HOOK SAILS ON

Surfing the Interwebs the other night, I was delighted to find this review of Alias Hook by modernlaureate on Instagram, from November, 2016.

In part:

"Dark and dangerous faeries, magnificent but terrifying mermaids, and fresh characterization of Pan and Hook all make this an outstanding Peter Pan retelling. Jensen deftly weaves faerie with fairy tale, mortality with hope, children’s games and bitter reality, all the while moving elegantly between the present events of Neverland and Hook’s past. An interesting and thought-provoking novel from start to finish."

Woot!

James Hooks voyage of world domination continues!

MEME-WORTHY

Captain James Hook continues to win over fans across the blogosphere!

Imagine my delight to stumble upon this lovely review of Alias Hook, posted in May of last year by Larkin, over at Wonderfilled Reads.

She enjoyed it so much, she created this meme from a quote from my book!

Pretty cool. huh?

This is James Hook's epiphany, toward the end of the story, when he realizes that neither the bloodthirsty boys, nor the magical forces of the Neverland have any more power to terrify or control him.

He, himself, has finally gown up.

Big thanks to Larkin for finding my book meme-worthy!

CAPTAIN'S LOG

Russell Brand as Captain Hook, by Annie Leibovitz

Captain Hook continues to have legs!

(And, why not; it was only his hand that got cut off.)

What I mean is that readers over at the Republic of Goodreads keep discovering Alias Hook and posting enthusiastic reviews!

Many early readers assumed the book would be YA (Young Adult) because it's about Peter Pan (although they were quick to discover my book is really about James Hook). And some were disappointed that it was not. But now, some of this late-coming crop of Goodreaders are actually relieved that the book is not YA.

Their comments have been interesting:

This was a book for people just like me - adults who still love magic and the fairy tales from childhood, but don't want to read another book about teenagers (I'm pretty sure 97% of all books now are YA action romances :/ )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, much more than I probably expected too, despite the interesting premise. I had sort of pegged it as a young adult fantasy with probably many of the same themes that seem to frequently recur in that genre, but this is most definitely a grown-up book, with an adult's perspective of Neverland.

It does sometimes seem there are more YA fantasy series than anything else in the marketplace. Of course, lots of adults read YA because, as a writer friend recently observed, "that's where the ideas are." But it's up to writers to resist the lure of formula that could so easily lead to stagnation within the genre (or any popular genre).

This is useful to think about, since my next two novels will be YA. Keeping the stories fresh and the writing fresh — for readers of all ages — that's the challenge!

(Meanwhile, it's great to know that my James Hook continues to win fans. Pardon me while I blush over this Alias Hook review posted last week on the You Tube book review channel Liene's Library! Thanks, Liene!)

STORY(BOOK) TIME

So this happened this week:




A friend helping her mom move unearthed this vintage storybook edition of Peter Pan. For some strange reason, she thought of me!


It's an oversized volume called The Picture Story Book of Peter Pan, published in 1931, and illustrated in voluptuous watercolors by Roy Best.


Obsessed as I am with depictions of Captain Hook in all media (to see how they stack up with my James Hook in Alias Hook), I couldn't wait to dive in!


This Hook arrives in full comic-opera regalia, complete with luxuriant, long black Charles II curls. And the red coat, which is standard in Hook depictions probably as far back as the original stage play in 1904. (And immortalized in the 1953 Disney cartoon.)


I do approve of the elaborate headgear here; my James Hook has an absolute fetish for extravagant hats.

But while J. M. Barrie makes a big deal of Hook's icy blue eyes, I find it a little bizarre that illustrator Best tints Hook's entire eyeball (what we usually think of as the "white") a fetching shade of powder blue.


Meanwhile, Best's version of Pan is much younger and way more cherubic than mine. In these illustrations, he's practically a toddler.

Which I guess makes a kind of sense, since the Pan in my book, is going through an eternal case of the Terrible Twos.


But I do love Best's  va-va-voom Tinker Bell. Just look at her, so saucily perched on her little vase, scantily-clad, and vamping like a mini Jean Harlow! Or a chorus girl in a 1930s Busby Berkeley musical.


It's plain to see why this artist was best known for his calendar girl pin-ups!


None of these images remotely resemble the characters as I see them in Alias Hook. But I'm such a sucker for vintage illustration, this one is definitely going on the "keeper" pile!

