Tag Archives: let no man put asunder

July 3, 2026 · 5:15 pm

Cats, borders, knees, writing, blood! My week in review

First the blood: Saturday I made my regular donation to the Red Cross. They’ve remodeled their facility and I was the first “power red” (double dose of red blood cells) donor there. I wrapped up just a little too soon for someone from the regional HQ to photograph me, darn it. That would have been kind of cool.

Tuesday, it was cat day: time to take Snowdrop in for his wellness exam and shots. He’s way harder to cage for the trip than Wisp; she’ll let us pick her up which gives us a chance to shove her in. Snow’s less trusting. However I got a dose of gabapentin — painkiller that also makes ’em sleepy — into him with a small morning meal. That left him just groggy enough to load into a cat carrier. He’s mostly in good shape, however he does have a heart murmur. Those can be bad in cats so we’re waiting to see what the labwork says.

Minor bonus, they applied his topical heartworm/flea med so we don’t have to do that again for two months.

Borders: as I type this, the theme I use for this blog has suddenly dropped the illustration on the vertical borders so there’s nothing but the image at the top. Maybe it’s a temporary thing and it’s gone by now. Maybe I’ll have to change themes because the brown border looks dreadful. I haven’t had a chance to do anything about it yet.

Knees: Tuesday, after TYG brought Snowdrop home, I went to physical therapy. Nothing major but my left knee gives me twinges in certain positions. I’d like it to stop. The therapist gave me a set of exercises which I’ve been working on. Too soon for any miracle cures, though. I also got a sleep apnea kit in the mail — my doctor thought that might relate to my recurrent insomnia — and I spent three nights with a testing kit on, making me feel like a cyborg. My grimace below is because I also felt like Hannibal Lector in his muzzle in Silence of the Lambs.

I slept better than I expected with that thing on. However it was choppy, which contributed to my tiredness for some of the week. Plus the pets were needier than usual. Still I got some good stuff done. Articles for The Local Reporter on Carrboro’s 2027 budget and the drought’s impact on Carrboro (not up yet). That took up Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday I tackled the next chapter of Let No Man Put Asunder. Didn’t go well. The changes I’m making are good but they’re the kind that require further changes — if the sinister Community of All simply puts everyone in Bluestone in a stoned trance, Mandy doesn’t have the conflict of fighting innocent mind-controlled people. It still works better and fits the Community’s strange goals; however I have no idea what comes next. And Wednesday I was most tired.

Thursday I worked on “Die and Let Live.” It’s steadily improving but ends up way too talky as Colin and Deadbeat explain what’s been happening and everyone debates ethics. Either I shift some of that material earlier in the story, I come up with a more dramatic ending or both (ideally both).

I also got the first scene of a new story. My mind generated several new details: one character, Claire, comes from the town of Riddle Grove where her family lives at Enigma Towers. And their last name, Maistery, sounds a lot like “Mystery” if you say it aloud. Her estranged best friend notes the pattern and decides they’ll make a joke about it later. I have no idea what it means but it isn’t anything funny. So my mind’s clearly engaged — not enough to figure out what comes next yet.

Today was, as usual, devoted to next week’s blog posts, planning what to write, and emptying my in-box. Plus we took Trixie and Plushie in for some shots and, as Plushie’s been walking wobbly recently, asked the vet about it. She says he might have some back pain and recommended upping his gabapentin dose for now. Makes sense as we lowered it a couple of months back. We’ll see if it helps.

What made the visit memorable is that Plushie expressed his displeasure by pooping on the exam room floor. And then several alarmingly runny poops after that. Hopefully it’s just a momentary lapse and not the return of his dread diarrhea. We’ll see.

And now for something completely cool, author’s copies of Southern Discomfort arrived this week.

Cover by Samantha Collins. All rights are mine.

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June 26, 2026 · 4:01 pm

Not a stellar week but I didn’t collapse into a black hole either

A combination of things slowed me down this week: invoices to submit to our insurer, Trixie having a recheck exam, having the cleaners in. That means spending two to three hours shut in with the cats and Trixie to ensure the cats don’t react to strangers in the house by bolting out. It’s a possibility, particularly with Snowdrop, as he’s still skittish after 18 months as an indoor cat.

