Koontz News
Dean’s Newport Beach home sold for $10.3 million
October 14, 2020
The circa-1933 house fetched $10.325 million.
Designed by pioneering “Architect to the Stars” Paul R. Williams and later remodeled, this 3,400-square-foot residence with three bedrooms, five bathrooms and seamless indoor-outdoor living areas makes the most of its Balboa Peninsula Point location.
The two-story traditional-style home sits on an oversized 45-foot lot with a patio, dock and dock pavilion.
Most rooms offer a view of the harbor.
Koontz and his wife, Gerda, bought the house in September 1995, property records show, while the couple’s Newport Coast mega-mansion was under construction. In April, the compound sold to Stearns Lending founder Glenn Stearns for an all-time Orange County record of $50 million. The Koontzes held onto the smaller “beach house” for six years and spent “just 30 nights” there, the author wrote in “A Big Little Life.”
Source: The Orange County Register
Dean Participating in the 2020 Miami Book Fair
October 9, 2020
Here’s what you need to know: The complete fair schedule will be available at miamibookfair.com on Oct. 15. You’ll need to register there or at https://miamibookfaironline.com/. Starting Nov. 1 , registered fairgoers will be able to begin building their personal watchlists (like you do on Netflix). You can also complete a profile based on your interests, and the website will recommend authors to you. You’ll find out which events are live and which you can watch anytime.
And on Nov. 15, the site goes live.
Here are just a few of the confirmed authors who will appear at the fair this year:
Fiction: Lee Child; Kevin Kwan; Joyce Carol Oates; Terry McMillan; Ben Okri; Roddy Doyle; Dean Koontz; Mary Gordon; Nelson George.
Source: Miami Herald
Six more Nameless episodes on the way
October 8, 2020
Check out Dean saying that he’s working on six more Nameless stories starting at about 1:11:00 in the recent Otherppl podcast.
What’s New & Updated October 5, 2020
October 5, 2020
In what might be a first, the first US paperback edition of Devoted came out as a trade paperback, not a premium or mass market. Plus, I finally got my hands on an ARC of Elsewhere which is on its way to my shelves. It just so happens that they trade hardcover and CD editions of Elsewhere are in the mail as thy come out tomorrow. Lastly, Dean’s doing some online events this week (see earlier blog posts) to plan on next week’s update being very Elsewhere-centric.
- Devoted trade paperback (formerly “paperback of unknown type”) and more marketing images
- Elsewhere ARC, marketing images, and videos
- Updated entry for A lizard named “Koontz” in Appendix G to include Gothic Blimp Works #3
- Phantoms mention in Richard Laymon’s One Rainy Night
Dean on Amazon Live tomorrow
October 4, 2020
Dean to participate in the 2020 Texas Book Festival
September 28, 2020
This year’s Texas Book Festival will take place as a virtual event with 16 days of programming on Oct. 31-Nov. 15. Festival organizers on Wednesday announced 15 authors who will be featured at the event.
Bestselling suspense writer Dean Koontz will present his latest novel, “Elsewhere.” Ghanaian American novelist Yaa Gyasi, who won a National Book Critics Circle award for her 2016 debut, “Homegoing,” will present the highly anticipated follow-up, “Transcendent Kingdom.” And comedian Michael Ian Black will present “A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son,” an examination of masculinity structured as a letter to his college-bound son.
Austin 360
More via these links:
- Announcing our 2020 Author Lineup!
- Texas Book Festival 2020 full lineup: Matthew McConaughey, David Chang, Julia Alvarez, more
- Texas Book Festival lineup: Matthew McConaughey, chef David Chang, other big names
The Other Emily
September 22, 2020
Looks like Amazon.com has put up pre-order pages for trade hardcover and CD audiobook editions of The Other Emily slated for release on March 23, 2021. Sadly no other details than a category of “Thrillers & Suspense” are given.
Where my ARCs at?
September 20, 2020
Where are the Elsewhere ARCs? I’ve literally seen just one Facebook post from someone who got their hands on one and that’s it. Nothing on eBay. Nothing on NetGalley. Just two weeks out and typically I’d have found one and read it well before now. Anyone have any ideas what’s different this time?
