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Badges of summer: Join our two-month quest to squeeze the most from the season
July 5, 2014
READ A RANDOM COTTAGE NOVEL
Earning this merit badge is easy. If you’re heading to the cottage this summer, don’t pack any books. Leave your e-reader at home, leave the magazines in the mailbox and leave it to fate. One of the peculiar joys of cottage life is to submit to the reading habits of the previous occupants.
You know the kind of books I’m talking about: Wedged between a Monopoly set dating from the 1970s and a neglected cribbage board, these books gather dust 10 months of the year. Hardcovers too heavy to bring home, water-stained thrillers, paperbacks with the back cover torn off, fantasy series that never made it to HBO, historical bodice rippers an aunt forgot in the guest bedroom.
There are certain authors who are native to cottage bookshelves: Dean Koontz; Patricia Highsmith; Stephen King (Needful Things is just about as common as mosquitoes). These aren’t the kind of books you’ll discuss at your next dinner party, but this is one of the purest reading experiences life offers, unencumbered by Goodreads or the New York Times Book Review. These are books that save you on afternoons when it seems the rain will never end, on evenings when there’s nothing good on TV, on mornings when all you want to do is stay in bed just a little longer. Best of all, it’s an opportunity to read outside your comfort zone, take a chance on a genre or author you’ve never tried before.
Read the full article @ National Post.
Jim Engster interviews Dean on WWNO
July 4, 2014
#1 New York Times Best Selling Author Dean Koontz has done it again with The City — a riveting soul-stirring story of Jonah Kirk. On today’s show, Koontz speaks of his latest novel which he says is his wife’s favorite.
Listen to the full show @ WWNO.org. The interview with Dean starts at approximately 37:00.
Call Me Ishmael: First Lines From New Books
July 4, 2014
“My name is Jonah Ellington Basie Hines Eldridge Wilson Hampton Armstrong Kirk.” —From “The City” by Dean Koontz
Read the full article @ The Wall Street Journal. (Which uses the original cover design in the article, so I do so here.)
Small error in The City ARC
July 4, 2014
With the number of ARCs I’ve read (as opposed to proofs) I’ve really not found a lot of errors in the texts. However I spotted this one at just about the end of The City‘s ARC. I’ve double-checked it against the trade hard cover and it was fixed.
What I find most interesting is the typo itself, “11” instead of “ll”. I’ve mainly experienced this type of error when it comes to optical character recognition (OCR) post scanning a text, as opposed to manual transcription. It makes me wonder why OCR would have been done on what I assume was a manuscript that was submitted electronically.
Interview re: The City on Patheos.com
July 4, 2014
Dean Koontz’ “The City”: A World Full of Mysterious Promise
We live in an age where we believe that science and technology have made us aware of all that is, but the world is a deeply-layered place, of which we understand only the tiniest part.
By Leo Brunnick, June 30, 2014
Dean Koontz sat down with Leo Brunnick (founder and CEO of Patheos) to talk about his latest novel, The City.
This new release continues Koontz’ tradition of writing stories that are exciting and thrilling and scary, while at the same time full of hope and meaning. The City is a story told through the adult eyes of Jonah Kirk as he relates some things that happened to him and his family when he was a boy. Set in a prototypical American city in the 1960s, The City tells a tale of the evil that is present in the world, but also shows that evil can be offset by the far-greater goodness and love that is also there, even where that good is often quiet and unnoticed, and makes the headlines far less often. Avid readers of Koontz’ work notice the strong spiritual messages and symbolism that permeate his work, and in The City Koontz gives a view of the world, of divinity, and of the power of love that readers will find very moving. Expect to cry a lot when reading this book …In many of your books, and perhaps increasingly so as your work progresses, you show the presence of the Eternal, of Divinity, in nature, animals, relationships, and moments. How do you express that in a story like The City?
The stories I write—aside from the specifics of the story itself—talk about the operation of grace in our lives, which I see around me all the time. And the older I get, the more I see it. I think as you get older, and if you keep yourself alert and aware of what’s going on around you, you gain some wisdom, and it helps you see that.
With The City I wanted to tell a story that was about all the different types of love that exist, about the reality of evil, and about the magic that cities that comes from the operation of grace in our lives.
