Hello Dear Reader!
(Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2020)
Not sure why I had to yell there, sorry about that. Welcome to our humble website.
The idea for this book was born out of an irrational fear of flying. I had become a jumpy flyer after 9/11, but that was compounded after I had two daughters, sixteen months apart. Every flight without them resulted in the same thought:
My girls had seen me almost every day of their lives. We quite literally spent hours looking into each other’s eyes, trying to find each other’s soul. I fed them. I changed their diapers. I dressed them, many times so awkwardly that they started crying. I coaxed them to sleep. I taught them, disciplined them. They knew me as their “dada,” a reliable source of unending love and comfort.
And yet, at these ages, they would not remember anything about me had I left their world on a plane.
I needed to leave them something that would last in perpetuity. A book. And in this book, I would write how I envisioned them. I also wanted to pass to them the benefit of the wisdom that I had accumulated. I wanted to set down the unwritten rules of life, those truths that reveal themselves when one approaches a certain age, everything from character to mental strength to friends to fear to appearance to social dexterity to work success to marriage to kids—in essence, a Manual for Life.
Along the way, I would recount my personal stories—my lonely youth as the only child of a deep-cover CIA spy, the night I met the girls’ mother, work experience as a longtime lawyer, grossly incompetent parenting, etc. I would infuse the book with a healthy dose of pop culture and sports references, everything that would give them a sense of who I was and what I stood for.
Yes, with a pandemic raging across the globe, a book titled Please Open in the Event of My Death sounds especially morbid, but it’s meant to be humorous and light, which is hinted at with the lengthy and awkward subtitle A Father’s Advance to His Daughters in Case Something Horrible Happens (Which Hopefully It Won’t But Just in Case …), which oh God that also sounds really depressing. OK, please just trust me that it will be entertaining and uplifting.
And while the timing of the book’s release on June 2—just mere weeks before Father’s Day and certainly not a blatant and shameless attempt to try to insinuate that this would be the perfect gift for the father in your life—is not ideal for a traditional PR campaign, perhaps the timing of this book may be just right. The pandemic has forced people to confront broader issues of mortality and legacity; to appreciate in more depth attributes such as courage and generosity and sacrifice; and to re-evaluate what’s important and necessary to live a full life.
The hope is that this book will also inspire other parents. I’ve partnered with my publisher Mascot Books and Gotham Ghostwriters to create a dedicated publishing service for parents who want to create similar books—to leave behind stories of their family history, lessons that they’ve learned, memories of their lives.
And your process can be so much easier than mine.
I started this book about seven years ago. I typed out paragraphs on my phone while waiting for the subway, in between court appearances and during any down time while traveling. I wrote long after dinner and past midnight, crazy early in the morning when I snapped awake, any time I could on weekends. The sacrifice was well worth it, but now all I have is a blank stare when someone asks me about the latest episode of Bachelor in Paradise.
In contrast, all you need to do is decide what your goals are. We have three simple programs. If you want to leave a heirloom behind, we have an option for you—at the other end, if you want your story to be published and distributed, we can do that as well. It’s a turnkey operation, and you’ll have a keepsake not just for yourself, but for your kids.
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Thanks for reading …
Mark
