Interview with author, Dan Skinner
The marvelous author, Dan Skinner, was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his writing process and personal journey. If you have not read his books, they are worth checking out.
The Purple Fantastic: The first of your books that I’ve read was Memorizing You. It was a powerful book that felt so real at times that it seemed like a memoir. I cried at some points. It was sexy. It was funny. The unexpected left turn in its later half was like a punch to the gut that didn’t allow me to breathe until I’d turned the last page. And then it was over! As I read more of your books I found that to be a consistent thing… you never belabor an ending. When the book is done, it is done.
I don’t want to spoil any endings here, but often I have yearned for just a little bit more… another chapter… but on the flip side I know that sometimes it is good to leave the party before it all goes south. Have you ever been tempted to carry any of those stories a little further? Have you any sequels within you for existing titles?
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DAN: I plan my stories out on elaborate story boards with a million post-it notes about characters and scenery descriptions and plot movements. I never start a story without knowing exactly where it goes and how it ends. So everything is driven on a course to the finish line. The purpose of my endings is that I want to take people to an emotional cliff without them realizing where they’re headed. That way they are surprised when they’re confronted with their own emotional involvement with the story and characters. It’s very important for me to leave that space so they are caught in their own thoughts…rather than mine.
As for right now, I am not working on any sequels.
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The Purple Fantastic: The Bible Boys was another gripping story. I spent a year at bible college with the intent of going into the ministry and was deeply involved in a fundamentalist church in high school and college, so many of the ingredients of this story felt quite familiar. It is difficult to step away from that entrenched world view when your life is enmeshed in church.
I get the impression that you might have had some experience with fundamentalism… you capture what it feels like to be a young gay man in that world. Reading your book felt… affirming… seeing characters battling unwarranted guilt and shame was freeing. Being able to observe from a distance gave a healthy perspective… a reminder to exhale. If religion is in your background, how old were you when you finally were able to step away? Or have you? Personally I have found many ideas rather insidious… I think they are gone, and then they pop out unexpectedly. Old stories that I think have been left behind.
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DAN: The Bible Boys was actually written from many of my own experiences at having been born and raised in a religious cult. I suffered a lot of trauma at the hands of my parents and their church until I ran away from home at the age of 17. I carried a lot of anger and rage with me for many years and writing The Bible Boys was my method of dealing with all these stored up feelings and trying to find a resolution within myself. For years I believed my parents to be evil and insane. But after studying other cults and talking to people who had escaped them as I had, I realized it was the religious leaders that were evil and committing the insanity. The people, like my folks, were victims as well. I never got to resolve that with them because they died before I came to that resolution. But The Bible Boys was my way of saying that Love Doesn’t Make Cowards.
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The Purple Fantastic: The Art of the Heart was short and unexpected… it completely captured me and surprised me! A Summer of Guiltless Sex (though longer) was similar in its ability to not go quite where I was expecting.
Your books are diverse. Where some authors churn out the same stories over and over again to supply the numbers of book titles that Indy authors need to establish cross selling, you’ve not taken that path. Each book is pretty specific. Do you have any stories percolating inside you these days that you want to tell? Any more books?
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DAN: I never say never. I hadn’t planned on writing any of the That Darn Muse comedy novellas until I met the actual young man, Dirk, who wanted to be my apprentice and learn my methods of photography. He was so funny and I was always telling anecdotes of stuff he’d say that people said: put it in a book. I reluctantly did it, and believe it or not, three of them became my very first #1 bestsellers on Amazon. So, to answer the question. I never actually stop writing, but I’m not sure if anything will amount to another book.
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The Purple Fantastic: You’ve accumulated lots of fans of your books. I’m inclined to think it is because they are well written and are not trapped in formulaic choices, but how did you get your book in front of potential readers in the first place? Do you have any advice for young writers on how to get their books seen by readers?
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DAN: I have several blogs where I feature excerpts of my various books that can be used in promotions. Other bloggers have featured them and I use the other forms of social media to promote as well, like twitter. I will be starting a TikTok soon and will also be using that for promotion.
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The Purple Fantastic: I initially read Xperiment when it came out, and your vision of the downward spiral of right wing politics has been far more prophetic than I realized at the time. With each successive reading the story has become more frightening as it is in the news every day. Mass shootings, book bans, racist attacks… the story feels like it was written in a very dark frame of mind. Can you share any origin for this story?
There’s a lot of anger at the horrific injustices perpetrated by zealous and ignorant segments of society. The vigilante behavior of our gay hero and his compatriots brings up a frightening (satisfying?) visceral response for me… their morally gray actions are only understandable through the lens of the blatantly evil behavior of the victims. What was it like to dive into the anger of the heroes? Did that affect your life outside the writing process? Are you a writer who can walk away from the computer and leave the story behind? Or does it weave through your waking life? Thoughts?
