I know a lot about cold winters.
Much of my novel takes place in Minneapolis, where I’ve lived for more than two decades. It’s a city known for natural beauty, lots of culture, and winters that are nothing short of epic. In fact, it snowed more than one foot in a single day just last April.
Quinton Skinner
I wrote more than half of my book in just two weeks.
I had a creative spell in which the first 200 pages of the book poured out of me and into my keyboard at a rate that shocked me. It was one of the greatest artistic experiences of my career, having the characters spring to life and become as real to me in a matter of days as people I’ve known in the “real” world.
Odd experiences follow me around.
There are supernatural events in Amnesia Nights that are indeed the stuff of fiction, although I’ve had inexplicable experiences throughout my life. I’ve bumped into invisible things on crowded streets (squashing a cigarette I was holding into thin air), been followed through my home by lights flickering on and off on their own, and received a strange and impossible gift in an old railroad car converted into a B&B room on the coldest night of the year.
I’m primarily known in Minneapolis as a journalist.
I’ve spent most of my career working as a freelancer and as an editor for newspapers and magazines, interviewing everyone from corporate CEOs to scientists to pop stars. I was also a theater critic for seven years, although I’ve by and large stayed away from reviewing books.
I work with my wife.
My wife, Mo, is an acclaimed actor in Minneapolis and also a journalist—we met when I was editing her column in a monthly magazine. Today we’ve established a writing agency supplying a wide range of material for companies and nonprofits. This crossing of business with personal life sometimes raises eyebrows, but we both enjoy it tremendously (at least she says she does).
I’m a smoker who doesn’t smoke.
There’s a good deal of cigarette consumption in Amnesia Nights, and I write about it from experience—I smoked quite a bit for nearly thirty years. I smoked my last pack about five years ago and haven’t touched one since, although the habit has enough of a hold on me that I superstitiously refuse to call myself a “non-smoker.”
I own a three-legged dog.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have enjoyed the company of a great many pets in my life. My current companion has only one back leg, having lost the other in an accident before we adopted him from our local Humane Society. His name is Wabi, named after the Buddhist artistic philosophy of beauty through imperfection known as Wabi Sabi.
I didn’t go to Harvard.
I used to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a lot of those ivied settings made their way into Amnesia Nights. But while the characters in my book graduated from that famous college together, I got my degree in California.
I’m a sporadic but determined writer.
After a number of false starts and some moderate success in my novel writing career, I’m able to intuit when I have a good idea for a book—although sometimes years have passed before a new scenario came along. Last winter I hid away in a cabin in the North for a month and wrote a draft of a new work that’s very different from my previous novels and which I’m currently editing.
I’m a lot more cheerful than you might think.
I channeled a good deal of dark truthfulness into Amnesia Nights, which I believe lends it much of its power. But I’m a big believer in connection, optimism, and the beauty of everyday life. Although it hasn’t made its way into any of my fiction (yet), my wife and I travel to the American Southwest a couple of times a year to take in the geologic grandeur and the slower pace, and to breathe and soak up positive energy like a couple of undercover hippies.
Amnesia Nights by Quinton Skinner (Fentum Press, £8.99) is available now.