Dear Reader,

It takes a certain amount of hubris to say a book I wrote about my dead wife is funny.

I’m just asking the entire internet to destroy the book.

The easier way to do this is to have someone else read it. Say it’s funny, and I get to act all humble and say, naw, it’s okay. Unfortunately, I can’t have my friends stand right outside your home having random conversations without getting arrested. I also don’t have enough friends to do that.

I told myself when I decided to publish the letters to Luciana that I couldn’t be afraid of the big, bad, internet being mean to me.

Please don’t be mean.

I can write a joke. I wrote one in Vanessa’s eulogy. On purpose. It landed. You would know that if you read the book. I wonder if shaming potential readers for no reason works well on the internet?

I know what you are going to say. People gave me a pity-laugh because my wife had died a week prior, and I was on enough medication to kill a horse.

They probably did. But it was also funny.

Someone on Instagram reviewed the book and called it funny. She doesn’t know me. She has no reason to lie. Other than guilt because she knew I would see her post.

The review is two minutes long. You can watch the whole thing. I believe in you.

Apparently darkly funny memoirs are all the rage right now. Probably. I don’t actually read anymore. I saw one called “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” What a title for a book. It takes enormous courage to put that on a cover.

And anybody who writes a title like that has a similar amount of courage. I’m really not trying to be subtle here.

I bet if you liked that book you’d like mine. Totally the same quality. I’m sure of it.

If I wrote a book about losing Vanessa and it wasn’t funny, it would be awful. I can’t expect Luciana to read 250 pages of sad-sack daddy and pretend she liked it. That’s not a gift to leave her.

I told you the book was honest. Now I’m telling you it’s funny. I’m not going to show you the parts I think are funny. That’s one step too far. Either you read it or you don’t. I’m not auditioning for your laugh track.

But trust the genre on the title page. Raw, honest, sometimes funny.

One of a kind. Except for all those other books that claim to be the same thing. I really need to read more if I expect to convince other people to read more.

Besitos,

Michael