Flip: Special Edition

December 18th, 2020

“Write drunk, edit sober.”

In my twenties, I was master of the former. For a while now, though, I’ve been living by the latter.

In that spirit, I wanted to revisit my second novella, Flip, with fresh eyes. I didn’t want to change the story, but I wanted to clean, clarify and filter any waste I had missed. I also wanted to put the book back into print (as it’s been sold out for years and is my most requested paperback).

So I present to you Flip: Special Edition.

I had an out-of-body experience doing this. If you know anything about Flip, you know it’s about dreams. If you know even more about Flip, then you know it’s also about loss. And as a person who’s dealing with it in a deep way right now, I wasn’t sure if what I wrote then would resonate with me now.

Boy, did it ever. (Chapter 2 made me openly sob when I read it again. In a good way.)

The new paperback is larger (6″ x 9″, the same size and material as Theia). It includes a new foreword, written by yours truly. I put this novella out seven years ago this month, and the fact that it’s still a thing I get asked about is very cool. (The Faribault Daily News said at the time in its cover review: “Moments of brilliance make a short read like ‘Flip’ worthwhile . . . Sometimes, Vogen unexpectedly breaks out beautiful, almost poetic, language at just the right moment.”)

I was obsessed with dreams and loss before writing it, and my fascination has only grown and intensified since.

Whether you’ve read it once or twice or not at all, I hope you pick it up now. It’s a real trip. And if it’s successful, I may revisit other work in the same vein.

Flip: Special Edition is available on Amazon now and will be in my store in the coming weeks. All my love.

America Hearts Criminals

December 18th, 2020

America loves criminals — as long as they have the right color skin and their subjective ideals align.

This post has been a long time coming, but better late than never.

I’ve heard, too many times, this era being compared to prohibition. Besides being an absolutely baseless and embarrassing comparison, it reminded me of something: people think the bootleggers and gangsters were the good guys.

Spoiler alert: they were all criminals, despite their intoxicating lingo and impeccable fashion sense.

“But the laws are unjust!” is a rallying cry for those under actual persecution and an excuse for selfish folk who need justification for their bad and illegal behavior.

It’s funny: bank robbers are objectively bad, right? Stealing is wrong? Please explain to me why there is a celebration called Jesse James Day, and try to include logic.

A recent hot topic has really displayed the hypocrisy of our sordid affair with the “right” kind of bad people; let’s talk about Alibi Drinkery in Lakeville.

You have certain people calling these law-breakers legitimate heroes. You know what really riles those same people up, though? Mention that one of the co-owners literally tried to murder police officers in September:

Owner of Lakeville bar that reopened in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions charged in September with attempted murder of cops 

They’ll tell you, “Nah, that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.”

Conversely, when George Floyd was murdered without a proper trial (much less a complete arrest), his criminal record was immediately dug up and presented like a charcuterie board for those who had to justify that kind of criminal’s death.

That kind of criminal.

I wrote about anger yesterday and I’m trying to not write this while having that feeling, but I do.

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s brilliant Between The World And Me, he writes: “[They] are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.”

America loves criminals — the right kind, the strong kind, the kind that you see yourself inside. All others are outsiders and terrorists, despite committing the exact same crimes.

You Wouldn’t Like Me

December 17th, 2020

Let’s talk about anger.

In a recent post, I mentioned that I think about the Hulk a lot, and it’s true. The Hulk is a perfect metaphor, for the people we can become and the ugly traits we can inhabit. The Hulk asks: is the ugliness our base truth? Are our worst impulses and instincts who we really are?

I hope not.

I have long had issues with anger. I think the roots are deep and tangled, but it’s a part of my construction that requires me to constantly examine the colors of the wires. I’ve had to learn the who’s and why’s and how’s of my temper, and how to cut those feelings off from the starters and reroute them to more efficient emotions.

It is not easy.

I’ve learned that the hardest way in 2020. I use words like “disappointment,” as in “so many human beings are disappointing me this year,” when I actually feel anger. I describe how I feel as “sad” or “shocked,” when I’m really angry. I keep trying to paint my pain in different colors, but when it comes down to it: the Hulk is green. The Hulk is always green. Even when the Hulk is gray or red — he is green.

