Dean Koontz

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Dean Koontz
Born July 9, 1945 (1945-07-09) (age 62)
Everett, Pennsylvania
Pen name Aaron Wolfe, Brian Coffey, David Axton, Deanna Dwyer, John Hill, K.R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Leonard Chris, Owen West, Richard Paige
Occupation novelist, short story writer, screenwriter
Genres Suspense, Horror fiction, Science fiction
Influences
Influenced
Official website

Dean Ray Koontz (born July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania) is an American writer.

He is best-known for writing many successful novels that could broadly be described as suspense thrillers, but which also frequently incorporate elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Several of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List, with ten hardcovers and fourteen paperbacks hitting number one. Early in his career, Koontz wrote under an array of pen names, but since the 1980s has written mostly under his own name.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Koontz grew up in poverty under the abuse of an alcoholic father. He started writing at the young age of 25, and sold his works to support his family.[citation needed] Koontz graduated from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania (then known as Shippensburg State College). While in college Koontz converted to the Roman Catholic faith.

In November 1967 he went to work as an English teacher at Mechanicsburg High School. In his spare time he wrote his first novel, Star Quest, which was published in 1968. From there he went on to write over a dozen more science fiction novels.

In the 1970s, Koontz began publishing mainstream suspense and horror fiction, under his own name as well as several pseudonyms. Koontz has stated that he began using pen names after several editors convinced him that authors who switched back and forth between different genres invariably fell victim to "negative crossover" (alienating established fans and simultaneously failing to pick up any new ones). Known pseudonyms used by Koontz during his career include Deanna Dwyer, K. R. Dwyer, Aaron Wolfe, David Axton, Brian Coffey, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Owen West, Richard Paige, Leonard Chris, and Anthony North. As of 2006, many of Koontz's pseudonymous novels are now available under his real name.

Koontz's acknowledged breakthrough novel was Whispers, published in 1980. Since then, ten hardcovers and thirteen paperbacks written by Koontz have reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

He has often quipped that he encourages fans to collect his novels and stories, as long as they don't actually read them.

As of 2006, Koontz resides in Newport Beach in California, (where most of his novels are set), with his wife Gerda.

Early author photos on the back of many of his novels show a balding Koontz with a mustache. After Koontz underwent hair transplantation surgery in the late 1990s, his subsequent books have featured a new clean-shaven appearance with a fuller head of hair.[1] Koontz explained the change by claiming that he was tired of looking like G. Gordon Liddy.

Since 1990 Koontz has contributed almost $15,000 to conservative Republican candidates and causes, most recently to the US Presidential primary campaigns of Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.[2]

[edit] Trixie Koontz

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One of Koontz's pen names is that of his dog, Trixie Koontz. Trixie, a golden retriever born in October 1995, is shown in many of Koontz's book-jacket photos.

Trixie was originally a service dog with Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), a charitable organization that provides service dogs for people with disabilities. After her forced retirement at the age of three due to elbow problems,[3] she was sent to live with the Koontz family. She was a gift from CCI in gratitude of the Koontz's substantial donations, totalling $2,500,000 between 1991 and 2004.[4] Koontz was taken with the charity while he was researching his novel Midnight, a book which included a CCI-trained dog, a black Labrador retriever named Moose. With the Koontzes, Trixie enjoyed a loving home and was walked for an hour each day and brushed for 45 minutes.[4]

Trixie began her own "career" in writing in 2004 when Koontz wrote and edited Life Is Good: Lessons in Joyful Living in her name. The book was published by Yorkville Press and released on October 31. In 2005, Koontz wrote a second book credited to Trixie, Christmas Is Good, also published by Yorkville Press and released on October 31.[citation needed] Both books are written from a supposed canine perspective on the joys of life. The royalties of the books were donated to Canine Companions for Independence.[3] Trixie is also often mentioned in Koontz's official newsletter, Useless News.