I’m also having some odd twinges in one knee. Nothing serious but I set up a PT appointment for next week. Oh, and one problem that eats away at my time — a few minutes here, a few minutes there — is that Plushie is refusing to eat his meds on the food or treats we normally give him. We have a limited range of options as eating anything with fat would trigger his pancreatitis and related diarrheal problems. It took twice as long as last week to get the drugs into him. TYG and I are both quoting that line from A Christmas Story, “Every family has a child who won’t eat.”

I got some advance work done on my two Local Reporter articles for next week. Beyond that, I only wrote 6,500 words on the redraft of Let No Man Put Asunder. That’s primarily because I hit a tough point: the chapters I worked on this week were way too talky and slow in the previous draft. I knew that; I knew what would happen once the action kicks in; I did not know what should replace the slow, talky bits. That led to a couple of hours of dithering and not writing and only sort-of thinking about writing.

Eventually I reminded myself that I had to write something so I might as well bite the bullet; if it didn’t work, I’d rewrite. I accelerated the Community of All’s attack on the city of Bluestone, cutting out a lot of the talk. I used a teleportation spell to throw Paul and Mandy into the middle of the trouble without any “what should we do?” discussion. Coupled with some other changes, I think it works much better.

That was pretty much it. I can’t tell you how good it feels to write fiction and know I’ve made at least one small step toward finishing this draft. Hopefully more steps on more fiction next week.

Oh, and New Myths is holding my story “Honey on the Grave” as a contender for one of next year’s issues. Not an acceptance but the first non-rejection I’ve had in a while.

On that note, have a great weekend.

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June 19, 2026 · 4:08 pm

“Should have known better than to cheat a friend” — wait, that’s not the lesson I learned this week

The lesson is one I already know: I work more efficiently if I focus on one thing per day. If I spend a day working on, say, Let No Man Put Asunder, I focus better than if I do half the day on that, half on, say, newspaper work or sending out submissions.

The divided day (the “divided” theme is a flimsy excuse for posting this Murphy Anderson cover but it’s one of my favorites) goes wrong too easily. I end up focusing too much on one of the two things, typically not the most important one. Getting writing done is usually job A but browsing possible markets online or doing research for The Local Reporter is typically easier. If I’m tired, I may go with easier or at a minimum start it sooner in the day. It’s also possible that I’ll throw in a third task to fill an odd moment and end up with even less writing time.

This week, however, I did have to do a lot of divided time. I was working to get the last steps done for the publication of Southern Discomfort next month. Revising the back-cover copy. Working through Amazon’s cover creation system to get the image (created by Samantha Collins) right on the front cover — that was the big challenge. I created the cover, ordered the sample copy (it arrived Wednesday), saw some problems, went back and did it again.

This takes time but it’s not something I can work on hour after hour. Once I ordered the test copy I was done; when it came in I dropped everything to go over it. For example I discovered my About the Author page in the back was several years out of date so I had to replace it with more recent information.

The end result? A patchwork week. Couldn’t be helped. And it paid off. Southern Discomfort will go live July 11; the initial ebook links are here, which is where Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others will show once they process it. The paperback goes live too, but Amazon doesn’t allow preorders.

That kind of erratically scheduled work is the pits for getting other tasks done on the same day. You’d be amazed how much time fiddling with the cover can consume. But now it’s done and I don’t have to do it again. On to fresh adventures.

I did get some other stuff done. I finished rewriting my short story, “Honey on the Grave” and sent it in to New Myths. I thought the rewrite suggestions from the writing group had made it too long but it was still under 4,000 words. That’s remarkably short for me.

I rewrote one chapter of Let No Man Put Asunder. I’d anticipated doing more but like I said, the book publishing process siphoned off my focus. Equally inconvenient, the last third of the book requires way more revision than the earlier two-thirds. It needs to move faster, scarier, with less talk. Everything that I’ve been hinting at has to be explained clearly. The bad guy has to go down — I know how that will happen but I have to get there logically. So it’s going a lot slower.

I also went back and rewrote one of the earlier chapters, where Paul is discussing his biophysicist mother’s insistence psychic powers are all fake. After reading How the Hippies Saved Physics I wanted to make mention of the early 1970s experiments that attempted to prove quantum non-locality (electrons can affect each other at a distance even though there’s no possible way they can) could be the basis for telepathy.

I still have to rewrite some of the chapters to show Mandy stopping smoking. Or give up the idea and let her keep puffing away. Finding she’s somehow compelled to quit has more potential so I’ll probably go with option A.