I just read an article about the Tom Cruise blow-out (Google it) in which the author had to begrudgingly admit something: he GOT IT. The writer understood why Tom Cruise lost his mind, because this year the writer has been losing his mind, like I have been losing mine, and instead of being numb to it like we have been expected to be, Tom Cruise expressed the core feeling that so many of us want but hide inside our humanity: anger.

He went overboard and he used naughty words and he really let those crew members have it and that is the impulse that is vibrating in this country right now. We want to yell. We want to scream. We want to stomp our feet.

So then what are we? If we tell ourselves not to yell or scream or stomp our feet, which one is our truth? Is it the humanity that stops us and keeps us trying to find commonalities and connection with other people? Or is it the anger, that ugliness we hide, that finds itself manifesting and sprouting in different ways?

It grows on sarcastic commentary, in passive-aggressive missives, in frustrated, compassionate pleas. It inspires a wealth of other ugly feelings, like guilt and shame and despair.

The Hulk asks: which one are we?

And the smartest thing he does is let us figure that out.

Fiction Hats

December 14th, 2020

Let’s talk about The Flying Squirrel.

To start, I want to give my friend Natalie a super-special shout-out for weaving this wonderful knitted cap. I asked if she could make one with “squirrel ears like my comic book hero’s” and she didn’t trip a beat; it turned out better than I could ever imagine. Thanks, Nat!

The Flying Squirrel was the first hero I introduced as part of my Weirdos series, and he’s the closest to my heart; he is not, however, a copy-and-paste documentation of who I am. Ashley Maypole and I are different people with different lives, but we’re also quite similar in universal and intimate ways. Even if I didn’t write him, I would undoubtedly relate to him. He was the key I needed to explore alcoholism in my story.

He came into existence while I was still drinking, and it wasn’t a plan that he would stop. He was going to be an active alcoholic while I still refused to admit I was one. I eventually decided that a thing would happen, and when the thing happened, he was going to be confronted and shipped off to Lake Mary, a rehabilitation center.

The funny thing is, once Ashley got sober, so did I. It’s funny because Ashley, for me, was my “fiction suit” in the world of the Weirdos. Don’t know what a fiction suit is? Allow me to explain.

Paper is two-dimensional. You are not. That means fictional fantasy worlds, like those found in novels and comic books, can be absolutely real in your mind but you can’t physically go to them.

Or can you?

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby used to write themselves into issues of Fantastic Four. You could argue that’s not the same as physically traveling to a different world, but isn’t it? They were drawing two-dimensional versions of themselves which could fit and live inside the book; those fiction suits could now interact with the other characters. They could have conversations and go on adventures together. And the relationship exists beyond the page.

You don’t have to put a literal version of yourself in a story like Stan and Jack did; a fiction suit is a representation. And the fiction suit works both ways; you can pull things from inside those worlds back out into real life. You can write scenarios and situations for your character that you’ll find suddenly confronting you in this reality.

And that’s what happened. I wrote myself into sobriety. The words that start and end the issue — “Anything can be saved” and “Everything can be destroyed” — were mantras I was repeating in my soul at the end of my drinking life. I was reminding myself that I could ruin everything at any time if I kept living this way — and that I, too, could be saved, just like anybody else.

I wrote a post about layers and digging deep the other day, and the characters in The Weirdos are true examples of that. I’m proud of how deceptively complex and real each one is. You can read more about characters like Ashley on my blog — like the battle we share with Imposter Syndrome: https://dennisvogen.com/2019/12/07/imposter-syndrome-the-flying-squirrel/ — and in the first volume of The Weirdos: From Sand, To Glass.

Hey, Jealousy

December 11th, 2020

I’ve been thinking about the green-eyed monster lately. (I’m talking about jealousy, not the Hulk, but I also think about the Hulk often.)

