David Quinn Background 

 80s: Music and Theater

During college years at Amherst College and CUNY David Quinn performed with a series of rock bands. Best known was Dolce Vita, which recorded an unreleased EP (CBS 1983) and an EP produced by Chris Spedding (Braineater Records 1984). Dolce Vita headlined at NY, Boston and Washington clubs and opened for international acts including Billy Idol, Thompson Twins, Lene Lovich and Klaus Nomi. Quinn also penned original plays during this period, with productions and workshops in New York and Boston.

“The life of a downtown musician was colorful, but it was frustrating to reach a level where we could play professionally but still not pay the rent. This is a valuable lesson for a creative person to learn, but a hard one. You have to evolve, break down walls. So I pulled back from music and focused on learning to be a business writer and teaching writing at CUNY. And with business clients like Swiss Bank Corporation to write for, I could finally be a full-time professional. And that gave me time to start shifting energy from writing for the theater into writing for comics. A friend introduced me to an artist that was gaining acclaim in independent adult comics, Tim Vigil, and we collaborated.”

90s: Comic Books and Film

With their Nightvision and Faust horror comic franchises, Quinn and Vigil joined Michigan-based creator James O’Barr’s The Crow as leaders of two late 80s/early 90s comics evolutions: comics for adults and creator-owned publishing. Influences reverberate across comics and media today.

David went on to script the edgy black comedy This Year’s Girl and the drama “Arona” for DC/Piranha’s Phobiasanthology, launching a prolific “comics for all ages” career:

• Phobias, This Year’s Girl, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps (DC)
• Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Midnight Sons, Carnage, Exiles, Codename: Firearm, Nightman/Gambit (Marvel)
• Ascension, Man Against Time (image)
• Cain, Vampirella (Harris)
• Gargoyles (Disney)
• Lady Death, Purgatori, Evil Ernie (Chaos)
• Aliens/Predator/Witchblade/Darkness (Dark Horse)
• Magic: The Gathering (Acclaim)
• The Amazin’ Mets, Cosmic Slam, The Battery (Ultimate Sports)

Quinn also created film treatments for Razor (Full Metal Films) and Cowboys And Aliens (Platinum) and the screenplay for Brian Yuzna’s Faust: Love of the Damned (2000, Lions Gate). His short fiction appeared Queer Fear, Queer Fear II and Sons of Darkness.

00s: Corporate Storytelling

A seismic shift from print to digital radically downsized work for hire opportunities in all print media, so Quinn once again evolved his storytelling craft in the service of corporate branded media consulting.

“Whether they know it or not, businesses need to tell a straight, engaging story to get results, both with clients and employees. Powerpoint and Data Points are Death. Stories inspire and engage.”

David’s delivered branded content for the financial, health care, marketing and energy industries, clients like Citi, J.P. Morgan, MVP Health Care, UBS, Integrated Marketing, PNT Marketing, Something Different After School, EDS and Rennergy.

It’s possible that a life as a corporate storyteller inspired his “Not for Children Children’s Book,” The Littlest Bitch, co-created with Michael Davis and Devon Devereaux ( Sellers Publishing, 2010)

Little Isabel is a deliciously funny cross between the mischievous Eloise and The Bad Seed – and she’s tapped into her inner CEO to become the 5-year-old tyrant readers love to hate.

“Inspired by Mad and Charles Addams, I couldn’t resist the comic tension between appropriate and inappropriate. The comic story also has a serious heart, learned from corporate life, one all of my female colleagues understood: women are branded with curses for behavior that would be forgiven, even praised, from men.”

Go to Sleep, Little Creep (2018)

Shhhh… it’s dawn, time for all the baby monsters to go to sleep.

Go to sleep, little creep… The sun is rising, Mummy’s beat…

From the Tiniest Troll to Dracula’s Daughter, from Lil Godzilla to Little Foot, from Frankenstein Jr. to Wolf Girl, it’s time for every little creep to tuck into a cozy spot for just one more lullaby.

We’ve had a wild and wooly night, Now give Daddy one more bite.

Published by Crown Books for Young Readers

Awards

A three-time Bram Stoker Award finalist, David also received a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship and a Denis Johnson award for playwriting.

Recently, I had to produce a brief bio (and a longer version) for some projects in production, and it came to me that I never included much about my background here. So here goes…

David Quinn (@quinn.david) writes comic books, screenplays, songs and children’s books, including Go to Sleep, Little Creep (Crown Books for Young Readers), Nightvision and Faust (Rebel Studios) and Doctor Strange and Carnage (Marvel).

David’s also delivered branded content in the financial, health care, marketing and energy industries, helping clients like Citi, J.P. Morgan, MVP Health Care and UBS tell their stories across all media.

He lives in Westchester, NY with his wife and daughter. David blogs erratically at inwalkedquinn.com.

