The Funeral Planner

Love Lynn's The Funeral Planner books, and got a sneak preview of her Hi-Def Digital Series on DVD that is due out this spring with a sparkling Hollywood cast that will make you laugh and think about how you want to be remembered. Three women plan Life Celebrations with fun twists and a coffee shop office in Santa Monica, CA, including Maddy Banks (Heather Mazur/ CSI), Eve (Joss Stone/ hot singer), and Sierra (Marisa Ramirez/ General Hospital). What an awesome compliment to Lynn's comedy novel trilogy (The Funeral Planner, The Funeral Planner Goes to the White House and The Funeral Planner Goes Global). Along with these entertaining books and upcoming DVD, Lynn has created The Tribute Network, which is a social media website where you can post videos and tributes to honor people and pets you love. After posting a tribute video for my highschool friend who recently passed away suddenly at a young age, it was heartwarming to see that over 500 friends watched my tribute from around the world. This video helped me share life celebrations for my friend when I could not be there to speak at the funeral. Thank you Lynn Isenberg for inspiring me to film this tribute with laughs of the good times together that are so important to remember. I highly recommend The Funeral Planner books, DVD and The Tribute Network!

The Funeral Planner is the first fiction I've read in years. I guess,like Maddy Banks, I've got too much to accomplish to fool around with fluff like fiction. Over the last few weeks I found time to get half way though the book. I spent last weekend finishing up seaside on Palm Island in Florida. What a treat to leisurely follow along with Maddy's adventures. If you have ever started a business, or in the midst of starting a business right now, here's your opportunity to match characters and stories with all the people and predicaments you will bump into along your way.

Madison aka Maddy Banks has been going from entrepreneur career through entrepreneur career, with many failures. After going to a funeral for a friend, she realizes her calling. Planning personalized funerals, with the new company she's going to build called Lights Out. She gets emotional and financial help from her Uncle Sam. And before she can even begin her new career, Sam dies of Cancer. His is the first furneral she plans, and it's a hit. Soon, she has people lined up to do funerals for. One costumer even wanted his furneral twice. Just so he could live through the first one. But things take a bad turn when her arch rival, the man behind satabogiging all of her other businesses she's had, decided to open his own funeral company, and steals all of Maddy's ideas, as well as many of Maddy's backers and clients. At the advice of her handsome Venture Capitalist, she decides to take time out for herself, and to properly grieve her friend Tara and her uncle. After spending time in Ann Arbor, she not only regroups, but with an old friend of her uncle's who used to own a funeral parlor, makes a pamplet on how to grieve, and hold grieving seminars. With this new info, she puts Lights Out back on track, and even gets the upperhand on her competition. I have to say one of the things that I liked about this book is that the main character is bi, and even though she winds up with a man at the end, there are some scenes with her and her ex-girlfriend, whom she remains close with. This book made me laugh and cry at the same time through a few chapters of it. The bad guys in the book get their just deserts, and Maddy also realizes what unconditional love from a dog can do to someone in need, like herself.

It's not a coincidence that a book about the funeral industry could serve as a reminder to celebrate life as it's been lived. Isenberg's "The Funeral Planner" is a treasure chest filled with shining gems of stories, anecdotes that resonate of reality despite the book's fiction status. The fact that the book is, in itself, a novel that launched an actual business, isn't its greatest success but its ability to remind the reader that it's never too late to change the direction of life and never too early to think about the best way to celebrate it.

Even as a child Maddy Banks equated self worth to be equal to net worth. So she is concerned that she has yet to make her entrepreneurial mark. Maddy has no time for self pity as she travels from Los Angeles to Ann Arbor to attend the funeral of her friend Tara Pintock. This second sudden death, last year her cousin was hit by lightning, with a canned eulogy by a clergy who never knew the deceased has Maddy thinking that ceremonies should be customized to honor the dearly departed and provide solace to the guests. Her Uncle Sam lends her $15K to develop the strategic business plan for Lights Out and soon sells the concept to venture capitalist Victor Winston. Her business booms until the Fed Uncle Sam pulls the plug on her. She misses Victor, who encouraged her every step of the way as he was with her the extra miles beyond that of an investor, more than Lights Out. Maddy reconsiders her mantra as her self worth is much higher than her net worth if she can persuade Victor that he invested in love. THE FUNERAL PLANNER is a primer for starting a business with satirical chapter titles that Maddy's entrepreneurial efforts never seem to quite achieve. Maddy is terrific as even as a preadolescent preferred the financial reports over dolls. Her how to succeed at business with trying makes for a fine chick lit tale; even when she breaks the first commandment of the Bush Administration "Thou shall not worship any other god but Adam Smith" when she entered the dark side of placing her personal life over the bottom line. Harriet Klausner