The City started as a much smaller book—basically as an e-single to help promote my previous book (Innocence) – with the connection being that this was in the same “universal city.” But as I started telling the story, I became enchanted with the voice of the character, this young piano prodigy Jonah Kirk, and about fifty pages into writing I realized this was going to be a novel. As I wrote, I had one of those experiences that writers can’t call forth on demand, and which certainly don’t happen to me very often—what psychologists call being in a “flow state” where it seems like you’re hardly writing the piece, that you’re more of a conduit for it. It made the experience of writing this book exhilarating from beginning to end.
Read the full interview @ Patheos.com.
Gugu’s raw talent
July 4, 2014
The actress seems to be taking that lesson to heart. After Crowne, she made the fantasy mystery Odd Thomas, based on the Dean Koontz novel, with Tim Robbins and Willem Dafoe in New Mexico. And just this week, Beyond the Lights, in which she plays a young popstar groomed for fame, was released.
Read the full article @ DestinyConnect.com.
Now on Facebook
July 3, 2014
If you prefer you can now follow the book’s progress on Facebook. Even if you prefer to follow along here, if you are a Facebook user, please take a moment to like the page to help get the content out to more people. Thanks!
Obscure Koontz Essay to be Reprinted by Cemetery Dance
July 2, 2014
I had a little something to do with the Dean Koontz contribution to this volume. I’ll hold off explaining exactly how for a later post. Click on the cover (right) if you’d like to head on over to Cemetery Dance’s site to place your order.
***
Detours
edited by Brian James Freeman
Cover artwork by Tomislav Tikulin
Featuring Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Kelley Armstrong, Michael Koryta, David Morrell, Michael Marshall and Michael Marshall Smith, Chet Williamson, Poppy Z. Brite, Stewart O’Nan, and Owen King!
Featuring artwork by Mark Edward Geyer, Donn Albright, Erin S. Wells, Glenn Chadbourne, Will Renfro, Jill Bauman, Chris Odgers, Steve Gilberts, Alex McVey, and Keith Minnion!
Important Note for Collectors:
Both editions are signed by the editor and the artists, and there are no other editions planned at this time.
About the Book:
Every now and then your favorite author takes a detour while writing a new novel: a chapter gets chopped, a connected short story is dreamed up, an essay about the book’s origins is composed, or an oddity is created on a day off.
Collected here for the first time are detours by Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Kelley Armstrong, Michael Koryta, David Morrell, Michael Marshall and Michael Marshall Smith, Chet Williamson, Poppy Z. Brite, Stewart O’Nan, and Owen King.
Join these bestselling authors as they share the other works they wrote while they were writing the books you already know and love.
Table of Contents:
“Introduction” by Brian James Freeman
“Memory” by Stephen King
“When I was Twenty-four and Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” by Dean Koontz
“Peter and PTR: Two Deleted Prefaces and an Introduction” by Peter Straub
“An Abandoned Fragment” by Ray Bradbury
“The Hunt” by Kelley Armstrong
“Winter Takes All” by Michael Koryta
“Dead Image” by David Morrell
“The Curious Odyssey of James Deacon (AKA James Dean)”/ “Where Darkness is the Only Light” by David Morrell
“Spares: The Missing First Chapter” by Michael Marshall Smith
“The Straw Men: Excerpt from Ch. 29, First Draft” by Michael Marshall
“Ash Wednesday: The Missing Chapter” by Chet Williamson
“Lost Chapter From the First Draft of Lost Souls” by Poppy Z. Brite
“The Ghost Ship: An Unfinished Manuscript” by Stewart O’Nan
“If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty’s Own Story of The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty
“The Curator” by Owen King
“A Night’s Work” by Clive Barker
Loads Of Women Running From Houses: The Gothic Romance Paperback
June 28, 2014
I was hoping at least one Deanna Dwyer cover would have made an appearance but alas not.
THE Gothic horror tradition can be traced back to any number of sources. Mathew Lewis’ Monk is probably the best starting point: it has every Gothic convention you can imagine: darkened tombs, black misty forests, haunted hallways, satanic clergy. It would make one helluva movie, but it’s so nonlinear that I honestly don’t see how you could translate it to a screenplay.