THE TAO of HOOK

Captain Hook dominated the runway last night on Project Runway. But, then, you know what a fashionista he is!

The designers were taken to see the Broadway musical Finding Neverland (based on the Johnny Depp film), about J. M. Barrie's friendship with a widow and her five young boys, which inspired him to write Peter Pan.

The designers' challenge was to create any kind of outfit inspired by any aspect of the show—they were encouraged to let their imaginations run wild! Predictably, most of them riffed on fairies, clouds, dreams; two outfits were done in shades of Peter Pan green.

But not winner Candice Cuoco. She was inspired by Captain Hook—and she went way beyond scarlet coats and pirate boots. Her favorite part of the play was when Hook tells Barrie to "own the darkness inside him." And so she came up with this very cool and edgy look that's all about embracing contradictions: hard and soft, leather and brocade, darkness and light. The judges loved it!

Owning your darkness and growing from it—my hero in Alias Hook could definitely relate. It's the Tao of Hook!

MORE DUELING HOOKS

Hey kids, what time is it? Ten points to Gryffindor if you said it's time for Captain Hook!

Sure, James M Barrie's enduring pirate captain may be 110 years old (or more, if you subscribe to my version of the character in Alias Hook, where he's been frozen in time—at age 43—since 1724). But the time has never been more right for the witty, sardonic old rogue, who's enjoying something of a mini-Renaissance right this minute.

Over on TV's Once Upon A Time, we have the handsome young leather-clad incarnation of the character played for a couple of seasons now by Colin O'Donoghue. It seems like this Captain Hook (aka Killian Jones) was brought in at the beginning of the second season chiefly as a villainous adversary to Robert Carlyle's Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold character.

But viewer response to the sexy Irishman was so positive, this Hook has since been promoted to the role of principal love interest to the show's nominal heroine, Emma Swan. But Emma's love interests have an unfortunate way of ending up dead—remember the handsome sheriff who had his traitor's heart squished (literally) by the evil queen? Remember Pinocchio?—which may be why Emma's been so standoffish.

Still, last night, with calamity looming (calamity is always looming in this show), Killian/Hook got another chance to plant a big smooch on Emma. That gurgling sound you may have heard was millions of women all over America melting over their remotes.

Meanwhile, Hook is coming back to the big screen in a big way in next summer's Pan. The movie won't be out for seven more months, but official studio portraits of the main characters were released this week.

No doubt inspired by the popularity of the OUaT character, the producers went with a younger vibe for their Hook, as played by Garrett Hedlund. In what purports to be an origin story of Peter Pan,  the boy Peter is whisked off to the Neverland, where he falls in with the notorious pirate, Blackbeard—one of whose crewmembers is the youthful James Hook. Apparently, the two of them team up to save Neverland from their lunatic boss. (Played by Hugh Jackman, from whom I'm expecting plenty of  scenery-chomping brio!)

I'm not sure what time period—if any—the movie is meant to be set in. That flintlock Hedlund is grasping looks appropriate to the Blackbeard era, although not so his clothing or his haircut. Doesn't he seem a tad neatly coifed for a pirate?

As I mentioned in a previous post, J. M. Barrie says in his novel, Peter And Wendy, that James Hook once sailed with Blackbeard, so I suppose the storyline isn't all that far-fetched. It's Hook becoming allies with that infernal boy I may not be able to swallow; but I suppose it's all in the telling.

And then, this Thursday (Dec 4), batten down the hatches for Peter Pan Live, an in-studio production of the venerable stage musical to be broadcast live to a TV screen near you.  And speaking of venerable, the intrepid Christopher Walken—iconoclast that he is—is going against the youth-vibe trend to bring seasoned menace to the role of Captain Hook.

A veteran hoofer from way back (remember him tap-dancing on the bar in Pennies From Heaven?), Walken also promises to bring a bit of the ol' soft-shoe to the deck of Hook's ship. (It's a musical, remember?)

I can't say that any of these gentlemen are exactly my vision of James Hook. But I'll be cheering them all on, thrilled that the good captain continues to, er, carve out a place for himself in popular culture!

YET ANOTHER HOOK

Look who's making a comeback in pop culture!

That would be Hook, Captain Hook, to you.

