Not (Just) A Romantic Gesture
This Is Dedicated…The other day, I was happily showing a friend a copy of my forthcoming novel, House of Rough Diamonds. She leafed through the opening pages and paused at the Dedication page.
It reads (in case you wonder): “For Jim, who knows what makes a house a home.”
“I noticed,” said my friend, “that you always dedicate your books to Jim.”
“Well, sometimes to Jim and to someone else,” I clarified, my sense of detail coming to the fore.
“I think that’s a lovely romantic gesture,” she said with a slight sigh.
I chuckled dryly. “Oh, it’s more than that. If there’s anyone who deserves to be given special thanks when a new book comes out, it’s Jim. Not only does he put up with me through the chaos of the pre-writing stages, but he listens to the weirdest things as I’m writing. I mean, sometimes I’ll read him a particular paragraph or even a couple of lines, just because I particularly like it. Or sometimes I might run a couple of versions of a sentence by him to get his opinion as to which flows better—and all of this for a book he has no idea what it’s about.”
“Seriously?” My friend put the copy of House of Rough Diamonds down and stared at me, then over at Jim, in disbelief. “You don’t tell him?” After I shook my head, she looked at Jim. “Really?”
It was Jim’s turn to chuckle. “Really. I sometimes have a vague idea, especially if she had to write a proposal in advance, but Jane doesn’t like talking about a work in progress.”
“I don’t,” I agree. “It ruins the story for me. That’s one reason I don’t belong to any writers groups. Getting feedback on a work as it’s evolving would ruin it for me.”
“She once wrote a book,” Jim went on, “that even I almost didn’t get to see.”
“What?”
“Asphodel,” Jim clarified. “She wrote it as an experiment, and I don’t think she even planned to type up the draft, but I got curious, because she was so absorbed and happy.”
“So I typed it,” I put in. “He loved it. So I read it in small installments to my gamers, who are also SF/F readers, and they really liked it. And then I indie pubbed it, because it’s solidly strange, and I didn’t want to make any other than copy edit sort of changes.”
“And Jim got the dedication on that one, too.” A statement, not a question.
I walked over to the book shelf and pulled out a copy. “’For Jim, Who understands the value of dreams and visions.’”
“Remarkable…”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Which is why I use those dedications to remark.”
