October 1st, 2023
I’ve always had vivid dreams.
For a long time, I had an idea for a story that wouldn’t let me go. It was about somebody who felt alone in real life and more real in their dreams, and somebody else who killed people in those same dreams.
I couldn’t get the sequel to my first book, Them, right. (Arguably, I still haven’t.) I was stuck, and I was anxious and depressed about it; I was also experiencing heavy feelings over a lack of control during this period.
The story about dreams, unexpectedly, decided that it couldn’t wait anymore.
On the second morning of November, 2013, I woke up and I knew the ending. (Knowing how a story ends is the most important thing for me before I start writing it.) November happens to be National Novel Writing Month: an annual event in which writers from around the world try to write a book in thirty days.
I decided to give it a try.
I did it.
And on December 16th, 2013, Flip became my second published book, a chaotic trip through the complicated mind of Liam, an awkward loner who is dealing with things not even he fully understands at the beginning.
Reviews were far kinder for my second novella. The Faribault Daily News gave me sentences that were both encouraging and have come to be part of the definition of how I write:
“…Moments of brilliance make a short read like ‘Flip’ worthwhile… Sometimes, Vogen unexpectedly breaks out beautiful, almost poetic, language at just the right moment.”
In 2020, I released a Special Edition of the book with a new foreword, embodying the concept of writing drunk, editing sober.
This month, we’ll be talking all about it, and the fascinating language and worlds of our dreams, the unreal places we visit to feel most real.
The Den 