I got a little work on Savage Adventures done. I’m close to the end of this draft; one more draft and I’m done with the writing part. I wrote two posts over at Atomic Junk Shop, one on Doc Savage’s Crime College, one on how certain comics writers are so good they make you realize what you’ve been missing.

Another obstacle to getting work done was that I had my annual checkup Tuesday. That took a few hours out of my day. Good news, though, I’ve lost weight and my blood pressure’s down. There’s a couple of other problems that might need some work or checkups with a specialist but nothing calamitous.

With Southern Discomfort under wraps and no appointments next week, I look forward to full days and more productive output. I hope it comes true.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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May 12, 2026 · 5:16 am

You’re simply the best

As Brian Cronin said in a post some years ago, there’s a tendency for comic-book writers to make their protagonist, or whoever the current “hot” character is, the best at what they do. They have to be the deadliest assassin, the strongest martial artist, the best thief, the most advanced scientific genius, whatever, and it has to be canon.

After reading that, it occurred to me I see a lot of that in fantasy fiction too. Lots of books on Kindle where the protagonist has a magic talent so great she has to be destroyed/controlled/mated. The kid who trains with a sword and becomes “the best I’ve ever seen.” The sex demon in one of Patrick Rothfuss’s books who informs the virgin protagonist he’s the best she ever had.

For some characters this is baked into the concept. The Hulk is the strongest one of all. Karate Kid in the Legion of Super-Heroes is a master of every known form of hand-to-hand combat. Sherlock Holmes is the world’s greatest detective.

However as Brian points out, this isn’t a requirement for a great character. Lots of brilliant detectives followed on Holmes’ wake; Dr. Thorndyke (by R. Austin Freeman) and Professor Van Dusen (by Jacques Futrelle) are both genius detectives. Despite having entertaining adventures and solving ingenious puzzles, hey’re largely forgotten not because Holmes was a superior detective but because neither had his quirky, eccentric, forceful personality. And Doyle, as I’ve pointed out before, had no problems with Holmes being fallible. He misses the answer in some cases completely; in others he cracks the case but can’t save his client.

Karate Kid, sure, I’m happy to assume he’s the best fighter ever. However Denny O’Neil never felt the need to make his martial artist Richard Dragon the best there ever was; in his Bronze Age comics run, Dragon routinely runs into people as tough as he is, though he finds a way to beat them but he’s not invincible (neither is Karate Kid but that’s because he’s up against supervillains, not rogue martial artists). In the early Dr. Strange stories, he’s very clearly not the top dog: Baron Mordo is his equal, and possibly his superior while Dormammu is way, way beyond Strange’s magic. He wins because he outthinks his foes, not because his magic is vastly superior.

Brian’s post convinced me to go back and rewrite some of Let No Man Put Asunder. In an encounter with the mercenary Peacock (he dresses flashy — or as he puts it, some people dress in style, he dresses with style), Mandy learns how her new combat skills work, and he tells her the fact she landed a blow on him proves she’s one of the best. There’s really no reason she has to be that good; if people read the book it’s going to be because they like her and Paul as characters, not their raw display of power.

I rewrote the scene to establish Mandy’s good, not world-class. She points out she did manage to land a blow; Peacock replies that in battle, nobody’s invincible. Anyone can get tagged if they get distracted or the other party gets lucky.

I think that works better.

Cover by Curt Swan, Dr. Strange panels by Steve Ditko. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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May 8, 2026 · 4:17 pm

A Charleston fountain plus a week in review

I still haven’t uploaded all the Charleston vacation photos so today you get to see the Pineapple Fountain we visited in a waterfront park. When it was built, being able to import and serve pineapples was a mark of wealth and Charleston was both a hub of trade and a wealthy city.

The fountain, with my sister wading in it. Birds did that too.

After a frustrating April, this week went well, despite taking time off Monday to visit Costco. With god knows what about to happen to our economy due to the Toddler’s stupid Iran war, TYG and I figured picking up some bulk supplies now might be wise.

I wrote 6,000 words on the current draft of Let No Man Put Asunder, despite the fact I’m having to change a lot more of the book. As I realized last month, Mandy’s character arc isn’t strong enough. I’ve added a couple of scenes this section that will help with that; hopefully more will come to mind as I move forward. However I also realized I cut out some scenes where she realizes whatever magical transformation she’s undergone is compelling her to quit smoking, something she’s not happy about. It simply looks like halfway through the book she stopped lighting up. I’ll have to go back and fix that.

