First up: I TOLD you I would be seeing you again soon!
One of the best comic book stores in the multiverse, Issues Needed Comics in Apple Valley, is hosting a graphic novel release party for my new all-ages book, Brushfire.
As always, treats will be served.
Please RSVP on the event page so I know how much sugar to smuggle into the shindig.
Deets:
Brushfire Release Party July 6th, 2022 5 pm to close Issues Needed Comics Apple Valley, Minnesota
Come back on Thursday and Friday for more Brushfire-related announcements, and I can’t wait to see you squirrels in July!
I’m writing this while my human blood is still mostly replaced with coffee, so I hope it’s coherent.
A giant hug and a supermassive thank you to the kind souls who came out to support me today; I don’t know what I did in dreams or a previous life to get you all in my corner, but I am beyond grateful that you are.
Another perfectly connected high five goes to Mighty Fine Coffee, who not only have some of the best coffee I’ve ever had the privilege of consuming, but the best people. (Whoa, sorry, I do not consume people, but Nate and I did have a conversation which naturally referenced cannibals.) Their space was absolutely perfect for this event (and I hope to work with them again soon!).
A good question I got asked several times today was, “Why?” Why do I do this? Why do I create things and put myself into packages for other people to take home with them?
The answer is both simple and dark, and is a theme of the book I was celebrating today, Cold World.
When you don’t believe in a literal heaven, when the idea of a forever life after life doesn’t resonate with you, you start to try to find a way to live as long as you can here.
I do that with art.
I can’t speak for all artists, but I can tell you that I will, at least deep down, never feel like I’ll be remembered in a meaningful way for who I am as a human being.
So I invest my human being-ness into words and pictures and sounds that stand a better chance.
I’m building an afterlife.
It’s why we have pyramids and Stonehenge and Starry Night. It’s why I have Them and Flip and Us and The Weirdos and Theia and Time is a Solid State and Push and Cold World and Brushfire.
And I’m just glad they’ve been able to connect with people while I’m alive to talk about them, and that in itself makes me feel even more alive.
Thank you again so much. All my love. And I’ll be seeing you again soon.
I hope you’ll join me in giving a warm welcome to my eighth book, and my first full-length novel, Cold World.
It is now officially for sale on Amazon as an ebook, paperback, and hardcover, and as a signed paperback on dennisvogen.com.
I want to tell you everything about it and also want to keep its secrets, so let’s aim for a ring somewhere between.
Cold World is science fiction and it’s not. It takes place 200 years in the future, in 2222, on an Earth where there is only one season: winter. Most of the seeds of science fiction I place in my version of the future are rooted in real science now, and that’s exciting for me.
Regardless of those elements, though, they’re not what the story is about.
Cold World is about family, and grief, and art, and hope, and love, and it has a lot to say about spirituality, especially for people who find themselves in a place that isn’t easily definable.
It features some of my favorite characters I have ever written, and it’s filled with action and adventure and, hopefully, some surprises and words that’ll stick with you long after you turn the last page.
I built this world to expand, and it can go backwards, forwards, and even sideways (especially sideways?!) from here. I can’t wait to hear what people think and what they want to dig further into.
Another extra special thanks to Steven for co-designing this stunning cover, and to every Kickstarter backer for making this real.
My mom’s birthday is today. She would have been 60. I’ve been real stressed because life is a stressful place but there is a thought that’s giving me peace.
When people talk about what their loved ones are doing in heaven, it is often something boring.
Like, “I know grandpa is up there fishing in heaven. I hope he’s catching some big ones!”
Or, “I bet nana is making the best quilts and pies in heaven. What I wouldn’t give for another slice of apple.”
It seems very odd to me that these people have eternity in paradise and this is how they choose to spend it, but no judgement.
When my mom was younger, she had Jell-O wrestled, at least once. She had a consensual physical altercation in a pool of cold gelatin. I don’t know when I learned this fact, but I feel like I knew it my entire life, as I can’t remember a day when I did not have that piece of information etched into my brain.
I would like to believe there is a gladiatorial colosseum in heaven dedicated to Jell-O wrestling, and my mom is just kicking everybody’s ass in it.
Like, one day she just showed up, and she walked up to the reigning Jell-O wrestling champion, and she just slapped them in the face, beginning her rise as heaven’s premiere Jell-O gladiator. There are whispers through the garden of her prowess in the tub.
And that’s not what she’ll do forever. That’s just what she’s doing now.
I went to the dentist this morning. The hygienist told me she was tired because she spent the weekend with her grandkids. Then she talked to me about visiting her mom.
Life isn’t fair, but there are some that feel more fair than others.
Share your love today, like a present on a birthday. It’s free and it is a priceless gift.
It is one of the best-ever examples of genre storytelling, and how it can explore complex emotional and psychological ideas that traditional storytelling just can’t.
It’s both affirming and inspirational, for a person like me.
I will absolutely spoil nothing here, but I do want to gush about how rare it is for a series to not only sustain itself, but get exponentially better four seasons on; episode four is, in my hyperbolic opinion, the best the show has ever produced.
