Author Q&A with Dean Koontz

August 14, 2007

First: In the e-mails you leave for me at the e-mail address given above, I'm being asked to send signed photos, books for charity auctions, and old socks for Old Sock Festivals. I'm happy to do all of that, but I must have a mailing address. Because of the popularity of "Author Q&A," I can't respond to every e-mail and seek addresses where needed. If you're asking for something that has to be sent by snail-mail, either leave an address where the snail can find you, or write to me at the post office box listed below:

Dean Koontz
PO Box 9529
Newport Beach, California 92658

 

This installment of "Q&A" features eleven questions from the Barnes & Noble readers' group for THE HUSBAND. Most of you visiting this site will not have seen them. Yes, including 11 questions is a profound violation of the protocols of this column, and I deserve a spanking.

Question #1

I just finished THE GOOD GUY and it was incredibly gripping. I'm impressed by the fact that you used sangfroid, jejeune, and sophistry so seamlessly. I feel the same way about your dialogue. Do you work through the dialogue verbally or in your head? -- Jeff M. from MA

It all is in my head but, that said, I hear it. By the time I'm done explaining to you how I work here, there will be a movement to have me institutionalized. The reality is that I sit in this room as if I'm in a "group" of people in any one scene. When I'm writing dialogue, I am working on the page but I hear it, not because I vocalize it, but because I literally almost hear the characters say it. I can get so involved in dialogue that I'm surprised, and I laugh out loud when a character says something because it struck me as completely unexpected. Yet there I am, typing it out.

A character can startle me in dialogue by revealing something that I hadn't known about them. Also, it will happen in the middle of an exchange and I'll go, "Whoa, wait a minute. What does he mean by that?" I have learned that if I don't immediately know what he means by that, I should trust it and just move on and it will come to me. Now, this may mean that my subconscious is working on all of these things and it is just coming to me in my conscious mind a little belatedly. For me, it feels like the characters have become real and they are actually doing the talking.

Question #2

Inquiring minds want to know what is on your nightstand for summer reading. -- From many fans

I don't read before bed. By the time I go to bed, I've had such a full day, I can’t stay awake. I'm one of those guys who puts his head on the pillow and is out in about a minute. This drives my wife, Gerda, insane because she's an insomniac.

As for what I’m reading this summer, I've been re-reading the short stories of Flannery O' Connor. I went back to a couple of novels by Alistair Maclean, who was a writer I adored in my twenties and thought was a tremendous suspense writer. I wanted to see if those stories -- Where Eagles Dare or The Guns of Navarone -- still captivated me because in those days, I didn't read for style. I didn't read for all the other things that now matter to me. What I found when I read them again was, yes, the style is imperfect and yes, the characters are not as deeply drawn as what I would like to read today as a reader, but the stories still hold up because all they want to do is entertain and thrill you. They do that perfectly and efficiently, even if the characters are rather shallow. So, they are just as fine to me now as they were then, and I had fun with that.

I also read a lot of magazines. Right now, I am researching a lot of information on dogs because of the book I am working on.

Question #3

Do you deliberately put a dog in each book? -- Tom M. from NY

I think there are actually some books that don't have dogs in them, not even as walk ons. Most of the time, though, there is at least a walk somewhere in the story. I have long had a love of dogs. I never had a Golden Retriever until 8 1/2 years ago when Trixie came to live with us. Anyone who goes to my website at www.deankoontz.com and clicks on Trixie's page will find that she has great input to the website so there's a lot of material there that she has provided.

All dogs are special but, for me, Goldens are just something else. They have such great personalities and sweetness to them, such devotion to people and giving personalities. I look at them and think, "If only humanity could more regularly show the qualities that this dog shows me every day, we'd be a much better planet."

I'm usually asked if I had a Golden when I wrote WATCHERS. I didn't. I was familiar with Goldens because I knew people who had them. I admired the breed, but hadn't had one at that time. I wrote my perception of what a Golden would be like, which was second hand and not what you’re supposed to do, but I did it anyway. It seems to have worked.

Question #4

I would like to know what job you had while writing your first published novel. -- Raymond W.from Las Vegas, NV

I have worked at an odd number of jobs. I had to work my way through college, so when I was in high school, I worked as a stock clerk in a supermarket. I went to work at 9 p.m. and quit at 3 in the morning, then went home and crashed for a few hours, got up and went to school. I did that three nights a week throughout high school. Then in the summer between high school and college, I worked as, of all things, a ranger in a park (Shawnee State Park in Pennsylvania). It sounds more romantic than it was. Basically, I manned the check in at the campground and that wasn't too exciting.

