Ask the Author: Dean Koontz
Answered Questions (10)
Dean Koontz
Something’s stuck between two of my teeth, but I’ll eventually get it. As to books: I’m working on a story about a woman, 33, who is now in Santa Fe but lived on a Montana ranch until she was 9. She starts to have strange dreams about events from those days, involving a boy who was frightening to look at because of facial deformities but is in fact benign and her secret friend. She has no memories of such a boy and thinks he’s a figment of her dreams. When she discovers he was in fact real, and when she gets messages begging her to return to the ranch——“only you can help me”——she goes back to Montana to discover the truth of her past and to see if she can find the boy. She’s going to find far more than the boy, much of it terrifying. There are so many twists and turns, every time I move the story through one, I sit here and chuckle like a sinister super villain.
Dean Koontz
You better love writing for the sake of writing, for the thrill of making a story work, for the pleasure of making the language sing. It’s a hard business, harder every year, and you might never find success, but if you get profound pleasure from the act of writing, you’re vaccinated against despair. And readers are more likely to respond to work written by someone who took pleasure in the craft and art of it.
Dean Koontz
Not having to work for a septic-tank clean-out company. Not having to commute to work. Not having to wear a suit.
Dean Koontz
That I actually could have a career!
Dean Koontz
Check out Twilight Eyes. We lived across from the county fairgrounds when I was a kid, and for a week every summer, I sneaked under the fence and spent long days on the midway, hanging around carnies. Given the dysfunctional nature of my home life, I wanted to run away with their show. I’m saturated with carnival lore.
Dean Koontz
I’ve always said I wouldn’t write a sequel to anything, least of all to Watchers, if I couldn’t think of a better story than the first one. Devoted, coming on March 31, isn’t a sequel to Watchers, doesn’t have any of the same characters, but you might like it. The story takes a new approach to some of the same issues. The human-dog bond fascinates me, as does the idea that some degree of intelligence is perhaps a little more widely spread in nature than we quite realize. In Watchers, there’s a genetic-engineering component, but I went somewhere else altogether in Devoted.
What if 100,000 years of human-dog bonding has led to an evolutionary change in certain dogs, in re their intelligence, and what if a secret community of them (they call themselves the “Mysterium”) lives among us? Someone recently told me that, considering the villain, Devoted is like a scary cross between ET and The Fly, and though I dislike that kind of Hollywood shorthand, there’s some truth in it.
What if 100,000 years of human-dog bonding has led to an evolutionary change in certain dogs, in re their intelligence, and what if a secret community of them (they call themselves the “Mysterium”) lives among us? Someone recently told me that, considering the villain, Devoted is like a scary cross between ET and The Fly, and though I dislike that kind of Hollywood shorthand, there’s some truth in it.
Dean Koontz
I never have it. All writer’s block is a consequence of self-doubt, and I have more self-doubt than any writer I’ve ever known, but I bulldoze through it. I rewrite each page 10, 15, 20 times, whatever it takes, smoothing and energizing the prose, working to give it a little lyrical flair and momentum, until I can’t get it any better. Then I feel good about going on to the next page——whereupon the doubt returns, and I start bulldozing again. Sometimes that’s exhausting, and sometimes fascinating to see how the language can be refined——and more often exhilarating than it ought to be.
Dean Koontz
Thank you. I loved those characters. I was supposed to write the Moonlight Bay trilogy as the first three books with a new publisher. When I delivered SEIZE THE NIGHT, number two, it was not received with enthusiasm. It was considered “too out there” and “too funny,” and the publishing company’s response was so adamant that it was conveyed to me not directly but through my agent in such a dire tone of voice that Darth Vader would have been intimidated. The book was well reviewed and popular with readers, but I was given to understand that I had better write a few other books before forcing the issue with the third in the trilogy, or perhaps find yet another publisher.
As that publishing house is no longer my publisher, and as the first two books are locked up there, it has seemed too difficult to publish and promote the third book elsewhere. However, as I was answering your question, I suddenly thought——Hey, maybe I can write one more Chris Snow not as the third in the trilogy, but as a nice fat standalone that reprises the background of the first two in a fresh way and carries the characters to a conclusion. It’ll be such a complex project that I’ll need a full year for it, but I’ve begun to get ahead of deadlines and might be able to manage it.
