October 19th, 2023
I have never been a religious person.
But that’s not to say I’ve never believed in anything.
When I was growing up, there was no shortage of things I thought were real but could never prove: aliens, ghosts, mutants, Bigfoot, vampires, time travel. I would spend entire days at the library (this was before the internet, kids), checking out books to learn everything I could about them. I remember being obsessed with the Weekly World News, and one day my dad told me it was joke newspaper, but I thought he said it with a wink; like he was comforting me because he knew I was scared, but when I was adult I’d be let in on the big secret that all of this was real.
All the stuff I couldn’t prove, plus the stuff I believed in that could, like science, all contradicted the concept of the Christian God to me, a paradox I have never been able to resolve in myself.
But I don’t know if I’ve ever believed in anything more than dreams.
They were frequently more real to me than real life, and I often wished they were. To this day, I feel like dreams exist on their own wavelength, and we’re able to access each other through them.
I had always wanted to tell a story through them. And for all the good dreams I had, I had my fair share of nightmares, too.
I worried I would die in one.
And that led to the creation of Alen: a serial killer who murdered people in their safest place. Their own mind.
I knew that writing a book about dreams would inspire people I met to talk about their own, but never in my wildest ones would I realize how much, and how deeply. Dreams are one of the few human experiences we have that are near-universal and boundary-less. All you have to be is a creature who sleeps to have them.
I get asked about the pop culture inspirations for Flip constantly, and there aren’t many I can count. Freddy Krueger pops up, and he wasn’t a touchstone for me; his shadow loomed over culture when I was a kid, but I don’t know if I’ve watched a Nightmare on Elm Street movie in its entirety to this day.
I love Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic series now, but I hadn’t been able to read it for most of my young life. It was too smart for me. (It is still too smart for me, but I love it anyway.)
I was actually introduced to a lot of dream stories after I published the book, and I’m grateful for knowing so little; it allowed me to write dreams the way I experience them with little outside influence.
While my beliefs have changed and evolved over the years, dreams remain something I deeply believe in. Their intimate and universal nature; their unknowable power and specific understanding; their sharp terror and warm comfort.
That faith lives on in me, and I explored the importance of it even further in Liam’s next chapter.
The Den 