Home | The Blog | Dean Koontz on Life, Literature & His New Book 'Saint Odd' (INTERVIEW)
Dean Koontz on Life, Literature & His New Book 'Saint Odd' (INTERVIEW)
January 13, 2015
Author Dean Koontz has sold more than 450 million books. He says of his best-selling success: “I’ve always been driven, probably for a lot of reasons, and one of those is, unquestionably: I’ve always loved the English language.”
Seven books later, the tale of Odd Thomas is now complete.
It was a sad day to finish the series because I loved the character so much. On the other hand, with the first book, I made a promise to the character, and it needed to be fulfilled, and it could only be fulfilled if the series came to an end.
Now that the series has concluded, some readers might determine that you’ve just finished your masterpiece. What do you think?
(Laughs) I think there have been so many books that it gets very difficult to make those kinds of assessments, at least for me. People ask me, “What is your favorite character or book, whatever?” To a degree, you have to almost say all of them because, even though I write pretty quickly, I’m still choosing to spend a lot of time with these characters, in these stories. I will say, though, that Odd Thomas was special to me. He wasn’t always well received, though. When I turned the first book in to my (previous) publisher, there were people there who so dislike the character and the conflict that they wouldn’t even talk to me about it. In me, that triggers a certain response.
