex. It works for me.

Here's the view from my bed/blogatorium. My legs are on the right in grey sweats:

This is Daphne after she's pushed the laptop aside with her paws:

Not that you were asking, but I came up with the name of my new novel,

after Denis and I watched Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, one night last winter.

Scenes From a Marriage was recently re-released on DVD. It’s very long, as it was originally a series on Swedish Television. It’s shot like a documentary but it’s a drama. Like a Christopher Guest film – only not funny. And artfully shot. It’s beautifully shot (okay, it’s not like a Christopher Guest film at all.)

The film, Scenes From a Marriage was made in the 70’s, and my first thought, while watching it, was that the clothes and hairstyles reminded me of my parents and their friends during that time. As the drama unfolded, and this couple’s marriage was revealed as being hopelessly frayed, I became riveted. These people really were like my parents and their friends. And also, I realized, like Denis and me and our friends, and probably all married people, everywhere. I watched it all in one sitting, on a winter night in front of a dying fire. Denis fell asleep during the first 15 minutes and slept right through.

I borrowed something from the film. The Liv Ullman character, at one point, tells her husband of a love affair that she had with her psychiatrist and a shrink/love interest found his way into my novel soon after.

Anyway, Netflix it if you’re a 70s junkie like me. I love 70s films. I watch Klute every couple of months and delight in it anew each time. I watched Klute for the first time, years ago with my sister Meg, and to this day, when I see Meg’s name on the caller ID, I answer the phone, rasping “Bree Daniels,” in Jane Fonda’s sexy whore voice. Meg does the same thing when I call her and it shames me to have to tell you that we actually laugh until we can’t breathe every single time we do this. What can I say; we’re simple people. Anyway, I’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby countless times. For some reason, I find it soothing. I could recite The Godfathers I and II - every word. Our friends Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme made a documentary called A Decade Under The Influence about 70s films. Netflix that too while you’re at it. Anyway, there’s something very comforting to me about the style of certain 70s era films, even the scary ones. Okay, I have to list a few more: Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sting. Dog Day Afternoon, and my all-time favorite - Paper Moon, starring our friend Tatum O'Neal , who is now a star of Rescue Me.

Outtakes From a Marriage hits bookstores on June 3rd.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!

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)

Well, dear web, tomorrow is the big day. My book, Outtakes From a Marriage will finally arrive in bookstores. Where you may purchase it. It makes a great gift . Father’s Day is just around the corner. Or just buy it for yourself. You deserve it. Not sure why I’m writing in fragmented sentences. Just am.

So, I arose this morning and headed uptown to the fabulous Paul Labrecque Salon for a blowdry. I needed my hair to look very stylish for the photographer who was going to take my picture after my 1:00 interview with Christine Kearney from Reuters . After my Reuters interview I was scheduled to meet with Nadine Rubin from Page Six Magazine at the W Hotel. On my way uptown, my super publicist Beau Benton called me to say that I could skip my hair appointment because Reuters wasn’t able to find a photographer for the shoot.

“Oh well,” I said, “I’ll have it done anyway for the Page Six thing.”

“They weren’t able to send a photographer either,” Beau said.

I had no idea my book would create such a stir. I decided to go ahead and get my hair styled anyway and the lovely and talented Star Wright gave me one of the best blowjobs of my life (that’s what Brian and Paul, the salon owners call blowdrys - honest).

Then I met with Christine from Reuters and Nadine from the New York Post's Page Six Magazine. Here I am with Nadine:
"

Both Christine and Nadine were smart, funny and sexy. They both had foreign accents which heightened their smart/funny/sexiness to dizzying levels and I was desperate for them to like me. I could see us being friends, had we met in some other capacity, so I did what I do whenever I meet exciting friend-prospects. I overshared.

I confessed. I gossiped. I swore. I talked and I talked and I talked and I talked. Sometimes they forced me to pause for a moment while they tried to ask a question but I usually interrupted their questions with premature answers, then talked circles around my half-baked answer, then asked what the question was again, and when they tried to ask it, I interrupted them all over again.

My damage-control email campaign is about to begin.

Denis and I were on MSNBC this morning, talking about... one guess.

Before you click on the link, beware. It's long. The producer had told me that a member of Joe Scarborough's family had just had a premature baby so just before we went live, I told Joe about my book, An Innocent, A Broad,, which was about our premature baby and he thought I wanted to talk about that, because he's such a nice guy, and so Denis, mercifully managed to steer the whole thing back to Outtakes From a Marriage. You'll see. I'm a spaz. My hands go flying all over the place and my hair's a mess. You don't even need to watch it. You've seen enough, trust me.

