"I've Tried Being Nice" with author Ann Leary

Today's podcast is with my friend and very close neighbor, And Leary. But before we start, I just want to tell you what we were doing. I picked her up at the gate, which is around the corner from her house. There's another gate in between her house and my house, but I don't unlock that gate even for Anne, and so I made her go all the way around to the next gate, and then we drove in my Polaris down to the Maple Avenue house where we record this podcast.

And thank you so much, Martha.

I just want to say that just riding on Martha's Polaris through her property is actually a wonderful way to spend a morning. I know you've probably already been to pilates, ridden two horses.

No, I didn't ride, but I did go to pilates. I have moved a lot of plants. I've been cleaning out the vegetable greenhouse, and I'm like, you, busy, busy, busy all the time.

You're more busy than I am.

I have a feeling you've also maybe started a new business and maybe negotiated a truth in the Middle East this morning.

I wouldn't that be good if I could?

I think you could, Martha.

Would I would like to try. I would like to ring bring some next first. Okay, so read that little, Read that little.

This book is called I Tried Being Nice. It's an essay collection. I was going to call it the Unauthorized Biography of Martha Stewart because I wanted it to be a bestseller, but it's It actually mentions Martha once. But the title essay is about a problem I had with Martha and I are neighbors, but was a different neighbor, and I finally reached a breaking point and actually had to say the words, look, I've tried being nice. This is about reaching a certain age. We went gray early

I found on my twenties.

But anyway, during COVID, I decided I would grow up my gray because I saw all these silver foxes, you know, that were supermodels that had gray hair, and I thought I would look like them. So I grew it out. Took a couple of years. And then I'll also add I was hit on a lot when I had gray hair, more than when I was in my twenties.

I'd have I'd be out.

Getting the mail and you know, a guy would be jogging pass. You'd circle back, ask me, you know what was going on?

People at gym?

And then I realized all this attention I was receiving from all these men, from men eighty to one hundred years old. They thought I was like a super fit former suffragist.

So anyway, my friend, this is what I wrote about you.

You WI helped me very much in changing my perspective of how I looked. My friend Martha said to me one day, why don't you color your hair? I told her that I was sick of coloring it, and I always admired women with wonderful gray hair. I think it's very attractive on certain women. I said it is, Martha said,

Well. See, I do like to fix things that aren't working. And this title could possibly I've tried, being nice could apply to my life and just so many other people's lives that I know. I mean, it's just it's very funny title, and we do reach a point. I reach it every single day trying to be nice. I wake up and say I'm not going to I'm not going to say anything to anybody today that's not nice, and then of course, five minutes into the day, I find

It is life, and you're a busy person who has time. I do do a lot. There's many things that I talk about in this book besides being nice. I write about my marriage, about dogs and kids and taking ballroom dancing classes, traveling. But I do circle back a lot to kind of exploring what it means to be nice, and women have extra expectations on us, expecting us to be nice. I've always experienced you as a nice person.

And I know you're what I think, what some people think is nice.

Maybe is what I tended to do, especially when I was younger, which is like people pleasing and trying to ingratiate myself with others, and that comes from a place of insecurity.

And you don't have that, you have comm evidence.

But I know you're nice, and I think a good sign of a nice person, especially a woman. I know that you have friends that you've had for decades because I know them personally, and you have people who have worked for you for decades.

That to me is an indication of a person's character.

And also of surviving, you know, difficulties with those people and being able to speak frankly and honestly. Yes, it's not all just oh you you look so great today. I can't do that all the time. My friend just asked me the other night that she told me that her back was hurting her terribly and she was really having a hard time. And I said, well, if you just exercised more and you lost about twenty five pounds, maybe your back wouldn't hurt so much. And she was

Okay, so yeah, we had just I've been living here very long, and there were we The street I live on is behind Martha's property. It's one of the most it's a favorite walking street in our town. It's beautiful and scenic Martha. It's called Maple Avenue, and Martha planted all these maple trees all along Maple Avenue. It's absolutely stunning.

