At 7 a.m. that day, my short-term goal and long-term plan were identical: I wanted to survive the next few hours. Literally. If I were breathing at 10 a.m., it would be a wonderful day. Still, we were all laughing in the operating room as the doctors and nurses bustled around, getting equipment ready, tactfully keeping the bone saws and the scalpels out of my sight. As if I might be thinking they were going to open my skull with a plastic spoon or kind intentions.

They put me to sleep. Then they cut and folded back my scalp, removed a good-sized flap of skull, and started slicing out a brain tumor the size of a baseball. Later, they said I may have had a seizure. That may explain what happened. Or it might have been a type of dream. Though none of it was dreamlike.

Getting chopped and sliced and poked, my brain could have turned the stimulation into a dream. Maybe even a story. I suppose it could have even given me a nice rom/com or "Citizen Kane" or a few episodes of "Seinfeld." But no, my story had open crypts, bizarre spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren version of the Manson Family. "How did my operation go? Well, I'm doing okay, but the people in my head — or wherever they were — they went through Hell."

More bizarre, the story stayed with me in the recovery room along with a Lady Gaga song playing on an endless loop. Even wide awake, I couldn't shake them. Two days later, I woke up without Gaga. The story stayed. And once I was able, I spent a couple of years recreating it, developing it and working out all the details, trying to get it just right. And in answer to your question, that, Ms. Interviewer, is where I get my ideas from. Or at least where I got the idea for "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon."

That title wasn't part of the original experience. Visions — or whatever they were — don't have titles. The book's first page takes us back to the '60s to explain:

Before he went missing, Professor John Harris delivered his last lecture on "one giant load of LSD." Here's how it went. "Good afternoon. Wow. American Literature, huh? Let's see. "Moby Dick" today. Right?"

"'Moby Dick'?" asked a confused voice. "No. What happened to 'The Scarlet Letter'?"

"Right. Moby Dick," Harris continued. "Great book. None of you have read it. None of you are going to read it. Nobody ever does. What you need to understand is that, as far as I'm concerned — and I'm the freaking professor — 'Moby Dick' is the same story as 'The Great Gatsby,' which some of you may read. I call it, 'the half-assed struggle of the individual to put their world to rights in the face of a failure that threatens to define their life.' I think that's from my thesis. Though maybe it's not pretentious enough."

Harris laughed. "Hey! How about this? 'Great Gatsby/Moby Dick: Same Story, Different Era,' right? So, if someone tries to write that story for this generation, they should call it 'The Great Dick.' That'd be perfect, wouldn't it? 'The Great Dick.' Alright, that's got to be almost 50 minutes. See you next ... whenever. Wow."

The story starts. Steve Witowski saves Victoria's life and his own by shoving what seems like the strongest and most bloodthirsty wino in California against a speeding truck. Minutes later, the face of the man he killed appears on Steve's arm, and we're off. "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon."

Barry Maher's latest book, The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon, has just been released. Suggest stories or sign up for the Slightly Off-Kilter newsletter at www.barrymaher.com.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Ed Robertson at Unsplash