Dedicated To ...
Between a novel’s cover page and “Chapter 1” is a page that I never paid attention to until I started writing: the dedication page. As an author, the person to whom a novel is dedicated fascinates me. Why that person for this novel? Is it the author’s spouse, children, a friend who cheered the author on? I’ll always flip to the back of the book to see if the author explains in the acknowledgments.
For Wavecrossed, there were lots of people I could dedicate the novel to. My mom, who has always supported my dreams; my dad, who passed away when I was in high school but who always made a point of telling me and my sister how capable and smart we were; my friend who has liked Wavecrossed from its first, very different rough draft and throughout every single transformation it’s gone through.
As it turned out, however, there was one family member I’d forgotten about: my cat Winston.
I often referred to Winston as my muse because he would sit on the arm of my chair as I wrote. He’d stretch his head towards my hand as I was typing, hoping I’d pet him, and sometimes he’d fall into my lap. I’ve been working on Wavecrossed in various forms for years, and throughout every draft Winston, with his gorgeous green eyes and an emphatic “Mrow!” when I was wrestling with plot problems, was always there.
Until, suddenly, he wasn’t. He was only six years old this summer when he began to rapidly lose weight and strength, and the diagnosis from the vet and the radiologist was heartbreaking: lymphoma. He passed away less than a week after diagnosis. I won’t go into how awful those couple of weeks were, but pet owners will understand.
Winston (and our other cat, Havarti) kept me from being lonely while my fiancé was deployed in Afghanistan a couple years ago. He made me so mad yowling for breakfast, always 20 minutes before my alarm was to go off (one of his special gifts, lol), but he was impossible to stay angry with. He had the softest fur I’ve ever felt, and when he wasn’t watching me write, he was cuddled next to me on the couch as we watched TV at night. He and I episode-binged our way through Veronica Mars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer together.
I was working on final edits for Wavecrossed when Winston passed away, and it was difficult finishing up without him perched on the arm of my writing chair. Despite our heartache, my husband and I are grateful to have had the time with Winston that we did. And so, when it came time to dedicate the novel, the choice was easy.
I know this post got a little heavy--sorry about that! But Winston would not want anyone to be sad (he’d lick your feet until you felt better, because he was very strange!), so tell me: if you wrote (or have written) a book, what would/did the dedication read?
Book Description:
Title: Wavecrossed
Author: Andrea Colt
Date of Publication: August 22, 2013
Genre: paranormal YA
A young-adult paranormal novel about selkies, tasers, kissing and secrets.
To Cassandra Kelleher, trust is a dirty word.
A teenage selkie who grew up on land, all she wants is to free her family from the man who stole their sealskins long ago. With her twin brother Brennan losing hope and her window of opportunity disappearing like the beach at high tide, she’ll try anything.
Before long, however, Cassandra can’t tell whether her biggest threat is the man holding her family captive, a classmate who’s discovered her secret, or her own paranoia. Battling broken friendships and alarming romantic entanglements, Cassandra finds that trust could be the key to winning her family’s freedom … or losing her own.
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