She did, Oh, they're so friendly, don't worry.

And this went on for you know, a few weeks of you know, me stopping and saying, coming out and talking, and then one day the dogs came on and almost got in a fight with my dog.

I jumped in my car.

I get up at five point thirty, but at noon I'm often still in my pajamas because I write all morning. I was in my pajamas. I go racing down Maple Avenue and then I.

Saw the doodle Lady and didn't know what to say, so I kept driving.

Then I circled back and I saw they looked uneasy, because that's kind of scary. She circled back, and then I rolled down the window, and without thinking, I said, look, I've tried being nice. The woman actually staggered backwards grabbed her dog.

She thought you were going to kill her.

Yeah, if those are very powerful words, I learned it's kind of like when the kids say no offense, but you know what follows is going to hurt. So that was the thing, and I write a little bit in the book. I knew from reading and talking to friends that when you reach a certain age and I could say menopause, I understood that you actually stop doing trying so hard to ingratiate yourself with everybody you meet. But

I had a friend who did the same thing. I gave her permission to I have a lot of roads on my property. No and they're private and there's no cars, and you can walk your dogs very nicely for four

Territorialist.

She called me up and she said, I think you should euthanize your dogs. Oh my god. And I said, what are you talking about. You were on my property with your dogs unleashed, and you could have easily just gathered them up and walked in the opposite direction if you had them on a leash. And I said, you're not welcome here anymore, right, And that was my end of being nice.

Well that was you were super nice to let her do that.

Yeah, But people, it's both sides of the story. And that's what I really found interesting about this book. It is both sides of the story, right, because your patience gives out at a certain point and right, and the other people's patients also gives out at a certain point.

That's right.

And it's a hard transition to make from being the sweetest, loveliest neighbor in the whole world. Don't ever turn on me, I'm telling you right.

Now, I would never have reason to. You are a wonderful neighbor, a very generous, kind friend. I just want to say, I'm an animal nut. So your chows are the They're ambassadors for the breed. So for them, I know how friendly they are. So for anyone to say that it should be no.

All of your dogs are horse my feeling and well, anyway, now we've gotten through them being nice party, and I just want you want to know who exactly you are. Anne Leary is a best selling author of six books, including The Good House, which was made into a feature film starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kleine. I loved that movie. Her essay about marriage about her marriage in Trouble was that your marriage Yeah, was adapted for the Prime video

I'm so thrilled and I'm loving your setup here.

Do you remember when we first met, when you moved here? What year was it? When you moved here.

You know, I think we bought our place in twenty sixteen, but we did some work and it was around twenty seventeen. Yes, Muffin dwadle are real estate extraordinary agent brought me over. I think I had met you at maybe some parties in the past, but of course you wouldn't remember. But she brought me over and you were very, very, very lovely, and soon you had a dinner party and you just were very welcoming and we were just it was just great.

No, but what's fun is that this neighborhood has really improved with the new homeowners that are coming, and I'm so excited about living in Bedford now. When I first came here, it was really quiet, and the Sunday nights you just wanted to just go back to New York with everybody else, because everybody just had this massive exodus back to back to the city after a pleasant country weekend. But now more people are staying, they're living out here.

So, Dennis and I.

I met Dennis when I transferred to Emerson College from Bennington College and I was a writing major and I was told by the head of the department, I should take this comedy writing class with this man, Dennis Leary, who I thought would be in his forties. I was twenty and then this, so you know, Dennis was a kind of a ginger, kind of blondish. You guys with fair skin, they when they're twenty five, they look like they're fourteen.

Kind of.

He came in, but he was super good. He was super cute. Anyway he walked in, I didn't think he was the teacher. He was the first thing he said you could smoke in class, and he said, smoke him if you got him.

Well, like they say in the military. Anyway, he was my teach.

Sure, I know it's very scandalous now, but it was a super fun class. Years later, by the way, I took the class, I got an a and we actually started dating right after the class was over.

