NEVER SAY NEVER

I'm glad I used that word "suspend" instead of "end" when, almost exactly three years ago, I discontinued my blog "Where the Catbird Sings: One Woman's Chronicle of Life in a Small Town in the American South." I was stretched for time and the blog had to play poor stepchild to my novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday, which was published by Algonquin Books in January 2017. 

I also worried that the blog was like a tree falling in the forest -- only heard (or read) by other trees. At this point in my life, however, it strikes me that trying to be 'heard' on the internet is a losing game when focus there is so fleeting, whereas occasionally hearing from thoughtful readers, gardeners, southerners and denizens of small towns who have stumbled on one or more of my online entries is of benefit to me in ways that can't be quantified.

For that reason and others, notably because I recently completed the second draft of my latest novel, tentatively titled Troublefield, and find myself at loose ends without the imperative to write 3,000 words a day, I am reviving the blog and will continue it, hopefully not too fitfully.

My assistant Clementine weighs in on the new novel

My mission remains the same: to describe life in my corner of the world and comment on, explore, analyze and share what I witness. I invite you to come back to "Where the Catbird Sings." Fittingly, the catbirds and their fledglings have been yowling from every tree in the yard this spring.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

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The asiatic lilies in my garden, 'Forever Susan' have multiplied since I featured them in my last blog entry, 2015.