I finished and let a couple people read and they went, huh, like Twin Peaks? And I’d never seen it. So I did. Then I got a little weirded out because there were lines in there like I’d plucked them right outta the show. And so the algorithm’s got my number. And I open YouTube and there at the top is a vid talking about how Lynch had dreamt certain scenes.
Which is how this started.
I’d double-hurt my back in rock climbing/mountaineering accidents. To where I couldn’t walk. Couldn’t do much of anything except stare at the ceiling from my bed, really. So I get this weird sleep cycle going. Like, sorta all day just be like sleep, wake, sleep, wake, and that bled into night. So already I’m fucked up.
I dunno if you do this, but at first I couldn’t stand it. I’d get mad I couldn’t sleep. Like getting mad and concentrating in a focused but still mad way could make me fall asleep. But it didn’t. So I eventually cracked. Just accepted it. Have you ever heard of “the 2 sleeps?”
Look that shit up.
Waking life and dream life got pretty hard to tell apart. And one day I wake up and am talking. And, I’d never been told by like a girlfriend or anything I did that. Cept I am. And it’s in like the “narrator voice” that in-the-spot directs your dreams. And I’m dictating the dream I’d just been having. As if the dream didn’t stop happening when I woke up. It just kept right on playing without skipping a beat.
It’s not the way I normally talk. It’s like poetical and pretty weird. And for a while as I laid there in bed I could see the whole landscape of the dream. Every character and their motivations and whatever they’d do in any situation. All that information was there to do whatever I wanted with it.
Has this ever happened to you?
Yeah, didn’t think so. But I get this kinda peace come over me and it was the first time I felt anything like hopeful since I’d fucked my shit up. So, I painfully force myself into a chair and write the scene I’d just been dreaming. And even as I got more and more awake, I could still sorta get into this voice.
So I sent it off without editing and Soft Cartel picked it up. It was called “Maria, at the Kitchen Table.”
Don’t look it up.
The site doesn’t exist now. So that’s one more thing like a dream.
I continued living my life and this was in 2018. And every now and again I’d think about that dream. Kinda wonder what all the characters were doing or something.
Fast forward, or kinda montage in your head time passing until it gets to the pandemic. So, then I’m fucked again. We all are. And, I kinda go shit, I always wanted to write a book and now I might die? Guess I better start.
I wrote a poetry book about my brother in prison. And that’s pretty cool and I’m really proud of it but when I was done the fucking pandemic was still raging. I’d lost my house and job and montage to me having to move into my best friend’s spare room. He has a wife, so you can imagine that made me feel pretty good. So, I’m like what the fuck do I do with my time?
And I’d already got myself into a habit for the first time writing that poetry book. So I thought, I’ve got this story kicking around from back when I was fucked the last time. Guess I could do that.
So, that’s what I do.
Remember the 2 sleeps? Did you look that up? K. Well I kept that shit going for a while after the injury. Like several years. And what I’d do is I’d write a chapter and then at night I’d be up at like 2 or 3 letting my creative brain do it’s business. And it’d eventually have me a chapter for the next morning.
I finished that shit pretty fast. Like, 2 weeks. And now you all know that X-R-A-Y is doing books because Ben Nezapsodifujekladfy’s book is coming out. But I’d reached out to Jenn after I finished and said, I really wish I could send this story collection to you, and she said, really? And, she brought me onto the team. This was before Crow.
Like way back.
And so even back in 2020 X-R-A-Y was thinking that.
Anyway, Jenn brings on this new big team (including Crow) to prepare for book central. And, my book is in the lineup for being one of the first. Tyler Dillow was on the team and he’s assigned as my editor.
He doesn’t really like the book, which was one of those starts with a bunch of stories then at the end there’s a sorta novella. Says they’re too disparate. The stories. That we should focus on those that sorta feel like they have similar themes, cause that’s all the rage these days. Oh yea, the story or novella at the end, I think you should double it in size and make it a novel.
Which, I agreed. It felt like there was more there. But also like fuck.