Not during because that would have been appropriate.

No, yes, I earned my grade, honestly. But he actually then we went on a couple of days. He stayed over one night, and he never left Martha to this day. It's been forty years. He turned out he didn't really have a.

Place to live. I didn't know that, so he just came rat it's in Boston. So we've been through a lot.

He actually, you know, he was just like a starting out an open mic comic, and then he kind of found his stride and became I guess famous after Yeah, he gave and then so that was fun.

We got to enjoy that together.

There's a chapter in my book called Red Carpet Diaries about our many like mishaps, fumbling along the Red carpet when we were total rubes at first, and now we kind of know what we're doing as you obviously know.

And these are twotiful people, and it's with her beautiful blonde blocks. Now, thank you, mind I don't, but don't you think you look better with blonde? Absolutely? Martha?

When I would look at photographs then with my blonde friends, I would always I was like, who's.

That old lady?

Who's the mother?

Because it wasn't I didn't have that wonderful shock of gray or the pet it was white.

It wasn't.

You were right, you know, That's what I was. I meant to say before. It's not Martha was helping.

Sometimes you know a finach in your teeth and your friend doesn't tell.

You, no, I wasn't being a bitch.

I just you weren't the only went by the way.

We're prettier than you were letting yourself. Thank you, and more tried. And how many more men hit on you now? Is a blonde?

I think now they're in you know I helped, There wasn't.

Yeah, I don't know, but they I think it was mostly these older guys thought she's fit for being nineties.

Well to Dennis, you have two children, yes, how old they were?

Not really thirty? I had to say that because I was just thirty a few years ago, Martha.

I I just was thirty not long ago.

They're wonderful kids.

And Anne Ann Leary is just I did the math this morning when I found out when you were born, and you're just three years older than my daughter, So I could.

Beat your mother. Well, that's shocking.

And I consider you much more unequal to me. I think because I consider all my friends more equal to me, because I like I hang out with younger people.

I do too. I had got people of all ages.

But I actually think i'm the same age as I can't guess. People say, but I think you might think i'm your age because you're so much more active.

Than I am. You do you pack so much more into a day, and you're so.

You're playing so much tennis and doing all that stuff.

I do that. Yeah, that's right.

And I met all your tennis buddies the other night, Yes, at your performance at the Bedford Playhouse and your husband.

Thank you for coming.

It was great grade to sit there and hear you bantered with each other. It was very nice.

It was super fun.

What is it like living with Dennis who comes and goes like I.

Mean, he does he's busy.

He's busy with his career. He's always going to Canada.

Yeah, you know what, I think it might be a key to We've been married a very long time. We've been living together a long time and married a long time, and especially early on in the marriage, I never saw him. I think that's the key to a successful marriage. I'm fascinated by him. It's wonderful when he comes home. He's always works with really interesting people. As you know, Martha, I'm a bit of a hermit, so I like to hear what exciting things he's done. But I like to

It's just so you were trained as a writer. At what point did you write your first book? So is that when you were married.

Yes, yes, my first book was called An Innocent Abroad. It was just you know, borrowed from Mark Twain's book but I but mine was an innocent comma abroad. It was about having my son in London by accident. He was supposed to be born in the United States. But we went for a weekend, I went into premature labor and six months later we came home. And it's kind

So that so that was that was fortuitious, Yes, it was, It actually was.

It was scary and then it was good because it all's well, that ends well. You know my son, he's fabulous.

He's very he's like seven feet, all the handsomest boys and a writer.

Also yeah yeah, producer, yeah actually yeah. So yeah.

So that but that book I didn't tell anyone, even Dennis. I wrote like five chapters in an outline and secretly sent it to this editor who was a friend of a friend, because I was sure I didn't want the shame of, you know, saying So it did get published and then this is I think my sixth book, but.

I usually write fiction.

These are that and this book are my only nonfiction books.

I prefer fiction.

So where do you find the inspiration for each of your books? I mean, start with the first one.