Sure, the title of the upcoming live onstage TV broadcast is Peter Pan, but look who gets the dominant position on the poster. And, yes, that's Christopher Walken under those black piratical curls.

I like Walken a lot as an actor, although he is not exactly the way I pictured the character in Alias Hook. And while he'll bring the requisite blue eyes and his innate sense of menace to the role, he might have to finesse his New Yawk accent a bit.

This upcoming holiday production is brought to you by the same folks who tested the waters with The Sound Of Music Live last December.

 The idea is to take some creaky, oops, I mean venerable old stage musical, infuse it with fresh young blood, and stage it in real time to be broadcast live, just like in the good old days of live TV on kinescope. This was semi-successful in Music: the kids were cute, and Carrie Underwood sang well as Maria, although her acting was a slightly different story.

In Peter Pan Live, they'll hew to the 100-year-old tradition of casting a grown woman in the role of Pan, in this case, Allison Williams, from Girls. In the theatre, you can almost make a case for this: actual children can be difficult to work with, and, at least nowadays, there are child labor laws. But, I'm sorry, on TV, a grown woman looks like a grown woman, no matter how short they cut her hair. Just sayin'...

On the other Peter Pan movie front, Pan, coming out in the summer of 2015, no pics have yet been released of Garrett Hedlund in the Captain Hook role. (That's the project featuring Hugh Jackman as the dread pirate Blackbeard.) Stay tuned for further details!

FIRST THINGS LAST

A great beginning is everything.

Don't you just love it in movies about writers when the author sits down to actually write?

Author sucks at the end of a pen, or flexes his fingers over the the keyboard for about 3.2 seconds, then commences to churn out the first two or five or ten pages of his magnum opus—as perfect and divine as Athena springing full-born from the head of Zeus.

Ah, such a charming fantasy. But don't be fooled, kids. In real life, the beginning of a book is the hardest part.

Everyone knows the first couple of pages or paragraphs, or sentences are the most important of the book—especially in this ADD-afflicted era, when there is so much competition for our shrinking attention spans. But that doesn't mean those first deathless lines are going to be the very first thing you write.

In my case, those opening pages are the very last thing I write! Or at least the last thing I write well.

Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf, The Hours: real writers write over.

During the first draft of a novel, I'm basically telling myself the story. I know it's all going to change in the rewriting process anyway. For that first draft I'll start anywhere that seems to get me into the story, some conversation, or interior monologue, or action sequence that gets me going. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first word.

Once I've plunged in, I keep adding scenes as they occur to me (and usually not in chronological order) until I have some sense of a story arc heading for a conclusion. For me, knowing how the story ends is essential before I can go back and re-tackle that all-important opening.

There are times, however, when first instincts are serendipitous. For Alias Hook, the very first paragraph I committed to a Word doc remained the first paragraph of the book in print—at least in the UK edition:

Every child knows how the story ends. The wicked pirate captain is flung overboard, caught in the jaws of the monster crocodile, which drags him down to a watery grave. Who could guess that below the water, the great beast would spew me out with a belch and a wink of its horned, livid eye? It was not yet my time to die, not then nor any other time. It's my fate to be trapped here forever in a nightmare of childhood fancy with that infernal, eternal boy. 

The Disney version ends where my story begins.

True inspiration struck belatedly (as usual), and I wrote an entirely new prologue for the US edition. However, that first paragraph remains intact as the first words James Hook "speaks" to the reader as his personal narrative begins—although the rest of the opening chapter surrounding it changed many, many times.

And that's just the way it is. Only after plowing through the entire narrative, with all its drama, humor, and heartbreak, can you possibly understand where your story really begins.

(Above: Russell Brand as Captain Hook, photographed by Annie Liebovitz.)

DUELING HOOKS

Hugh Jackman, rehearsing for Pan

If only this was Hugh Jackman  in swordfighting rehearsals for Alias Hook! But sadly not. If you read my post on Crossbones, you'll recall that Jackman is playing arch-villain Blackbeard in a new live-action Peter Pan movie, Pan, in production as we speak, to come out from Warner Bros. next summer.

People are finally starting to realize that Captain Hook is everybody's favorite character in the Peter Pan universe. Seriously, who else besides J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, could ever think of that bratty, heartless eternal boy as the hero? These days, we know better.

