INTRODUCTION: The full text of Edmond & Fredestaire, one of my earliest King Kuts tie-in stories.
Ed & Fred, as I often call it, was meant to be a precursor to a followup story, The Secret Of The Pyramid, which would detail the discovery of King Kuts's tomb by archaeologists. The two stories were so closely connected, in fact, that I started them both in the same composition book, Secret commencing halfway through. It's best that I never finished either of them, however, as I was rapidly running out of room!
I checked out a book from the library sometime during the writing of Secret and learned a lot more about the discovery of King Tut's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, upon whom my titular characters are based. Hence many of the details in that story were inspired by that book (whose title and author escape me just now). However, that's then and not now. Most of the characters in Ed & Fred and the followup story were based, at least in name, on real people. "Petrie" you may recognize from the famous Egyptologist of the same name. "Lady Coventry" was the name of some woman I read about in a book long ago, who used lead to whiten her face and ended up dying from it. "Lord Dufferin" I read about in that or a similar book--he was this guy who had a weird vision and then an encounter in an elevator which ended up saving his life when the elevator crashed. Lady Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, and Lord Porchey were based on the real relations of the real Lord Carnarvon (referred to in the first story as "Edmond"). "Pecky Callendar" was a real member of the archaeological team which dug up Tut's tomb. "Pierre Lacau" really was in charge of the Antiquities Service, and butted heads with the real Carter. And the names "Sarwat Raman" and "Aberdassul Abdul" I stole and modified from fictional characters in some novel about an Egyptian tomb (though I misspelled the latter's name--it should have been "Abderassul"). I'll point out other borrowings I made as they come along in the stories.
As I said, this is written in the first half of a very battered composition book. The dedication is written on the inside front cover, along with numerous scribbles and doodles, including a few of Lady Coventry--one done in a completely different style as I was pretending what it would be like if my book were illustrated by somebody named "Diane Dedrim." The writing of these two stories obviously took place over quite an extended period of time based on how my illustration style changes throughout them. I'll put a rough estimate as to the start of the writing being around 1989, and I probably trailed off around 1990-91 (late elementary school/early junior high).
Front, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9
Dedicated to Howard Carter & Lord Carnarvon, the two real archaeologists--and Black River Elementary, the real Dog High & Elementary.
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