Well and Innocent Abroad was you know this this thing happened. It was very stressful and traumatic. I waited years until it wasn't anymore. I found actually a friend of mine. This was nineteen ninety when that happened, so there were no cell phones. I wrote on paper, Martha to my

I don't use carbon paper.

I did when I was in school and write, you know when I would write short story.

Yeah, we had to yes, carb I forgot about that.

Well, I used carbon paper any letters I wrote, like to my husband. We got married in nineteen sixty one, so wow, a long long time ago. But all the letters I wrote to him, I kept carbon copies, so some were by hand and some were on a typewriter. But it was so easy. With a typewriter, you just put in your yeah, your carbon, you know, they had two sheets of paper and one sheet of carbon. But I kept all those. That was so good because we didn't have computers, right, we didn't have you know, word.

Typewriters that we're right. I forgot about that we would have to Yeah, did.

You write your first book on a typewriter or by no?

By then I had probably a word or maybe I had an early computer. But yeah, I don't know how.

Nineteen eighty two I got my first computer.

Wow, okay, so yeah.

So then I started using that to write on.

I don't know how people wrote books.

But my last novel was The Foundling, and it was set in the nineteen twenties, and I don't know how people researched books.

It was so easy.

It's so easy now you can just, you know, find anything online. Although I did go to place where the book was set multiple times. I think you actually have to go and be in a place. But I don't know how people researched exhaustively.

Well, after you read I've tried being nice listeners, then please read The Foundling and then also read The Good House.

A good House thank you, Martha.

Than because those are the ones I love. Thank you. I subscribed to Founding because I remember living, you know, as your neighbor, hearing little bits about the Foundling over a period that takes you a couple of years to yes.

The Foundling was loosely based on a discovery I made about my grandmother, who I never really knew, even though she lived till I was a mother myself. But she worked at a eugenics asylum in the nineteen twenties, and it was called the Laurelton State Village for feeble minded women of child pairing age.

I found that eugenics mean so thank you.

I didn't know either at first, but eugenics was actually a household word in the early twentieth century. It was the law of the It wasn't like a scary cult. It was actually, you know, the Immigration Act of nineteen twenty four was a eugenics law.

It actually limited immigrants.

From certain parts of Europe, and it's the law that kept Anne Frank from coming here. It had to do with keeping the right types of people coming. And it also where my grandmother worked is where they sent bad girls and they called them feeble minded because they were prostitutes or they had been very sexual proclivities. Yes, in those days, those things were against the law, and morality

She never spoke about it, so I think she was embarrassed or when she realized, I don't know.

I will never know. She probably spoke to my mother about it. My mother never really wanted to talk. My grandmother ended up very troubled. She was an orphan and so I don't have much his and my mother and she had to cut ties when I was a little girl, so I've kind of been fascinated by her as a result. What happens when you cut off a grandmother to a curious daughter, that grandmother becomes fascinating.

Are we going to see that in a movie?

It has been optioned as a limited series. Oh, that would be yeah, that would be good.

Because that kind of history, that that people are kind of embarrassed about, that America actually adopted some of those policies is very fascinating and it would be an honest thing to show it. Yeah, I just watched the is a feature film of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her and her first big accomplishment of pelic cart arguing about sex discrimination involving a man and the tax law. It's interesting watch the movie, I will, but it's cooled. I don't

Yes, we were not taught.

I mean so the Nazis learned a lot of their horrible policies.

They learn from our eugenics.

You know, the final solution of eugenics is genocide, and fortunately the United States didn't ever go that far. And when World War II happened, that's when eugenics came to a screeching halt in the United States. In the UK, but people in the UK are taught about eugenics in public school and the United States really it's quiet, like you know many things, It's just it was short lived. Why revisit I think there's a good reason. Why why do why go back there?

So?

Yeah? Interesting?

Yeah?

And so what about your writing habits? Because you are writing all the time, I try to, I write it and does not answer her phone all the time. It's a texture. Maybe you'll get to answer in a couple of days. What are your habits there?

