Dear Reader,

Authors are supposed to know their target audience. Age range. Income. What they bought last year.

Mine is three. She can’t read.

Reason #1 to read my book: it wasn’t written for you.

The letters are real. I wrote them to Vanessa, who is dead, and to Luciana, who was nine months old when her Mommy died. One audience will never read them. The other one couldn’t. I wrote them anyway.

These letters can’t be bullshit. The final judge on whether the book should have been written is the person I have to look in the eye every morning.

The book is honest because Luciana was there for all of it, and one day she’ll check my math. There’s no redemption arc because she lives in my house. She’d know. It’s funny because the alternative was handing her 250 pages of her father crying and calling it a gift. And you get to meet Vanessa because Luciana can’t remember her. Someone had to write her down.

The title sounds like clickbait. It isn’t. “I’m Only a Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died” is a confession I’ll have to explain to her someday. I just scheduled the conversation early and put it on the cover.

She won’t remember the night after her Mommy died. She won’t remember the funeral, or the first year, or learning to walk in a house that was half empty. She won’t remember Mommy. The book remembers for her.

So what are you doing here?

She’ll read it when she’s ready. You can read it now.

You’re not the point. You’re just early.

Besitos,

Michael