Vitaly Kirkpatrick

Book Four · In progress, title not final

How Big Am I Allowed to Dream

Its title is the last line of the book before it.

The decade after the green card

Tell me when it is ready
Cover of How Big Am I Allowed to Dream by Vitaly Kirkpatrick

About this book

Four subjects, one tangle.

A company, a book, a body, a marriage. This is the decade after the green card, when everything I had built was tested at once. Four subjects, one tangle, and no tidy chapter order to hide behind. I am learning to live with that.

Its title is the last line of the book before it. In Green Card, Gold Ring, I ended as though the hard part was over. Life does not care where you place your endings, and this book is where I admit that out loud.

The ending is written, even though the middle is not. It is a real voyage: eleven nights out of Seattle, Alaska, September 2025. The ending is finished. The middle is still negotiating.

I live in Salt Lake City now, and the middle of this book is still being written there. The title is not final, and no date is promised. It is finished when it is finished.

Eleven nights out of Seattle

The four subjects

What this one is made of.

  1. Company

    Admit one · Book Four

    A company

    CloviTek, from the optimism of a first trade show to the arithmetic refusing to cooperate.

  2. Book

    Admit one · Book Four

    A book

    The years of writing the memoir you have just read, at a desk, at midnight.

  3. Body

    Admit one · Book Four

    A body

    A back that stops bending. Training at an age my birth date argued against.

  4. Marriage

    Admit one · Book Four

    A marriage

    Nineteen years in, and what holds when everything else gives.

A question I asked in 2016 and spent ten years answering.

Who it is for

Readers who finished Book Three and want to know what came after the green card. Readers who like to see how a life gets rebuilt once the paperwork stops being the plot.

Look inside

No opening lines are published yet. The first pages go out by email when this book has a date.

How it ends: Alaska, September 2025

The ending is written, even though the middle is not. It is a real voyage — eleven nights out of Seattle, verified against 730 of my own photographs.

From the ending

“Kimball knelt in front of me on the stateroom floor, his hands moving with the same quiet competence he used for balancing budgets and booking flights. He did not sigh or roll his eyes or announce to the room that he was once again saving me from myself. One loop, then another, a gentle tug, a double knot.”

No date promised

It is finished when it is finished. Leave an email and I will tell you when that is.

Read or buy

Tell me when it is ready

Reviews

No reviews are published yet. This space stays empty until a real one exists.

Join the reading list

  • The opening pages of the book you pick.
  • One note when a book has a date.
  • One note when it is on sale.

No spam, no drip sequence. One note when a book has a date, one when it is on sale.