So I like to write in the morning. I'm the brightest shock you might not believe that, because this is the best. This is the best, Marta, this is the best I could be. Yeah, you know, I like the mornings.

I'm a morning person, are you Yeah?

I mean I have confidence when I can write a passage in the morning and think, okay, this book. I've got a book here, And then I'll have lunch and then return to it and read the same passage and feel my face like burning with shep. Just like my confidence kind of wanes. And so I don't write, you know, after too much in the afternoons. I try to get other stuff done then. But I do like to write every morning if I can. And I tell people who are new to writing if a book is really working for me.

I used to say, I'm writing a novel and it's.

Just come alive and the characters are making things happen without me. I used to keep going until it ran itself out, and then the next morning I'd kind of be in the dol drums again. And now I've learned to stop. I stop it to put it away, because the next morning I get to go back to it, it's still alive.

You know. That's just like a little.

And that's good to know. You learned yourself.

I learned, Yeah, you learn.

Over the course of time, each book taught me something about writing.

It's been testa So what three pieces of advice would you give to aspiring novelists because there's probably a lot of them listening to you right now.

Oh well, I always tell writers. First of all, if you're an aspiring writer and you're writing, you are a writer. I do believe for every published author, there's probably a thousand more talented writers that just haven't been published yet.

Keep writing. Find out trusted friend.

And this is the thing I say all the time to young writers especially, Write everything as if you're writing a letter to your best friend who gets you. That's what I did with my first book, when my friend saved my letters. I wrote in the tone I wrote those letters to her. And when you write that way, and I certainly did that in this book. I wanted

I think writers often try to write in a very writerly.

Voice and also are kind of paralyzed with this thinking of the reader, as this very stern critic at the New York Times, he's going to hate it. And instead think of your sister, your friend, your husband, whoever, your partner. Because in that way you don't underestimate the reader. Readers are smart, they will get they will get what you're writing, and it just makes the whole thing.

I think it makes for a better tone in writings.

So do you solitary? Some people, some writers say it's so lonely to be a writer. Do you find that it's lonely? No? But good?

But it is hard when I'm writing fiction. So when my kids were at home, I would be so caught up in my story. I'd be driving them and they'd be like mo, Mo, Mom, I would be not that attentive. So I kind of live in a kind of fantasy world a lot when I'm writing. But I don't find it solitary. I find it lonesome when I've finished a novel, especially The Good House.

That main character, He'll be Good was.

I just loved her and I was sad, and I wrote it in the first person, so I was kind of her for a while, and I was sad to not be here at any posts. I kind of missed that. But no, it's it's it's not that lonely. I'm a loner though, as you know, I kind of spent a lot of time by myself.

My animal.

No, you do, you are an animal over talk about that. When did that all start?

Al So, we moved all the time growing up.

Why what was your father?

My dad was in the military when I was very little, but he also then it was just in marketing. He worked at these corporations at various in these cities in the Midwest that the whole town worked. We're seeing Wisconsin, like which which companies Johnson Wax and we're se Dow Chemical Company. You know, we worked for Carnie he is the grass is always greener kind of person.

He was just chronically unsatisfied.

I think, and you know, he's read this book and I write about it and he acknowledges that. But you know, we were uprooted a lot. We moved every couple of years, so it did help me learn to make friends. It actually made me an avid reader. We would often move in the summer. I kind of lived in libraries. I knew the one thing familiar in any town is the Dewey decimal system. I knew where all the books were in the stacks. And I really got into reading at a very young age.

But I think.

Also it was the best book you read while you were in junior high school. Oh, my goodness, whatever.

I remember the first big book I read, and it was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I was probably maybe younger than middle school.

Because I got a lot of attention. I had read.

I always read books about animals, and I had read The Red Pony by John Steinbeck that I loved and decided to read the Grapes of Wrap And I tell people with kids john Steinbeck is super accessible to young readers.

It's not complicated.

