RELENTLESS
10 Reasons Why Reading It Will Be Your Happiest Summer Experience
1. The government has not yet bailed out the author and therefore has not yet appointed a committee to tell him how to write.
2. Anna Koontz, dog, has recruited canines nationwide to report whether or not their human companions have purchased this book. Those who do not purchase it will be targets of a well-organized Poop in the Parlor Day.
3. A steady diet of "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol" has left you with the intellectual capacity of an armchair. You haven't noticed your mental decline, but that is why people keep sitting on you to watch TV. Read a book quickly, before you're mistaken for a footstool.
4. Other summertime activities are dangerous. Four out of five people who go on a picnic are attacked by bears gone bad, thrill-killing bears that have no mercy. The fifth is stung to death by bees. If you go to the beach, the chances are one in three that you will be swept to your death by a tsunami. Of the two out of three who survive the tsunami, one will be killed by the new variety of four-legged shark created by toxic-waste dumping in the sea. The third beachgoer will probably live. For a while. Until the bears move their operation from the parks and meadows to the shore. Stay home, read RELENTLESS, survive.
5. Lightning most commonly strikes golfers and those on a sports field of one kind or another. One--and only one--person has ever beenstruck by lightning while reading a Koontz novel. But it was not the fault of the book, for the victim was sitting on top of an iron lamppost, in hobnail boots and copper pants, wearing a stainless-steel colander for a hat.
6. You could go to the movies, but theaters are not as safe as they once were. Crazed bears have recently been seen casing megaplexes, drawn by the twin delights of thrill killing and popcorn.
7. If you're a rocker, you might believe, as the song asserts, that "Summer's here, and the time is right for dancin' in the streets.' Yeah? Well, see how right it seems when you're crushed and dying under the wheels of a Peterbilt.
8. Remember last summer, you didn't read the latest Koontz book, and now your only memories of that precious golden season are the near escape from a bear attack, melanoma surgery, and the sexually transmitted disease that left you blind in one eye and hideously deformed.
9. You could read a novel by someone else this summer. But you will live to regret it. Unless, of course, you're so tough that you can come out the discharge end of a woodchipper without damage. Then, by all means, read anything you want. You don't have to worry about becoming mulch. Not you. You're indestructible.
10. The advance review of RELENTLESS from Library Journal says, "This is an exquisite rafting of the thrilling, the unexplainable, and the personal, with the mirth and whimsy that Koontz throws in seemingly effortlessly just when it's most needed and least expected. Koontz fans will snap it up. Highly recommended." And freshfiction.com says, "Koontz again crafts an excellent tale. Although his plotlines are always enjoyable, his character development is amazing...a thread of humor...a delightful journey. Readers...will race to the end." So, if you'd rather be eaten by a bear, that's your business, but RELENTLESS will be more fun.
Santa's #1 Gift Choice for Christmas
Here are 20 reasons why Santa Claus rates YOUR HEART BELONGS TO ME as #1 gift choice for this Christmas.
1. It is not printed on paper saturated with deadly toxins, as are most of the other novels published this season.
2. Not one cent of the author's royalties is used to fund terrorist training camps in third-world hell holes.
3. The author has NOT embedded in the text subliminal messages that will transform you into his zombie love slave.
4. A hardcover book has a lot smaller carbon footprint than that wood-fired Hummer you wanted.
5. Thus far, the author has assaulted with blunt instruments only people who were NOT his readers. Buy the book, save your face.
6. Anna Koontz, dog, needs kibble and treats. Look how cute she is. Can you sleep at night knowing you failed to buy the book and allowed this dog to starve?
7. The PARIS HILTON BOOK OF PHOTO-ILLUSTRATED BIBLE SCENES is neither as spiritual nor as sexy as its publisher claims.
8. These days, nobody wants a freakin' partridge in a pear tree.
9. If the national food-distribution chain collapses, book-binding glue and paper are edible, and the nutritional value of this book might be the difference between life and death for you and your children. Buy it for the children.
10. Santa's token psychotic elf, Blister, is a fanatical Koontz fan, so if you don't buy the book--he knows where you live and he'll want blood.
11. Videogame companies have conspired to conceal the fact that malfunctioning joy-sticks kill 400,000 people a year.
12. If you ever require a heart transplant or wish to perform one, this book contains just enough information on the subject to get you started.
