front and back cover

inside front and back cover

Twelve years ago, I never imagined that I would still be doing this!

The Adventures of Flash Meridian was just one of those silly things that just happened one day. My friends Jeremy, Josh and Justin came over. I had flight suits. They put them on. It was as simple as that. I took pictures and altered them in Photoshop (which I was just beginning to learn to use).  Then I made up some captions for the pictures. We laughed. That was it… Or so we thought. 

Those fifteen or twenty actors that portrayed characters in the early episodes grew up and/or moved away long ago, and here I still am, with my silver “space suit” and a story in my head. 

The website has always gone through changes. I did one episode with Barbie Dolls and action figures. I did an episode or two using a comic book app on my phone…  but in the last year since the relaunch (at my daughter’s urging), there have been cataclysmic evolutionary leaps. 

The story now focuses primarily on the writing, even though I have transformed a room in my basement into the interior of the mother ship. 

Maybe the pictures will come back. Maybe in the form of paintings. Maybe a new crop of actors will wander into my life.

For now, I am obsessed with writing. The current story line (in the mid 50’s episodes) goes back about 28 years, when I was in my early 20’s and worked in a summer camp between semesters in Bible School. 

It doesn’t matter what you write about, pieces of you will surface. C.S. Lewis said that, far better than I just did. And it’s true. I’m often surprised at what details of the real me appear in my story. 

But the thing that really spurred the idea of a book is that the blog is all backwards!  The most recent episode always appears first, and I find it cumbersome to be constantly scrolling back to find continuity, although the links at the right hand side do make it easier to navigate (and allow you to comment). 

So the book flows. In order.  And that’s why I did it. 

I read the entire booklet out loud to my dogs tonight, and they listened attentively to the whole thing. I think they enjoyed it. I happen to love the story even though I wrote it, and I hope you’ll like it, too.