Author Q&A with Dean Koontz

June 15, 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'm thirteen. I'm in high school. I want to be a writer. What were your favorite subjects in high school?—Joe, New York

Lunch. Home room. Fire drill. Between-class hallway horseplay. Snow days. Study hall. Music, especially dismissal bells. English. No one should model his high-school years after mine. When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject—if I have a serious interest in it. Oh, I forgot three other of my favorite subjects: hall pass, girls, and nuclear-attack drills.

Question #2

THE FACE presents a very funny but dark view of movie actors. Have you ever met any nice ones?—Kevin, New York

In my experience, Porky Pig is not a bad guy, and while Donald Duck is excitable, he's got a good heart. Kermit the Frog is a sweetie. Fame is potentially as corrupting as power, but in fact I have met a few nice actors in addition to Porky and Donald and Kermit. The kindest and classiest was Peter O'Toole, who had a role in PHANTOMS. I wrote the screenplay for PHANTOMS. The filmmakers realized some—but not all—of the scenes well. The movie was overall a disappointment for two reasons—an inadequate budget and the production company's desire to emphasize creepiness, attenuating scenes at the cost of action and forward-motion suspense. The director was talented but apparently not that interested in discussing character motivation with the cast, so some of the actors called me to discuss their roles. Some wanted wholesale dialogue changes that would have made their characters seem stupid or incoherent. By contrast, Peter called to ask if he could drop just one conjunction and elsewhere add a comma—and he had an elegant explanation for doing so. In another call from London, a few weeks later, he started reading the dialogue of all the characters in the scenes that involved him. He made no comments, just cited page numbers and read dialogue, hopping through the script. He has that brilliant voice, all the technique of the finest stage actor, and listening to him can cast you into a pleasant kind of trance. After about five minutes I interrupted to say, "Peter, I'm sorry. I'm dense. I'm hopeless. I know you expect me to hear something inconsistent about your character, something that needs fixing, but I'm not getting it." He said, "No, no, dear boy. There's nothing wrong with this dialogue. In fact, it's marvelous. I just wanted you to hear how wonderfully it flows as written." I was stunned. Peter O'Toole was one of the finest actors of his generation, rich and famous, yet here he was taking time to call me from London to let me hear my dialogue being properly delivered. I said sheepishly, "Oh. Well�go ahead." And he did, for about another ten minutes. Most actors with many fewer achievements than Peter's are too full of themselves to be capable of such a kindness. By the time the film was shot and edited, I realized that he knew some of the other actors would "massage" their dialogue until much of the wit was squeezed out of it and that the private reading he did for me would be the only time that I would hear all the lines in major scenes delivered to their full effect. That was such a kind and decent thing to do, the act of a gentleman.

Question #3

Where did you get such a wild idea as LIFE EXPECTANCY? It's so off the wall—yet entirely believable.—Harold, Missouri

As I was driving home from a business meeting in L.A., tucked between two recklessly speeding motorists who would be the first to be picked off by a highway patrolman if we encountered one, I was listening to a stack of Simon & Garfunkel CDs. I was singing along to an old Paul Simon tune, "Patterns," a line in the lyrics struck a special chord in me: "My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled." I thought, Wouldn't it be interesting if a man knew, somehow, that five or six dates in his life were going to be of enormous—possibly terrible—importance, but didn't know what was going to happen on those days. He knew a dark pattern had been imposed on his life, but he didn't know what it meant and could not control it. Somehow, this led me to the idea that a dying grandfather would make this prediction about his unborn grandson's life, along with predictions of the baby's sex, birth weight, and length that would establish his bona fides. Ten miles later, the whole opening sequence of LIFE EXPECTANCY was in my head. It wasn't until I was writing the book, however, that clowns came into it. After describing the expectant-fathers' waiting room at the hospital on the night Jimmy was born, I typed "The chain-smoking clown didn't improve the ambience." The word clown totally surprised me. I don't know where it came from. I stared at the computer screen, telling myself that a clown had no place in this story, that a clown was so totally over the top that it could never work... But I decided to trust my creative unconscious, which had given me the word. Soon, I was having so much fun with the novel and felt so strongly about it that I couldn't imagine Beezo having been anything but a clown.

