DEDICATION .... IS THE NAME OF THE GAME.

So, you've written your 80,000 or so words. You've edited them. Your editor has edited them. The blurb for the back of the book has been sorted. If you're lucky enough to have famous friends then you'll have got a puff quote too. You've done the acknowledgements - fingers crossed you haven't missed out anyone who will chop you off their Christmas list. I have a book here by an American author (not going to name her) who has four whole pages (in a tiny font) of acknowledgements - page after page of names all separated by a semi colon. I'm left wondering if these were people she met on a long, long train journey or something. But I digress ... we are talking DEDICATIONS. To do this blogpost I had a rummage through my bookshelves. I used to have far more books but the floorboards began to quake under their weight and a good many of them had to go. So, for this exercise I grabbed some books at random. And it's been interesting. I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith has no dedication - well, not in the version I have anyway. I once went for a walk with my father in the Essex countryside and he stopped outside a white weatherboarded cottage and said, 'A famous writer lived here.' It was Dodie Smith. But I digress, we are talking DEDICATIONS. PERFUME -The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind has no dedication either. And neither do the Thomas Hardy novels I have here - most of them. One of the first books I every owned was a Sunday School prize - HOLIDAYS AT THE WARREN by Marjorie A Sindall. The dedication reads 'For CON to remind her'. I'm left wondering who Con might have been to Marjorie and what she needed to be reminded of forever and in printed form. Kathleen Tessaro's dedication for THE PERFUME COLLECTOR (are you picking up on my fondness for perfume here?) reads 'For my son Eddie, always, evermore ... and then some'. What if she also had a daughter? Is the son the favourite and how would the daughter feel to read that? But I digress, we are talking DEDICATIONS. 'To Geoff. for believing' is the dedication of Judi Hendricks in BREAD ALONE - one of my favourite books of all time. Adriana Trigiani for LUCIA, LUCIA has a pretty long acknowledgements list (but not as long as the above) and obviously was wary of leaving anyone out so for her Dedication she has 'For my sisters, Mary Yolanda, Lucia Anna, Antonia and Francesca, and my bothers, Michael and Carlo. And now the biggie - GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell. I once met a real life Margaret Mitchell - also an author - but she wasn't allowed to use her real name because that had already been bagged ... and how! But I digress - we are talking DEDICATIONS. In the 1937 copy of this most famous book that I have here the Dedication is 'To J.R.M.'. I'm guessing - perhaps - her husband. Or might she have had a lover with the same initials as her husband? Who knew Dedications could be so intriguing? And I don't suppose they are - or are meant to be - until you start reading them. Of all the dedications I looked at to write this blogpost the one that made me smile the most is A.A. Milne's NOW WE ARE SIX. I have met A. A. Milne's almost-as-famous son, Christopher Robin. We were godparents to the same child some fifty years or so ago now. But I digress, we are talking DEDICATIONS. Mr Milne Senior dedicated this book to 'ANNE DARLINGTON' now she is seven and because she is so speshal (sic). Isn't that lovely! I hadn't noticed it before but I now see that on the inside of the front cover are these words, Oakdale C School. Presented to Peter for Good Collection of Salvage April - July 1942. Isn't that something! Obviously Peter's effort was a wartime venture but still appropriate today as we try and save the planet under a detritus of plastic and the like. And now to my own DEDICATIONS. I've had to do this nine times now, but what a lovely problem to have. There must be so many people out there who would love to struggle with a Dedication and wondering for all time if they've made the right one. For my own first novel - TO TURN FULL CIRCLE - I wrote thus: 'For my son James, and my daughter, Sarah - ever my shining stars. And in memory of my father, Olmen Arthur, who always believed in me.' I just had to get my dad in there because his name was pretty 'speshal' too. Goodness only knows where my Granny got it from. I once gave my dad Middlemarch to read because I'd loved it so. He handed it back, thus 'Well, dear, she didn't write one word where a thousand would do, did she?'. But I digress, we are talking DEDICATIONS. So, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, do any of you have a favourite dedication, or even one of your own that, perhaps, you wish you hadn't made?

As you will see from this photo, my first ever novel had the best placement ever in Waterstones .. but I digress ....