Goodreads Ask the Author
September 19, 2020
Dean’s doing an Ask the Author over on Goodreads. Don’t know how long it will last or how many questions he’ll be answering.
The Duke Locus Collection: What it contains
August 3, 2020
The wonderful librarians at Duke University were able to supply me with copies of the Dean Koontz material from the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Archives. While not every item gets it’s own entry, here’s the complete list of content for the record.
- December 18, 1987 Publishers Weekly pages from “Publishers Weekly The Author Series: Dean Koontz, Traveling many roads to the top of the charts”
- March 12, 1986 Los Angeles Times article “Writer Knows His Place—at the Typewriter”
- October 23, 1989 The Orange County Register “The Dean of Fantasy: How OC’s Dean Koontz toys with the Imagination”
- Face of Fear promotional PBK cover
- “Fair, accurate, and to the point.” (Unpublished letter)
- “It was good to see you in Tucson…” (Unpublished letter)
- “Nice seeing you at ABA.” (Unpublished letter)
- “Some news and a quibble.” (Unpublished letter)
- “Usually, I’m too shy to do this sort of thing…” (Unpublished letter)
- “I know the following letter…” (Unpublished letter)
- “Because I have liked some of her work…” (Unpublished letter)
Source: Locus Science Fiction Foundation Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
Elsewhere ARCs have been released
July 16, 2020
According to Bill Popper who posted this photo on Facebook of their copy, there are now ARC copies of Elsewhere out in the wild.
Happy Birthday Dean!
July 9, 2020
What’s New & Updated June 14, 2020
June 14, 2020
I’m a day early this week because my day job is re-opening to the public tomorrow. So while Monday is typically part of my “weekend” I’ll be back in the building. This also means that next week’s update might be super light but I’ll continue to do my best as I re-adjust back to my “normal” schedule.
- The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy to Appendix D
- “The Sex Machine” by Lee Griffin to Appendix F
Dean sells one home, buys another
June 13, 2020
Dean Koontz Sells California Home to ‘Undercover Billionaire’ Glenn Stearns for $50 Million (Mansion Global)
Dean Koontz picks up another Shady Canyon home in Irvine for $10.5 million
Dean Gets Corny
June 7, 2020
Did you see Dean’s recent tweet and Facebook post about Gerda’s baked corn recipe?
Well did you know that this recipe has been published twice? Check out the entry for The Best Baked Corn.
Oh, and there’s a chance I might have a few spare copies floating around for those interested…
Elsewhere prologue and US cover courtesy of Entertainment Weekly
May 26, 2020
Dean Koontz needs no introduction, but his newest novel does — at least, a small one. The author is set to release the thriller Elsewhere on Oct. 20; it follows a father and daughter who come into possession of a very mysterious object, which the local eccentric who passed it on to them called “the key to everything.” The key comes with a warning that it must never be used, but of course that doesn’t exactly happen.
EW is exclusively revealing the cover above, and below you can read the first excerpt, of the novel’s creepy prologue.
Read the prologue @ Entertainment Weekly
Dean’s statement on his “prediction” of COVID-19
April 9, 2020
The end-all be-all blog post debunking how Dean Koontz “predicted” the coronavirus
March 4, 2020
It would be impossible for me to send the following response to everyone tweeting that Dean “predicted” the coronavirus:
Nope. In 1981 version it was “Gorki-400” from Russia. Was not Whuan from China until 1996 revision. And images of 2020 date is from a Sylvia Browne book, not a Koontz book.
By ya know what? I’ve sent it to a heck of a lot of people. Trouble is, my little response doesn’t ever cover all of the claims presented and doesn’t give me a lot of room to back it up. So, henceforth, my new response tweet will be “nope” and a link to this page. Enjoy!
Claim: Dean predicted the corona virus in his 1981 book The Eyes of Darkness
A couple of base-level problems:
- Coronavirus is a family of viruses. SARS is a coronavirus. MERS is a coronavirus. Even some forms of the common cold. The current virus is COVID-19. So at best, he “predicted” COVID-19, not coronaviruses. (Way to start an argument Mr. Pedantic.)