In 2007, Trixie contracted terminal cancer creating a tumor in her heart. The Koontzes had her put to sleep outside of their family home on June 30.[3] Koontz plans to write a book about Trixie and to continue publishing "her" humorous essays on his website, which are to be authored by "totos", meaning "Trixie on the Other Side".[3]

[edit] Common elements

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Koontz is renowned for his skill at writing suspenseful page-turners, crafting memorable characters, and blending elements from numerous different genres. Koontz has a tendency to moralize heavily, and frequently uses similar character types and plot structures. Some of the common elements of Koont'z fiction include:

[edit] Characters

  • Until recently, Koontz had only rarely written more than one novel featuring the same characters, the two exceptions being the Black Bat Mystery series featuring Mike Tucker, art dealer and professional thief (Tucker appeared in the novels: Blood Risk, Surrounded, and The Wall of Masks, all written under the pseudonym of Brian Coffey); and the Moonlight Bay Trilogy, whose hero, Christopher Snow, appears in the novels Fear Nothing, Seize the Night, and a proposed but as yet unwritten third entry, Ride the Storm. In recent years, however, Koontz has written four novels featuring the character Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, and Odd Hours), as well as the ongoing Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series, based on a concept for a failed television show that Koontz was briefly involved with, but dropped out of due to creative differences. (What would've been the pilot episode for the series was eventually released to DVD as a stand-alone movie).
  • An unusually smart, intelligent and beautiful female protagonist who tends to take the dominant and assertive role whilst the male protagonist is more sensitive and the weaker of the two, though invariably the more humorous and easy-going (e.g., the roles of Bobby and Julie Dakota in The Bad Place, Detectives Michael Maddison and Carson O'Conner in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, Tommy and Del in Tick Tock, and Jimmy and Lorrie Tock in Life Expectancy).
  • A single mother bringing up her child superbly against all the odds, and a strong male character with the inevitable "love at first sight" (e.g, Laura Shane in Lightning).
  • A capable protagonist/co-protagonist male, sometimes a current member of a police force or one with a military affiliation (Dragon Tears, The Bad Place), or other times a mild mannered person who is revealed to have police or military experience in the past (The Good Guy, Dark Rivers of the Heart)
  • A protagonist whose upbringing was either abusive (or at least extremely dysfunctional), or conversely, extremely idealistic, but who is in either case financially independent or successful in his or her chosen field.
  • One of the primary characters is often a writer (The Taking, Velocity, Fear Nothing, Mr. Murder, The Good Guy, Tick Tock, Odd Thomas").
  • A pre-adolescent (more often than not a girl) possessing "adult wisdom" as a secondary protagonist; Leilani Klonk from One Door Away from Heaven is a prototypical example. Mr. Murder has two such characters in the protagonist's daughters.
  • An irredeemable, sociopathic antagonist who is invariably destroyed by the story's end; usually someone who considers his or her warped, often delusional worldview to be philosophically transcendent (e.g., Edgler Vess from Intensity, Corky Laputa from The Face, Vassago from Hideaway, Bryan Drackman from Dragon Tears, Vince Nasco from Watchers, Preston Maddoc from One Door Away from Heaven, Valis in Velocity and Krait in The Good Guy).
  • An unusually smart or precocious child, one who seems extremely wise or mature for their age, but still retain an unmistakable childish aura (e.g., Chris Packard in Lightning, Aelfric Manheim in The Face, Chrissie Foster in Midnight).
  • A sympathetic character, often but not always a child, who suffers from a physical abnormality (e.g. One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Moonlight Bay Trilogy, Hideaway, Forever Odd), or mental disability (e.g. The Darkest Evening of the Year, By the Light of the Moon, The Bad Place).

[edit] Plot

  • Attempts at plausible, logically consistent explanations for the seemingly fantastical events that occur in most of his novels (very few of Koontz's novels involve the overtly supernatural), often explained by unique genetic traits and natal conditions.
  • Koontz's protagonists often arm themselves with guns to combat the various monsters and madmen they are forced to do battle with. Often a Chiefs Special or Heckler & Koch P7 appear as handguns (Koontz himself is a lifelong gun owner). An exception to this rule, however, is the recurring character Odd Thomas who is in fact afraid of guns.
  • A protagonist having to hide a dead body.
  • A desperate struggle for survival that leads to a final confrontation where good completely vanquishes evil, usually leading to a "happy ending" for the main characters. (an exception would be Dark Rivers of the Heart).
  • A corrupt, often sinister police force.