I just found this video of us on Today in which I have much better hair than the one below. So just watch this and skip the other.

Kathy Lee and Hoda are funny. Before they started shooting, Kathy Lee made a very funny Mister T joke. I laughed too loud, for too long, my foot jiggling madly. I was a nervous wreck. You can't believe how nice the people who work on these shows are though, seriously. When you arrive they make a HUGE deal. We love you, we love your book. Here's our segment producer who loves you. Here's the sound technician who loves you. There's the crowd on the sidewalk! They love you! So by the time the camera is rolling you've completely bought the whole "you're the most loveable thing that's ever walked into this studio" trip and it really helps make you feel less awkward.

Wondering why I keep looking off to the side? That's where the monitor is and I was mesmerized by my own image on television, being the media-savvy gal that I am.

Dermot McEvoy from Publishers Weekly was kind enough to do a Q & A with me last week. Here it is.

Then, Monday, the Huffington Post ran this:

The Huffington Post headline was alarming and I'm sure captured the attention of many readers who might otherwise have passed it over. Denis Leary's wife skewered him?

I have not kept up with my blog the way I would like to because my computer was destroyed by lightning last week. Actually the folks at the Apple Store would argue that the lightning surge didn’t destroy my computer. It just destroyed my hard drive. The Apple people explained that this could be fixed but that it would cost me $800.

“It’s a deal,” I said, because my laptop contained many pages of my manuscript for my new book, my very busy calendar (kids' doctors, horse dentist appts, etc), all my email contacts, all the photographs I’ve taken in the past two years, all my music, my address book, two ideas I had for screenplays, a multitude of letters, and a journal.

The laptop spent a week at the Apple Store and then I was notified that it was ready to be picked up, and so I did. When I got home yesterday, I plugged it in and waited in breathless anticipation for the desktop window to light up with my beloved array of photographs and documents that I keep there. Instead, I was greeted by a multimedia extravaganza of welcome. There was much flying through galaxies of planets and many light beams shot across the screen, and then I was asked to register my new Mac because they had fixed my hard drive by REPLACING it.

My laptop looks and feels the same on the outside - there are the same scratches on its cover, the same ding on the corner from the time I dropped it from my car onto Greenwich Street. But when I log on, I am met, not with my messy former life – dozens of icons covering a giant photo of my dog's face - but a sterile blank screen. My computer is like a sloppy but beloved friend who went away and returned with very good hygiene but nothing interesting to say.

Now I’m going to spend the morning trying to find the discs to reload Photoshop and my camera software. My hopes are not high, because I am a little bit disorganized.

Check out this interview I did with Rebecca Carroll from Paper Magazine last week.

I've met quite a few interesting people in the days since my book's publication date but Rebecca is definitely one of my favorites. We bonded over coffee. We talked about our kids, our moms, our husbands, how fragile we are sometimes, our writing, our New England childhoods. Oh, and we talked about my book a little too. Rebecca is FASCINATING and I hope to get to interview her when she starts promoting the book she has up her sleeve.

I have done a couple of book signings this past week. Here I am at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca.



And here I am at my favorite bookstore, The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Connecticut. That’s Fran Keilty, the shop’s owner standing next to me.

I never know what to write in a book I’m inscribing. My instinct/desire is to write something along the lines of: “Thank you so much for buying my book. I hope you like it, I’m really sorry if you don’t. Really, don't feel like you HAVE to buy it. But if you do, I can’t thank you enough! You’re so nice. I like what you’re wearing. Thanks again. I love you, Ann”

I recently asked a couple of writer friends what they write when they sign books. One said to always remember that the book you’re signing might end up for sale on a sidewalk one day. Then she said that a book she had once inscribed to her aunt turned up on eBay! The other told me that she simply writes: For (the person’s name) and then signs her name.

So on Saturday, I kept these authors' words in mind. No more offering love, praise, free sex to the book buyer. I simply signed my name. Okay, I used the word love a few times, but only for people I really do love - my daughter's former teacher, the guy who lives down the road whose name I forgot, everybody who said they loved my first book, a woman who bought TEN books as gifts because she thought I was so amusing on Morning Joe, and a woman who thought it was going to be Roxana Robinson signing books that day (she bought my book anyway, how could I not love her for that?)

