September 14th, 2025
Holy cow, you guys. On the first day of preorders, we hit a quarter of the goal I have for sales. You’re amazing, thank you so much.
A lot of questions came up, but really just a big one: what the heck is Maple Island about? This video will explain it all, Clarissa-style. Go preorder this “literary smut book” at my website today!
Maple Island Presale Starts Now!
September 12th, 2025
MAPLE ISLAND IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW!
You can go to my website (dennis vogen dot com) and order yourself a copy (or a dozen) now! This is a limited time presale and I will be shutting down this option before I order my first shipment of books.
In case you forgot all the goodies that come with ordering first, here you go (with a bonus fourth thing!):
1. You’ll get your autographed copy before the official release date in November (as long as there are no delays on the printing side, of which I currently expect zero).
2. You’ll get an exclusive signed Church of Virtue bookmark, designed and hand-cut by me and available nowhere else. (What’s the Church of Virtue? You’ll have to wait and see!)
3. You’ll help make it possible for me to order more initial copies of the book, which is huge for me; the more preorders that come in, the more funds I’ll have available to use. (Note: I couldn’t open the tip field, so if you want to add anything additional just because, you could order more copies of books and note that you don’t want that many, or there are options like Venmo, too, if you just want to help.)
4. You’ll have your name published in the book! I created a co-publisher page, and anyone who preorders will have their name printed right on it (and you can opt out in the shopping cart notes if that’s not your thing, too!).
I want to (and will continue to) make this extremely clear: Maple Island is a work designed for mature readers. It contains intimate sexual scenes (oh?) and intense violence (oh!), along with my incredible wit (ha) and ability to knit in layers of meaning and heart. It’s the whole package — and that’s what she said.
Books will be ordered in early October and then shipped to you as soon as I have them.
Check out the video and then go! Go to my website! Order a million books! Spread the word! I appreciate and love you all!
The Rules
September 10th, 2025
I don’t write about my dad as much as I do my mom; it’s not that he isn’t as important to me, but that he’s still here. Often, when I’m writing about her, I find it’s my attempt to lose as little of her as I can, like collecting stardust into a coffee tin.
I was watching the Steve Martin documentary on Apple TV last week and he said something that felt like it encompassed my entire being:
“I think if I had any guidance, nothing would have happened for me.”
He’s referring to a few things here. He never had a creative mentor; that’s something that I’ve talked about at length, a part of my life that I can’t help but feel I’ve completely missed. That lack of guidance, however, can be a gift: neither Steve nor I had anybody to tell us how it was done, so we’ve spent our time figuring it out on our own. That has resulted in work that is, at least, idiosyncratic, a little odd and totally unorthodox.
Another side of his remark, though, and the aspect that reminds me of my dad, is the idea of not having any rules, which is hugely influential on me to this day.
When I say no rules, I don’t mean lawlessness. No, I just mean that we are allowed to look at the made-up rules and ancient laws as they’ve been presented and actively wonder if they’re any good at all.
I grew up with a dad with a real sense of wonder and a general disregard for what any dull person would consider normal. This attitude wasn’t an infection; it’s coded in our DNA, and it has largely informed how I perceive the world and what I want to do with the short time I’m here. It also made him an alarmingly optimistic person.
What he has is not toxic positivity; he doesn’t ignore problems or pretend terrible people and tragic acts don’t exist. But he persists despite them; he has made me laugh off more bad luck and tough shit than I ever thought I could.
He believes in action; in that what we do is who we are, and that nothing is insurmountable, even if the thing you think you want is impossible. It just might look differently than you dreamed.
Why am I writing about this today?
Because if I didn’t have these specific tools, I would be dead.
If I didn’t have my sense of humor and my hope, two traits my dad gave me through nature and nurture, I would not be able to exist in this world. A place where violence and uneducated hate persist, a place where people will blindly follow the rules of their tribe, even those rules that go against everything that makes us human.
Every day I want to drink. Every day. Today is no different. This isn’t a cry for help; this is my actual life. This plane of existence can be brutal and bleak and fucking dark.
But it can also be funny. And so sweet and blindingly bright. My dad made sure to point out when we were presently living the good life; it was more often than I thought. And there is never a day when I’m not surprised at least once, because I’m open for the universe to do that, because I don’t see the rules between us.
Your politics are not a guide.
The only real rule is love.
