Bookreporter.com interviews Dean Koontz (January 14, 2000)

Interviewed by Joe Hartlaub


Masterful author and quirky character Dean Koontz impresses us yet again with his new book, FALSE MEMORY, a book that is about, among other things, a woman who suffers from a rare and peculiar disease called autophobia --- which the author defines as the fear of oneself. Chilled yet? Only Koontz could juggle the logistics of this odd premise and only TBR Senior Writer Joe Hartlaub could tackle the enviable task of interviewing his favorite author (I don't think he'd stand for anyone else doing the asking). In this interview find out about Koontz's FALSE MEMORY, what an atypical day of writing is like for him (it has to do with walking his pet crocodile), which Koontz books will be peppering the silver screen, and more in the latest and greatest Koontz conversation.

TBR: I'm going to have to confess...my favorite passage in a novel published in 1999 was in FALSE MEMORY, wherein Martie Rhodes, in the grip of an autophobic episode, makes her home "safe." It read more like a case study account than a work of fiction. Did you go through your home and do an inventory of dangerous objects as preparation for creation of this passage?

DK: A few years ago, when I was writing INTENSITY, I had to do an inventory of the culinary tools and gadgets in an ordinary kitchen. My lead character, Chyna Shepherd, had been fettered, handcuffed, and chained to a kitchen chair and table by serial killer, and she wasn't too keen about waiting around to see what he might serve for dinner. First she freed herself from the table, then from the chair. (By the way, as research, I had myself cuffed and chained to exactly the same table as in the book and spent a looong morning getting loose of it; Chyna managed to free herself more quickly, because she had the advantage of my experience!) Anyway, once free of the table and chair, she was still chained and cuffed, and she needed to find something with which to release the cuff lock. The key opening in a set of handcuffs is too small to accept a knife blade, scissors, or most other things that you might think would work as a makeshift pick. The tines of a fork don't work because you only need one, and the others interfere. After a long, frustrating search, drawer by drawer, I found a set of poultry struts, which worked on my cuffs --- and later on Chyna's. In the course of the search, I gradually became impressed with the fact that everything in a kitchen is, to one degree or another, a reasonably good weapon. Well, with the exception of whisks and rubber spatulas. You wouldn't want to battle an armed intruder with just a whisk. Everything else, however, is wickedly sharp or had the heft and balance to serve as a bludgeon. I suspect it would be a mistake for anyone to mess with Julia Child; she probably knows a thousand ways to cave in your skull and gut you without being in the least distracted from the preparation of a superb crème brulee. Anyway, when I wrote Martie's descent into phobic panic, in FALSE MEMORY, I had her begin her weird odyssey in her kitchen, because I vividly remembered my research for INTENSITY. After that, a quick walk through the rest of the house revealed that, indeed, even the most beautifully decorated, serene, and welcoming room contains a stunning array of fearsome weapons if one has even the most latent talent for homicide.

TBR: Autophobia --- (1) fear of being alone; (2) fear of being egotistical; (3) fear of oneself --- is a personality disorder that has attracted very little attention in the mainstream press. Was there an impetus for you to use the topic as a vehicle for FALSE MEMORY?

DK: Years ago, while I was doing research for another book on an entirely different subject, I encountered a passing reference to autophobia. Upon first seeing the word, I assumed that those who suffered from this rare condition were afraid of Buicks. When I discovered the real nature of the disorder, I was fascinated. If you're afraid of flying, you don't get on an airplane. If you're afraid of horses, then you don't ride. If you're afraid of female television evangelists, you can avoid turning on the TV every Sunday morning and stay away from the false-eyelashes display whenever passing by the Neiman Marcus cosmetics department. But if you're afraid of yourself, there's nowhere to hide. I knew at once that this was ideal material for a novelist, especially for this novelist, but I needed a few years to figure out how to use it to the best of my abilities.

TBR: On a related note, were there any autophobic-related reference works which you used while writing FALSE MEMORY?

DK: The condition is rare, so I had to fine-comb the psychological literature and subsequently enquire among therapists to find people who had firsthand experience with the disorder. A couple times, I was briefly misunderstood, and because of who I am, the therapist made the assumption that I had at last cracked under the weight of my own dark fiction, and that I was suffering from autophobia myself. And insisting that you're seeking the information only as background for a book can sound suspiciously like the claim that you're inquiring about impotence cures not for yourself but for a friend.

