The Red Scorpion /Book One /1 & 2

Ed Newman
5 min readJan 16, 2019

Based on the Private Journal of Dr. William Comstock, Ph.D

Photo by Shayna Take on Unsplash

Introduction
In the early 1980’s I had a dream that was exceedingly real, very intense, involving an aggressive, glowing red scorpion. I wrote nearly ten pages describing this scene. It was the beginning of a writing career that involved freelance article writing and attempts at developing myself as a writer of short stories.

When AOL came along I felt I’d written enough stories to seek an agent. I’d won the five-state Arrowhead Regional Fiction Competition with my story “The Breaking Point” and sent a batch of stories to an agent whose handle was PRQueen. Her response led to the creation of The Red Scorpion, my first novel.

She said, “Of the 200 writers I’ve read this year you are the best, but no major publisher will publish an unknown, unpublished short story writer. You have to write a novel. It’s another example of the dead fly in the ointment metaphor. Or, as Dylan once sang, “Behind every beautiful thing there’s some kind of pain.”

As I considered what to write about, I was motivated by a desire to create a story that teenaged boys would get into and not want to put down. I’d observed how boys weren’t reading as much as girls, so I needed an idea that boys would be eager to latch onto. Having been a teen once, I thought…

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Ed Newman

An avid reader who writes about arts, culture, literature & other life obsessions. @ennyman3 Look for my books on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/y3l9sfpj