(Over on Disney's Once Upon A Time, Hook is practically the star of the whole show thanks in no small part to sexy Colin O' Donoghue in the role. But then, Disney is notorious for graverobbing its own past successes in the fairy tale realm to accommodate changing tastes. Just look at Maleficent.)

Colin O'Donoghue, Once Upon At Time

But in the upcoming Pan, it looks like the only way they can think to make a good guy out of Hook is to team him up with Pan against an even more dastardly villain—Blackbeard.

This is not an entirely unprecedented idea. Barrie tells us that James Hook was once "Blackbeard's bosun." So it's not too much of a stretch to imagine the two of them running amok in the Neverland together.

In the Pan version, the boy Peter (to be played by newcomer Levi Miller) is an orphan whisked off to Neverland. He meets James Hook as a young man in Blackbeard's crew, and they become shipmates and allies.

Garrett Hedlund is cast as Hook, most recently seen as Dean Moriarty (the Neal Cassady figure) in On The Road, and John Goodman's mysterious driver in Inside Llewyn Davies. It'll be interesting to see if he can ditch that modern hipster vibe to play Hook.

Apparently, Peter and Hook will be friends at the start of the story. But the badder Blackbeard gets (one assumes), the closer they come to an epic rift as each one has to choose what side he's on. 

Garrett Hedlund: hipster Hook?

I'm not sure if making James Hook the buddy—or even mentor—of little Peter is the best use of such a witty, sardonic, and complex character. And as to the whole idea of Hook as one of Blackbeard's crew? Well, the James Hook in my novel laughs at the crack-brained notion that, rumors aside, he would ever actually sail with Blackbeard —who was a well-known lunatic! Just sayin'...

So, not the way I would (or did) tell the story, but it's good to know Captain Hook and Peter Pan are still going strong in pop culture!

(Notice I'm not even going to mention the upcoming Peter Pan Live TV project, due in December. That's another post...)

Hey, maybe Hugh is playing Blackbeard (instead of Hook) because he's saving himself for the lead in Alias Hook! Well, a girl can dream, can't she...

REDEEMABLE VILLAINS

It's my very great pleasure today to have a guest post up on the excellent speculative fiction blog, Layers of Thought.

My topic is "Top 5 (Redeemable) Villains." Since I've already revealed my soft spot for Captain Hook, I was asked to come up with some other designated villains from fantasy fiction, characters who I think may have gotten a raw deal. Characters who might deserve a chance to tell their side of the story!

Case in point: Circe. Okay, she turned Odysseus' men into pigs. But remember, they were a shipload of strange men of unknown provenance invading her island. And it's not like she killed or enslaved them; they were free to roam around her island in peace, enjoying the fruits of the land.

All they had to give up was the man-like shape that made them war-like. (Get rid of those pesky opposable thumbs, and no more weapons can be grasped!) Besides, she only turned them into swine after they spent a night of gluttony feasting at her table.

Click here to read the rest of the story. Then let me know what villains you would like to see redeemed!

HOOK-WINKED

Okay, I love Captain Hook so much I wrote a novel about him. (Alias Hook, coming soon to a bookstore near you.) But tossing the character into the chaotic mosh pit that the TV series Once Upon A Time has become hasn't done nearly enough to improve the gene pool in terms of story.

The Irish actor playing him, Colin O'Donoghue, is sexy enough. (Although if you've read your Barrie, you know that Mr. Smee, the bosun, is the Irishman; Hook is pure Etonian-bred English.) O'Donoghue would likely rise to the occasion if the writers gave him anything interesting to do.

But, no. After one brief episode that took place at least partially aboard ship, now Hook is landlocked on the Island of Lost Toys, or wherever it is where half the cast is segregated this season, wandering around with the rest of the superfluous characters—Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, Snow White, Lancelot (Lancelot? I thought these were fairy tale characters)—in search of a plot.

And—most egregiously of all—last week they introduced the Frankenstein monster, in the person (at least, the cadaver) of Regina's lost, reanimated stableboy lover. It must have been some kind of Halloween thing; the reanimation sequence was even in black-and-white, performed by a doctor called "Whale." (But if you want a truly clever homage to the classic James Whale movie, go see Frankenweenie).

