“Using accessible language, Paul Hosch describes the twenty years he worked as a fingernail artist in Hawaii’s burgeoning tourist industry. He pulls back the curtain on the voracious merchants, clueless tourists, talented entertainers, and exotic locals that we never get to see in tourist guidebooks. His internal dialogue is honest and endearing in this stirring and colorful narrative.  I wish more writers told stories this way." GHH—Beta Reviewer

“Paul Hosch’s latest e-book offers readers a new and different view of the islands; one they will not soon forget. The Fingernail King takes us back to Waikiki Beach of the 1980s, in which a recent art school graduate creates a tourist craze by painting tiny tropical scenes on fingernails…”

After working for several years as an unpaid volunteer for a yoga organization, a penniless thirty-year-old is offered part-time employment in a halfway house and two months' free rent in Hawaii. Having no other means of support, he gladly accepts the job offer and lands in Honolulu with only a tattered suitcase, an old guitar, and barely enough money to stay alive. The year is 1976.

Longing for a career as an artist, he answers a want ad in the local newspaper and is hired to decorate inexpensive shell jewelry in a famous Waikiki Beach shopping center. This leads to a lucrative gig painting Hawaiian scenes on fingernails, which surprisingly goes viral. Within a few short months, he becomes an established tourist attraction.

For the next twenty years, the young man works six nights a week in one of the busiest tourist resorts in the world, and as an unexpected perk, he stumbles into many strange and exotic romantic entanglements. While struggling to balance his meditation and yoga practice with the overwhelming allure of Waikiki, he finds it increasingly difficult to resist the worldly pleasures vying for his attention. The Fingernail King is the humorous and sometimes poignant story of youthful indulgence, occasional overindulgence, and eventual redemption.

After reading this unique e-memoir, you’ll never see “paradise” the same way again!