Heaven’s Only Hospital Closes on Saturdays

Steven Winkelstein lived in Boulder for years and started “The Day God Got Amnesia” in Folsom Street Coffee, a coffee shop there almost 20 years ago. The shop is gone. The book made it. It is a comedy about God slipping into a coma. The hero is a gay Jewish atheist barista. Heaven’s only hospital is Mt. Sinai for the Very Sick and Very Holy, and it closes on Saturdays.

“The Day God Got Amnesia” publishes October 13, with the launch that night at the Boulder Bookstore, 6:30 p.m., with Steven. RSVP to Boulder Bookstore here.

Here are Four Questions for Steven:

1. You started this book in Folsom Street Coffee almost twenty years ago. Why did this story refuse to let go?

Coffee shops have always been part of my writing ritual. I did it back in New Jersey, and when I moved to Boulder, that ritual became even more important. There’s something about walking into a café, opening a notebook, smelling the coffee, hearing the machines and conversations, and watching all these different lives happening around you. You’re alone, but you’re also absorbing the energy of everyone in the room.

Boulder had a kind of coffee-shop culture I had never experienced before. The baristas were serious about what they did, the cafés had their own personalities, and the people themselves were this wonderful mix of weirdness, spirituality, individuality, and eccentricity. It was incredibly fertile ground for creating characters.

Then one day I got this image in my head: God being discovered unconscious on the floor of his office, with a giant box of frosted cornflakes lying beside him as the only clue. I couldn’t let it go. It haunted me in the best way.

Once I started writing, the characters came alive too. Even during the years when I put the manuscript away, they never really left my head. I would come back, revise it, reshape it, put it down again-but I never wanted to abandon it. I loved the premise, and more importantly, I loved the people in it. They felt alive to me then, and they still do now.

2. The book splits between Heaven’s bureaucracy and a Boulder coffee shop. Why those two worlds?

The idea of Heaven operating through mundane rules, departments, and bureaucracy is funny to me because of the contrast. On one hand, you have the creator of the universe. On the other, he has a secretary. In my story, that secretary happens to be a badass cherub-and I wanted her to be biblically accurate.

That was another part of the fun. We tend to picture angels through the imagery handed down by Renaissance art, but the biblical descriptions are much stranger. A cherub isn’t a cute little baby with wings. It’s a fantastical being with four faces: an ox, a lion, an eagle, and a human. That immediately gives you something much more interesting to play with.

Then you have Boulder, which is almost the perfect Earth-side counterpoint. The coffee-shop culture, the spiritual eccentricity, the strange and wonderful people-it already feels a little heightened from ordinary life. There’s also a canonical reason Boulder matters in the story, so it isn’t just a funny setting choice.

But really, who doesn’t want to read a story that takes place in Heaven, Hell, and Boulder, Colorado?

3. In the novel, a sixth Flatiron appears above Boulder and it is bad news. What is it about Boulder?

I’m giving away a little bit of the secret sauce here, but in the world of “The Day God Got Amnesia,” Boulder is sometimes referred to by angels and demons as “the land over Eden.”

I never explicitly explain exactly what that means, because I like giving readers room to make connections on their own. That’s always been more fun for me, both as a writer and as a reader. But the implication is that Boulder exists above the place where Eden once was on Earth.

That made Boulder the perfect place for the supernatural parts of the story to break through. There’s already something about the landscape that feels mythic-the Flatirons, the light, the mountains, the sense that the place is somehow charged.

People call Colorado “God’s Country,” and I understand why. You can see His face everywhere.

4. This is Book 1 of a trilogy and it ends on a cliffhanger. What can you tell us about what’s next?

Here’s another secret: this trilogy was actually written as one very large story.

After working on it for nearly eighteen years, I realized I needed a way to finally kick this baby bird out of the nest. The first section felt fully dialed in, so I made the difficult decision to release it as Book 1, even though that meant ending on a cliffhanger.

I know not every reader loves a cliffhanger, but this really is one continuing story. The open questions get answered, every major thread continues, and in my opinion, the story gets bigger, stranger, and better as it goes. Book 1 is really just the first taste. My hope is that it’s enough to make readers want to come along for the rest rather than throw the book across the room.

I can’t reveal too much about what comes next, but several things are already hiding in plain sight by the end of Book 1. Dabria’s quest to find the Son continues. Slinger has quite a lot to deal with after the incident at the Pearl Street Pub, but fortunately he has a wonderfully enormous ensemble of friends around him-including a mysterious rabbi who is much more than he appears-and a newfound faith pushing him forward.

And readers may be slightly disappointed to discover that God spends the entirety of the first book in a coma. Fear not: He does wake up.

And yes, He will have amnesia.

Book 2 is planned for next year, and anyone who wants to know when it’s coming can join the email list at TheDayGodGotAmnesia.com. They’ll also receive the first chapter of the first book free.

Bonus Question: Why did you leave Boulder, and do you miss us? Tell us about your Boulder Jewish connection.

I left Boulder because I had reached one of those moments in life where everything was changing at once. I had just been laid off from a marketing job, I was in the process of coming out, and after five wonderful years there-plus an earlier six-month stint-I felt like I needed a change.

But I miss Boulder all the time. Every time I come back, it still feels like home. Niwot’s Curse definitely got me.

One thing I regret is that I never really found my way into the Jewish community while I lived there.

Maybe this interview will help change that. If a few folks in Boulder’s Jewish community connect with me or with the book and reach out, I’d love to start building some of those relationships now.