It WASN'T so okay when I ventured into more serious writing, such as this unfinished story, Revolution. In cases like this everything just got remarkably, remarkably stupid. But let me attempt to explain how I plotted my ancient Egypt. Basically, I had several "generations" of rulers whose order went vaguely like this (to use only the ones I named above):
Zoser
Hatshepsut
Thutmose III
Amenhotep III
Akhenaton
Cheops
King Kuts
...kind of; I may be a bit off, especially with Zoser. And there were of course other rulers in there. The system seemed to be based on just "retiring," after which another king would take the former one's place. Stupid!
Anyway...in my stories, Zoser, Hatshepsut, and Thutmose III were all around the same age; ditto with Akhenaton and his gang who show up in Akhenaton & Nefertiti, and again with Cheops, King Kuts, and the "new generation" who show up in the King Kuts stories. Each set of characters is about ten years apart from each other, so in my most recent writing Zoser is around fifty, Akhenaton is around forty, King Kuts is around thirty, etc.--though of course, some characters look and act younger than they actually are. ANYWAY...in my plotline, Egypt long ago went through a great revolution in which the Two Lands fought each other and were not united--you can see vestiges of this in Ak & Nef. There was the additional menace of the Syrians, who were my all-purpose bad guys. This was a sort of intermediate period as King Menes had united the countries long ago, at least in my newer writing, but I guess they separated again. In any event, this story was to take place during the time of this revolution, though I'm afraid I can't recall the exact details of what was to happen. Thutmose III and Hatshepsut were slated to be the main characters, along with Zoser, who in my storyline had a big connection to the Syrians and the revolution. (I believe you can read more about that in Zoser's Journal--and if not, I'll just explain it. A hint, it involves Zoser's wife.) Basically, the teenaged Zoser, Thutmose, and Hatshepsut et al. would get swept up in this revolution, and the fallout would involve the disappearance of Hatshepsut (I think) and the conversion of Thutmose into a bad guy, as he later appears in Ak & Nef and the King Kuts stories (albeit in a much less serious role). One clarification--even though Thutmose became a bad guy, he never became a traitor to Egypt, in my storyline, and even in his role as Purrsha's henchman he never comes across as terribly evil.
You might be able to see how Revolution conflicts with the jokey tone of later stories which I had actually written first--the buffoonish Thutmose is here presented more seriously, and the plot wasn't meant to be very funny at all. I never made any attempt at reconciling these character contradictions, and even to this day would not bother trying. I prefer to think of such fare as the King Kuts series as the funnier, more kid-friendly stuff, and stories like Revolution as the more adult stuff--and aside from brief references to each other, never the twain shall meet.
This story was scribbled in a battered spiralbound notebook missing its cover. The name is written on the front in an odd angular block print. The date is unknown, but is quite likely from around 1989, since it seems later than my earliest Egyptian writing (King Kuts, Horus) but earlier than my 1990 material (D Is For Damien, The Trench Rats).
Front, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Back
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