Then after college, I worked in the Appalachian Poverty Program. By then I was writing short stories and married to my high school sweetheart. I’m still married to Gerda, my high school sweetheart. We lived in this little tiny coal mining town and I would go to this job in the poverty program every day and come home and write. I would also write on weekends. Then, a year after that, I took a job in a regular school district teaching English. I did that for a year and a half and that's when my wife said, "I know what you want to do. You want to write books. I'll support you for five years and if you can't make it in five years, you'll never make it." I tried to negotiate her up to seven, but she's got Sicilian blood and she won the negotiation.

Question #5

I don't know if you watch television. Not many writers do, but I'm wondering if you are a fan of The Sopranos, how did you feel about how it ended? --Linda H. from NH

I watch very little television actually. The first seven years of our marriage, we didn't even have a TV. When we married, we had $150 and a used car and couldn't afford a television. After a couple of years of getting out of the poverty program and into a regular job, I could afford one but we'd gotten along so well without one that we just didn't bother buying one. Then, by the time we did, we were out of the habit of being regular television watchers. Now, we turn it on as we're getting ready for bed.

I did start watching The Sopranos on DVD and I think I made it into the second season and started to lose interest. I know this probably puts me alone among Americans, but I lost interest because it was the same thing over and over. You know what these people are going to do. The kind of fiction I like, or television I like, is somebody you can feel sympathetic for and somebody you can feel connected to. I didn't feel connected to anybody in that show.

Recently, after years of friends telling me, "You've got to watch this show," I bought five seasons of 24. We started watching it and are now totally hooked. In only six weeks, we are now in the third year and sometimes I will take a Saturday and watch eight episodes. I think Kiefer Sutherland's performance in that is just phenomenal and probably the iconic suspense performance in the history of television. There are some amazing things he does with the role that I don't think he gets enough credit for.

Question #6

I would like to know what your biggest challenge is as a writer and how you deal with it. -- Martin D.from Trinidad

I think the biggest challenge is not forgetting the purpose of what you do and not being distracted from fulfilling that purpose. I write suspense fiction, but it's very emotional suspense fiction compared to a lot of what is out there. My work has a viewpoint and a philosophy of life. Sometimes, when you're writing, you can get caught up in, "Oh, that would be a cool idea. I should do that. People would really like that, or if I did that with it, there's a movie sale for sure."

You've got to stay away from that because I would call that scoping the market or putting the periscope up and seeing what everybody wants and then writing it. Stay true to the philosophy behind your work and what you believe about life. Don't jump to those ideas that might make it more commercial or a project for the movies. The temptation is always there, so you always have to be on guard for it.

Question #7

What would people be surprised to know about you? -- From an interviewer

I'm not going to tell you that kind of thing. I'm not a real surprising guy. What you see is pretty much what you get. Nothing shocking. Nothing that is going to end up on any of these tabloid shows. I'm very much a homebody. Basically, that is because as a child, I really didn’t have a settled home and I vowed that when I grew up, I was going to have one. My home has become the center of my life. So there isn't anything terribly exciting about me.

Everybody knows about my love of dogs. I'm pretty knowledgeable on a number of areas of antiques, especially the Deco Period because my wife and I built a house that has a huge amount of Art Deco aspects to it. Over the years I served as my own contractor on building and remodeling projects until we did this house. Then we hired a contractor for the first time. So I'm quite knowledgeable about contracting. I could go be one if I had to. I could get a license, I think, but that holds no interest to me.

I also collect Art Deco radios from the ‘20s and ‘30s, which are just the coolest looking things. That was a period in which everyday objects like Mix Masters and toasters and radios had really high design to them. I haven't started collecting toasters yet, but the radios are very cool. I have about twenty of them. They are objects of art, and they are so beautiful.

What else about me? I like wines, but people would probably know that from reading the books because that shows up from time to time. I'm passionate about human/dog interaction. We work with a lot of charities for the disabled and I'm an activist in causes for the disabled and against the movement to euthanize them to one extent or another. There are the utilitarian bio-ethicists who want to deny healthcare to the severely disabled and that raised my ire, so I spend a lot of time on those kinds of issues.

But basically I sit here every day and work.