TBR: A shadowy, secondary theme of your novels for some time now has been the behind the scenes involvement of what we will call for simplicity's sake the Institute --- referred to in FALSE MEMORY as the Bellon-Tockland Institute. The "Institute," while not "onstage," if you will, for long periods of time in your novels, nonetheless exerts considerable influence over events. Do you plan to keep the Institute as a shadowy background figure in your novels, or will you will ever delve at length into the secrets behind the stacked-stone wall?

DK: In the middle of writing FALSE MEMORY, I laughed out loud when I realized that the Bellon-Tockland Institute wasn't a government body but an academic think tank stuffed full of megalomaniacal but well-meaning psychologists and sociologists, funded by a consortium of universities. Not Big Brother, but Big Professor. In the books where The Institute or its equivalent plays a role, I'm making the point that we live in a century during which we have increasingly entrusted the running of society to "experts," because those same experts have convinced us that we're too dumb or too narrowly educated to make sound judgments on many subjects. Yet these experts, these supposedly best and brightest, have routinely let themselves be swept into irrational thought and brutal action by grand theories and by noble-sounding ideologies, resulting in the destruction of freedom, war, and mass murder on a scale unthinkable in previous centuries. I wouldn't doubt that the Institute will show up again, in future books, though there's no such paranoia-inducing organization in the book I'm working on now.

TBR: Do you plan, in the foreseeable future, to return to Moonlight Bay, and more specifically, Christopher Snow, featured in FEAR NOTHING and SEIZE THE NIGHT?

DK: I'm half way through RIDE THE STORM, the third Christopher Snow story, but another book will appear between FALSE MEMORY and RIDE. I must say, I never anticipated the enormously positive response I've received from the first two books. They are different, after all, and the characters in them are unconventional for a suspense novel, so I expected that the tone of these books would seem like a sour note to some readers who wanted only what they've seen before. Yet that hasn't been the reaction at all. I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work. Each of the first two Snow books, however, have drawn nearly double the usual volume of mail, and out of that correspondence, only eleven readers, to date, have complained. Most of those who complained didn't perceive the humor in the books. Since humor is the essential coping mechanism for Chris Snow, since it is at the heart of all his relationships with his friends, and since it is as saturated through the events of the story as is suspense, I'm a little surprised anyone could read the books and not at least recognize the comic elements. You might not share my sense of humor, but I'd expect you to know that with these books --- as with, say TICKTOCK or MR. MURDER --- I'm wearing two hats: my suspense-novelist fedora and my comic-novelist cap with pompon.

TBR: Walk us through a typical writing day for you --- walk us through an atypical writing day.

DK: A typical writing day begins at either 7:00 or 8:30, depending on whether it's my turn to walk with the dog. Trixie, our golden retriever, takes either Gerda or me on a brisk one-hour walk every morning, and in return for giving us this needed exercise, she receives a half hour of brushing, combing, paw-cleaning --- and as much belly rubbing as she can con out of us. I've found that the days I walk Trixie are often the most productive, even though I get to the computer 90 minutes later, because a long walk and grooming with a well-mannered dog is a Zen experience that leaves you refreshed and in a creative frame of mind. I then have breakfast at my desk and work straight through the day until 6:00 or 6:30. I never take lunch, because food at midday leaves me feeling sluggish; happily, this has made it possible for me to keep the 30-inch waistline with which I graduated college --- although skipping lunch hasn't done anything to prevent my face from becoming a textbook example of the pernicious effect of gravity. I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing, trimming page 1 repeatedly until I feel I can't do better with pace or language, and only then moving on to page 2. This means anywhere from twenty to fifty passes at each page before proceeding to the next. At the end of each chapter, I print out and pencil the hard copy four or five times, because I see things on the page that I didn't see on the screen. Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as 6 or 7 pages on a very good day; the average is probably 3 pages.

