My favorite page

So, a week or so ago, a box came in the mail.  Here's what's was inside:

It was a pretty wild feeling but one thing hasn't changed since the day I wrote it: my favorite page.  It's not the opening, Sara's moment of realization, or even the end.  It's this:

I'm a bad photographer, but it says
"In loving memory of Kevin James Kehoe, Sr.
and Charlotte Elizabeth Eck."

During the time I was writing AUDITION, my family lost two very special members--far too soon.  They were very much in my mind and heart as I worked on the novel.  And when the happy time came to write the dedication page for the book, I didn't hesitate.

Writing novels is, in its way, the author's grasp at immortality. I won't deny it, there's something strangely satisfying about leaving some kind of tangible proof that I was here on this planet--that I had stories to tell. Still, better than this is sealing in ink the fact that others, who will not have the opportunity to do it for themselves, were here and were loved and mattered so much.