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DAN: Most of my readers know that XPERIMENT was written well in advance of what started to occur politically in 2016. I didn’t have any prophetic insight of what was coming. I was astonished as anyone else was. But I had heard all of these things that the right-wing wanted to do all those years in my parent’s church…from the pulpit. Everything that I wrote in that book was what they said was their “future goals”. And it never left me that these religious organizations were the true fount of evil in the world masquerading as saviors. So I built an entire world where that came to pass, with a young genius (Seuthers) who foresaw it and planned his own method of combating it.
The anger you feel in the book is my own. I first felt it when I was 11 years old sitting in that church listening to what was coming from that pulpit and realizing that if there truly was a “Devil” it was housed in organized religion. These people were hellbent on murdering people who did not believe as they did. Innocents. Even children because they were born in a religion that was not their own. I saw them as monsters. Real Monsters. And so as (Seuthers) I built monsters of my own to save the world from the monsters that wanted to destroy it. Every single act of horror in Xperiment is symbolic. For example: The metal bird killing all the Nazis in the garage… the very symbol of the Nazi empire. The murder in the gunshop.. everything symbolic. They wouldn’t be saying “Eat hot lead again” so to speak. Like I said, I plot these things to the inth degree before I ever put down one word. Lol.
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The Purple Fantastic: Paraphrasing Robert Steuthers: Did you lie in bed dreaming of the story, or did it come to you like it had been planted there as a seed that lay dormant until finally taking root? Why?
DAN: XPERIMENT had been in the plotting stage for years and years. I kept putting it off because I realized I’d be writing a book the size of War And Peace with everything the plot and characters would be involved in. There’s a tremendous amount of subtle world building that went into it that literally filled three notebooks in my plotting stage. And each and every character had a very detailed plot arc of their own that contributed to the world building and movement of the story and its “moral” or “purpose”. For example, I had to have a blind character who when given the “pill” could not see the subliminal videos. That meant he would develop into a totally different type of creature without the psychological modification. It was, in fact, the key to him developing into a “God” character that could actually control the elements of nature. So, yes, I carried this story with me for a long time. It’s just daunting when you realize you have taken on something so complex.
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The Purple Fantastic: Does Saint Louis really have an underground tunnel system? Did you do any exploration of the city looking for places to use as locations? Do you have any giant waterfront gay clubs in Saint Louis?
DAN: Total fiction. But it helped me get from one location to the other using plot driven devices rather than people in cars. lol
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The Purple Fantastic: There are probably a lot of misperceptions about what gay life is like in the midwest. Does one have to live in a big city if one is gay?I suppose any city has its strengths and challenges. What do you like about living in the midwest?
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DAN: I’ve lived a lot of places and traveled to many places, but always come back to the midwest simply because it’s easy to find your way around. L.A. damned near drove me crazy and the traffic (when I used to drive a car) was absolutely abominable. Although if I had my druthers I’d probably love to live in San Diego. It used to be Hunting Beach because it was so beautiful but now it’s a hug for right wingers that drove most of the artists like myself out.
As for being gay in the Midwest, up until 2016, I never had a problem being gay. After the orange menace got in the White House was the very first time I’d ever been called a faggot by someone. The thing is, in real life I’m a bodybuilder so physically I’m intimidating. Very few people will call me a name to my face. When I was called a faggot, it was on social media. I’m hoping we can reverse this and start making gains again.
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The Purple Fantastic: Your fitness journey has been quite inspiring. Do you have any advice from what you have learned?
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DAN: My advice is never think you can’t accomplish the impossible. The body is a survival machine. Everything you do to it, no matter how small, will make it stronger. The more you do, the stronger you get. The stronger you get, the more you can do. Why become old when you can become ageless?
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The Purple Fantastic: Do you find that your experience as a writer impacts your work as a book cover artist?
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DAN: Art, and for that matter, photography is just another means of telling a story. You just have to tell it in a smaller frame. Every piece of art or photo that I’ve ever taken is designed to start the story with your eyes and let you finish it in your imagination.
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The Purple Fantastic: Any other thoughts, rants, or advice to young creatives?
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DAN: I gave a lecture on this one time at college class a teacher friend asked me to do. And the advice I gave is this: don’t try to imitate another author. It will not resonate with reality. Find your own voice, and speak with that. If you can read the sentence you wrote and it sounds like something you’d say, you have struck gold.
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The Purple Fantastic: Thanks again for your time!
DAN: Thank you as well!