The weirdest thing about the Hook subplot (and I use the term "plot" in the loosest possible sense) was the backstory establishing his enmity with Robert Carlyle's Mr. Gold. Each is responsible for depriving the other of the woman he loved, which suggests a tedious and prolonged grudge match of vengeance between the two of them if Hook ever gets out of Purgatory. And just so we get the point, Mr. Gold, in his sorcerous Dark Lord persona, is the one who cuts off Hook's hand, equating him in the storyline with—yes—the Crocodile.  (They even call him "Crocodile" in the episode.)

Carlyle remains the best (possibly only) reason to watch the show. But, seriously, give a guy a break! They've already got him playing Rumplestiltskin, the Dark Lord, Beast (in the Beauty and the Beast subplot), and now the Crocodile. How long can he be expected to carry the show all by himself? Talk about the hardest-working man in showbiz!

DISENCHANTED

I don't know about you, but it seems to me they can't bring on the Captain Hook character soon enough in the second season of TV's Once Upon A Time.

The curse was broken at the end of last season, and the suddenly un-enchanted denizens of Storybrook remember their fairy tale lives, although for some reason that escapes me at the moment, they can't go home to their fairy tale realm. But now, the scriptwriters have no idea what to do next; like the proverbial spaghetti noodle test, they're throwing everything at the wall to see if something, anything sticks.

Evil queen Regina (Lana Parrilla) is under some kind of house arrest in her mayor's mansion, out of the action. There are early indications that the writers are trying to soften her character up this season by re-introducing an even more dastardly wicked queen, the mother who made her what she is, previously seen only in flashback. This would be fatal to the show; Regina's ruthlessness is one of the series' few constant pleasures.

The other one is the great Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold. You never know from one week to the next if he'll prove to be a good guy or a bad guy, but he always has a private agenda, some angle of self-interest, and that's what makes him so interesting. (Along with Carlyle's deliciously acrobatic and insinuating voice.) But we haven't seen enough of Mr. Gold this season, either.

Instead, the bulk of the narrative action so far falls to the designated "heroes" in the cast, and you've never seen so many shades of vanilla. At the moment, storylines are unfolding on three fronts, none of them interesting: the folks in Storybrook are trying to figure out how to get home, under the dubious leadership of Prince (yawn) Charming; angsty Emma and virtuous Snow (as in White) have tumbled though a mystic portal into some other enchanted plane, where they team up with another couple of personality-challenged females—Sleeping Beauty, and the so-far-underwhelming warrior Mulan—to battle ogres and elude Regina's poisonous mommie dearest; meanwhile, everyone's backstories continue to play out in flashbacks to the original fairy tale kingdom.

The mystery of how these stories fit together may be more trouble than it's worth solving for an increasingly disenchanted audience. (Okay, for me.) The writers must know it; the end of last week's episode teased a shot of a sailing ship, with a promise to introduce "one of the most despicable villains of all time." Hmmm...that's a bit harsh, especially if you've read my History of Captain Hook on stage, page, and screen.

Even if this Hook is still a villain, if he can hold his own against Gold and Regina, he'll be worth his weight in bullion in a show that desperately needs a breath of fresh sea air. It's promising that they have a sexy young Irishman playing the part, although the fatality rate for sexy young males on this show is pretty, er, grim.

Remember the hunky Huntsman/Sheriff? The queen squashed his heart like a bug. Mysterious stranger August/Pinocchio was last seen turning into wood (and I don't mean in a good way). And didn't Ruby/Riding Hood devour her own sweetheart during a werewolf interlude in her backstory?

If Hook is a hit on the show, I'll be waiting to see what kind of backstory they invent for him, and how it differs for the one I wrote for him in my upcoming novel, Alias Hook.  That's the great thing about a character who's been around as long as Captain Hook (107 years and counting)—he's always ripe for a new interpretation.

COVER ME

-->

Well, this is exciting. Check out the cover for my new novel, Alias Hook!

My designer (who is also my editor; talk about multi-tasking) just sent this over from Snowbooks. She tells me the yellow bits will be in shiny gold foil, and the lettering will be embossed. Pretty cool for a trade paperback!

 I just love the script for the title, perfect for an 18th Century gentleman privateer penning his memoirs. And I like the tilt of that ship at sea, a visual metaphor for the shipwreck Hook's life has become.

(I had nothing to do with this cover, btw, as much as I'd love to take credit fo it. All I asked was that the designer steer clear of anything involving a large, shiny hook—too literal and way too Spielberg. Happily, she was way ahead of me!)

