After Dean Koontz had taught English for a year, his wife, Gerda Ann Cerra, who was also his high-school sweetheart, volunteered to support him for five years while he tested his ability to be a writer.
That was back in the 1960s. Today, 17 million copies of Koontz's novels are sold each year, and 200 million copies have been sold worldwide.
Obviously, the five-year experiment worked.
At the age of 55, Koontz has written 60 novels, including "False Memory," "The Bad Place," "Intensity" and his newly released "From the Corner of His Eye." Seven of his novels have occupied the top spot on the New York Times best-seller list for multiple weeks.
The prolific Koontz works very hard, writing 10 hours a day, six days a week. Not because he has to, but because he loves his work.
In an interview with the Deseret News from his home in Southern California, Koontz spoke candidly about his astounding career.
Although he regularly writes about murder and mayhem, he said he also focuses on good people who serve others. "To write accurately about life, you have to have suspense. Some writers think it is tacky or beneath them to write suspense, but it is the most fundamental experience we all share. You write not only about the things a villain might do, but the things that happen to all of us. There is nearly always an element of uplift in my stories. I don't want the reader to be completely attracted to the romance of evil."
In his newest book, Koontz focuses heavily on a woman named Agnes Lampion, to whom he refers as "the closest thing to a saint to ever walk the earth."
"Both my mother and my wife are in Agnes. Sometimes, I wonder if my wife can be real. She's so entirely honest and free of self-interest. I wanted to write about a character like that."
On the other hand, his dad, Ray Koontz, was "a violent alcoholic, guilty of unspeakable behavior. He was a sociopath who lived for his pleasure alone. His emotions were fake. He made two attempts to kill me, then ended up in a psychiatric ward. But he influenced me in many ways."
His villain in "Corner of His Eye" is Junior Cain, a young man who starts out looking like any healthy, successful young man but is soon revealed to be a sociopath. "Junior thinks every woman is after him," said Koontz. "He is a great womanizer. I know that part of the character came right out of my dad."
Koontz wanted to write from the time he was 8 years old. "Books gave me early pleasure. Writers became heroes for me. I grew up thinking if I could do that, it would be the best thing I could do. In a back-door sort of way, Dad gave me my career."
The author does extensive research for each novel and retains what he reads. "Ironically, I hated libraries and research when I was in college (at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania). When I wrote a paper, I'd make up the bibliography, and I never got caught at it!
"Now I take great pleasure in research. I love looking up the most arcane detail."
His writing is character-driven. "I start a book with a premise and something I'm interested in saying about life. I have to care about the people in the story. I have a character or two I fall in love with, then I jump off a cliff. I just trust in the characters when they come alive. There is a mystical quality to it. It fascinates me, which is why I keep doing it."
In spite of the serious tone of his books, Koontz freely uses satire, even with villains. "It's not even borderline satire. It plunges all the way in. We all cope with our problems every day with humor. If you can laugh with the lead characters, you'll be afraid for them when danger appears."
One of Koontz's hallmarks is his incomparable ability to surprise the reader. "If you can shudder at something and then laugh out loud on the next page, it keeps you emotionally involved in the story. Besides, I have to entertain myself, too. I have a low boredom threshold."
Like all writers, Koontz occasionally faces "writer's block," but he doesn't worry about it. "I sometimes have a week without finishing a page. I never write fewer than 30 drafts. But writer's block is always the same problem — self-doubt. We all have it. There are days when I leave impressions of my head in the drywall in my office."
Before he tackled his latest novel, Koontz was thinking about interconnectedness — quantum mechanics. "The chaos theory tells us the world is so interconnected that the actions of a butterfly in Tokyo leads to weather changes in Chicago. One day, it dawned on me that human relationships indicate all the same interconnectedness. Human life is amazingly interconnected. So the new book required an immense cast of characters — and none can be subplots. They have to to have great weight in the lives of all people."
When Koontz was having trouble meeting his publication date, he was contacted by the Dream Foundation, a group that grants wishes to adults with terminal illnesses. "They said a woman in Iowa who was dying of lung cancer was a fan of mine and wanted to meet me. I couldn't say no to that — no matter how tight my schedule was. So she came out to see me three days before I finished the book. I had a wonderful day with her and her family. It dawned on me how many things you do in your life affect people you have never met. That visit seemed necessary for me to finish the book."
At the end of his new book, Koontz was "wildly exhausted. You say, 'I don't know if I want to put myself through this again.' But two weeks later, you can't wait to get started on another one. It's been said that the urge to write is a disease. I believe it."
Since October, he has been at work on a new novel, to be titled, "One Door Away From Heaven," a story about "a sense of hope, but with a noirish quality to it. It is about redemption, people deeply troubled, whose lives have not gone as they hoped they would.
E-MAIL: dennis@desnews.com