But what was exciting to me about that book is the structure is simple, but it was fascinating to me. So if you recall, it's like the first chapter is about this Jode family, and then the next chapter Steinbeck pulls out and shows the dustball during the depression. Each chapter alternated like that. It's very simple, but to me as a young girl, instead of just the story, I actually paid attention to the writing and the structure. So probably that was the most influential. But I got a

Grown up to get a lot of probably very impressed. But about high school, it was the most exciting book you read in.

Oh gosh, do you know what's so funny? I thought The fountain Head was absolutely the sexiest book and the most romantic book. Well now I think it's on. I mean, all the books I loved are on banned book.

Lists, and I can't understand that at all.

Well, you know, our library here in Katona has this wonderful band book club and they read all the banned books because they're fabulous books.

And it's too bad and.

How sad that children aren't exposed to those in my town in Noteley, New Jersey, we were allowed to proceed at my age to the next library. There was the Children's room, than the Stockton room, than the adult library. So there were three libraries, and if you passed the tests in the children's room, you were promoted to the Stockton Oh my god, and then the stock The same thing happened. So by the time I was twelve, I was in the adult library, I'm sure. And I read

Books were sexy, I remember, And they're not like that anymore. Passed around the bus, yeah, remember Jacqueline Susanne. Of course we would pass them around. They'd open up to the dirty pages.

Yeah, I don't know. It was a different time. I guess kids watch stuff on their phones now.

But I read all the history, all the books about Chica and the and and the Depression, and the John Steinbeck's and the Pearl Book, did you read Pearl books? Well the Earth?

I feel like I did the history of.

China in one novel. So interesting. Yah, and kids are missing out on all this stuff now?

Is that band?

No? I don't think it's banned. I hope not. I hope because it's the it's really the simplistic history of the emerging China.

It's accessible.

Yeah, very very good. So people will probably write and say that's not crappy book. But I found it extremely interesting.

I know you're so well read.

I rely on Martha because we'll be riding through the woods and Martha can tell she did.

You know.

She's modest, but she can tell every tree without leaves are on or off. I've begume to rely on her knowledge. I don't know if you remember this. We were looking at a house. I love looking at houses for sale. We both we have a friend who's broken. Sometimes she shows us these very impressive estates just.

But we love looking at house.

We were curious there was one that had this amazing It was a beautiful home and had a marble mantle piece and there was this Latin inscription on the top.

I'm so used to Martha knowing everything. I turned to Martha and said, Martha, what does that say? And then you started to you knew a few of the words, and then you turned to me and said, what am I? You're walking Wikipedia? But I said, kind of you kind of.

So in your books, at least you stay pretty local in your books. At least four of your books include New England as part of your story.

Yes, they do.

And for those of who have never lived in New England, what do you love about this area of the country. You lived elsewhere, but you keep coming back here.

Well, I think because I moved from Racine, Wisconsin to Marblehead, Massachusetts at age fourteen.

And that's a beautiful place.

It is beautiful, the Northville Boston I love. I have such a strong heart for that part of New England.

But it was hard.

It was very different. We lived in places that people moved all the time. And then I moved to Marblehead where you know, not only the kids had lived there all their lives.

So I had their grandparents.

I had classmates, multiple classmates who had like the cove was named after their family, the street was named it felt and so there was just this I think it was good that I came as an outsider with a weird accent, and that I quickly changed to fit in. I just became very aware of this New England personality that is quite distinct. I think it's as a kind of a regional personality. I love a good towny from

You know.

So I just kind of love that your book.

The Children, it is about an unconventional New England family which which is sharing a sprawling, beautiful lakeside home. Explaining why this book is such a story of survival.

Well, so that we had a little cabin on Lake Waramuk. I'm sure you know where they are.

So that was this other part of New England, which is Connecticut, old money wealth, and I really explored that, and I was kind of familiar with that in Marblehead, but especially that old Yankee, the people who they have millions and hundreds of millions probably in a trust fund, but they turned their lights off because they don't want to pay for electricity.