I rewrote the short story Honey on the Grave and it looks good. I’m reading for the writing group next week; we’ll see what they make of it. If it’s got problems I can’t see, they’ll spot them. I also reread Die and Let Live and started restructuring it so that it’s less of a talk and exposition fest. I haven’t actually written the changes — there’s places where I’ve no idea what to replace the exposition with — but diagnosing what needs to change is the first step. I also reread my short story Inherit the Howling Night (title very much a placeholder) and I want to work on that one next. It has substantial problems — no good ending, no idea of the lead character’s arc, protagonist is a writer and “struggling writer” is a character type that rarely works for me — however I’m starting to see fixes (character may become an actor instead).

I got some work done on The Savage Years and my cover is almost ready to go for Southern Discomfort. It’s just technical stuff like formatting to make it work on the Amazon paperback. I should have a release date soon and hopefully will have some copies in hand at ConGregate this summer. Details soon.

I also got my first article in at The Local Reporter in the new monthly format, a longish one on why Chapel Hill/Carrboro is looking at school closures.

From some time back, here are Con-Tinuals panel with me discussing humor comic books, another where I talk Swamp Thing and one about Britain in 1940.

May the rest of the month flow as smoothly. Don’t bet money on it though. I certainly don’t.

Cover by Bernie Wrightson, all rights to image remain with current owners.

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May 1, 2026 · 4:30 pm

Rhiannon Giddens took me down

TYG has been a huge fan of folk musician Rhiannon Giddens since catching Giddens when she was just starting out. We went to her local concert last year and Monday, she was performing in Durham again, so …

As you can tell we were waaaay close to the stage. We got to see Giddens up close, and she was clearly over the moon about performing. As with her last concert, she had a roster of talent performing too: Mavis Staples, Blind Boys of Alabama, Rissi Palmer, Toshi Reagon. I don’t know any of those names (music is not one of my fields of expertise) but damn, they can sing.

Trouble was, rather than wrapping up around 9:30, the concert ran until well after 10. Then we had to get an Uber home. Then we had to dose the dogs. We crawled into bed around 12:30 AM which is late for us (particularly me). That left me off my game Tuesday (which I’d anticipated) but the rest of the week as well. I think maybe I had some sort of mild bug or my pollen allergy kicked in — I shouldn’t have felt as wiped as I did. Though the concert was still worth it.

I got in an article for The Local Reporter, though in our new format, it won’t be out for a week or so. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about Marvel’s execrable War Is Hell series and the appeal of Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk (a repost from this blog). I got some work done on Savage Adventures because proofing nonfiction doesn’t require the kind of creative thought that writing fiction does. And following the two shorts I sent off last week, I submitted a third short story, “Champions of Darkness,” this week. It’s a no-pay market but there aren’t that many places to submit a 6,000 word reprint so I’m cool with it.

At this point, 2026 is one third over (you may have noticed). It’s tricky to assess my performance so far, given that a lot of it is long-term stuff (e.g., two drafts of Let No Man Put Asunder). I’m doing well on short stories, not just submitting but writing them: “Oh the Places You’ll Go” is finally done, for instance, though I haven’t found a market yet. “Honey on the Grave” and “Die and Let Live” are both looking closer to finished than they have before.

However I’m way behind on writing Impossible Takes a Little Longer or Let No Man Put Asunder. I think I can still get in two drafts of each but it’s looking tougher. Part of that’s because I used up the vacation time and “time off for disaster” that I’d budgeted in this year. Which, of course, doesn’t guarantee I won’t have to take more time off for more disasters … fingers crossed.

Financially, things are still dismal. Dog drug expenses are up, other expenses have been up and with Local Reporter dropping back to monthly coverage, income has been down. I’ve been looking around for more freelance work, no luck so far (while we are a two income family, I do take some satisfaction in covering my designated share of the bills).

Health, last time I had it checked, is good. Weight down a little, blood pressure back down. Exercise was off with everything else this week, but hopefully not enough to reverse the improvement.

And now May. Let’s hope for reasonably smooth sailing.

Cover by Gil Kane. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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April 24, 2026 · 4:14 pm

I thought I would spring back into writing this week …

I came back from my Charleston trip refreshed and rested, ready to write. Only of course getting in at 7 Monday night, I limited Tuesday to blogging and attending to bills and such — I knew I wouldn’t be on top of anything more challenging

(Photos are from a visit to the Charleston Tea Garden, which was very cool).

Wednesday and Thursday I got back into the swing of things. I sent off two stories, “All Happy Families” and “Mage’s Masquerade,” the first submissions since a year ago. I started work on the Local Reporter story due at the end of the month. And I reread the 40 percent of Let No Man Put Asunder that I haven’t worked on yet. I wanted to refresh my mind about what came next so I could structure the story better.

As I thought, there are several characters, including the mercenaries Peacock and Mountebank, who drop out of the story. I’ll have to work them back in. I still need to strengthen Mandy’s character arc (also a problem I was aware of). The climax needs a massive reworking; fortunately I have the new climax already in mind. I’m also unsure whether to set this up as a duology, my original concept, or leave it reasonably standalone with options for a sequel.

I’d intended to start the next bit of rewriting today; didn’t happen. After several nights of rough sleep, I made up for it by oversleeping, which threw me off. A bigger problem is that while I’ve diagnosed the problems with the story, I haven’t figured out the remedy. I think my mind needs to process a little more. So today wasn’t as productive as I expected. Next week maybe — but I have a lot of Local Reporter work to do, and some household IRL duties. We’ll see.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I wrote about what supervillains think about their portrayal in comic books, And songs that make me wonder what happened after the last lyric.

(The warning sign is because the tea fields include cottonmouth, rattlers and coral snakes).

In other news, the dogs are over their digestive issues and in great shape. Trixie missed me while I was gone and was happy to have me back. Here’s a photo of my little angel and one of her toys to wrap up the week with.

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April 8, 2026 · 5:15 am

A character arc has to bend towards something, right?

I’m now more than 30,000 words into the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. I think I’ve encountered the first problem I’m having to think hard about.

As I’ve written several times over the years, the start of a story determines where it ends. Bleeding Blue, which came out last year, starts with Janet beginning her three days service as a police shield; it ends when her service ends and she returns to normal life. Questionable Minds starts with Simon Taggart dealing with a traumatic flashback; it ends with him making peace with at least some of his trauma.

Let No Man Put Asunder starts with Paul and Mandy both unhappy. Paul’s academic career has crashed and he’s now working as a busboy at a greasy spoon and spending whatever he can spare to buy time with sex workers. Mandy’s family are finally out of the house, she’s ready to start living life for herself … and yet she’s suffering a failure to launch. Then they meet, find they’re somehow telepathically linked, people start trying to kidnap them … but I think the ending sets up that the resolution should be about moving into a better place in life, or failing to.

Paul’s arc is shaping up nicely; from his perspective this is a “new adult” book where he grows up and starts to live his life. Mandy’s is trickier. She’s older, a lot more mature, and the life she has at the start isn’t bad; Paul needs a complete reboot, Mandy just needs some upgrading.

The obvious HEA would be some romance in her life, which she’s certainly open to. However that feels way too trite for a female lead and I don’t have anyone in mind (Paul is more in the little brother category). I’m not sure yet what the alternative is.

Because of that, the current section of the book feels a little unbalanced. Paul’s getting to grow and change, Mandy doesn’t have as much to do emotionally. Part of what I did last week was to go back and rewrite the scene before they storm the vampire fortress that materialized on the motel where they were staying (things are getting weird. They’ll get weirder). Dive into Mandy’s feelings, her fear they’re on a suicide mission, the reasons she does it anyway, the realization that frustrating as her life is, she’d like to hang on to it.

I think it helped with the balance between them a lot. That still doesn’t show me where her character arc is heading but it’s a start.

Cover by Samantha Collins, all rights to image are mine.

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April 3, 2026 · 3:37 pm

March was a month that happened …

Despite Plushie’s fortnight of diarrhea, it was fairly productive. Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s partly because of The Local Reporter switching to monthly so I didn’t have actual paying gigs distracting me. I’ll be back to work on it next week, prepping for the April issue.

I got close to 34,000 words rewritten on Let No Man Put Asunder, redrafted “Mage’s Masquerade” and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” and proofed the first chunk of Savage Adventures. I applied for a couple of writing jobs (remote) and started checking various short fiction markets — no luck so far. And we made it through diarrhea and out the other side er, so to speak. And the multiple trips to tire places or our VW dealer.

Yes, it’s mostly Snowdrop photos today. I think he’s worth it.