That’s a lotta work.
Basically a year passes. And I get the stories organized no problem. They’re greased and whizzing.
But the book.
Nothing’s coming. But I sorta keep it in my head and any time I had a free moment to daydream would like examine it from all angles and think of what to do.
And then one day it happens.
Again.
I guess if you’ve read the book you know there are kinda 2 stories going, right. And if you haven’t, that’s what’s going on. The “detective” story is the one Tyler had said to grow.
Again, I woke up talking. This time still the “narrator voice” and still poetical and stuff. But very primal. And deep down I knew it was evil.
I didn’t even think about it. I knew it was the voice of the killer from that original dream world. But somehow, I’d never been given access to that angle and character. I hop up and write that shit down. And it was pretty crazy cause I was working at a daycare. Like, rocking babies to sleep all day. But in my head was this serial killer talking to me. Haha. *Tugs shirt collar uncomfortably*
Again it took me 2 weeks. Like I would do the whole write a chapter in the morning and then wake up in the middle of the night and write the next one then fall back asleep. And it was the craziest shit ever. If you’ve read it, that’s the shit going through my head.
Keep in mind, no one knows I’m writing it. Like I just look like a normal dude living life. But every morning I’m watching this character pass through me and sometimes I just had to laugh it was so uncomfortable.
I start sending out chapters.
And, pretty much they’re getting picked up by the first place I send them. This doesn’t happen to me.
Not usually.
So, I’m like, wow. I’ve got something. I finally finish the “killer” story and guess what. The two stories, the detective one and this one, fit together like a puzzle. Like they were meant for each other.
And I send that shit to Tyler.
And he goes, what the fuck.
Like, he’s really excited.
And we edit that shit and he even makes a playlist and we’re having Zoom calls and it feels really momentous.
Then, nothing happens with X-R-A-Y.
Actually a bunch happens. But the book stuff gets shelved cause all those people who came on are now just barely keeping up, cause all of a sudden X-R-A-Y blew up. And we’re getting like 150k words submitted daily and Crow’s updating the site and we’re writing newsletters and make the jump to Submittable.
All the energy’s redirected into that.
And what about my book.
Who knows?
Kinda in that time Stuart Buck, remember him?, starts Bear Creek Gazette and he’d read one of those chapters picked up somewhere and he DM’s me and says he’d like to publish me in his zine. And I’m like, sweet. So he picks up another chapter from the same voice and sooner or later he’s announcing he’ll be making books.
I’m like, boy howdy.
I send him the book. And in October of 2021 I’m sitting in the parking lot of Howard McLeod Correctional Center in Atoka, Oklahoma, about to visit my brother and get the acceptance. He says he loves it. Can’t promise a lot of sales but what he can promise is amazing artwork and a hand drawn foldout map of the town all the events in the book happen in.
And, I’m ecstatic. Like, I didn’t even send the book to anyone else. And it got picked up.
Insane.
But he says he’s got a lot lined up and it’d be 2023 before he could get it published, did I mind?
I said I didn’t.
So, you can do that montage thing again cause now it’s 2023. You all know what happens. I get an email from Stuart being like, it’s time, we should have a meeting on Zoom to discuss the final details before we start working getting this thing out. And Kyle Seibel’s book is like imminent. And, I’ve waited so long. Like that first dream was in 2018. It’s been like the longest road ever.
But the press folds.
Stuart does whatever the hell he did and we’ll never get a clear answer for that. And that was a week after we were supposed to have the meeting.
So, I tweet about it. What else am I supposed to do?
And guess what. A couple people reach out. And one of them was Alan Good.
Like, one of my favorite indie writers.
And a good dude.
He says, I’ll publish your book.
And now, you’re going to read it. Or maybe you already have. But anyway, it feels like a dream.
Consumption and Other Vices, a novel by Tyler Dempsey, published by Death of Print, is available from Amazon, B&N, Bookshop, and most other book retailers. Order from the Death of Print shop on Big Cartel by May 25 for a signed copy.