It was Ann Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) that really serves as the impetus for the “women running from houses” genre. What exactly is the “women running from houses” genre? I’m glad you asked. It refers to Gothic romance novels (generally paperback) which WITHOUT EXCEPTION pictured a woman running from a house on the cover. It’s really a bit insane when you think about it: for several decades an entire genre (a quite popular one at that) featured the exact same cover with very little variation. It’s mental.
Read the full article @ Anorak.co.uk.
‘Odd Thomas’ did a lot to prove that ‘odd’ can still be a lot of fun
June 28, 2014
Here’s a late-comer to the Odd Thomas film reviews.
With this film, ‘Odd Thomas,’ it was more because of a legal issue that it wasn’t able to succeed on the big screen.That mainly has to do with the fact that it was never given a chance to.Overall, though, it is a shame because I would have liked to see how the public would have received a film like this.
Read the full review @ Maryville Daily Forum.
Another The City giveaway
June 28, 2014
Random House has copies to give away. Head over to Random House Reader’s Circle to enter.
'Odd Thomas’ And The Historical Roots Of Bodachs
June 28, 2014
Being a monster nut, I was particularly intrigued by the bodachs. I knew the name “bodach” sounded familiar, so after I watched the film I went to my little library of monster books and started flipping through them. As it turns out, “bodach” is an old Scottish term for a “bogeyman” – and of course, “bogeyman” is in itself just a variant of “boggard” or “boggart” – a type of goblin or household spirit. However, the bodach isn’t just any goblin. Even in Scottish folklore, they can appear as omens of death.
Read the full article @ Suvudu.com.
Charnel House editions of The City now available for ordering
June 25, 2014
Interesting marketing for Saint Odd
June 25, 2014
From the recent “Random Revelations” newsletter/advertisement from Random House aimed at librarians: Saint Odd marketed as an “adult book for teens.” Discuss…
Lots of Intensity
June 20, 2014
I think the one title that I have the most number of editions of is Intensity. Here’s a slideshow of all of the editions in my collection and some related material. (In no particular order.)
Dean Welcomes You to The City
June 14, 2014
Horror in Vancouver: Jeff Goldblum and that Aerosmith chick in Britannia Mine
June 14, 2014
Vancouver has not been kind to Dean Koontz.
First you had his awesome 1987 suspense novel, Watchers, being turned into a godawful Corey Haim vehicle up here in 1988.
Then seven years later you had his fine 1982 supernatural thriller, Hideaway, becoming the type of B.C.-shot trainwreck he tried to sue to get his name off of.
As the Vancouver correspondent for Fangoria when they shot Hideaway back in 1994, I had no idea it was going to wind up being crap. I just wanted to go on the local set and hang out with Jeff Goldblum for a while.
Not to mention that young lady from those hugely popular Aerosmith videos, Alicia Silverstone.
So here’s a shortened version of the set-visit piece I wrote for Fango 20 years ago. Please don’t feel like you have to actually watch Hideaway after reading it.
Read the full article @ Straight.com.
Trio of quality books explore facets of faith
June 14, 2014
Best-selling novelist Dean Koontz frequently includes spiritual struggles in his novels, and Innocence (Bantam Books, 2014, 338 pages, $28) is no exception. Here we meet Addison Goodheart, a young man driven to live beneath the streets of a great city because his face repels his fellow human beings. Raised by an alcoholic mother who could barely stand the sight of him, and then adopted by a man with a similar likeness, Addison survives by emerging from his shelter only at night, hiding his face and avoiding contact with people.
Until he meets Gwyneth. She is a young girl, an heiress, who is being pursued by a maniac who wants what remains of her fortune. Together she and Addison fight back against this man and his thugs. While we follow them in their flight through the city, Addison sees what he calls the Clears and the Fogs, which seem to be angels and demons.
To reveal more of the plot of Innocence would give away the ending. Suffice it to say that Koontz, like Evans, is not for everyone, but again he clearly appeals to tens of thousands of readers.
Read the full article @ Smoky Mountain News.
Demon Seed trade paperback out in 2015
June 14, 2014
Amazon.com has listed a Berkley trade paperback edition of Demon Seed with a release date of 6 January 2015. ISBN: 978-0425253816, cover price $15.00. No cover art yet.
A few more Cemetery Dance eBay auctions
June 11, 2014
Don’t worry, I already own these items so you won’t be bidding against me. 😉