Just this, today, an Edith Wharton quote:

"I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawingroom, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."

I'm in my beautiful hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts. I drove up yesterday because I'm doing a book signing today at the Spirit of 76 Bookstore, from 2:00-4:00.

This morning I went down to the landing and saw a lobster boat unloading its traps.

Then I walked down to the cove near my mother and stepfather's house. This is Brown's Island which sits right off the cove:

When the tide is low, as it is in this photo, you can walk right out to Brown's Island and barely get your ankles wet. When the tide comes in, it's a good long swim back to shore. When I was a teenager, I went to a few parties on Brown's Island and there were times that the tide rolled in with the night and when we were ready to leave, we were forced to whip off our clothes and swim to shore under the light of the moon. I have teenagers now, so I hasten to add that we NEVER consumed alcoholic beverages at these parties. What did we do? Oh, I'm sure we had a campfire, sing-alongs. The usual. Moon-Doggie would whip out his bongos and we'd all dance and get crazy. Good times.

This morning I'm heading into the city to tape an edition of NPR's "Fresh AIr" with Terry Gross. I'm a huge fan of Terry Gross and am very excited but also anxious about doing the show. I was told that I would be asked to read from my book and have spent the better part of the morning ruling out various excerpts. I can't read the opening chapter because there's too much dialogue and I'm no actress. Whenever I read dialogue aloud, I would like to adopt the persona of the character and try to say the words as she or he might, but just as I begin to form the words in my mouth, I am overcome by a dizzying self-consciousness and I switch course and read the language with all the pizzazz of a third grader reading a term paper about road construction. All the female characters sound like me and all male characters sound like me. The children sound like me and so do the drunkards, elderly and demented.
So I ruled out any parts that have too much dialogue. Then I ruled out some rather funny parts because, taken alone, they sound ... not so funny. Ruled out any parts that described fictitious famous people because I've run into trouble recently with people thinking I was describing real living famous people. The hairdresser and dermatology scenes might make the book sound too chicklit, while the flashbacks, taken out of context, make no sense. I finally narrowed it down to three words in the middle of the book: "Babies change you." I would like to read just those three words because, really, no truer words have ever been spoken.

I was very pleased to wake up this morning and learn that Outtakes From a Marriage is listed as #1 in today's New York Daily News list of "sizzling beach reads."

In honor of the Fourth of July, I’ve decided to print an excerpt from my memoir, An Innocent, a Broad. For those who haven’t read it, (and judging by my royalty statements, that probably includes you) the book is about the time that Denis and I went to London for a weekend and stayed for six months, because I went into premature labor with our first child, Jack. We had arrived in London in March. By July 4th, Jack had been born and was out of the hospital but still wasn’t healthy enough to travel by plane so we rented a flat in Islington. Denis did stand-up in London comedy clubs at night and wrote his one-man-show, “No Cure For Cancer,” during the day. I nursed our baby every fifteen minutes, all day and all night.

We were broke. I was a new mother and I was homesick. I was SICK with homesickness. Before that trip to London I had never felt particularly patriotic. You really have to be in a situation where you can’t get here, to appreciate how heavenly it is to be here. In America, I mean. So here’s my little excerpt:

“By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, I imagined that if I ever did make it back to my beloved homeland, I would sink to my knees and kiss her hallowed earth. On that day, I was watching a documentary about Elvis Presley, and he sang a medley that began with “Dixie” and ended with “God Bless America.” Although the only southern state I’ve ever visited is Florida, when Elvis sang “Dixie,” my heart ached for the old times there, and by the time the King finished his mournful ballad, I was sobbing. Right around then, Queen Elizabeth was visiting the United States and was taken on a tour of a Philadelphia housing project. The press followed her into the home of one of the residents, who decided that the best way to greet a famous queen was to give her a big ‘ol bear hug, which sent the queen into a state of shock and was the subject of headlines in the UK for at least a week. To me, the encounter said volumes about British-American relations, and I felt very much like the affable but clueless American woman in the news.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to drink strong cups of brewed coffee and talk on the phone with my mother about nothing important. I wanted to order a sub or a slice to go and drink lemonade made from real lemons and eat fresh corn on the cob. I wanted to meander down a familiar street with my baby in a stroller and know that there was a possibility I might run into an old friend.

