-It is such a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
-Thank you for having me. This is great.
-And I know you have some fans from Pearl River, New York here
to help you out. -I have a couple here, yeah.
[ Cheering ]
-Apparently you got your whole town to vote for you?
-I did, yeah.
I struck a little deal. -What'd you do?
-Well, I -- you know, my friends and family were voting anyway,
but one morning I was getting breakfast for my kids,
and I said, "Nobody gets anything in this house
until I see you vote, like, 50 times,"
and then when my son was doing it,
I realized I could draft the kids.
It's not a presidential election,
so I, um -- I made a deal.
I texted maybe --
I think there were, like, 37 parents on this text chain --
two different chains -- and I said,
"If your kids vote 100 times a day for the next five days,
then we can go to King Cone,
and you can get whatever you want.
Nothing's off the table."
-Wow, so you bribed --
-Did the kids even know what they were voting for?
-You know, uh, some of them did. -Okay, okay, great.
-Some of them did. One kid, he was going like crazy.
He's like, "What is this --"
you know, they just wanted that percentage.
-Yeah, they just want --
yeah, they just want that ice cream, yeah.
-I saw people voting at ShopRite,
at Dunkin' -- everywhere.
-Everywhere, right? -Yeah, it was crazy.
-I'm so happy it won, 'cause I love this book.
-I am also happy it won.
-Did -- Did -- Did --
Explain, like, what the past two months were like.
What is it -- Like, did you know that you --
Oh, 'cause --
I don't know you, and I didn't --
we didn't rig this thing at all, so we just selected it,
but is it weird to see, like, "Oh, that's cool."
-I mean, yes, it's crazy.
This book came out at the end of May, and I went on tour,
and I was gone for maybe a month, you know, back and forth,
and it hit the list, which was wonderful,
but then it kind of started to slow down a little bit,
and, um, I just thought that that was it.
I had a good run, and then, out of nowhere,
I guess your producers called Scribner Books,
and, um, they told me about this, and then it just got --
It's been crazy since then.
-It went back on the top ten. -It went back on the list,
and it's been there ever since, actually.
-That's how we do.
That's what I'm talking about, baby!
-Thank you, thank you. -No, thank you.
Let's get into the book.
If you haven't read it, it's called "Ask Again, Yes."
I loved it.
I think, like, I was, like, reading it going, like,
"Oh, my gosh, this is all so real."
'Cause I'm Irish,
and my grandfather was a police officer,
and he was on the job. -On the job.
-...which is what you say.
-Dude, how'd you learn all the --
I mean, there's so many things there.
You had to have done research with...
-I did, yeah. I was --
I talked to a lot of active and retired cops,
like, from the '70s and from now,
and we would go, usually, to a diner
in a town right next to mine, and we'd, you know,
get a big plate of bacon and eggs,
and I would just ask them a lot of questions.
-What was the one thing that they said, "Oh, do not do this"?
-Well, right off the bat, the very first breakfast I had,
he was a retired detective.
He said, "Never --
If I see the word 'badge,' you know, in a novel --"
like, a cop showed his badge, "I'm out."
Like, you never say "badge." -What?
And that scared me, because I didn't know what the word was,
so I realized what I was in for. -What do you call it?
-A shield. Yeah, a shield. -Yes, of course. Okay.
-Little things like that -- there were tons of them.
The little, little things. -I mean, but the detail,
the attention -- every detail, I loved it so much.
I was like, "Ooh," and then,
I mean, there's so many twists and turns.
What inspired you to write it?
Like, how do you just come up with this idea, and you go,
"I'm just gonna write --" I know a writer writes,
but, I mean, what makes you -- what inspired this?
-I think everything around me.
You know, things that I was struggling with,
my friends were struggling with.
I think of it sort of as a Romeo and Juliet story,
except if Romeo and Juliet had lived,
and then their families had to cope with each other
even though they hate each other,
and then Romeo leaves his boxers on the floor,
and Juliet -- nobody is emptying the dishwasher.
-Yeah, domesticated Romeo and Juliet.
-The romance is -- yeah, it's gone, yeah.
-Right, like, the sweet-nothings part is over,
and now you have to, like, deal with each other forever.
-It's life, yeah. -You know, what that's like.
-Yeah. -You're so romantic. Oh, my God.
It really is, though, a romantic book,
and it's about love, and it's about disease,
and it's about -- it's just forgiveness,
and I just -- I know a lot of hard work went into this.
-Yeah.
-And, uh, how long is it -- does it take you to write?
-This book took four years on and off.
I, um -- I quit at one point.
I thought, "I'm done. I can't figure this book out,"
and I sort of took a summer off,
and I thought I'd start a new book,
but I just kept coming back to it,
and then I stuck with it partly out of laziness.
It would take me another whole year to think of a new book.
-Yeah.
-I wanted to stick with this one,
and I'm glad I finished, thank God.
-Yeah, yeah, you did, and and I got to say,
some, also, good news --
it's been purchased to turn into a limited series?
-Yeah, exactly.
It's in development to be a limited miniseries.
-Dude, that's fantastic. -Thank you.
Congratulations, and thank you so much for coming on.
-Thanks. -Mary Beth Keane.
"Ask Again, Yes" is available now.