Question #4

I loved your dog's two books [LIFE IS GOOD and CHRISTMAS IS GOOD by Trixie Koontz, Dog]. Is she writing a third?—Nancy, Ohio

Trixie has not been at the computer in weeks. Lately, she's been spending a lot of time composing a piano concerto.

Question #5

Why do you set so many of your novels in California? Why don't you set one in Virginia?—Ronnie, Virginia

I do so much research for a novel that I try to spare myself additional research regarding the locale. Consequently, I prefer to set my books in territory with which I'm deeply familiar—largely here in California, but also in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. When I set BROTHER ODD in the Sierra Nevada, in California, I thought I had spared myself locale research—then too late realized a great deal of the novel would take place not in the mountains themselves but inside the monastery. I didn't know a lot about monastic life. I sure do now.

Question #6

I've been waiting twenty long years for a sequel to WATCHERS. It's time, don't you think? —Lissa, New Jersey

It's not time, Lissa. It may never be time. I've long said that I wouldn't write a sequel to WATCHERS unless I had a story equal to the first. That novel was about change: about the difficulty of changing ourselves for the better, of letting go of our world view even when we recognize that it's false; about the way that an encounter with the right person can suddenly change us forever when, as a solitary pursuit, change had seemed impossible. The main characters in WATCHERS followed a major arc of change, lifted by one another. To me, their story feels finished, and even if a new plot hook occurred to me, I would have to know what character evolution would drive the story. But I never say never. Actually, I just said it twice, but you know what I mean.

Question #7

When did you decide you were destined to be a writer? At what point in your life? —Marcy, New Jersey

After a devastating ankle injury forever ended my ice-dancing career. Actually, nothing is destined. Everything depends on the unstinting exercise of free will, and hard work.

Question #8

How important were college creative-writing courses to your success?—Alberto, Washington

I'm sure that the right teacher, in a well-designed course, can be a great help to beginning writers who are trying to find their way, but I have no personal experience of that. I found my own way by doing two things. First, I read 150 books a year, sometimes more, (very little TV, later no blogging, no e-mail, that's how), fiction in all genres, contemporary novels but also the classics, poetry, and a variety of nonfiction. Second, I revise every page of a novel twenty or thirty times, whatever it takes, before moving on to the next page. This line-by-line immersion focuses me intently on language, character, and theme. I began this ceaseless polishing out of self-doubt, as a way of preventing self-doubt from turning into writer's block: by doing something with the unsatisfactory page, I wasn't just sitting there brooding about it. I have more self-doubt than any writer I know, which seems healthy to me, and now this method of working, this line-by-line immersion, no longer seems arduous; instead, it delights me. While my conscious mind is on the micro world of a single page, my unconscious is always working on the macro world of the entire novel.

Question #9

I loved all the carnival lore in TWILIGHT EYES. How did you learn all that?—Connie, Florida

During my childhood, we lived across the highway from the county fairgrounds. The county fair was the biggest event of the year. Even bigger than the summer-long thrill of watching corn grow. I knew all the places where you could sneak under the fence and get in for free. Consequently, I spent a huge part of fair week on the fairgrounds, but not in the livestock and home crafts exhibitions! I might run up to the barns to see the biggest hog of the year, because everyone gets a kick out of huge hogs, but otherwise I was on the midway. I was fascinated with the exotic, gaudy world of the carnival, with the life on the road that it offered. Because of our poverty and my father's alcoholism, I might have run away with the carnival if they would have accepted me. My fascination with carnies has endured, though current carnivals are a pale imitation of what they once were.

Question #10

How tall are you? How much do you weigh? What color are your eyes?—Anita, Ohio

I haven't had my height measured in maybe twenty years (I'm more obsessed with the thickness of my ear cartilage, which I check with a laser micrometer four times a day), but I used to be five feet eleven. We do shrink with age. I'm pretty sure I'm still taller than four feet. I weigh 155 pounds. My eyes are dark brown. Now, Anita, I want some answers from you. Are your nostrils more round than oval or more oval than round? On each of your feet, which is longer, the big toe or the second toe? When measured with a laser micrometer, how thick is the helix of each of your ears? How thick is the antihelix?

Next Installment Coming Soon!