An older English doctor I had met at the hospital told me that she’d done one year of college in America. She reminisced about the way she had wanted to be able to walk like the American girls. “The way they ambled along, swinging their arms – I really wanted to emulate their uninhibited style, but I couldn’t.” Now I wanted, more than anything in the world, to go home and move freely and unabashedly like the American girl I used to be. My American, pre-baby self was recalled in my mind now, like a dear, departed friend. Like a dead friend, really and just as we usually retain only rosy memories of our dead friends, when I thought of my former self, it was always in glowing terms. I recalled with affection the girl who loved dogs and horses and dancing at clubs and watching old movies. I remembered how I used to walk home to Charlestown on the North End bridge and how I would smile flirtatiously back at the leering longshoremen and construction workers who shouted unprintable things at me as I passed by. I remembered how I used to wake up on Sundays and buy coffee and the paper on the corner and stop at the local bakery for fresh, hot sticky buns to take home to Denis. I remembered the summers when Denis worked comedy clubs on the Cape and how the club owners put us up in fly-infested cabins for a week and we would swim and eat fried clams and drink beer and stay up all night playing gin rummy and then making love. When I was young, I always thought of myself as worldly and wise beyond my years, but now I was a mother, and I saw my former self as I really was – hopelessly innocent and naïve and unfinished - and I desperately wanted to be that way again."

I was looking for a poem for something I'm working on this morning and came across this wonderful poem about having a book published.

THE AUTHOR TO HER BOOK
by Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612-1672)

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.
In Critics' hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.

I went to Marblehead the other night to meet with my sister's book club.

Here they are, the members of the ...I forget the name of the book club but it's an abbreviation that stands for something naughty. Can you believe how tan and gorgeous and sporty-looking they all are? I felt like a sickly, pale-faced consumption victim in their midst. See if you can guess which one is my sister:

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Ooops, the photo's too big and it cut the club in half. Here are the rest of the gals:

Well, nobody guessed the right answer to yesterday's stumper.

THIS is my dear little sister, Meg Seminara:

I just love her.

Just this today - a poem by William Butler Yeats. I'm near the ocean, and the poem reminds me of my youth ( I even broke a kneecap once, wild thing that I was - but it was a horse who broke it.)

A Crazed Girl

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

I’m in a Nantucket rental house, and like any self-respecting Nantucket rental house, this one has, upon its bookshelves, a worn, unabridged, slightly soggy-about-the -edges copy of Moby Dick. I always read my favorite passages from Moby Dick whenever I’m in Nantucket. Being emotionally about twelve years old, I immediately read the sexy, homo-erotic part first – you know the part where Ishmael and his mates are squeezing the whales’ blubber and each other? It’s very beautiful and naughty. If you have a copy of the book, the chapter is called, “A Squeeze of the Hand.” If you’re very good, maybe I’ll excerpt it here in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, let me share a passage that goes with a lovely photo I took today. I have struggled with trying to keep a growing sadness from surfacing, these past weeks. It has partly to do with kids growing up but mostly to do with my own biochemical make-up and general peevishness. So here’s the passage. It’s the “Insular Tahiti” passage that they made you write a paper about in high school.
It's better now that you're older, trust me.

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

The other day I received an email from a reader of my book. I receive many emails from readers and would never print one here without permission from the writer, but I thought this one was intriguing so I asked the writer for permission to post it and she agreed. I'm interested in what you all think. Here it is:

"Dear Ms. Leary, After reading An Innocent, a Broad I rushed to get Out-Takes. I felt that the last part of the book was very emotional. You described how sour marriages can become after a certain amount of time. When that time comes you have to rethink the relationship and decide if you want to continue with the marriage. Thank you for a very moving experience.

One question I would like to ask is why did you use the expression "..his tuxedo trousers and a wife beater..." It was only in the last five years that I heard of a wife beater and was horrified that it was so easily used by women. As a child of the sixties, I would have felt today's women would be more sensitive to that kind of expression. I feel that if you use that expression than you probably see no harm in a person being a wife beater or a woman being beaten. Time passes, but how sad to think we women still suffer from the same beatings and we don't say, "no more."

This writer, who shall remain anonymous, made me think about the fact that the term "wife beater" when describing a man's undershirt, has only been in the lexicon for a short time now. When did people start using this term? And it never occurred to me that it might be sexist - if anything I think it says something about the type of men who originally wore these shirts around with no shirts over them - which would be more of a classist thing. Anyway, I'm interested in your thoughts.

PS, the photo has nothing to do with this blog, it's just my nephew Tommy wading around looking for clams. He'll never be a wife beater, but he'll probably wear one at some point.