November 5, 2010

FLUSH, THE FISH


When I was a boy, I was very industrious.

I tried my hand at many sales and marketing jobs (sold all things door to door and in my "snack shack" which I built out of pilfered wood from the housing construction sites near my house, tsk tsk.... I found enough nails left in the dirt outside the sites to put together a pretty impressive shack (all featured in my GP saga).


One thing I tried my hand at was a goldfish farm. I planned to sell them along with all of the candy, gum and other treats in my snack shack to my friends.

I bought some twenty goldfish bowls, calculated that each bowl would supply around fifty newbies and I would continue to build my farm. I supplied each with "verified" male and female fish and waited for them to make me UBER RICH!

One by one they all turned belly up and so did my fish industry (which happened to be in the basement next to the bathroom providing an easy burial.





To distance myself from the ever dying fishies emotionally, I didn't name the first two thousand* but then came upon a clever enough name. Every goldfish I owned from that point on, as well as the other varieties we would get when my own boys owned them were named FLUSH.


From these experiences has come a new picture book that is working its way from my brain to paper. It is called Flush, The Fish, which takes on two meanings depending on how you say that sentence.

Flush is a little albino fish (or the more politically correct way to say it is that he is actually pigmentally impaired) who prefers the backstroke to any other. This unusual fish is mistaken for any number of belly up fish who have somehow leached out their color into the still somewhat clear waters of their bowl, so the little fish farmer gives him his proper burial in the nearby commode. Flush goes whirling down into the underworld, underwater domain and the adventure begins...

NO, it is nothing like Finding Nemo!

Now back to the book!

*hyperbole

1 comment:

Paige said...

I can't wait, I am very intrigued by this explanation of how your new book came to be. Sounds adventurous and of course, silly.