I don’t know why this never occurred to me before. I guess I had to get old enough to get smart enough. A friend who has read the three finished books awaiting publication told me I have gotten smarter, but only because, as a younger man, I was so stupid that there was nowhere to go but up. Friend or not, I’m thinking of having him knee-capped.
As that publishing house is no longer my publisher, and as the first two books are locked up there, it has seemed too difficult to publish and promote the third book elsewhere. However, as I was answering your question, I suddenly thought——Hey, maybe I can write one more Chris Snow not as the third in the trilogy, but as a nice fat standalone that reprises the background of the first two in a fresh way and carries the characters to a conclusion. It’ll be such a complex project that I’ll need a full year for it, but I’ve begun to get ahead of deadlines and might be able to manage it.
I don’t know why this never occurred to me before. I guess I had to get old enough to get smart enough. A friend who has read the three finished books awaiting publication told me I have gotten smarter, but only because, as a younger man, I was so stupid that there was nowhere to go but up. Friend or not, I’m thinking of having him knee-capped.
Dean Koontz
Most likely, you can’t. You’re more likely to connect with a fraud who will charge you to write a bad book. Generally speaking, a really good writer can only write with passion when the premise for the novel arises in his or her own head. Believe it or not, ideas are the easy part.
I was once approached by two successful businessmen who wanted me to write the first book in “a new genre” they invented, which they were sure would be huge. Since new genres aren’t invented every day, or even every century, I was curious as to what it might be. They said, “It’s Tom Clancy without all the military stuff.” That was it, their idea not just for a novel but for an entire genre. Take all the military stuff out of a Clancy novel, and what you have is a book of blank pages!
I was once approached by two successful businessmen who wanted me to write the first book in “a new genre” they invented, which they were sure would be huge. Since new genres aren’t invented every day, or even every century, I was curious as to what it might be. They said, “It’s Tom Clancy without all the military stuff.” That was it, their idea not just for a novel but for an entire genre. Take all the military stuff out of a Clancy novel, and what you have is a book of blank pages!
Dean Koontz
I take this to mean where does the inspiration come from, the idea. Damn if I know. It’s as mysterious as how Big Bird got to be so insanely big. Some weird radiation? From another planet? Just a freak of nature? Okay, wait. I’ll give it a shot. Sparks? Reading has a lot to do with it, reading not just novels but poetry and nonfiction, newspapers and magazines. It’s like the dormouse said: Feed your head.
THE TAKING was inspired when I read an Arthur C. Clarke piece in which he said the technology of ETs, thousands of years more advanced than ours, wouldn’t look like applied science, but entirely supernatural. This inspired me to consider the reverse: that a spectacular supernatural event, in our secular age, would look to us like an alien invasion.
PHANTOMS was inspired when I read a book about mass disappearances in history——and wondered what scientific explanation could explain these inexplicable events. LIFE EXPECTANCY was triggered by a line in the song “Patterns” by Paul Simon——“My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled”——and ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN was inspired by disgust at the arrogance and fascist “logic” behind the “utilitarian bioethics” that has infected our medical schools.
In short, inspiration is everywhere. However, one thing I learned over the years that’s helpful is this: Sitting and brooding in search of a story idea is usually fruitless; instead, if you feed your head, the subconscious conjures up the ideas when you’re least expecting them.
THE TAKING was inspired when I read an Arthur C. Clarke piece in which he said the technology of ETs, thousands of years more advanced than ours, wouldn’t look like applied science, but entirely supernatural. This inspired me to consider the reverse: that a spectacular supernatural event, in our secular age, would look to us like an alien invasion.
PHANTOMS was inspired when I read a book about mass disappearances in history——and wondered what scientific explanation could explain these inexplicable events. LIFE EXPECTANCY was triggered by a line in the song “Patterns” by Paul Simon——“My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled”——and ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN was inspired by disgust at the arrogance and fascist “logic” behind the “utilitarian bioethics” that has infected our medical schools.
In short, inspiration is everywhere. However, one thing I learned over the years that’s helpful is this: Sitting and brooding in search of a story idea is usually fruitless; instead, if you feed your head, the subconscious conjures up the ideas when you’re least expecting them.
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