Author Q&A with Dean Koontz

June 29, 2006

The first four installments of this feature, which appeared weekly, are now archived and were put together from questions readers sent by mail. This fifth installment includes, for the first time, e-mailed questions. When e-mailing, please include your city and state with your name. To protect your privacy, we will use only your first name.

Before asking your questions, please read the archived installments of "Author Q&A." We have received many hundreds of questions in the initial wave of reader response, but a significant number were answered in the first installments of this feature.

 

Question #1

I am a furniture sales person. I was wondering... What kind of mattress do you sleep on? - Chris, New Jersey

For a long time, I slept on a bed of nails, Chris. I was especially comfortable when the housekeeper remembered to scatter some broken glass in it. It was a bed of nails that had one of those motorized massage features, so I could really work the tension out of my muscles with the touch of a button. Previously, I had slept on a slab of bare rock, with a cactus for a pillow, but I worried that if I continued to indulge myself in that fashion, I would get soft and indolent, and would lose my edge as a writer. My wife tells me that our mattress is by Royal-Pedic, extra firm, but she can't be right, for there is no mattress, only six-inch spikes...unless she and I are sleeping in parallel universes.

Question #2

I'm listening to ODD THOMAS and my question is: Did you know my mother? How did you write so clearly about a personality like Odd's mother? Did you know someone like her? Are you my lost brother? I can understand why you left. I am grown and my mother is gone, but that chapter is the story of my youth. For the first time I felt that someone else understood a person like her. - Judy (perhaps from Pico Mundo?)

Judy, you didn't give us your location, but I chose your question anyway because, really, I'm a swell guy. As I've discussed in previous installments of Author Q&A, with main characters I need to hear a singular voice before I'm comfortable with the book, and when I do hear that voice, I allow that character free will, the freedom to make his decisions, which shapes a story. Consequently, I'm frequently surprised by what characters do and how the plot evolves. This is no less true of supporting characters like Odd's mother. By the time I got to her scene late in the book, I knew part of Odd's problem with her had to do with guns, but until the scene began and she stepped on stage, I didn't know who she was. As she revealed herself to me, I listened to her and allowed her to paint herself. I know this isn't as satisfying an answer as it might have been if I had presented character-structuring charts, diagrams, and extensive sketches of the shape and texture of the mother's nose, or if I had said I based her on my nutty cousin Eileen. But the truth is that writing fiction is in part a mystical experience, and if you allow characters to have free will, they come alive in the most surprising and magical way.

Question #3

I adore you and have since I was a teenager! I'm now 29. I've read and loved every single book. When on earth can I meet you at a book signing??? I live in the Dreadful Northeast! -Heather, Worcester, MA

Heather, I urge you to move at once from the Dreadful Northeast to the Blissful Northeast. I suspect you may be stuck in a malevolent alternate reality. We can test that suspicion. In your world, is Lex Luthor the governor of Massachusetts? Is Adam Sandler a stage actor renowned for his performances in the plays of Shakespeare? In your world, does the nation's primary fast-food franchise sell burgers made with ground lizard meat? Yes, Heather, you are in a malevolent alternate reality. Proceed at once to your nearest Starbucks, enter the rest room, turn three times in a circle while repeating the word cinnamon, and the room will transform into a cross-dimensional vehicle that can bring you safely to a benign alternate reality. As for book signings: I have never done a book-signing tour, staying exclusively within California. If eventually I get ahead of my deadlines, I might consider a lengthy trip around the country to visit bookstores and meet readers. Meanwhile, anyone who writes to me at the address given above and asks for three or fewer bookplates, either with generic inscriptions or with inscriptions specific to certain titles, will be sent them on a timely basis. We do not accept books for signature because in the days when we did, they came in such volume that a full-time employee was required to unpack and repack them-repetitive and dreary work that threatened the sanity of said employee even more than having to work with me threatened her sanity.

Question #4

I'm 19, writing a science fiction novel, and intend to make a living by writing. Would it be easier on me in the long run if I got an agent and went to a commercial publisher or instead to an indie publisher? -John, South Dakota

You cite the name of an "indie" publisher which I have censored. These are in fact what used to be called "vanity" publishers, though they once preferred to be called "subsidy" publishers. My opinion, based on decades of observation, is that 99% of the time, you will not only never make a profit from such editions but will also not recover the money you paid to have the book printed. Few bookstores will carry books from subsidy publishers; few if any genuine critics will review them; and it is extremely difficult, almost to the point of being impossible, to get meaningful radio or TV interviews for what amount to self-published books. This is a hard truth, but your old Uncle Dean can't lie to you. Finding an agent isn't easy, and landing a deal with a real publisher may be even harder, but as with most things in life, the arduous road is the one that leads to the greatest rewards. A real publisher is one who pays an advance against royalties to the writer and intends to make its profit not from fees paid by the writer but by selling copies of the book to the general public. Furthermore, books under a subsidy-publisher imprint are not useful credits on a writer's resume. Many editors and most genuine publishers-agents, too-take such credits, rightly or wrongly, as an indication of amateurism. If you've already published a book with one of these companies and then have a manuscript that might appeal to a real publisher, you are best advised not to mention the earlier book at all. Good luck, John. And when setbacks come-as they most llikely will-remember that my first four novels never sold. Persevere.