I knew very parsimonious.

Partimonious is a good word for it.

And you know, so anyway, I explored that it's about Uh did.

Weas earned our lights off in our house because we didn't have any money? I read with a flashlight, did you Yeah?

Yeah?

Well, first of all, because I was supposed to have my lights out and I would be under the coverage reading with a light right, so nobody could tell that I was still up and reading.

It's so funny, I Dennis Lye full the lights on and I run around it and turn off lights, just because the way I was brought up.

But our kids have no idea. Remember if you called a friend who lived in the next town over, it.

Costs oh yeah, total call.

Yeah, so your parents, you know, you'd have to babysit an extra night to pay for.

Do you remember your phone number from from childhood?

Well? I had so many? Oh yeah, but I think I do remember.

I think it's still probably my mother's phone number. She stayed at Marblehead my dad moved on.

I remember I remember my noteley well, it was a party line North seven seven nine to two. And then I remember my first married phone, which was at Columbia University University five five two eight oh number of feet in a mile? I remember that and so weird? Oh wow, that I would remember these random phones.

Yeah, remember we memorized all our friends.

Now, yes, oh yeah, we didn't have We didn't have a direct dial phone. Now do Now I knew everybody's phone number. I don't know my daughter's phone number right now, I have.

To lock it up.

I don't know my mother's I have to look it up too. It's embarrassing. But yeah, but I know my friend from fourth grade.

Well, now your next book I want to show write Outtakes from a Marriage. Okay, was that the most painful book to write?

You know, it wasn't really.

So it's it's a you know, it's a book about a woman who is married to a person who becomes famous, and it, you know, describes their experiences on the red carpet.

But he's having an affair.

So everyone thought it was a bummer because when this came out, everyone thought I was writing about our friend Elizabeth Hurley, who is our friend and is a lovely person. But you know, she and Dennis had done a movie anyway, so it was like all over page six and it kind of was a bummer. It wasn't at all about that. It was that part wasn't autobiographical, but.

Just on a side. Did you watch Elizabeth Hurley's Sons movie?

Oh, my gosh, no, but I was. My Dennis is one of his godfathers.

Oh he is a movie. Oh and she's in it.

Well, I'm not supprised.

Very weird movie. Watch it in the middle of the night. Somehow I got to watch that movie. It's very weird. He smiles a lot, very he is handsome. He's a handsome boy. Yeah, but what what inspired you to write that book about about? You know, the difficulty?

I saw, you know, right, they say, right, but you know I have you know, it's it's interesting. I feel like it's a unique experience I have of being walking on a red carpet with a person who's famous. What happens is the photographers will do this thing of they'll be polite and take pictures, and then they.

Say to me, can you move? Can you move out of the thing?

Because I'm known and what they call a waste of editorial space and they want to have a famous person next to do I just have funny things that I thought, I, you know, I would add to that.

But I also just I was also right.

About funny or bitter? Maybe did you ever feel bitter about that?

I don't know if that which No, no, I wasn't.

But the first book, which was about our son my helpful editor first, So this was a memoir. The first it was my agent, I'm my editor. He read it and he said to me, you know, I like it. I just wish the narrator were more likable. And I said me too. I've been working on that all my life because I was the narrator. It was about me, and he actually thought I was a little bitter in that, and he was right, and I took it. I fixed that. I don't like that in a memoir. I don't want

But again I usually write.

About things when they're behind me. So that Modern Love piece that is in this at my new essay collection in an expanded thing. It's about a time when our marriage went through a rough patch that lasted three years and we actually thought we were going to get a divorce, and we didn't.

Tennis saved our marriage.

We went to marriage counseling, and the piece I wrote for Modern Love was well received and so, but I couldn't write that until that was behind us for a few years. When it's when you're in it, you are bitter. I couldn't have written that the way I did, which was with the little humor.

Did you live in the same house when you were breaking up?

