Kelly Ripa writes about marriage, kids, “Live Wire” and more in Book 1 of “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories”

NEW YORK — In Kelly Ripa’s first book, “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories,” she writes about her long marriage to Mark Consuelas, their children, and her decades as a “Live” co-host.

The result is a collection of essays that reads as if Ripa is right there with you, telling you these stories one-on-one.

Kelly Ripa said the book gave her a chance to have fun at her own expense, and she realized that “you can’t die embarrassed or humiliated. You can’t. It won’t kill you, and humiliation is good if you use it as a learning tool.”

Entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon told her that he really enjoyed her book and wondered what she had learned from the experience of writing it.

“What do you know now that you didn’t know before you wrote?” he asked.

“We all come from a place where we’ve had moments of insecurity and self-doubt,” Ripa said. “And nothing shows your own insecurities like sitting down with yourself and writing a book on your own. This is the most difficult. I have given birth three times and it is much harder. It was a much harder journey for me than that.”

Ripa wants us to know that her 34-year career has not been, as she puts it, “a cakewalk.”

“Whenever something seems inherently easy, it’s really very difficult,” she said.

The trick is to make it look effortless, but still stay true to yourself on and off the air.

“There aren’t 15 different mes, it’s just me,” she said. “That’s it. You know what you’re going to get, and there’s something to be said for that.”