DK: An atypical writing day? It's my turn to walk the crocodile. We haven't gone two blocks before it attacks and devours a neighbor. The leash is torn out of my hand, and Homer (the croc) races from street to street as though afflicted by reptile dementia, with me in frantic pursuit. Homer's impetuous gambol ends in tragedy when he is run over by a garbage truck, and my morning is shot because it takes three hours to persuade the operator of the local pet cemetery that a cherished and pampered pet crocodile has every right to be buried among calico cats and cockapoos --- not to mention the half hour required to offer sympathy to the widow of the neighbor who was eaten by Homer and to present her with a properly inscribed copy of my latest novel by way of apology. Exhausted, I return home, wondering how I'm going to break the bad news about poor Homer to Gerda, who was the first to cradle him in her palm when, as a baby, he chewed his way out of his egg and savagely bit her thumb. When I step through the front door, however, I forget all about Homer, because a large amorphous mass or shape changing protoplasm, out of the Jurassic period, is coming across the foyer toward the dining room. Caught, it tries to deceive me by morphing into a nine-foot-tall replica of Richard Simmons and barking out aerobic-exercise command. I have some experience with beasts of this ilk, and I am not so easily fooled. This ensues a violent, at times terrifying, at times tedious, at times horrific, at times sentimental, smelly, muck-spattered, noisy, heart-stopping, kidney-purging epic battle for survival that comes to a sudden halt when Gerda accidentally discovers that the shape changer's supple flesh dissolves into a foul-smelling and lifeless slime if hit with the foamy spray from a shaken can of Diet Pepsi. Then it's after four o'clock when the guys from Ned's Emergency Carpet Cleaners finally leave with all their noisy equipment. When at last I get upstairs to my study, my clone is waiting there with a Glock machine pistol, determined to eliminate me and take my place. The guys from Ned's Emergency Carpet Cleaners aren't a mile away before they have to turn around, come back, and haul all their equipment into the house again. One of the cops and two of the technicians from the medical examiner's office, who are dealing with the lookalike corpse, admit that they are longtime readers of mine, so I have to sign several of the police photographer's polaroids of the dead clone for them. Now it's almost six o'clock; my office carpet reeks of the cedar-based chemicals used to clean it, and I'm a little dizzy. I'm concerned about the cost and disruption that we'll have to incur to repair all the bullet holes in the walls and furniture, and this inhibits my creativity. After an hour at the keyboard, at the start of a new chapter, I've managed only to write four words that please me: The large butternut squash. . . But I have no idea where this scene is going to lead. Is the important issue the size of the squash, it's very largeness? Or should we be more concerned that it is a butternut squash, rather than another variety? Or perhaps the issues of utmost importance is the fact that a squash of any variety or any size will play a major role in this suspense novel. Is this squash an ominous development or a foreshadowing of hope and salvation for the protagonist, or merely a metaphor that will not profoundly affect the plot? By seven o'clock, I need a drink. This atypical writing day is over.

TBR: Do you have any film or television projects in the works?

DK: Filming has wrapped on a miniseries of SOLE SURVIVOR for the Fox network, starring Billy Zane, John McGinley, and Gloria Reuben, and perhaps it will air in the May sweeps if postproduction can be completed in time. In the spring, filming starts on BLACK RIVER, based on my novella of the same; this is supposed to be the first of a series of two-hour movies, each stand-alone, but all exploring events in the same town in northern California. Other things are always percolating, but after too many dreadful film adaptations and only a couple of good ones, I no longer spend any serious time, intellect, or emotional capital on film adaptations. A great movie adaptation would be a pleasure, but I'm no longer at a point in my career where it would have any significant impact.

TBR: What are you reading now?

DK: THE LIFE OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE by Daniel Stashower and THE LAST DANCE by Ed McBain. I'm not a nut about Sherlock Holmes, but I've long been intrigued by Doyle. I've read every book McBain -- and Evan Hunter -- has ever written, which must be close to a hundred by now, and I hope he hangs in there to produce another hundred.

TBR: Is there a book you love so much you wish you had written it first?

DK: Lots of them. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY by James Cain, probably twenty books by John D. MacDonald, A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame. Hundreds more.

TBR: Can you give us an update on any of your upcoming literary projects?

DK: I'm half finished with RIDE THE STORM, the third Christopher Snow novel, but before that, late this year, Bantam will publish a book that I'll wrap later this spring. It's titled FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE, and it's kept me on the edge of my seat and continually surprised from the day I started it. It's been one of those rare stories that goes so well that some days I find myself in a flow state, getting it down with less struggle than usual. Fortunately, there have been no atypical writing days on this one...so far.