I’ve been a jealous person for most of my life. A lot of what I created in my twenties came from the twin intertwining roots of jealousy and control. The first song I ever wrote in high school was on the topic, and it was written by a person who had never actually experienced it in an exterior reality, but permanently lived it inside his head.

It might not come as a revelation to anybody else, but it did to me when I realized on my own that jealousy is a direct descendent of insecurity, like anger or hate is born of fear. I think the deepest people tend to dig on that insecurity is skin-deep. It’s what you can or can’t do. It’s what you look or don’t look like. It’s the relationships you have or don’t have.

Imagine a camera on a tripod. Now imagine the tripod has a broken leg. No matter how many times you set up the shot, the photo turns out blurry or crooked. Treating the near-surface reasons for jealousy is like buying a new camera instead of fixing the leg. Your sense of image in both cases will still be distorted.

Instead, you have to keep digging. And you get to the cold, hard bud of it all, and understand that your insecurity isn’t based on your ability to throw a football or write a song or bake a cake. No, it’s based in the idea that you, at the very core of your being, are not worthy.

Not worthy of time or space or love. Not worthy of consideration or conversation, of acknowledgment or accomplishment.

And if that sounds ridiculous — I agree.

It’s ridiculous that you don’t know how exquisite, magnificent and unique you are. You’ve survived 2020. You’ve survived your entire life so far. A constellation of cells in the shape you make had never graced the sky before you did, and will never be seen again.

Not only are you worthy — you are absolutely divine, regardless of what you believe.

I’ve been thinking about the green-eyed monster lately, but on better and more hopeful terms.

I’ve been thinking about all the ways that we can slay it.

I Managed To Celebrate Three Years of Sobriety in 2020

December 9th, 2020

Over the past three years, I feel like I’ve done okay.

I wrote stuff. (Books, comics, songs, and over 60,000 words of blog material, to name some of it.) I did stuff (like go to conventions and concerts, on adventures and meetings). I thought stuff and I felt stuff. Like, really thought and felt it.

I was decent. I was reliable. I was empathetic. I was passionate. I was patient. I was kind (most of the time).

With help, I forged tools for the inside of me that I had never used before. I sewed myself a bag to carry them in.

I have dealt and am dealing with a lot. Some of the worst things I could imagine, brought to life in unimaginable ways. Darkness and hunger and heaviness and tragedy.

But, as of today, I’ve done okay for three whole years — without pouring myself a single drink.

And in a year that feels like a net full of losses, I need to remember to take photos of the keepers.

All my love today to those who still struggle, and to those who have found the people, places, words, and things that have helped you find better days.

Subconscious Wormhole

December 3rd, 2020

May 1st, 1985. I’m born. I am my parents’ first child, as far as I know.

September 16th, 2020. I get a phone call from my sister. My mom is in the hospital due to extreme stomach pain. Within a few days, we learn she has cancer. We are optimistic and ready to fight.

October 16th, 2020. My mom passes away.

January 14th, 1995. My third and youngest sister is born. She is my parents’ last child, of that I am certain. I cut her umbilical cord and am sick for the rest of the day.

October 31st, 1991. My mom has spent a lot of time making me a Halloween costume, and Mother Nature cares not one bit. Being six, I don’t have a clear memory of this snowstorm, but I do know I wore a winter coat over my homemade fiction suit.

November 30th, 2019. I have Thanksgiving at home. This will be the last time I have a Thanksgiving meal that my mom makes and the second-to-last time I beat her in the dime game.

July 13th, 2003. I have my high school graduation party. I play a concert on my porch. My mom is rightfully proud of me for completing school, and is proud that I have learned to create music, which is easier for her because she is deaf.

February 29th, 2020. I do my first convention of the year. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this one. I do not know it will be the last, both of 2020 and that my mom will ever attend.

January 25th, 2007. Jack is born. He is my first child, as far as I know.

December 25th, 1995. It’s Christmas and we get a Sega Genesis with the Toy Story game. I remember the graphics blowing my mind. I don’t remember what we ate that year.

Fall 1990. My mom and I get in an argument. I threaten her by saying I’m going to tell everybody she’s mean. She tells me that they’ll take me away and I’ll get a new mom and asks if I would like that. It takes me one time of feeling this fear to know that I will never want to lose my mom.

