First Look Excerpt: Eric Dane Inspires You to Live and Love Fully, Right Now
Here’s Your First Look
TODAY
6:15 a.m.
"Good morning, I love you."
I say those five words aloud, today, and every day, dictating a text to Georgia, my thirteen-year-old daughter. I speak slowly into my phone, which Cynthia, my nurse, holds up to my mouth.
I nod. Cynthia lowers the phone and places it on the nightstand next to me. She may as well have placed it thirty miles away on the beach in Malibu. I can't reach it, can't use it, can't even see it because I can't turn my neck. I nod again, close my eyes, and hear Cynthia padding across the floor, leaving the room. I exhale lightly, then breathe in the morning. The sunlight dapples through the blinds and rinses my face.
My day begins.
--
LATER TODAY
11:13 a.m.
Readers, friends, family.
Rebecca, my ex-wife, well, technically wife, best friend.
My daughters.
You hold my life in your hands.
Every part of me, every ounce of flesh, every muscle, every cell.
My face. My eyes. That good hair still.
My smile.
My breath.
My beating heart.
And my mind, fully operational.
My body is failing, becoming weaker day by day, but my brain is alive, electrified, thoughts bouncing back and forth, ricocheting side to side, images hurtling at me—it was the best and worst of times—bringing me here, in the present, into this exact moment.
My past? Whoa. It was a lot. I wince when I replay parts of it. 'The future? I'm understandably nervous about that. I can see what's ahead and I know how this story ends.
Do I pray? No. Not saying I won't at some point, because you never know. Never say never. But right now, I'm having a little bit of a disagreement with God. We're not seeing eye to eye. I do consider myself a spiritual person. I hope to pass that on. I did have a bar mitzvah, but after that religion didn't really take. Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who've been there. David Bowie said that. Or maybe I read it on a bulletin board before a meeting while I was pouring coffee. Anyway, I believe it. Because I've been to hell. Buckle up. You're about to visit those fires, too, at least for the reenactment.
So, here I am. In bed. Inert. Immobile. An adult infant. Excuse me if I'm being a little dramatic. It's my nature. It's also a fact of my life. I can't avoid this. No going back. No rewind. No mulligan. This shit is real and relentless. I think about what I've lost, physically, who I've become, and I feel swamped by disbelief.
I sometimes imagine myself as a character in a movie I'm watching, living a different life, doing what I used to do. Nothing grand. Just normal stuff. I walk, I sit, I brush my teeth, comb my hair, feed myself, dress myself, use my phone. Normal stuff. I squint at that image of me. That person. He's out of focus, far away. I barely remember him. Even though being normal was less than two years ago. Now I wake up, blink, take in the room, observe everything I can see from this position lying on my back, and I say, sometimes aloud, with some surprise, but mostly resignation—
"Oh, fuck. This again?"
Yeah. This again. Life has become this.
Always this. Only this.
This fucking disease.
ALS.
A Life-changing Shitshow.
Today. All day, tomorrow, every day. Until the end of my days.
But for the record—I'm not dying today.
Well, I am dying today, little by little, but no, I'm not leaving this rock yet. Got more to do. More to say. A lot more. I have a ton to explain, to describe, to reveal about my days, some of them beautiful and surprising and emotional I, some shocking, shameful, and scary as hell. All those days lead here and end with a singular purpose—the explanation of a life. A life splintered, told in fragments. My life. But I've got to do it now, as in literally right now. Hear that?
Tick... tick... tick...
That's the brutal passing of time. The ticking is like a hammer to my head, and it's accelerating. Each day rips by. But here's a trickle of good news. This disease has bestowed on me an unlikely gift—the ability to live completely in the moment. This being in the present tense is new to me. Before ALS, I would wander off mentally, lost in my own head for long chunks of time, wallowing in worry, self-pity, shame, regret. I'd replay decisions, second-guess myself, "I should've done this, I never should've done that."
No more.
I'm right here, right now.
Truth?
I didn't arrive here in the moment intentionally, or existentially, or heroically. I came here as a function of the disease. I got here because I don't have hands anymore. I can't use my phone, or the TV remote. Or a spoon. Or a fucking fork. I have to be in the moment. I have no choice.
Well, I guess I do have a choice. I could retreat. I could detach. I could complain, resist, scream, make myself and everyone around me miserable. I could get under the covers and stay there for the rest of my life. Would you blame me?
But I choose not to. Turns out, I'm not built that way. I'm a fighter. A competitor. I also have a secret power. I've been blessed with a massive reservoir of resilience. The way I lived my life in my early twenties, I should've died ten times. I somehow managed to survive. I pulled myself through days of oblivion, days of hell, again and again and again.
So today, I embrace the fight. Well, mostly. I admit there are times when I'd like to wail my head off. But I resist the urge. I accept my new normal. I'm where I want to be—in the now. I'm here, in bed. I can't move. And I don't want to move. Even at eleven at night when I'm trailing off to sleep, I think, "This is exactly where I'm supposed to be. It's normal. I'm living the same way as everybody else."
Sure, I want to hang around, I want to slow down time, but that, as I say, is futile. Time blazes by, the minutes a blur, dizzying, tick ... tick... tick...
Enough. Let's jump in.
Here's what you're holding.
The true testament of my thoughts, emotions, realizations, revelations, and, to the best of my ability, my memories.
I call it my book of days.
Days.
It's funny how that word, that time frame, that twenty-four-hour cycle has become so prevalent in our culture.
Mama said there'd be days like this.
Our day will come.
Counting the days.
Back in the day.
End of the day.
Day by day.
Happy days.
Glory days.
Day tripper.
A hard day's night.
A day in the life.
What a difference a day makes.
And the expression I think about, well, daily—
My days are numbered.
So—how do I start my book of days?
If you don't read another page, if you decide to stop now, here's a sliver of wisdom, a snippet of advice, a simple suggestion, a takeaway.
Self-help?
I don't know.
But here, help yourself:
Don't wait until you get the worst possible news before you decide to become your best possible person.
Or friend.
Or husband.
Or dad.
Start today.
Start now.
Trust me.
From MY BOOK OF DAYS by Eric Dane, to be published on November 3, 2026 by The Open Field, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Dane Family Trust.
Don’t miss Maria’s interview with Eric’s wife, Rebecca Gayheart, airing November 3 on NBC
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