The Ends of the Earth
September 1st, 2025
There’s a trend, but it’s not new; it’s as old as internet time (was there anything before?). It’s the idea of sharing something that absolutely does not need to be shared, in order to signal to others what tribe or political feed you subscribe to.
There’s a version of this making the rounds this week (see: my last essay about ugly), in which a person “bravely” announces that they will be raising their boys as boys and their girls as girls, because the world is already so confusing and God something something, as if this stance is not the default mode in which humanity has been raising children since the beginning of our species.
This, to me, appears to be a decision one can make in the comfort and privacy of their own home, with their own family, no formal announcement necessary — unless they’re trying to say something else.
But who’s to say?
I imagine a dad who says, “I’m going to raise a soldier, because that is the only job that means anything to me.” And he does everything he can to raise that job — not that child — ignoring who the kid is on the inside for the sake of what the dad wants him to appear to be on the outside.
So brave. Way braver than the search for meaning and purpose and identity nearly every human being has participated in since our inception.
We’re complex, and it’s fucking amazing. We’re not and have never been binary creatures; nothing about us is black or white, 1 or 0, and that includes the near infinite options that God (if you wish) has to choose from when it comes to our chemicals and chromosomes and genetics, the amounts and balances, our personalities and dreams and souls. It’s why a straight boy (hi) can be more effeminate and empathetic and into show tunes than other straight boys; it’s why an addict (hi) can’t have one after-dinner cocktail like other people can without it destroying his entire existence.
You know what posts are brave? The ones where a parent says that they’re going to follow their child to the ends of the earth; the ones where a parent vows their unconditional love. Do you know why? Because that is not the default. For every fucked up person, there is more than likely a fucked up parent or relationship or traumatic life event that found no healing or resolution. We say mental health matters; this administration took away $1 billion in mental health care this year so we are what we do, not what we say.
This photo is me, and I’m a witch. Not a wizard; a witch. I clearly wanted to be a witch and my mom was like “fuck yeah, you be a witch” and she helped me. It wasn’t confusing. It didn’t disrupt my worldview. It confirmed something that I never, ever doubted: my mom loved me unconditionally and she would go to the ends of the earth for me, her little witch.
If only every child could feel like this. If only their parents could stop politicizing every piece of their lives and just saw them, held them, protected them. Not from the big, bad world, not from abstract outside forces; from the insidious biases that feed on us all.
A Little Less Alone
August 28th, 2025
I live in Minnesota, so the morning after a horrific tragedy I wasn’t surprised to open social media and see so much ugly. (A lot of this ugly coming from so-called Christians, who have spent the last decade showing all of us, including their Jesus, who they really are and what they definitely are not.)
Disappointed, always, but not surprised.
One of the most “interesting” takes (I put “interesting” in quotes because it’s meant to represent so many other words, like “ignorant” and “repugnant”) I’ve come across is about the identity of the shooter, and how they consider that identification to be a mental illness, and that if the shooter would have just had a nice, Christian upbringing, with two straight parents, who did not allow or accept that identity, that none of this would have happened at all. Oh, and that guns aren’t the problem, have never been a problem, in the only country where normalized mass shootings are a daily occurance that only require an acceptable portion of our thoughts and/or prayers to alleviate our preventable pain until the next one, which will be tomorrow, set your watches.
For fuck’s sake. The opposite is true, you guys.
Our goal should be to create a society where every single child knows how beautiful they are on the inside, how unique, how irreplaceable; a society that agrees, without exception, to keep those children (and all children) safe and to admit when things are not working towards those ends; a society that then makes significant steps to protect every life, the same lives where we’ve instilled the beliefs that every human is beautiful, unique, and irreplaceable.
A society in which every person has intrinsic value and we all know it.
If you have ever disparaged someone simply because of who they are on the inside, congratulations: you are the problem. Full stop. You are responsible for making a person or people feel less-than: less than beautiful, strange in the wrong way, completely disposable.
There are people who feel disposable.
It’s all lives, right? All lives matter? Some of you were chanting this to make a point that most of those chanting never meant in the first place.
Pro-life has nothing to do with a fetus. Pro-life means preserving the dignity and sanctity of every single breathing creature, from a minute to over a hundred years old.
It’s fucking bizarre, thousands of years into the human experiment, to have to waste my words to explain to everyone what you already know: this existence is magical and inexplicable and instead of embracing that and each other, we do it wrong most of the time.