#kidlitquarantine

Library closed? Storytime cancelled at the bookstore? Gather ’round IG LIVE here on my Insta Saturday 3/28 11:00 am EDT

I will read Go to Sleep, Little Creep! (By yours truly and @ashleyspires) and howl at the moon with the Monster Tots!

#kidlitquarantine #geekdadwarjournal #gotosleeplittlecreep #randomhousekids #storytime @amherstarts @life.all.in @picturebookplaydate @picturebookblogger @scatteredbooks @splitrockbooks @powerhouseon8th @booksaremagic @literatibookstore

This event is not public, according to our terms with our publisher; to enter the reading, follow @quinn.david on Instagram

RESCHEDULE NOTICE: I RAN INTO A CHAIN OF SOFTWARE INCOMPATIBILITIES BETWEEN MY MAC, MY ENCODER AND YOUTUBE AND HAVE TO FIND A DIFFERENT CHANNEL. STAY TUNED.

Library closed? Storytime cancelled at the bookstore?
Gather the kids around the old YouTube this Sunday Morning!

Kids’ Author Reads! Go to Sleep, Little Creep!
Sunday 3/22 10:30am Eastern

Livestream* at:

https://youtu.be/gpbUOCtumZE

#kidlitquarantine #geekdadwarjournal #gotosleeplittlecreep #randomhousekids

*this is a low tech event, just me reading my book and howling at the moon on camera…  but if you have kids stuck at home, I will try to beguile them with my baby monsters!

FEEL FREE TO SHARE!

(Today, Penguin/Random House announced that authors could read their books to kids on channels like YouTube, without the usual concerns regarding copyright,  provided that the event was unlisted. So you need the link above to get to the right place. Never done this before in 33 years of publishing, so fingers crossed!)

Preview Art from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

Since concluding Faust: Love of the Damned in 2013, the Rebel Studios creators never stopped working together on characters and stories; collaborations we’ve played with include:

• Marquis De Sade vs. monsters both human and inhuman
• A modern gothic centered around a creepy cult (Correction, we actually have two modern gothics centered around creepy cults)
• A treatment for a film about a revenge killer on a locked down military base
• A retro-futuro cosmic sex dream ala Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal
• A Savage Tales inspired alternative GN with Faust, Claire, M, Blythe, The Wrath and other Rebel Studios characters
• The pilot chapter of an Elemental action series
• A GN for all ages about a young law student who wakes up one day as Brooklyn the Barbarian™
• Even a plot for an improvisational web cam crime drama

You haven’t seen these stories?

No. Not yet.

Preview Art from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

Text Excerpt from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

But with your continued support – thank you – you may still see them some day. What some of you did see, if you checked out Absolute Underground, a West Coast magazine celebrating all things punk, hardcore and metal, is Phi Underground, a series of splash page micro dramas.

Some began with Vigil’s Vision, others with Quinn’s Quote, but we are both in there, playing both with and against each other, harmony and creative friction. As you can see in the sneak peeks here…

Preview Art from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

Text Excerpt from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

Most underground pieces evoke a mythological feel. Many present as transgressive. Death and dreams dominate, but amidst that, we find surprising life, passion, even a strange humor.

So when it came time to prepare a sketch book for comic convention season, we thought maybe we should collect the underground one pagers, throwing in some traditional pinups as well, in both black and white and color.

And now that the book has gone to press…  the conventions are all postponing or  cancelling.  In the time of Covid 19, we work together to stay just a little more distant, for our own survival.

In the coming weeks, we hope you all stay safe and healthy. Don’t panic, but stay smart. Be good to each other. And we will find another way to get this book to the people who want it, don’t worry…  the Underground is both persistent and resilient.

Preview Art from Quotes & Visions: Underground (Rebel Studios, 2020)

 

 

 

 

Story Time at Greenville Elementary Book Fair, Scarsdale NY

When my daughter was in elementary school, I never missed a chance to volunteer during the annual book fair, so it’s always a pleasure to visit school book fairs today with a spirited reading of Go To Sleep, Little Creep. The bright young creatures at Greenville Elementary listened to the author carefully, but howled every wolfgirl howl, bloopblooped every gill mama lullabye and booed every baby ghost boo with glee. Thanks for reading with me, for asking your questions about making books and for inviting me to sign your copies to you!

 

When Katonah NY’s Halloween Parade was rained out, Gretchen and Katie and the rest of our great bookstore family at Little Joe’s Books hosted an instant Indoor Halloween Parade up in the kids reading room. Invited to come and read at the last minute, I was out the door and heading up the highway to Katonah before you could say, “We’ve had a wild and woolly night, now give daddy one more bite!”

If you are walking Katonah with your family, don’t miss the bookstore – you might find me in the fiction or the kids stuff, you might find my wife in the excellent cookbook shelves! Local indie bookstores are obviously part of what make our Hudson River Valley Towns home!

Just a few of the treats on display at Little Joe’s in Katonah – great books, great coffee, great people!