[edit] Themes

  • Serious themes about the importance of faith, especially faith in God.
  • Characters who follow an unwavering moral compass, but do not conform to organized religion or depend on the law.
  • The ideal that love and compassion can save one from the apparent absurdities of existence and the cruelties of life
  • Love for children by their parents
  • Reflection (sometimes at length) on the decline of modern society in the past twenty to thirty years, either in a dialogue between two characters or in the private musings of the protagonist, sometimes centering the blame on liberal-based tolerance of criminal and/or undesirable activity; free love, drug use, and political correctness are frequent targets (The antagonist of Dragon Tears, for instance, evidently owes not only his superhuman abilities but also his pathological personality to his mother's use of illicit drugs while he was in utero.)
  • A particular high respect for humanity and repugnance for those who degrade any human. Sometimes (as in One Door Away from Heaven) takes the form of slams against his apparent pet peeve, Utilitarian bioethics.
  • A lack of atonement or redemption from the villains and antagonists, coinciding with main characters who are (eventually) clearly depicted as either good or evil with little moral ambiguity. Little sympathy is elicited for the antagonists.

[edit] Other trademarks

  • Koontz is an avid dog lover, and canines (typically an unusually smart Golden or Labrador Retriever) often feature prominently in his works: Fear Nothing, Seize the Night, The Taking, Watchers, Dark Rivers of the Heart, Dragon Tears, One Door Away from Heaven, Tick Tock and The Darkest Evening of the Year are prime examples. Cats have often fared worse in his books (Koontz is allergic to felines), though he has occasionally included cats as characters, most notably the smart feline Mungojerrie in the Christopher Snow novels, Terrible Chester in the Odd Thomas novels and Aristophanes in The Mask.
  • A setting in southern California.
  • A Smith and Wesson .38 caliber Chiefs Special.
  • A Ford or Jeep SUV.
  • A motorhome, usually owned by the villain (Such as Edgler Foreman Vess in Intensity).
  • An ability to travel by some type of understanding of space/time (such as Deucalion in the Frankenstein novels and Shepherd O'Conner and Jillian Jackson in By the Light of the Moon).
  • Vivid, detailed descriptions of the settings' architectural and interior design elements.
  • Strange weather - A climax that coincides with the development of an unseasonable or unusual storm, with the penulimate moment of conflict often occurring during the height of the storm's violence.
  • Amoral scientists using brutalizing techniques (especially upon children) to further their research (Sole Survivor, Frankenstein, The Door to December)
  • References to literature and poetry of which Koontz is a fan. The poetry of T. S. Eliot plays a prominent role in The Taking, and many of the same lines by Eliot are seen in Velocity. Fear Nothing includes a character named Tom Eliot, another reference to the famous poet.
  • Plants and flowers are described in great gardener type detail, and bougainvillea flowers often feature in Dean Koontz's books.
  • Small references to Japan are often made. Such as plants and characters with a Japanese name, or people having Japanese gardens, furniture or enjoying Japanse food and drink.
  • Strange, quirky descriptions, eg. The Darkest Evening of the Year "...but a pair of lamps shed light as lusterless as ashes and the colors were muted as though settled smoke from a long-quenched fire had laid a patina on them."

[edit] Film and television adaptations

Though several of his novels have been adapted either as motion pictures or television movies, Koontz is generally unhappy with most of these adaptations. According to a 1996 interview, Koontz was so unhappy with the final cut of the film adaptation of his novel Hideaway that he now insists on keeping creative control over all subsequent films based on his books.

Film adaptations

[edit] Mailing address

Koontz includes his mailing address in the "About the Author" section of most of his books:

Dean Koontz

P.O. Box 9529

Newport Beach, CA 92658

[edit] Bibliography

Main article: Dean Koontz bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ deankoontz.com. photo gallery. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  2. ^ NEWSMEAT ▷ Dean Koontz's Federal Campaign Contribution Report
  3. ^ a b c d deankoontz.com. Trixie Koontz. Retrieved on 2007-08-01.
  4. ^ a b Ben Fox. Associated Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-01.

[edit] External links

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Persondata
NAME Koontz, Dean Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolfe, Aaron Wolfe; Coffey, Brian; Axton, David; Dwyer, Deanna; Hill, John; Dwyer, K. R.; Nichols, Leigh; Chris, Leonard; West, Owen; Paige, Richard
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1945 (1945-07-09) (age 62)
PLACE OF BIRTH Everett, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH