Tag Archives: let no man put asunder

May 2, 2025 · 4:39 pm

Raven(con) on the wing

(Title is hat tip to a British comic strip I read as a kid)

For the second year in a row, I attended Ravencon in Virginia Crossing near Richmond. It’s a lovely place to hang out.

The programming schedule was perfect: enough time between my panels to browse the dealer’s room or go back to my room and crash (with four pets, I’m almost never completely alone these days). I ran into a couple of friends (Wayland Smith, Lisa Hodorovych), talked to a few writers I hadn’t met. The only drawback? I didn’t get an author table so I didn’t have a chance to push my books. Despite which I sold two — one two a guy who’d bought one last year and liked it, one to a dude who liked the cover of Undead Sexist Cliches.

I was supposed to follow that up with Atomacon in North Charleston, SC, this weekend. However lugging my suitcase full of books (just in case …) and a stuffed backpack around Ravencon kicked my bursitis into high gear (the old “doesn’t feel too bad, I can lift more stuff” error). I decided the four hour drive to Atomacon, followed by more lifting stuff — I did have a table reserved — was a bad idea.

That was disappointing — I like selling books and I was one of only two panelists on a couple of panels (so it’d be a pain if I wasn’t there). I looked into flying, thought it would be affordable (probably not practical for my bottom line, but still) and it was … but by the time I’d checked the time-frame with TYG, it was $300 more and that’s with the return flight getting in close to midnight Sunday. I contacted Atomacon who were wonderfully good sports, and said they’d credit my table fee to next year.

(Cosplaying Holy Grail‘s Killer Rabbit)

I haven’t once second-guessed myself so it was definitely the right movie. And my shoulder, while improved, is still sore enough I know how much it would have hurt Monday if I’d gone.

That did give me a full week to work, which was good. I spent a lot of it research reading: The World War II Combat Film by Jeanine Basinger (that took a while. It’s a very dense book) and The Savage Dyaries by Dafydd Neal Dyar (reviews to follow). I got some work done on Let No Man Put Asunder and three movies watched for Jekyll and Hyde.

Oh, and my short story Bleeding Blue sold to Stonecoast Literary Review, my first sale in a while! Me, a literary person, imagine that!

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April 4, 2025 · 4:04 pm

There is no question that spring has sprung

In North Carolina, mother nature lets us know.

This has been an exceptionally pollinated week. Monday I could see clouds of the stuff blowing along the street; despite taking Claritin, I’ve been coping with occasional sneezing, scratchy throat and watery eyes all week. It still doesn’t wipe me out the way the pollen mix back in the Florida Panhandle did.

Pollen aside, it was a good week. The Local Reporter printed my story about musical duo Blue Cactus. At Atomic Junk Shop I discuss the pros and cons of sticking to the status quo when writing fiction. Unfortunately the site is glitching and not posting illustrations when I upload them so my second post couldn’t be posted; our tech person is AWOL and the hosting company hasn’t answered my questions so far.

I wrote another 6,000 words apiece on the next drafts of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and Let No Man Put Asunder. My decision to shift Impossible to the early 1980s is paying off — it’s working much better — though I’ll need to add more period detail.

I worked on rewriting Savage Adventures and watching more films for Jekyll and Hyde. I also worked on a couple of Local Reporter stories that won’t be out until next week. And I got to read part of Jekyll and Hyde to the writing group, the section dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Strongly positive reaction, though they pointed out that in a couple of spots I was dropping too many movie references without explanation. It’s a common problem and easy to course correct.

TYG’s birthday was this week too. Her birthday wish was to have it free of any responsibilities around the house so I took care of the dogs, including lunchtime drug-dosing while she went off shopping and eating lunch out. For dinner I made her zucchini lasagna, a labor intensive dish that’s one of her favorites. She gave the day thumbs up.

Oh, and I sold one ebook of Questionable Minds and one of 19-Infinity last month. If you’re reading this, thanks for purchasing.

Cover by Kemp Ward.

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February 7, 2025 · 4:04 pm

A weird and disorienting week

And not as productive as I’d hoped. Partly because I had an awful night of sleep Monday which left me zonked the next day and in poor shape for creative thought. Partly distractions from the increasing insanity of politics (here’s a sample).

Snowdrop, however, is not a problem, except in being one more demand on my attention. And sometimes scarfing up Wisp’s food with her probiotics in it — not that it’s harmful but we want them inside Wisp to avoid her tummy troubles recurring. Though as you can see above, Plushie’s not sure what to make of him.

And I had to take Trixie in Monday for a checkup due to her rubbing her butt on the floor all the time. As I half-suspected, the problem is allergies so she got a shot and now she seems fine.

Monday, knowing my schedule was tight, I rewrote another 6,000 words of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and the same for Let No Man Put Asunder. At this point it’s mostly tightening and tinkering. The real challenge will come further out where the story needs more work. Still, I’m pleased with the work.

I got one article in at The Local Reporter about a new rails-to-trails project. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at a cool page of Gene Colan Daredevil art (partial view above), why Big Event tie-in comics remind me of Grease, and a look at some comic-book firsts: first Hulk cure, first person besides Cap to get the super-soldier formula (technically just a reverse-engineered attempt to recreate it), first eco-terrorist (I’ve been pondering how almost all environmentalist characters are bad guys). Below a Sal Buscema splash page from one of the stories.

And we got a look at some of the items in Abebooks’ weird books room.

The rest of the time was spent working on the cover for Southern Discomfort. My cover artist sent some possible mockups as idea generators (like the 1970s paperback cover to the left); it got really hard narrowing down which ones I liked and how I thought she could adapt them to fit the book better. It’s not the kind of creative work I do best but Sam is patient. Today I finally sent back my responses.

Next week, Monday will probably be shot but things should pick up after that. Wish me luck. And I hope we all have a good weekend.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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January 17, 2025 · 4:15 pm

Thoughts on Facebook, then my work week

As I mentioned yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg has not only given up fact-checking on FB, he’s loosening the rules on content so that insulting women, gays, trans people will be easier. As someone said (I don’t have the link) it’s not just about kowtowing to FOTUS (Felon of the United States) it’s that right-wingers having their speech unrestricted gets them more engaged, which keeps them on FB rather than popping off to X or Gab.

I’m not leaving, at least not yet. There’s lots of people I stay in touch with on Facebook. For “Oh, my wife said a funny thing” or similar trivia, FB works better than an email newsletter or a txt, and I contact more people. The format works better for me than Bluesky though I’m there too. As with X, the whole threads thing feels very awkward if I have a long post to make. And screw it, Facebook is (practically, though not legally) part of my public space. I’m not letting people push me out if I can help.

As someone said years ago when FB started, we need a social medium like Facebook … just not Facebook. However that’s what we’ve got. So unless Zuckerberg works to make it as toxic as X, I’ll stick. But no clicking on ads of any sort.

Now, my work week. Wait, first here’s a photo of my master bedroom, taken at an odd angle.

This was a good week but not as good as last week. I wound up doing three Local Reporter stories which took up more time than I’d wanted. However one of them’s held over until next week so that means less work (hopefully—it’s a council meeting so it might run long). One of the two that ran this week was about Carrboro’s plans to turn East Weaver into a pedestrian mall. The other covered a discussion of how Carrboro can keep up its support for diversity and equity in the face of national trends against it.

We also had our housekeeping people in Thursday. They do good work (and get tipped accordingly) but having to shift the dogs and Wisp around so they’re out of the way and can’t run out through an open door takes some work. And invariably ends up with me sitting in a room with three pets for half an hour. The cleaners came earlier than usual, which is good, but then again it was disruptive enough I was off my balance the rest of the day.

(Our dogs in the master bedroom when they’re not freaking out about strangers in the house).

Wisely I spent Thursday on mundane matters that didn’t require much creativity or thought. That helped balance things out.

The rest of the week I did some work on Savage Adventures, though various distractions (most notably an overflowing toilet) hindered me from focusing. I watched one movie for Jekyll and Hyde and did some rewriting. However I also did some fiction, returning to both Let No Man Put Asunder and Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I made my word quota for January on each book — it’s rewriting the early chapters which is relatively easy — though I may put more time in, depending how the next two weeks shake out.Impossible was the more interesting and challenging rewrite: I’m trying setting it back in the 1980s. This requires changing a lot of the pop culture references, though it also simplifies some of the alt.history.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at ABC’s Saturday morning lineup from 1969, a bad Wonder Woman story pitting her against three eeeevil lesbians —

— and Roy Thomas on his efforts to shake up Marvel’s Captain Marvel.

Not a stellar week but satisfactory. Art by Mike Sekowsky, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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October 2, 2024 · 5:15 am

2024 is now three-quarters over

Which has me reflecting on my writing goals and how well I’ve done meeting them.

Nowhere near as well as I hoped, which isn’t unusual — my reach typically exceeds my grasp. I didn’t finish the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. Haven’t finished any short stories. Haven’t sold any. Only attended one con. While I should be able to bring out Southern Discomfort this year I know I won’t finish Savage Adventures, my Doc Savage history. My exercise regimen has also fallen way, way off. And plans to spend time on marketing don’t come to pass.

Part of the problem was our pets’ various health problems — the added time for Plushie’s eye drops, unplanned vet appointments, etc. Having three pets has made it a lot harder to find time by myself to exercise or stretch out, especially as TYG’s schedule requires me to handle the dogs for more of the day (which is fine — her work pays 90 percent of our bills, after all). That adds up to a loss of time and also of mental energy.

Another factor is that everything takes more time than anticipated. I thought I’d factored that into my goals for the year, but I didn’t. My Local Reporter work in particular keeping sucking up bigger chunks of my week than I think it will. I try to minimize that by concentrating all the work in one day each week, but interviewees aren’t always able to do that.

Ceaseless Way turned out to be a much bigger time drain than I expected. Working on a collaborative anthology sounds fun but it’s a lot more work than submitting a story to an editor and letting them handle the rest. Though my collaborators really appreciate the extra work I put in.

Then there’s my decision to starts writing Jekyll and Hyde; I’d considered waiting until Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures were done, but the itch proved too strong. That also sucks up more time than expected, as I’m determined not to lag behind and end up massively rushed as I approached the deadline.

On the plus side I’m starting to get the hang of budgeting my exercise time around our pets. And I am getting a lot of work done, even if it’s not on the projects I thought I’d be handling. And switching to four seven-hour days a week has done wonders for improving my productivity.

While a little disappointed, I see no reason to beat myself up.

#SFWApro. Cover art by James Steranko, painting by Salvador Dali, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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July 19, 2024 · 4:33 pm

I fought the week and the week won

This was definitely the least productive week since I switched to the four-day week. Sooner or later, a bad week was going to happen.

It started early Sunday morning when Plushie threw up on the bed. I took them downstairs so TYG could wash the bedclothes then we decided the simplest thing was to keep them downstairs with me. I thought I could drift off to sleep but every time I tried, Wisp got in my grill. I think she’d have been willing to curl up next to me on the couch but Trixie was there, so …

I slept well Sunday night but I was still tired Monday, when I worked on a Local Reporter article. Oh, and took Trixie back for another appointment for her butt (doing great, thank goodness). Plus I spent more time than I’d thought I’d need formatting the draft of the Ceaseless Way anthology, making sure that all the contributed stories use the same typeface, paragraph layout, etc. That took longer than I thought — it’s been a long time since I had any sort of editorial role on a group project.

Then I had another bad night of sleep. Tuesday all I could manage was to read The Essential Jekyll and Hyde and jot down some thoughts about the book. Wednesday I had Plushie’s eye appointment (he’s also doing much better) and a contractor in the morning. I figured I wouldn’t get a chance to build up creative steam so I made it a day to do errands, paperwork, tasks. Then the contractor postponed so I could probably have done some good work after all.

Yesterday I was zonked so I worked on Savage Adventures. On the plus side, it’s the first time I think my prose is coming together. That feels good.

And I have two blog posts up at Atomic Junk Shop. One about the strange ideas DC came up with at the end of the Silver Age, such as Dolphin, advertised above. Another is about love comics, which were successful on the spinner racks longer than I realized.

And I did get a first draft of my chapter on the Stevenson novel. That’s good too. And yes, all the bills and other tasks I got done Wednesday instead of writing were necessary. Still, not getting anything done on Southern Discomfort or Let No Man Put Asunder frustrates the crap out of me.

#SFWApro. Cover by Modest Stein, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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July 12, 2024 · 3:49 pm

A bad week for our dogs. Challenging for us, too.

Monday morning, TYG discovered Trixie had bled onto the bedsheets. We checked her over and found bleeding from her butt. We were able to score a same-day vet appointment and they confirmed her anal gland had ruptured. They did whatever you did to fix that and sent me home with Trixie and some antibiotics.

She did not enjoy her vet trip.

The bottle of meds had a leak or something because there was nothing in it when I got it home. I picked up a replacement Tuesday. Fortunately Trixie made a full recovery almost as soon as they fixed her gland. Yay.

Yesterday TYG became convinced Plushie’s glaucoma had suddenly gotten worse. I took him to the vet today to check his eye pressure (TYG’s workweek has been insane which is why I handled the dog stuff). TYG was right — it’s elevated. They sent us home with directions to increase the dosage of some of his drugs. It worked, yay! However it’s still upsetting every time life reminds us Plushie will not be the world’s first dog with Wolverine’s healing factor.

Despite all that, I did get a full week of work done. Partly because with Jekyll and Hyde under way, I’m doing research reading which helped me make use of my time waiting at the vet. I also did some research reading for Savage Adventures and proofed another chunk of the book.

I did some good work on Southern Discomfort, cutting a couple of scenes based on writing group-feedback and going through to eliminate the excessive use of “but” (way too many compound sentences) and “just.”

I wrote an article for The Local Reporter on policing stats in Carrboro, one of the local towns in the Triangle. At Atomic Junk Shop I wrote about Marvel’s art in 1968 — much as I’m a DC fanboy (and find a lot of Marvel’s writing in this period mediocre), the visuals at Marvel are amazing. This simple but effective splash page by John Buscema, for instance—

— or John Romita’s shot of Spidey here.

I also blogged about several random Silver Age stories from the same period.

I did not get any work done on Let No Man Put Asunder. It would have taken more creativity than I could focus. Overall, though, the 4-day week continues its effectiveness.

Oh, and here’s a link to a Con-Tinual panel on character conflict in comics.

Send positive thoughts for our dogs, if you would be so kind.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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July 5, 2024 · 4:05 pm

A short but productive work week

Despite some distracting doomscrolling over the Supreme Court’s bring back the monarchy decision I had a good work week. Short, as my four-day week got chopped down to three for Independence Day, but I made up for that by not having any Local Reporter work (though they did publish an article I finished last week, on a local veterans memorial).

(For visuals, here’s Wisp and Snowdrop greeting each other from a few days ago.)

I reread Southern Discomfort and I think my beta-readers were right, the conversations in some sections do drag on a little too long. However it’s not a massive trim-all-scenes problem, just a problem for a few scenes, so it’ll be relatively simple to fix. I also went over the street references, making sure that I identify locations consistently — and wouldn’t you know, a magical trap at the Peachtree/Blake intersection is later identified as King Street. Next week I clean it up (I spotted a couple of other details that need fixing along the way), then I get it into paperback for a final proof. Phew — much less work than I thought.

I resumed work on my second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. That one did suffer from the doom-scrolling and I didn’t get anywhere near as much as I’d hoped done. However I am working on it again after missing all last month, so that’s a (small) win. I continued proofing Savage Adventures and began some reference reading for my new Jekyll and Hyde film book.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at Gardner Fox’s last story for DC Comics, introducing the tragically lonely Red Tornado, a favorite of mine. Fox defined the Silver Age and the Justice League for me. While his replacement on the book, Denny O’Neil, tried to add more characterization, it’s very bad characterization.

Superman doesn’t shrug off things that way, neither do WW or Green Lantern. And every Leaguer knows “someone steals scientist’s machine” is a prelude to trouble.

I also look at Arnold Drake leaving DC and the Doom Patrol dying. Plus several other books that went under, such as Plastic Man and Hawkman.

#SFWApro. JLA art by Dick Dillin, whose style embodied the Bronze Age JLA much as Mike Sekowsky embodied the Silver.

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May 31, 2024 · 3:10 pm

If it wasn’t for the nights …

Insomnia was appalling the past three nights. I’ve no idea why. It made me feel miserable at times during the day but the days were still productive.

As I said last week, I’ve decided to switch to a four-day week for creative work, leaving blogging, email, etc. for Fridays. It worked well. The biggest problem is when I wrap up my assigned work for the day early, as happened yesterday; it takes a conscious effort to switch to some other productive work that needs doing. An easy fix, though: I have to make sure I have backup work in mind for situations like that.

The big accomplishment this week was finishing this draft of Southern Discomfort. I’ve edited out verbal tics, fixed plot problems and adjusted character bits. I also find myself wondering if it needs a bigger rewrite before the final proof, something I’ll blog about next week. Still, the work is good; I shall pat myself on the back for getting it done rather than fret about the remaining work.

There was some drama over the Ceaseless Way anthology when it became clear we’d had a major misunderstanding about some of our plans. We’ve worked out, though with some hurt feelings along the way. Everyone seems back on track, though. This was a good example of something my various business-writing articles over the years have discussed, the importance of getting everything absolutely clear. It’s why oral agreements often result in problems. We’re taking steps to avoid a repeat.

The Local Reporter ran my article about two Carrboro town leaders winning an award. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I look at where the Spectre’s Silver Age series went wrong.

#SFWApro. Cover by Murphy Anderson, all rights to images remain with current holder.

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May 17, 2024 · 3:45 pm

Disorder continues but the work gets done

Overall, much less disorder than last week. But for various reasons we’re having Plushie sleep downstairs this week. TYG sleeps down there with him so he doesn’t have to feel alone. I sleep upstairs with Trixie in the master bedroom.

The result? Instead of getting up for tea in the early morning I wait a couple of hours until TYG is awake. That throws me off schedule, even though I bring my computer up to the bedroom and work there early. I’m also sleeping much more than usual, which means I don’t wake up as early. This is a net win but again, it’s disruptive. I have no idea why; apparently our huge bed with one dog in it gives me the right amount of space for good sleep hygiene.

Despite the disruption, work got done. I finished this draft of Savage Adventures and met my May word-count for Let No Man Put Asunder. I completed a bunch of IRL tasks and bills that I’d left unresolved because of all the chaos last week. I worked on a couple of articles for The Local Reporter but one had to cancel an interview, one couldn’t give me definite answers yet.

Catching up on Con-Tinual, here’s a bunch of panels I’ve been on, on the Spectre, on Nexus, Agents of SHIELD, the Doom Patrol, comic-book couples, and magic in the comics. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I look at the beginning of the end for Batman’s New Look. The art below is by Irv Novick.

I did not meet my exercise goals. I thought breaking my efforts into five minute bursts throughout the day would work but our pets keep getting needy when they see I’ve put the computer down. Sigh.

Overall, though, an excellent week.

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