Please try not to spoil anything, too, here or anywhere else, as people take their time to savor this; I was trying to consume just one episode a day, but if you do the math you can deduce that I clearly did not, and I’m envious of those who have the patience and will.
Here’s to a new, much more digestible countdown: July 1, to part 2. They could just air eight hours of a black screen and it wouldn’t take anything away from what they’ve already given me.
I guess I liked it, is what I’m trying to get across.
The people who have guns, who love guns, who make money off guns, are absolutely unwilling to do anything about guns, so the only solution I can think of is arming each and every child who has to enter a school building.
If you’re thinking, “That’s crazy,” you’re right: this is fucking crazy. This is all crazy. We live in the craziest fucking country on the planet.
I want to reiterate what I wrote in a post a few weeks ago: if you support guns in any way, you are not “pro-life.” I put the term “pro-life” in quotes because it doesn’t really mean anything anymore; it’s a catch-all for people to put themselves on a pedestal over others.
Guns are made for one thing: to kill. Period. People who say they own one for “self-defense” are lying to you and, perhaps unwittingly, themselves.
Guns are not “defense.” Do you know what defense is?
A shield.
And until we can shield our most vulnerable people — our elderly, our children — we need to arm them.
All of them.
Especially the children.
And before you ask, “Where will we get all these guns?”: we already have them. There are more guns in America than people — over 400 million of them.
Every single argument that gun owners have ever made mean absolutely nothing now; it is the definition of insanity. They say the same things over and over and over again and we wake up to the same tragedies. Over. And over. And over again.
I only hope the people who think this country needs Jesus takes that same energy and applies it not only to his teachings, but his action. Faith without works is dead.
Like so many children.
If you think me saying that the children need to protect themselves is crazy, you’re right, and welcome to the world that we live in right now.
Adults are not protecting life; we are not shields.
Hiya! I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my upcoming novel, Cold World, and I thought I’d answer them all here; if you have one I didn’t acknowledge, please add it below in the comments!
Q: What is Cold World?
A: It’s a book I wrote. Next!
Q: When is the official release date?
A: June 2nd, 2022.
Q: Have the Cold World Kickstarter Exclusive Editions been shipped?
A: Yes! And, according to my records, they have been delivered. If you were a backer of Fire & Ice and chose Cold World as a reward, and have NOT received your book, please reach out to me and I will make sure you get your copy.
Q: I didn’t back your Kickstarter but I REALLY want one of those Exclusive Editions. How can I get one?
A: You can’t. Period. The community I’ve always tried to cultivate is one of rewarding the people who were there for me first, who have trusted in my ability and just plain like me as a storyteller. Those people put their money where their mouth was and they get the cool stuff.
P.S. I feel like this will be a bigger problem when you see some of the amazing, very rare stuff coming out with the Brushfire Collector’s Set, which will be compounded when people learn that it’s a part of a larger collection they missed out on.
Q: Has anyone read Cold World?
A: Yes!
Q: Did they like it?
A: You know, people are generally nice to me when I release something, so I never really know how they feel about something at first. But I get the feeling that they do.
Q: How can I get a copy?
A: You can order the eBook, paperback or hardcover editions on Amazon right now! The first editions on Amazon have three errors that we caught and are fixing before June 2nd, but I have a whole shipment of the original editions and, who knows, a copy of Harry Potter riddled with errors just went for a buttload of money so maybe we’ll see Cold World do the same (let’s be honest, we definitely will).
Q: Where are you celebrating the release of your new novel?
A: On Saturday, June 4th, I will be at Mighty Fine Coffee in Faribault from 1:30 to 3:30 pm to commemorate the release of Cold World which is, if you go back and read the first answer I gave, a book I wrote!
I hope this helps! Happy Monday! Let everyone know what you think of Cold World as you get your sweaty paws on a copy.
I could see the bright sun shining through the window before I left, so it was strange when I walked through the door and found that it was raining.
For all the weather we get here, it felt like the most emotionally relatable.
All I seem to live through are sunny days of rain.
I know what the sun is; it’s the hope I find in being alive.
But the rain is always changing.
Sometimes it’s the grief or loss I feel. Sometimes it’s watching the people I know and love make bad decisions over and over again, both of us knowing that they could prevent the tragedies they create. Sometimes it’s a critical, overwhelming disdain for myself, which is easy for me to get drenched in.
And there it is with the sun.
I don’t want to spoil Cold World too much, but I feel like it’s better than one line, no matter how good that line is.
On a certain page, Calef turns to his father and says: “Dad, when mom died, I knew that I was going to be living in winter for the rest of my life, no matter where it was I lived.”
For everything we say Minnesota weather gets wrong: it seems to get life most of all.
We saw it last week and fell in love with it. How could you not? It has one of the best breeds of baby on it, wearing sunglasses, borrowing Obi-Wan Kenobi’s most famous (and meme-able) phrase.
We did not buy it.
