Harper Lee, the now 88 year old author of the classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, has announced that her second book, Go Set a Watchman, will be published this summer.
According to this CNN article, Lee originally wrote Scout as an adult, with flashbacks to her youth. Her editor preferred the flashbacks, urged Lee to write an entire novel about young Scout, and the rest is history.
To Kill a Mockingbird was published on July 11, 1960 and this sequel, which will feature an adult Scout, will come out July 11 of this year, a full 55 years later.
In other words, calm down wannabe writers. If one of America’s most beloved authors took five and a half decades off between novels, you can forgive yourself for putting your novel off for a week while you binge watch Breaking Bad.
I’m not sure about the name though. Go Set a Watchman. It doesn’t really sound very sequel-ish.
My To Kill a Mockingbird Sequel Title Suggestions:
Mockingbird II – Judgement Mock
Mockingbird II – Scout’s Revenge
Mockingbird II – Scout’s Honor (that’s actually pretty witty)
2 Mock 2 Murious
Journey to the Center of the Alabama
Mockingbird vs. Mockingjay – the Ultimate Scout vs. Katniss Royale
Mockingbird II – Electric Boo-Radley-ga-loo
Mockingbird II: Atticus’ Revenge
By the way, one of the morals of this story? Save your work. According to the above article, Lee thought the novel was lost, but it was found by her lawyer. Alas, Ms. Lee didn’t have the ability to save a copy on a flash drive because back in those days, your options were either a typewriter or, yeesh – pen and paper.
I hate to admit it, but I’m only half-way through To Kill a Mockingbird. Ten years ago, I started to read it, found it marvelous, got busy, put it down, forgot about it, have been meaning to re-read it all the way through this time ever since.
Now I actually have to since there is a sequel.
And I’m just throwing it out there, but even though she’s 88, Lee really needs to push out a third, just so she can enter the ranks of today’s authors who now pretty much start out with trilogies from beginning.
“Hello, I’m Harper Lee, Author of the Mockingbird Trilogy.”
Hey, all joking aside, this is great. I look forward to it. What do you think?
Bookshelf Battle 
Great post! I only got to reading ‘Mockingbird’ last year, but really enjoyed it. Interesting though, to find out this hotly anticipated new book was actually written before ‘Mockingbird’, which makes it her ‘practice novel’, the invisible book that helped make ‘Mockingbird’ so brilliant. I wonder if it will prove to be another exceptional read, or if – heaven forfend – it will highlight how much the author honed her skills for her second.
Having just released my first, I realise how much I’ve been learning in the course of writing. I hope people will enjoy my book – of course I do – but I’m looking forward to putting everything I’ve learned into my second from the minute I start.
Either way, I’ll be grabbing myself a copy of ‘Mockingbird – The Prequel’ to see for myself!
I hadn’t thought of that but yeah, the sad part of this is that Mockingbird becomes a prequel.
I’m afraid to read it. I loved Mockingbird, like pretty much everybody. But I’m just so worried Go Set a Watchman will not be as good that I’m not sure I can bring myself to read it. I realize how ridiculous that sounds, it’s just…. Well, what if they’ve fucked it up?
Hopefully, it will live up to the original…unless it runs off the rails and has Scout fight robots or something.