Author Q&A with Dean Koontz

July 13, 2006

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

 

Question #1

I've been reading your books for ten years. I have just finished LIGHTNING. It was AMAZING, and I have to ask: How did you wrap your head around THAT one? -Ella, Australia

Halfway through LIGHTNING, as I realized the full challenge of keeping to the rules of the story and not creating any paradoxes, I began to hyperventilate so urgently that my office windows vibrated from continuous rapid pressure changes. During a particularly dramatic attack of hyperventilation, I inhaled a passing cat, which had to be removed from my sinuses by emergency surgery. Truly, there were moments when, straining to think through the thicket of potential paradoxes, I felt like my head would explode, and the only time I usually feel like my head is going to explode is when I'm strapped into a chair and forced to watch old episodes of the Teletubbies, which fortunately doesn't happen more than once a month. That's why I will probably never write another novel with a time-travel element.

Question #2

I would love ODD THOMAS to be a graphic novel. Will you allow your characters to be in comic books? -Toby (location withheld, perhaps because this is the Toby the police are looking for in 50 states, or perhaps because he just thinks the rules shouldn't apply to him.)

I am in the process of forming a joint venture with three really smart women to move Odd into graphic novels and other exciting formats. See how it works, Toby? You just ask me for something, and you get it. Within reason. You ask for my car, however, the most you might get is run down by it.

Question #3

Please tell me there are no plans for retirement in your near future. -Jason, Montana

Some novelists develop terminal block. Some become alcoholics and never write again. Others become cokeheads and alcoholics. Some are abducted by extraterrestrials who patch their organic brains into starship guidance systems, and some turn to screenwriting, which is pretty much the same thing as having your brain sucked out of your skull and incorporated into ET technology. But I'm not aware of any who retire willingly. Death usually retires us, so I hope to be working at the keyboard a few more decades.

Question #4

I read that you write seven days a week, ten hours per day. Is that true? As a new writer, I go more for word count rather than time. My current goal is 2,000 words each day, Monday through Friday. -Todd (who does 2,000 words a day but couldn't favor us with just one more word, so we'd know either his city or state.)

I get up at six each morning. If it's my turn to walk and brush the dog, I don't get to the keyboard until 8:00. If it's Gerda turn to walk and brush the dog, I'm working by 7:00. If it's the dog's turn to walk and brush both Gerda and me, I get to work somewhat later. I write through the day, until 5:00 or 6:00, without lunch because lunch is for sissies. I try to work only five days but usually end up at the keyboard for six, if not always for a full day on the sixth. If a deadline is fast approaching and I'm having trouble getting the end of the book right, I will go to seven days until it's done. Some days, those hours will leave me with 2,000 words; other days with 200. I'm afraid that aiming for a certain number of words each day would encourage me to bloat the story, like: The tall sad-looking awkward man in the handsome blue suit entered the enormous room and took a deep breath, very deep, almost too deep-Lordy, how deep!-and then let it out with a long sigh of poignant regret. I spend probably half my time revising to trim words, condense language, while enhancing the visual quality of the prose, so if a day gives me only 200 words but they're the right 200, I'm still happy.

Question #5

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? - Dan, Shreveport

You have posed an unanswerable question, Dan. It's unanswerable not because the chucking capacity of a woodchuck is one of the great cosmic mysteries, and not because there is a powerful interest group that would be offended by the very discussion of the subject. I'm sure that in contemporary America there are in fact several groups who will be ferociously offended by the subject and that even by allowing you to raise it, my reputation will be savaged and my life will not be worth spit. But we are not going to be cowed by the threats of the politically correct. I would be happy to answer your question if you would qualify it in ways that make an answer possible. First, what is the time frame? Are you interested in how much wood a woodchuck could chuck in ten minutes? An hour? A day? A standard woodchuck lifetime? Second, please define what you mean by the word chuck. Do you mean "to toss, to throw with a quick motion" or do you mean "to tap or pat lightly?" I hope you do not mean "to vomit," because this raises in the mind the disgusting image of a spewing woodchuck, which would offend the sensibilities of my gentle readers. Finally, by the use of the word if in your question, you suggest that in reality woodchucks cannot chuck wood, that your question is entirely and hopelessly hypothetical. But to pose your question from such a philosophical position suggests that woodchucks are frauds, that they choose to be called by a name to which they cannot live up. Personally, I have never met a woodchuck who was anything but straightforward and honorable, so I am quite sure that they can indeed chuck wood, and I think you should apologize for implying otherwise.