13. A case of beer and two bottles of whiskey are gone in an evening, but a book lasts forever.
14. When a giant asteroid collides with Earth and you are swept to your death in thousand-foot tides of sea water and pulverized rock, you will wish you'd taken more time for pleasure reading.
15. Books provide mental exercise, which we all desperately need, considering that these days the average citizen's brain resembles his sagging butt.
16. Once you have read the book, another member of your family can enjoy it, whereas if you made a gift of the regurgitated Christmas cookies you ate, no one would find it appealing.
17. Shelves full of handsome hardcover books lend style and class to a home in a way that your collection of Hulk Hogan memorabilia never can.
18. What if you die and at the Gates of Heaven St. Peter informs you that one of the criteria to enter Paradise is having read a certain number of Koontz books, and it turns out you're one book short of the required number, so you burn in Hell forever while leeches feed on your eyes and cockroaches ceaselessly crawl the surface of your brain? Huh? What then?
19. We're just going to keep hitting you with reasons until we exhaust you and finally you buy the stupid book, so why put yourself through this?
20. So you go into a bank to deposit a check, and suddenly three brutal thugs with guns, wearing Aflack-the-duck masks, take over the place, and something goes wrong--like maybe an old lady with an umbrella takes a swing at one of the robbers, a nasty piece of work named Bruno, startling him, or a desperately poor little girl selling matches to buy food for her grossly obese grandmother tugs on Bruno's coat sleeve, startling him--and when the dust settles, everyone in the bank has been shot dead, including the thieves, and only you are left alive because you happened to be carrying this book, and it stopped three bullets that otherwise would have torn the crap out of your heart. It's been known to happen. Except that the match girl was a little drummer boy.
Insights
Not for the Faint of Heart - Heart Transplant Research
I have been asked how much research into transplant surgery I did before writing YOUR HEART BELONGS TO ME. I would like to reveal that, in the interest of accuracy and the accumulation of vivid detail, and because I bring total commitment to my writing, I underwent a heart transplant myself, even though I didn't need one.
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All About Anna
Ten months after losing Trixie, Dean and Gerda were ready to bring a new dog into their lives. At that time, in May of this year, the Canine Companions for Independence division in Oceanside had a young golden retriever, sent to them from the Northwest division, that they had decided to release from their program.
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The Darkest Ice Cream of the Year
I once said writing a novel is sometimes like making love and sometimes like having a tooth pulled--and sometimes like making love while having a tooth pulled. I arrived at one of those joyful yet excruciating moments while working on THE DARKEST EVENING OF THE YEAR.
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"Starring" Dean Koontz? You've Got to Be Kidding!
My publisher's Creative Marketing Department lives up to its name in every regard: The folks there are creative, they know marketing, and they have their own department. Considering that they also have to put up with me, they would be well advised to rename themselves the Patient Creative Marketing Department.
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ABOUT ODD THOMAS
So I was in the middle of writing THE FACE, polishing page 345 of the manuscript, focused to such an intense degree that even an attack by a pack of wolverines failed to distract me from the keyboard (a team of out-call physicians treated me in my office chair: 124 stitches, a series of rabies shots, a procedure to reattach my left foot, and nine operations by a plastic surgeon to reconstruct my nose - all of which cost me only four hours of writing time.)
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ODD
When I wrote ODD THOMAS, the title character came to me fully formed, as if he were a real person whom I had known all my life. No character in any of my previous novels led me through his story with such grace, with his voice unfailingly strong in my mind's ear, making revelations about himself and his family that were surprising - even shocking in some instances - yet seemed inevitable to me the moment they were made.
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Funny Bone
THE ORIGIN OF AUDIO BOOKS
Ten thousand years before the first word of history was written, the first audio book was created by Og, brother of Nogg and Plogg, son of Vog and Noog, grandson of Zogg and Heather. Og was a born storyteller frustrated that paper had not yet been invented. He wrote his first book on slabs of wood, burning the words and pictures into the surface with sharp pieces of stone superheated in fire fed by Wooly Mammoth fat. He is credited by some with inventing the words "hot," "ouch," "S***," "***k," "D**n," and "************," as well as the exclamation point.
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THE MURDER OF A PEN NAME
During the first fifteen years of my career, my income per novel was so small that I might have done better trying to sell hamburgers to Hindus. The proceeds from one novel per year would have sustained me only if I had crafted all my clothes from leaves, wild grass, and bird feathers, with no concern for the cruel stares that rude people would direct at me, and with a willingness to tolerate the pain from being pecked by all those angry, bald birds.
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