Question #5

I haven't read anything about you commenting on the film (title censored) being nearly identical to your novel, INTENSITY. As far as I know, the filmmaker has given you no credit. What do you have to say about that? - Sandra, Colorado

My snail-mail newsletter (well, it's really Trixie's, as she has more space in some issues than I do) has run an item on this matter in two issues, under the title THE RIP-OFF MOVIE. I'll quote the piece in its entirety here: "Many readers have been writing to inform Dean that a recent movie, which we aren't going to promote by naming it, ripped off the first half of INTENSITY. Initially the director of this bloody and inept film denied having read the book, but later acknowledged that part of it might have been "inspired" by INTENSITY. In the past, Dean has been aggressive about plagiarism and has succeeded in every action he has taken against every plagiarist. In this case, a win appeared inevitable, but he decided to ignore the offense because he found the film so puerile, so disgusting, and so intellectually bankrupt that he didn't want the association with it that would inevitably come if he pursued an action against the filmmaker. Maybe the lesson is that if you're going to steal from Dean's work, you better make your version as disgusting and misanthropic, as full of loathing for humanity, as you can; then you might get away with it!"

Question #6

Dean, I know this is your "question" page, but I don't have a question. I just wanted to say thank you for writing the books you wanted and not a bunch of what publishers want. Thank you for not being egotistical like most writers seem to be now days. And thank you for being an inspiration while I continue to work on my first novel. - Christopher, New Jersey

You just sank the whole concept of "Author Q&A," Christopher. You just blew it out of the water by not having a question. Where do you get off, Christopher, coming in here without a question and aggressively promoting your novel? How obvious is it, Christopher, that this is supposed to be about me, me, me, not about you? It's bad enough that the Internet isn't called DEAN KOONTZ'S INTERNET, that I can only have one miserable web site, and now you come here and want to rant on and on about your book? And what's this "Dean" business? You will address me henceforth as "Immortal God of the Word," though if that's too much to type, you can call me "Binky." By the way, do you know that other Chris from New Jersey, the guy who asked question #1 above-see, he had a question!-the guy who is strangely interested in my mattress?

Question #7

Do all your characters run through your head, keeping you awake at night? How often do you revise the answers you write for this column? - Tim (city and state not given, perhaps because of a paranoid fear that an innocent question might trigger a psychotic response from the author, who would then set out to find Curious Tim and punish him severely)

Chris has no question, and you have two. I might need to establish some protocols for this feature to stave off chaos. My characters do not keep me awake at night. I sleep like a baby on my bed of nails, especially if I am also wearing a warm pair of rose-bramble socks. I think so intensely about a story while working on it and am so deeply involved with the characters that when I get up from the keyboard I must leave it all behind until tomorrow-and I do. Now, really, Tim, do these answers seem revised to you? Could you really confuse these lines with any paragraph out of, say, a Hemingway novel? After reading the two weeks of collected e-mails, which I can do before bed, I spend an hour on the column the next day. In fifteen minutes I choose questions from those I marked, and in half an hour to forty-five minutes, I've hammered out these answers. This should be fun, and laboring over answers wouldn't be fun.

Question #8

There is a site in which a book titled STORM FRONT, by you, is promised to be released in 2010. There is a great forum about your work in which people have discussed that this book was actually written, but due to problems with editors, it was never published. Is this true? Will the book ever be released? -Marco, Brazil

Very good, Marco. That's how it should be done. Direct, to the point, a fresh subject, and a question. By the way, if you are the Marco who wrote me a very kind and interesting letter by snail mail, you should know that I wanted to send you a special book but was unable to because your return address wasn't on the letter, only on the envelope, and the envelope was badly damaged in the mail. Write me again with your address. Now to STORM FRONT. This was an idea that interested me for a brief time and, without my knowledge, was listed by a publisher as forthcoming even though I had not in fact promised it and had not begun to write it. I lost interest in the idea when the concept for the Chris Snow books came to me-and then shortly thereafter I changed publishers. The book does not exist and never will.

Question #9

You've created unique characters, never generic as in so many other best-selling books: an autistic girl in THE DOOR TO DECEMBER, an eyeless yet sighted character in FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE, a lovely disabled girl in ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN, a character born with syndactyly in LIFE EXPECTANCY, a character with xeroderma pigmentosum in FEAR NOTHING and SEIZE THE NIGHT, and many more. Will you ever write a book with a deaf character in it? I am asking because I am deaf since birth. -Jesse, Alexandria, Virginia

In one of the earlier installments of this column, I referred to a book I'm going to write, God willing, about Ivy Elgin, the waitress who had a small part in VELOCITY. Ivy herself is not deaf, but she was raised by a deaf grandmother. Deafness will feature prominently in that novel. Long ago I realized that the rich variety of people in real life is not reflected in the characters who inhabit most popular fiction-or literary fiction, for that matter. I also saw that most writers shy from eccentricity in characters, though in the real world, human beings are an astonishingly eccentric species. Dickens was well aware of that. When a lot of writers avoid a certain subject, you know you've found a rich vein of original material.

Question #10

Do you ever wonder if one of your characters will actually come out subconsciously? Like, say, if you were writing a girl in the first person, do you ever fear that the character might appear through you in some way. A friend of mine, who happens to be a young male writer...he came to school one day, cross-dressed. He looked like a girl, too. He said he just felt like dressing like that. - Mike, Oakland, CA

So involved was I with Conrad Beezo, the clown antagonist in LIFE EXPECTANCY, that I once regained consciousness and found myself walking through a shopping mall, dressed like a clown, squirting people with a seltzer bottle. And after I finished WATCHERS, I discovered in my closet a well-worn golden retriever costume that I had no memory of purchasing, and to this day I go running off in wild excitement when someone inadvertently uses the word "fetch." Yes, there is a danger that a writer may create such a strong character that it will entirely seize control of him and lead him to do things he might later find embarrassing; consequently, I have never dared to write a novel about a foot fetishist.