Today. I think about time travel, as I do. I realize that the closest I can currently get is displaying words on a flat surface, turning linear experience into simultaneous. All at the same time, I can sing and eat a Thanksgiving dinner and be at a convention and see my sister’s birth. I am born and my mom dies and then she sews me a Halloween costume that I will have to hide under a jacket.

I am having difficulties in believing in anything other than this, the idea that my subconscious is a source of eternity where everything and everyone lives forever as long it exists. This belief started on May 1st, 1985, which is also the beginning of time.

L/A/Y/E/R/S

December 2nd, 2020

I like to dig deep.

When I’m dead and gone, you may force yourself to read or listen to something I did to try to understand why people are calling me “a unique talent who was taken too soon.” (I don’t really know what that is or how that doesn’t describe every human being on this planet, but it sounds good and saintly and I’ll give you permission from the afterlife to say it.)

And maybe, when you read or listen to that thing, you’ll remember this post about what I said about digging deep. When I create things, I make them like an everlasting gobstopper. I make the outside blue. The outside is the part of the candy that everyone understands. But then, below, there’s yellow and pink and, if you keep at it, colors that nobody else will ever discover.

For example: I have a song called Rerun. It describes a break-up, a bender, and the day after, nursing a hangover with television reruns. The lyrics are jam-packed with sweet references, but my favorite one is probably:

“Two of a kind’s ironically a full house.”

Blue layer — Generally, when two people become a couple, any more people can be too many. This is a concept most jealous humans inherently understand.

Yellow layer — It’s a poker reference. It describes two hands that only a person familiar with the card game would get. This is the layer that makes the lyric “ironic.”

Pink layer — My favorite: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were on a mega-popular television program called “Full House.” When it ended, the twins tried to recreate that same magic on a show called — wait for it — “Two of a Kind.”

I guess all I’m trying to say is that when I’m gone, I hope I’ve given enough of who I am to what I’ve done that people are finding layers forever, layers that I hadn’t even consciously built, and that it gives them joy and sadness and a sense of being.

This is an absolutely awful photo of my beard phase that my sister found and I just know that there’s damn layers here.

Let’s Talk

December 1st, 2020

Do you write a blog? Do you articulate articles for a website? Are you a constant content generator? Do you have your own podcast? Because, if so, I have an idea: PLEASE INTERVIEW ME.


As we navigate this second lockdown, I find myself with time on my hands and still looking for unique ways to share my work. Maybe that’s where you come in.


What would we talk about? We could discuss what it’s like to release two books in one year during a pandemic. We could talk about how one of those books took a WEEK to write. If your platform has a topic, I could learn a thing or two about it. (I love learning.) If you’re a fellow creative type, we could interview each other! The possibilities are literally endless!


So, if you’re looking for a subject, hit me up and we can chat about some subjects. Coffee is on me.

Grateful For Moments

November 26th, 2020

Today I’m grateful for my sneak-a-peeks.

Those moments when you’re asleep and someone who loves you takes the opportunity to look at you for a longer-than-normal period of time. Those moments when you get to do the same when someone you love is napping across from you on the couch.

My mom was always sneaking peeks.

I can remember nights when she’d walk to the bathroom, and on her way back she’d sneak a peek into each of our bedrooms. At the time I didn’t get it, but now I understand that she was just filling up her mental camera roll, getting some good shots, for the days when we weren’t under the same roof, for in case we would ever be gone.

I learned how to do the same.

I’m grateful for the opportunity I afford myself to appreciate a moment, and let myself be a weirdo and really take it all in. The quiet ones, the stressful ones, the subtle ones, the life-changing ones.

The time you take to memorize crease lines and eyebrows and beauty marks and fur, sometimes.

It being a weird Thanksgiving helps it feel not like a First. A First, everybody reminds you, will always be the hardest. But I’ve only cried twice today, and as I sneak a peek at the puppy on my lap under the blanket right now, I know that as long as I keep peeking, a part of her is alive in me.