I’m Only a Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died: Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
I’m Only a Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died: Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.Following find an interview with author Michael Schwartz:
1. What is the name of the book and when was it published? I’m Only a Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died. Published in 2026 by Dear Luciana Press.
2. What’s the book’s first line? “My wife died when our daughter was nine months old.”
3. What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”. It’s a grief memoir written as letters to my late wife Vanessa and our daughter Luciana. The book is about the panic attacks I had while my daughter played with blocks. The fifty pounds I lost because eating felt like betrayal. Figuring out whether a “wah” means hungry or scared. I’m not a grief expert. I’m not even sure I’m a good dad. It’s a book for those who feel isolated trying to live up to ridiculous standards while internally falling apart.
4. What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event? When my wife died I looked everywhere for a book that showed what I was actually going through. I couldn’t find it. So I wrote it.
5. What’s the main reason someone should really read this book? Because survival doesn’t have to look like healing. Sometimes it just looks like getting through Tuesday. If you’re a widowed parent, especially a dad, and you’re tired of being told to “stay strong” or “she’s in a better place,” this book doesn’t do that. It’s honest about how ugly grief gets, and it doesn’t pretend there’s a moment where the light bulb goes off and everything is better.
6. When did you first decide to become an author? I didn’t. I decided to write letters to my daughter so she’d know who her mother was. The book part happened later, almost by accident.
7. Is this the first book you’ve written? Yes. And I told my editor that if she thought it was trash, I was fine keeping it on a shelf for thirteen years and just giving it to Luciana when she turned fifteen. I specifically gave her permission to tell me it was bad. She didn’t.
8. What do you do for work when you’re not writing? I have a nondescript job doing relatively interesting things no one would care about.
9. How much time do you generally spend on your writing? I don’t remember. It was always after I put Luciana to bed. Sometimes I could only write for about ten minutes at a time before dissociating. The book was written in sprints over 18 months. Some letters took hours for what ended up being a few paragraphs.
10. What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie? The best part is that nobody told me to soften it. No publisher asked me to make the title less confrontational or add a redemption arc. The hardest part is that every single thing, from formatting to marketing to figuring out why my Amazon dashboard isn’t updating, is on me. Writing the book was the easy part. Marketing a book about my dead wife is not fun.
11. What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors? Say no to most things. If it’s too good to be true. It usually is.
12. Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why? Depends on what they’re offering. I don’t know if it would work. Publishers understandably want mass appeal, and I don’t think my book fits that mold. If it means more people in my target audience find the book, I’d listen. If it means changing the voice or the content of the book, no.
13. Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?) Reach. I don’t care about money from this, and I don’t want to be famous. I want widowed parents to find it when they’re in the middle of the worst stretch, and realize someone else went through it without sugarcoating how awful everything is.
14. Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire? I’ll pass on this one. I stopped reading grief books when I was writing. I didn’t want anyone else’s voice in my head. I wanted to sink or swim on my own. There are plenty of them that are helpful. I just didn’t find one that worked for me.
15. Which book do you wish you could have written? I wish I never had to write a book at all. I wouldn’t be an author if my wife was alive.