Question #6

I have just finished reading VELOCITY and noticed that unlike some of your other novels, there were numerous times when you mentioned brand names such as Pepsi, Guinness, [Heineken, Elephant Beer]. I'm wondering if there is a reason why so many brand names show up in VELOCITY. Is it strictly a monetary thing? -Kim, Toronto

Monetary thing? Sorry, Kim, but no marketing executive in his right mind would pay a novelist for product placement. And let me hasten to assure you that I don't mean insane marketing executives are paying me for product placement. Product placement happens in movies all the time, but I can't imagine any self-respecting novelist who would do it even if anyone was crazy enough to offer. The impact of reading a brand name, say, Kraft Mayonnaise, in a novel is negligible compared to seeing Angelina Jolie slathering her body with Kraft Mayonnaise in a movie. What the brands pay for in movies is visibility and association with glamorous celebrities. I am about as glamorous as a woodchuck. Generally speaking, I use fewer brand names than most contemporary authors, and I suspect I used no more than usual in VELOCITY. Possibly you were attuned to the mentioned brands because you are more familiar with them than those mentioned in other novels. By this I do not mean to imply that you spend a lot of time in bars (Billy, my protagonist, is a bartender), or that you are daily swilling down Guinness, Heineken, and Elephant beer in vast quantities.

Question #7

Do you plan on writing an autobiography? -Shane (who wants to know all about my life but is loath to reveal even the city or the state where he-or she-lives)

Rather than an autobiography, I thought I might one day write a memoir or a book of amusing true stories about things that have happened to me. As many of my friends have noted, for a guy who spends a lot of time at a computer keyboard, a surprising number of amazing and hilarious things have happened to me, and in fact the story of how I was once almost killed usually gets a lot of laughs at a dinner party-and, no, not because my friends are delighted by the idea of me being murdered.

Question #8

FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN!!!! - lots of you, in all kind of places

I love you, gentle readers. Because of you I have a career, food to eat, shoes, and beer to drink (though most likely a great deal less beer than Kim, who posed Question #6). But it's frustrating that scores of you keep asking about Book Three: when, when, when. Here you are, sitting in my virtual classroom, but you haven't done your homework. I answered this question in the second installment of "Author Q&A." Please check the archives.

Question #9

Since you're my favorite author, and YOUR favorite author can't be you (without sounding amazingly pretentious, anyway), who's your favorite author? - Brad, Ohio

Listen, Brad, if I'm in the company of a hundred writers, and we're all crossing a highway at the same time, and barreling towards us is a huge truck loaded with dynamite, driven by a deranged film producer (which has happened to me three times already), I am going to be my favorite writer in the push-and-shove to get to safety, and I won't feel the least pretentious, just grateful to be alive, grateful even during the long series of plastic surgeries needed to remove the imprint of Dan Brown's shoe from my face. As to which writers do I most enjoy reading and from whom I have learned the most: John D. MacDonald for virtually everything he wrote; Dickens for his entire body of work minus the PICKWICK PAPERS, for which I have a blind spot; Walker Percy for THE MOVIEGOER and LOVE IN THE RUINS; James M. Cain for THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY; C.S. Lewis not for his Narnia books but for his brilliant writing on faith and philosophy, books such as THE ABOLITION OF MAN; The complete poems of T.S. Eliot; Donald Westlake for his best comic novels and his alter-ego, Richard Stark, for the incredible series featuring Parker; James Kirkwood for THERE MUST BE A PONY; the incomparable William Goldman for SOLDIER IN THE RAIN, TEMPLE OF GOLD, YOUR TURN TO CURTSEY MY TURN TO BOW, BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER, and the stunning THE COLOR OF LIGHT; Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein; Elmer Kelton.... Having read 200 books a year for decades, it's impossible for me to name a single writer whom I like more than others. And by the time I finish this installment of "Author Q&A," I'll have thought of a dozen more names.

Question #10

OH, MY GOSH, I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN!!! YOU ROCK!! YOU HAVE GIVEN ME SO MANY THRILLS AND SO MUCH EXCITEMENT OVER THE YEARS. THANK YOU!! I HAVE VERY STRANGE DREAMS WHICH MY HUSBAND BLAMES ON YOUR BOOKS. I WAS WONDERING IF YOU HAVE EVER GOTTEN AN IDEA FOR A NOVEL FROM A DREAM. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR INTENSITY? I WAS SCARED TO DEATH READING IT! THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL THE HOURS OF WONDERFUL READING!! -Tracy, Kentucky

I have several pieces of advice, Tracy, and because I care for you, I want you to listen carefully. First, massive amounts of caffeine taken with steroids and methamphetamine makes a deadly combination. Second, your husband is obviously a bad influence. Third (and this is not generally known), when we are born, we are granted by God a specific number of exclamation points. When we use them up, it is our time to go. As for getting an idea from a dream-it has never happened to me. Indeed, when I'm working on fiction, I rarely have dreams. I only dream when I'm between book projects. And thanks for your enthusiasm!!!!!!! (Don't worry, I've got tens of thousands of exclamation points remaining in my allotment.)

Next Installment Coming Soon!