Jeff B. Skinner was born in Highland Park, Illinois, the youngest child of five children. At the age of three, his family moved to the City of Evanston where he attended St. Athanasius Grade School and Evanston Township High School, graduating in 1978.

He made his way down to Carbondale and attended Southern Illinois University. There, he stayed for two years and started a college paper called, "No Nonsense News." His band Critical Mass was a popular progressive rock band that played the local circuit.

In 1981 he studied audio engineering at Columbia College in Chicago. After graduation in 1983, he worked for a dozen audio engineering firms, and also worked as a technician for radio and television.

He is currently writing movie previews and has been a contributing editor for several online magazines. His first short story was published in a magazine called The Horror Express. After a tramatic car accident, his goal was to write and publish novels. He is continuing to write short stories and has a few being published in the near future. His eighth novel, a sci-fi thriller, will be published in 2012.