My publication date has been moved up to March, 2013. At first, the book will only be available in bookstores in the UK (and online, of course), but, as Hook himself might say, tomorrow the world!

In the meantime, take a look at my recent post on one hundred years of Captain Hook in the popular media, and why I think he's ripe for redemption.

A HISTORY of HOOK

Evidently I'm not the only one who thinks James M. Barrie's immortal pirate captain is ripe for revival.

 Last year's hit TV series, the fairy tale mash-up Once Upon A Time, is adding a new character to its roster of villains for its second season; none other than (wait for it)—Captain Hook.

Here's a teaser trailer, oozing sinister portent.

For most of us, the "original" Captain Hook is this cartoon version from Disney's 1953 Peter Pan.

First produced for the London stage in 1904, Barrie's play about a tribe of boys who refuse to grow up in a childhood dream world called the Neverland might have gone the way of the Dodo if not for the presence of this flamboyant, crowd-pleasing pirate chief, the lovable, hissable villain who's kept generations of audiences coming back for more.

This overdressed, supercilious, cowardly comic-opera villain that we know as Captain Hook is almost—er—single-handedly responsible for the ongoing popularity of Barrie's sentimental domestic comedy.

Disney's animated Hook wrings every possible laugh out of his swordplay, pratfalls and surreal flights of fancy, along with an exaggerated cartoon visage worthy of his every scheme— hawk's beak, chin jutting like the prow of a ship, quivering Salvador Dali moustachios, wiggling eyebrows with a life of their own.

Not to mention the juicy, overripe trilling of Hans Conried's vocal performance (he was also the voice of Snidely Whiplash on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show).

Another famed onscreen Hook was stage actor and music hall veteran Cyril Ritchard (right) in the Broadway musical Peter Pan, which was filmed for TV in the mid-'1950s and rebroadcast sporadically after that. This is the famous version with Mary Martin as Peter, but, it was the delightful Ritchard, dripping dry wit and fussbudgety sarcasm, who made the show so much fun.

It's been a longstanding tradition for mature women to play Peter onstage. But ever since Barrie published his novelized version of the play, Peter and Wendy, in 1911,  allowing readers to imagine Peter as a real boy, it's believed that all little girls swoon for Peter. Current discussion boards on Goodreads reveal that young female readers still can't understand why Wendy doesn't choose to stay forever young with Peter in the Neverland.

But not me. Stay in the Neverland forever with a bunch of mangy boys? No thanks. Even as a child, I thought Peter was too much like the boys I went to school with—bratty and full of himself.

I liked Hook! He had the funniest lines, and by far the coolest clothes!

Book representations tend toward a more menacing Hook. Look at this F. D. Bedford illustration from a 1912 edition of Peter and Wendy.

This Hook as more of a Medusa-headed ogre than mere villainous human.

The image of Captain Hook as mincing fop was re-established by Dustin Hoffman in the 1991 Steven Spielberg movie, Hook. Hoffman brings plenty of comic brio to the role, but this is an aging, defanged Hook fading into the sunset.

By far the darkest and sexiest screen Hook is Jason Isaacs in the 2003 live-action Peter Pan. Isaacs (below) is all menace laced with a shot of wry; he suffers children and childish pirates with elaborate, if short-fused patience. ("Silence, puling spawn!" he roars when the kids start whining, a sentiment any babysitter or parent will understand.)

It was Isaacs' Hook, cracking jokes to himself, sotto voce, that nobody else gets, who set off the spark in my imagination about how awful it must be for a functioning adult to be trapped in a world invented and run by children.


 And the more I started thinking about it in those terms, the more real and complicated and tragic the character started to feel to me. I started to think of James Hook as a character worthy of redemption. I wanted to get him out of there!

They've got a handsome young Irsishman, Colin McDonoghe, coming in to play the character in Once Upon A Time, which suggests another reinterpretation of the Classic Hook. (Not surprising in a series in which Red Riding Hood is also, herself, a shapeshifting Wolf, and the hobgoblin, Rumplestiltskin—played by the delghtful Robert Carlyle—also gets his own Beauty and the Beast love story.)

The series' second season begins September 30, and Hook is scheduled to make his first appearance in Episode Four.

But as long as Captain Hook remains a designated villain, that's not the story I'm telling in Alias Hook.