- In the 1981 book The Eyes of Darkness by Leigh Nichols (yes a pseudonym of Dean’s) the virus is named “Gorki-400” and is from Russia. Russians are convenient bad guys in 1981 due to the existence of the Soviet Union. (Ah the simpler times of the Regan-era.)
- The original Twitter post that started all this used a photo of a vaguely current mass market paperback edition. (Can’t tell what printing the tweeter used but that edition was released in 1996 and was the “current” cover until 2008.) It’s obvious the author of that tweet saw the 1981 copyright date in a much more recent edition and thought “Hey! He wrote this is 1981! How prescient!”
Claim: Ok, it was changed from Gorki-400 to Wuhan-400 in the re-release under his own name in 1989?
Yes, the book was re-released under his own name by Dark Harvest in 1989. Guess what? Still “Gorki-400” in that edition. It wasn’t until the 1996 re-re-release that the name of the virus was changed to “Wuhan-400” and it’s origin moved to China. (The relevant Snopes article originally said “1989.” Later said it had changed “by 2008.” As of this writing it just points out that the Amazon.com preview that shows “Wuhan-400” is from a 2008 release.)
Claim: In The Eyes of Darkness Dean specified that a world-wide virus would happen in 2020.
More recent versions of the twitter post have added an additional photo of some text stating “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like virus will spread throughout the globe…” In no way do any of these re-tweets point out this this image is not from a page of any edition of The Eyes of Darkness, nor even of any Dean Koontz book. It’s a page from 2008’s End of Days by Sylvia Browne. I’ll let you read about her and her “predictions.” (I’ll wait.) Oh, and that’s just a few years after SARS (2003) so hell, I could have “predicted” it would happen again.
Claim: But “Wuhan-400.” “In around 2020.” 20 times 20 = 400
Nope. Not making this up. It’s out there. Score one for frickin’ numerology.
Claim: So he revised the book and wrote “Wuhan-400” in 1996. That’s still a 24-year-old prediction. What say you?
A few final points:
- Dean revised a whole bunch of his older novels in the mid 1990s.
- By 1996 the Soviet Union was no more so who’s the new “bad guy” for the story that would make sense at the time? China.
- The Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in 1956. A minimal amount of research in 1995, even sans-internet, would have made that a good choice of a “source” within China.
Lastly, if you’re still not convinced by all of this it still couldn’t have been Dean who “predicted” it first. The Simpsons beat him by 3 years in 1993. Better yet, the film Akira beat that by another 5 years in 1988. I’ll let you decide.
Update 27 March 2020: Dean’s opinion on the matter…
Snopes says: Mostly False
February 19, 2020
Please, can we just stop with this nonsense now?
Claim
Author Dean Koontz predicted the 2020 new coronavirus outbreak in his 1981 novel “The Eyes of Darkness.”
Rating
Mostly False
What’s True
An image shows a genuine page from Dean Koontz’s novel “The Eyes of Darkness” containing the words “Wuhan-400.”
What’s False
However, Dean Koontz did not predict an outbreak of a new coronavirus. Other than the name, this fictional biological weapon has little in common with the virus that caused an outbreak in 2020.
Read the full article, which even talks about Gorki-400, @ Snopes.com
Whuan-400 a.k.a. Gorki-400
February 17, 2020
Read this post instead. It’s got a lot more detail.
The end-all be-all blog post debunking how Dean Koontz “predicted” the coronavirus
So yeah, I didn’t think I’d write another post about this wild conspiracy theory that Dean “accurately predicted” the coronavirus but here we are again. The reason I am is that folks are getting a simple basic fact wrong: The fact that Dean wrote about Wuhan-400 in 1981 when The Eyes of Darkness was originally published. Turns out, the virus in the book was originally from Russia and named Gorki-400. It wasn’t named Wuhan-400 until Dean revised the book in 1996. Here’s four examples, two of the original text, and two of the revised text.