We did, but we had a couple of houses, so it's like we had a house in the country and the house in the city. We did, and we thought the kids were being horribly traumatized by our very troubled marriage. And when I wrote this piece years later for The Times, I sent it as I always do, to my family to make sure no one's embarrassed to.

Embarrassed by it, and my kids were shocked. They had no.

Idea we had any So I guess we did a good job of hiding.

Yeah, so if you write too soon.

One of my favorite essays is Nora Ephron and her famous quote is everything is copy. Not everything is copy for me when it intrudes on the privacy of those I love.

But almost everything is copy.

And it's only funny though with time, and I like to be funny and not bitter.

That's a very nice trait, and it comes across except to the neighbor.

Yes, I know, maybe you don't know. When I moved here is when I stopped being so nice.

So why did you move to Bedford of all places? What do you here?

Well, so we were downsizing and we wanted to get rid of this. We had a big farm in the country and many acres, and we had the place in the city. Horses and yeah, horses. We just wanted a smaller place. Our kids had moved out. We loved that this was on the train. But I'd also been coming to the Bedford Hunter Pace for twenty years and I wanted I knew all the trails, so I kind of knew it that way, and we bought a house that's

Because of the paddocks.

Did you think I thought there were soccer fields? But it was Martha Stewart's property. Our pets love my dogs sit upstairs in the window, and they every day watch Martha Stewart living because there's so many, so much going on here. My horse I used to ride here, wanted to dump me and live in her barn because the animals here are have a great life and are fascinating.

And the field and the fields are great pastures, you know, Oh my god, the horses do like I feel so sorry when I see a horse or two and a little little paddock with no grass and then just hate to eat right like at my house. Yeah, I feel I feel always so sad that would.

Be my house.

But I'm so glad that you did move in across the street. It's been such a pleasure to have you and Dennis and the children as neighbors. And what are the kids doing now?

Our daughter is writing. She's about to go to law. She works in writers rooms for television shows, so she it's like a nomad's life. She goes for a few months, works on a show as a writer's assistant. Sometimes she gets to write as well, and then she comes back. Our son is a producer. He works with Dennis, and he found it and made it happen, and it's going to be shooting in Ireland this fall, but it's set in the Netherlands.

Oh, collaboration. So you're on a book to right now with I've tried being nice. Yes, Where are you going on this tour?

I mostly just the New England area. You know since COVID.

What happened during COVID, A lot of book events became virtual and they publishers realized, why are we spending all this money? Now It's different for Jodpico and Stephen King. They still do like multi city tours. But you know, if you are kind of you know, it's okay selling author, it's you know, you can do these virtual events, which I do, but I also go to you know, I don't like to fly that one, so places where I

So great for you to be here, and I can't wait for your next book. Of course, on your Instagram page at Ann Leary One Word, you share a lot of videos of your dogs doing tricks and you can get to know Ann Leary very nicely with her love of animals right there on Ann Leary, thank you well, thank you for coming by, and thank you, and I can't wait to talk more about writing. I'm trying to write an autobiography.

I know that I cannot wait, though this is hard.

I'm not because I'd like to write, but I'm not a novelist and I don't profess to be a writer. But I know it's going to be a long slog to do a book like that, but I'm looking forward to it. Yes, I have friends like Anne Leary that I can sort of.

I write it as you're writing it to your best friend.

I'm reading your very very good piece.

Yes, write it, you know, like you're writing it to Charlotte Beers or Memory Lewis.

Your friends. I love you. Guys are a few years older than me.

I've gotten to know a couple of Martha's friends, and I am watching you guys because I want to be moving into the next part of my life and being able to.

I can't keep up with you now.

But we're all curious. Keep up the curiosity, that's right, and that's what I think is the best thing about being a writer is your curiosity.

I think that's something a lot of people don't know about you. You are authentically very curious, and that's what makes anyone and.

I think that will help us a lot with my writing as I embark on this next phase. But and Larry, thank you and best of luck with this book as it and you don't need it, but good luck.

Thank you so much, Martha, and come visit against so I would love to