See, we live in a destructive community; it has a lot of children and dogs and lacks any kind of responsible, respectful adult oversight (it’s annoying, to say the least). We know that if we get a doormat, there is a good chance that it will be stolen, or torn in half, or a dog will take a shit on it, or a child will take a shit on it.
Yesterday, I had to remind myself:
Don’t let the fact that beauty will be destroyed prevent you from putting beauty into this world.
Nothing gold can stay, we know that, and yet we often let it prevent us from doing something that makes us happy.
So I bought the mat.
This mat makes us happy.
And it has made me happy several times already, every instance of opening my door to let my puppy out. The next time I turn the knob, the mat might be gone, but it was here for a time and that time would be over.
I am beautiful and I will not last. Same goes for you.
I hope you remember that the next time the fear of inevitable entropy tries to prevent you from embracing beauty.
Look at that death, right in her eyes, and welcome it: “Hello there.”
I made a video, duh, but if you prefer, I also transcribed the words for you to read.
“Good morning, everybody! I’m Dennis, if you don’t know who I am, now we’re friends. I’m making this video because today I received my shipments of my new book, my new NOVEL, Cold World. So, we’re gonna unbox one, we’re gonna look at it together, we’re gonna talk about it for just one minute. You ready?
“So, I said it was my new novel, and it is a novel this time. It’s got more words than The Great Gatsby. So, if you consider The Great Gatsby to be a novel, then this is a novel. But is it better than The Great Gatsby? Does The Great Gatsby have laserguns and hovermobiles? I don’t know, I never finished it. Maybe it’s because it didn’t have laserguns and hovermobiles. What’s so great about that Gatsby?
“The one I’m unboxing here is the Kickstarter Exclusive version of Cold World. And the design idea for this was to make it look like the book was encased in a block of ice. And, so, I talked to my good friend, Steven, and he was my photographer for the ice and he was the co-designer of this cover. He put in a ton of work to make this thing look beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Spoiler alert, I opened up the Amazon copy, too, and it’s great, but this one is so much better! So, if you donated to the Kickstarter – if you INVESTED in the Kickstarter – you get one of these copies, and they are just – they are worth the that money I put into them, that YOU put into them. I can’t wait for you to get this one.
“I want to talk about this for just one minute. One minute. Ready, go.
“So, when people find out that I’m a writer, and that I’ve written several books, they ask, ‘Which one should I read first?’ and that’s a hard question for me to answer. So, usually, I end up asking them a bunch of questions to figure out what they’re into and then I kind of figure out what book they might like the most.
“From now on, this is the book that I’m going to tell people to read first.
“I feel like it’s a culmination of everything that I’ve done so far. It’s got the sci-fi elements of Them and Us, it deals with loss and grief like Flip and Push do, it’s got a dog named Joan who is the best, and I’ve written animals in Theia and Brushfire, and then, like Time is a Solid State and The Weirdos, I deal with a lot of major themes in life, and spirituality is a big one, and that’s the main theme of this book, spirituality.
“I feel like there’s a lot of books about strong beliefs, and there’s a lot of books about how people who are religious are crazy, and I don’t feel like there’s a lot of things for people like me who are in the middle. ‘Cause that’s what I am, I’m in the middle.
“I can’t tell you that there is no God, but I can’t tell you that I’ve found the God I believe in. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in anything. So, this is a book dedicated to people like me who don’t feel like they’ve found ‘the right thing’ but they’ve found the right thing for themselves. I think that’s a really important distinction to make, because there are a lot of people out there who think they’ve found ‘it,’ and I think that they’re missing a big part of what life is all about. And so that’s the major part of Cold World. That’s why I wrote it, and that’s what compelled me to tell this story.
“What’s really cool about the way that I built this world is that you can, going forward, we can explore it forward, backwards or sideways, and I’m really excited for people to read it and be like, ‘I really want to know what happens with this, or that,’ or ‘Why are things this way?’ or ‘What happened to that character?’ I’m really excited to see how people gravitate. But yeah, this is a world that – like they say in Star Wars, this is the first step into a larger world.
“So, I really hope you guys love it. I hope the people who are excited about the concept love it, but I really hope the people who are kind of on the fence about it, I hope they find something to love, too.
“With that I’m gonna wrap this up. This is way more than a minute, I’m so sorry, I told you one minute and I took up more. Please forgive me. But these are going to be going out this week, if you were a Kickstarter investor. You can go on Amazon right now and you can also order your copy. Official release date is June 2nd, on June 4th, I’ll be at Mighty Fine Coffee, please come join me! Get your copy if you haven’t already bought one.
“I’m really excited. This is my eighth book. I just – I just keep doing it. And I do it because of you. So, thank you for supporting me, thanking you for reading stuff and saying nice stuff, you know, even if you’re someone who says bad stuff about my writing, good for you –”
And the video cuts off.
All I had left to say was “All my love.” All my love to anyone on this journey with me, in any capacity. This is so many flavors of crazy, as I am, and I love each one.
The Den 