Fuck that. I love you guys. My guy guys, my girl guys, my nonbinary guys, my animal guys. I had a heated discussion with one of my best friends late last night and he was so upset, but it made me feel good to see it, because the world is so upsetting right now and I felt less alone.
So do that. I rarely give advice; I’m a terrible role model. But go out, and make someone feel less alone. And maybe — just fucking maybe — you’ll feel a little less alone yourself.
Shake It Off
August 24th, 2025
Tomorrow is my last first day of my graphic design program; if all goes according to plan, I’ll be a DCTC graduate in May 2026.
To recap: I currently have a 4.0 GPA (I got an A+ in my summer Ethics class and I didn’t even know that was a possible grade in college) and took the largest load of courses I’ll ever have to take for this program back during my spring semester (six classes, which is actually kind of crazy). I’ve finished all of my generals, which means it’s just me and design for the rest of my schedule. I’m going to student my butt off and hope to uphold my average so far, but my biggest goal is to get my degree, perfection be damned.
I got a reminder today of why I’m doing this, why I’m developing new skills and sharpening old ones and opening up new paths for myself: I was intensely disrespected by someone and it was, frankly, near intolerable. It’s not something that happens every day, but it happens often enough, and it can be terribly hurtful and fairly dehumanizing.
A side effect of continuing my education and investing in me has been finding a deeper respect for myself and, to be perfectly corny, even loving myself a little more. I think I have some decent qualities and a talent for things that I’m not actively doing every day, and I’m working to change that.
So anyway: back to school, back to school, to prove to dad that I’m not a fool.
I love learning, and I love fall: hooded sweatshirts, football, pumpkin everything, the smell and the taste and the sights. I wish the best of it to you and all of yours.
Mark Your Calendars!
August 18th, 2025
It’s getting real.
Maple Island, my 14th book, will be officially released this November. I’ve spent nearly all of my sobriety in labor with a story about a society of vampires and I’m finally ready for you to experience this baby.
I’m going to be doing things a little differently this time; instead of using Kickstarter to raise money for publication, I’m going to open my website on September 12th, 2025, to start accepting preorders.
I think this will be better in several ways, but we’ll find out for sure by trying it! By preordering, you truly become a co-publisher with me, and it will benefit you and me in at least three ways:
1. You’ll get your autographed copy before the official release date (as long as there are no delays on the printing side, of which I currently expect zero).
2. You’ll get an exclusive signed Church of Virtue bookmark available nowhere else. (What’s the Church of Virtue? You’ll have to wait and see!)
3. You’ll help make it possible for me to order more initial copies of the book, which is huge for me; the more preorders that come in, the more funds I’ll have available to use. (I’ll leave the tip portion open, too, if you want to add anything additional just because.)
I want to (and will continue to) make this extremely clear: Maple Island is an adult book. It contains intimate sexual scenes (oh?) and intense violence (oh!), along with my incredible wit (ha) and ability to knit in layers of meaning and heart.
It’s the whole package — and that’s what she said.
Anyway: mark your calenders. I would love for this unconventional preorder plan to work. I think that some of you will be obsessed (while others equally revolted) over this book. I am both, in the best way.
Everything I Ever Was
August 12th, 2025
Whenever I’m feeling spicy (and I’ve been very spicy this week [don’t act like you didn’t notice]), my ongoing recovery reminds me to reflect on myself and figure out why.
Sometimes it’s a complex web of things, anxiety and doubt and my schedule and projects and the state of the world, but sometimes it’s simpler than that.
It’s almost fall, and I really miss my mom.
In a month, it’ll be five years since she was fine and then she wasn’t and then she was gone. That time is always living inside of me, but right now it feels like my body’s throwing a rager.
One of the hardest parts of getting sober was not being able to imagine my life any other way. I was drinking daily, and never to get drunk but often to just feel normal. It wasn’t an aspect of my life; it was the entire jewel, everything I ever was, or so I thought.
I can’t recall exactly when, but at some point in my early recovery I remembered something: I used to be eight years old.
And my life was so much different then.
I was in love with the world. I pursued my passions, drawing and writing and being a superhero, and I was scared but also fearless. I didn’t just love life; life loved me back, and that was in the form of my mom.
The craziest part of being that age? I didn’t drink alcohol. I didn’t even need to.
And then I remembered that it was possible to do that again, because I already done it, and I was only eight years old.
It’s weird because when I got sober as an adult, my mom was the least expectant of me. I don’t know if it was because she wanted me know that she loved me whether I sober or not (I did), or if she had just never seen anyone go through recovery like I had chosen to. People drink. It doesn’t make them bad. To her, I wasn’t bad, either.
