We were lucky to catch up with Dennis Vogen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dennis, appreciate you joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

The first dollar I can remember earning from being creative involves several layers of theft.

When I was a kid, I got pretty good at drawing characters that people knew.

The Lion King had just been a huge hit over the summer, and I had been sketching the stars of the film to much acclaim from my classmates. Some of the other kids even wanted to purchase the pieces of paper I had drawn upon.

My friend told me that his mom had a copy machine at work; we could collect their money now, make as many free copies of my art as needed to distribute to the masses, and roll around in our profits.

The problem was that we kept putting that last part off, and making excuses for it. We never got around to making those copies, but we did get paid, and we clearly never owned the rights to the characters of The Lion King in the first place.

This story haunts me to this day.

Dennis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a writer. I do other things, too, but let’s start this simple and call a spade a spade.

I was born in the 80’s and am a lifelong comics & pop culture obsessive. Pop culture has saved my life and helps me explain our existence. I’ve expressed myself artistically in a lot of different ways over the years — I started a company called Sleeping Kitty Productions when I was in high school, I released a trio of full-length music albums as The Next Step when I was a puppy, I began publishing my own books in 2013 with the help of Kickstarter, I fell into a character business called Awesome For Hire — but words are the thing that I have held onto through it all.

In 2013, I released a punk-rock sci-fi novella called Them, and in 2014, its sequel, Us; in-between those two books, I put out a novella about dreams called Flip.

I derailed my personal and creative train after releasing those first three books within a year; after getting sober in 2017, I put myself back on track.

In August of 2018, I released my first comic book: The Flying Squirrel, which is part of a flawed superhero series called The Weirdos. Over the next two years, I released a total of five issues of the series, eventually collecting & coloring them for a graphic novel volume that was published in May of 2020. The heroes in The Weirdos find each other through their struggles; they deal with things like alcoholism, depression, cancer & mental health issues. Later in 2020, I released a novella called Theia, about a silver Boston Terrier in an animal shelter who just wants to run away.

In 2021, I put out Time is a Solid State, my first non-fiction collection of essays; I also released Push, the sequel to Flip, later that summer.

In 2022, I released my two biggest projects to date: Cold World, my first full-length novel, a sci-fi story about spirituality on a future Earth where there is only winter; and Brushfire: Wave 1, my first all-ages graphic novel, about an underground society of wildlife.

I write, draw & produce all my own work. I did go to art school for a minute, said, “Nah, I’m good,” and am mostly self-taught. My books are readable steps of my journey.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Early in my comic career, I was printing black & white single issues of my series, The Weirdos, to get started.

I wanted to use local printers, so I connected with them using an intermediary, and our overall relationship was fine. At first.

After they printed my second issue, I got an email from my guy to give him a call as soon I could. The printers, apparently, were livid with me.

I want to stress: The Weirdos does not have any nudity or gore or extreme violence. It just has some bad words in it, but I have always been clear that it is an adult project about adult issues for mature readers.

The printers didn’t care. They actually blacklisted me on my next issue, absolutely refusing to print my content. These people were not my publishers, nor was there ever a contract between us; they simply did not like the work.

I started talking to local members of the community, and Eric Childs, the owner of Mind’s Eye Comics in Burnsville, also did some printing. He believed in the work, stepped in, and was able to produce the last issue of that series, which led to a full graphic novel collection called The Weirdos: Volume 1.

It was a terribly stressful time, but it also led to a lot of support, and it caused me to realize how much I really believe in my work, and made me stand by it.

: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

There’s a theory that a writer is just telling the same basic story over and over again until they get it right. The story is unique to each writer, but they only have one.

I think my story is hope.

Hope in all its forms, hope against all odds, tiny hopes against infinite darkness.

I don’t think I’ve gotten it right, but I will keep trying until I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.dennisvogen.com
• Instagram: @dennisvogen
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/sleepingkittyproductions
• Twitter: @dennisvogen
• Youtube: http://youtube.com/thenextstepislast