This week was choppy, with enough errands Wednesday it was a struggle to get anything done. Still, overall satisfactory. I got another 3,500 words finished on Asunder (that was what I struggled to complete Wednesday). I reread “Oh the Places You’ll Go” and I think I’ve finally finished it. I’ll proof it later this month but I’m satisfied I’ve fixed everything I didn’t like (or my beta readers didn’t like). First story finished in a long while. I read “Mage’s Masquerade” to the writing group; the overall reaction was way favorable though with several slight changes. For example it comes off as if Sinclair is waaaay older than Cecily; while that’s not out of line for a Regency plot, it’s a sensitive enough subject I’m going to make it clear he’s maybe a decade her senior, nothing more.

Finding markets for two 7,000 word short stories will be a challenge. But I can always publish them in another collection of my work.

I got several thousand words of Savage Adventures proofed and polished and I started looking for a cover artist. No luck so far.

I also began editing my Hellboy Chronology. At first I was only going to update it to add one of the new Hellboy-verse TPBs. However I wound up converting it to blocks which threw the spacing and the whole look of the page out of whack. I’ve begun correcting for that, though I’m only up through the 1960s. Please be patient as I keep working. All the information is still good.

Over at Con-Tinual I talked about The Worlds of Andre Norton, Favorite Superhero Moments, the return of Superboy, now all available on FB at the links.

Week is almost over, as I’m stopping work early to cook something for TYG. Have a great weekend, y’all.

Cover by James Bama, all rights remain with current holder.

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April 1, 2026 · 5:12 am

When will this story finally start?

About 10 months ago, an agent doing a writing workshop told me the opening of Let No Man Put Asunder didn’t give any idea of the genre and I should fix that. As I said at the link, I don’t see that as a problem for stuff published through my Behold the Book imprint. Readers are going to see a cover image and read the back-cover copy so they won’t look at the first page and assume it’s a mainstream story about a kid who dropped out of college and now works in a greasy spoon.

The same for Southern Discomfort. It’s not got any magic on the first couple of pages, and no definite magic even through the first chapter. However readers will know when they pick it up or see the Amazon listing that it’s specfic, rather than a historical novel about a female fugitive.

Showing the magic up front won’t work in either case. The protagonists are ordinary people about to be sucked into the supernatural; until that point they have no reason to know magic exists (as Maria in Southern Discomfort protests very loudly at several points). In some stories you can have weird shit happening from the get-go even if the protagonist doesn’t know the reason; these two books are not that kind of story. Originally I started Southern Discomfort with the murder of Aubric McAlister, cluing the reader in to the basic premise of the book. Feedback convinced me that was too slow a start, without sufficient tension; Maria’s story’s got tension in spades.

It’s perfectly legit to start a fantasy novel with mundane scenes, provided their interesting. Much as I like the magical goings on in Pharisee County, I think Maria’s character arc is a stronger hook. The magic is essential to the story and becomes more so as things get crazier. Still, it’s more about ordinary people stuck in the middle of a magic war than the magic war itself.

Which brings me to the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After completing my viewing for Watching Jekyll and Hyde, I’ve come to appreciate even more how good this film is (though the abuse subplot is horrifying. Consider that your trigger warning).

In a 90-minute film, it takes us half an hour before Edward Hyde comes on stage. Several movies do that, introducing Jekyll, his fiancee/dream girl/wife and the nature of his research before getting to the transformation. A lot of them are boring with uninteresting, undramatic pre-Hyde scenes. They’re a long establishing shot that sets things up but accomplishes nothing else.

Not in this one, thanks to Rouben Mamoulian’s direction and Fredric March’s performance. We open with a Jekyll’s eye-view of his life — his elegant home, his devoted butler — and that unconventional viewpoint makes it way more interesting than it would be otherwise. Then we watch March’s Jekyll lecture to an astounded audience about his vision of splitting off our evil side so that we can enjoy lives of pure goodness. As I explain in my book there are huge flaws in this idea (what are the pure evil sides going to be doing?) but Mamoulian makes it visually fascinating. Then we cut to Jekyll’s charity clinic where his medical genius enables a girl on crutches to cast them aside and walk — a classic miracle as the ultimate proof of his goodness.

We shift to the Carew dinner party where Jekyll’s future father-in-law dresses him down for being late, then he and Muriel (Rose Hobard) snatch a quiet scene alone. March was best known at that point as a romantic lead; alternating between dreams of passion and whimsy he keeps the scene arresting (Hobard’s not a bad actor but her role doesn’t give her much to work with). The result? It’s a good movie even before Hyde enters.

I don’t know if I can create anything that intense in my opening. I’m certainly shooting for it.

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