But I was. In fact, I think my moral framework is stronger than it’s ever been not because I have lived a straight and ethical life, but because I’ve been bad, I know the shame and guilt that being bad brings, and I do my best every day to not be bad again.
I recognize bad because I know how mirrors work now.
So anyway, if I’ve been a lot this week, either online or in person, I’m sorry. My bad. It’s almost fall and I miss my mom and I really thought that five years would be long enough.
Gratitude Tipline
August 11th, 2025
I was talking to a man this weekend and everything was going well until it was not.
We men do that.
He, his family and I had found some things in common and were having a generally nice time. He knew what I did for a living and then, out of nowhere, he asked:
“Have you said thank you to Don yet?”
Genuinely confused, I replied: “For what?”
“No tax on tips!” he said.
“I’ll put it on my to-do list,” I said, hoping to put that conversation away.
He, unfortunately, didn’t. He kept pushing it on me. And so finally, to my delight, I got to explain to him what this “no tax” bullshit is in reality. (Screenshot from the bill itself provided for context; photo of me during an era known as Margarita Madness provided to show I once had hair.)
See, this bill only applies to cash tips, which, as you can imagine nowadays, is the smallest percentage of our income and is generally acknowledged as something that servers get to choose how to claim anyway. It’s why so many people choose to tip their favorite servers and bartenders in cash, even if they pay with a card. So, in order to “not pay taxes on it,” the government wants us to claim every single cent we put in our greasy little paws.
Weird, right? That the government would want more oversight on our tips under the guise that they’re doing us a favor?
There’s also a cap on that “no tax” income, which is just hilarious and extremely representative of everything this administration does (or absolutely does not do) for the majority of American citizens who are not billionaires (we still exist!).
So, if you were one of those people who wrote “No Tax On Tips!” on your credit card receipt to send inexplicable support to this pathetic bill (alongside a tip on that receipt which is still getting taxed even after that bill was passed) from this even more pathetic president, I would, sincerely, like to thank you for nothing.
There was so much about this exchange I could not wrap my head around, but first and foremost:
I could not, in my wildest imagination, see myself asking a fellow citizen if they had showed proper gratitude to a political figure, past or present. That is absolute pet behavior, the exact way a dictator would expect his subordinates to behave, or a withholding daddy would his children.
It is, without a doubt, the definition of unhinged.
Especially so when talking about the person we are talking about.
So no: I did not thank Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend today. I did not show gratitude to the pal of Putin and countless other tyrants. I didn’t shake the hand of the felon who has also been found legally liable of sexual assault. I didn’t hug the man who, every day, vomits bigotry and hate in the name of power. I haven’t high-fived the guy who hasn’t done shit for anyone except himself.
I didn’t do any of those things.
Because I am not an insane person.
I am a sane person in an insane world.
And, boy, am I tired, and not entirely grateful.
Liberty & Justice
August 8th, 2025
This afternoon, I was doing my routine paid eavesdropping (you have no idea how much we know about you from the tea you spill freely and sloppily at your favorite establishments, but I will tell you right now, it’s more than you think). I generally hear clips and phrases out of context, like a real life internet, but I heard a powerful line that struck me and needed no additional notes:
“…every morning at school I was forced to say ‘for liberty and justice for all’ and now they call me crazy and ‘woke’ for wanting liberty and justice for all.”
I think this is why so many of us feel insane today.
I’ve been talking about bias a lot lately but I do want to clarify: not everything we are taught, culturally or at a young age, is bad. In fact, a strong moral framework is one of the most important things a human being can construct and utilize.
When I was a kid, I thought American values were universal values: personal autonomy, freedom of speech, kindness, respect, dignity, education, innovation, community, nature, joy, peace, love, hope.
All that corny shit.
But this isn’t what America represents anymore. Not to its own citizens; not to the rest of the world. Maybe it never did, but now we’re not even pretending. We defunded Big Bird, you guys.
The environment we live in has become inhospitable to compassion and reason. It hurts to care, and the pain feels worse because so many of the adults who taught us the right things are guilty now of doing the most wrong.
If you feel crazy too, just know you’re not the only one. Like I’ve said before, it is a good and noble thing to give fucks. But this isn’t even about setting unrealistic standards; this is about living in a land where there are no standards left at all.
A land where liberty and justice exist solely for a few.
The Den 