And while I love King, I wish people would stop comparing every horror author to him. Haters gonna hate? Dean is one of my go-tos, my favorites. Good article. Seems like a real hack move. A quick way to fill pages and cash in. Dean Koontz is NOT original….. Great article. I think Dean Koontz is one of the best out there. I agree that it can be tough for horror writers to be constantly compared to Stephen King, but I can see why.
Both Dean Koontz and Stephen King were huge influences on me. I have to agree. His writing is very simple and boring. He is polar opposite of Clive Barker. They find Barker too strange and hard to follow. Barker takes the time to paint vibrant scenes and characters, so complex you have to slow down and absorb what you are reading.
Now, I have read several stories by Koontz and the last one I read was so terrible, I do not think I will read another. The story was predictable and drab. The dialog was even worse. Has anyone ever read this book? It seemed like a rush job to meet a deadline, but then again, all his stories lack imagination and strong characters. Some of his books are fine, and they leave a fine aftertaste. But some, like the frankenstien books are quite terrible. You are commenting using your WordPress.
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Dean Koontz is one of suspense fiction of all time. Never read one of his books. What would you recommend for starters? Brilliant work, IMO. That works both ways. Now I steer clear of both. Well-said, Michelle! Her skill is accounting and numbers, and mine is not. How do you find that balance? I started out in paperbacks, a market in which entertainment comes first. But I think it should anyway. I always have been in love with language, but over time it became a more profound love, and my books started changing.
When I was a young writer, I thought there were a certain number of tricks to writing, and once you learned all of them, the books would get easier. Language is so pliable. Tell me about your process from the initial idea for a story or a character to a published book. I used to write from outlines. But when I wrote Strangers, which ended up having an enormous cast and being about a quarter of a million words, I decided not to do an outline and just start with the premise and a couple of interesting characters.
I decided to wing it, and it was the best decision. I start with a bit of an idea, a central theme, a premise, and then I think about it for a little while—not for weeks and months, but days—and then I begin. If a character comes alive, I let the character move the story along. This is the hardest thing to explain to young writers. You tell yourself that you know exactly who a character is and try to make that character conform.
If you give the character free will, the character becomes richer, more layered, more interesting. I lead an unusual life. I keep a yellow, lined notepad to put down reminders, and I wrote the line down. And even though I never write longhand because I can barely read it, I found myself continuing to write, and hours and hours later when I stopped, I had the first chapter of the book Odd Thomas.
But I wrote eight Odd Thomas books. I usually get up at five in the morning, get ready for the day, walk the dog, read the Wall Street Journal. I rarely have lunch, because if I eat, I get furry-minded. All I can say is, it works for me. I never run into that. And I think it all has to do with this way of working.
How have you successfully navigated all the big changes in the publishing business? One of those was to let the paperback business basically die. A lot of publishers never quite grasped the rise of ebooks.
Last year, my agents made the argument that I would probably sell more books with Amazon than with anybody else. And one of the key things was its marketing proposal. We looked at eight publishers and some of them came with a one-page plan. Others came with eight or 10 pages. The Amazon plan was around 30, and impressive and thoughtful. So we did a contract for five books. But has anyone else noticed that in the IT miniseries the security guard at the mental hospital is named Koontz and he is in the novel IT as well.
When I wasn't reading King in highschool, I was always reading Koontz. Definately give his work a chance. I've never heard anything bad or was turned off by his work?! Check out, "The Voice of the Night". Some books are hit and miss by Koontz ,but The Odd Thomas books are good and so are the Frankenstein books he did. Most of his older stuff is good ,his newer stuff is hit or miss. I read Velocity, it took me a little while to get into it but I thought it was really good.
Interesting serial killer premise. People also seem to love the Odd Thomas series about a guy who sees ghosts.
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