Do you remember the song, “Polk Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White? It was a big hit when I was a kid in Florida. We loved the line about the gator getting your granny. “Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!” Last summer my daughter and I were kayaking in a spring-fed river in North Florida. We had paddled into one of the…

When I was writing The Butterfly Cage, my dear old dog Grendel was in the process of dying. He was a big, sweet black lab who had once belonged to my ex. When my ex died in 2019, I took the dog and gave him a home. He was the most loving dog I ever knew —…