This Is What Mystical Writing Feels Like (Dean Koontz Interview)

I'm sitting here in the library of Dean Koontz, who's written more than 100 novels and sold more than 500 million copies of those books. Now, this is my second time having Dean on the show. The first time we talked about writing practices, routines, rituals, the standard stuff we do on How I Write. But this time was different. [music] We talked about the supernatural, mysticism, and how to cultivate a sense of wonder both in life and on the page.

And the vibe of this conversation is like two friends [music] sitting in a cabin, old friends talking about life, the world, and How I Write.

I want to start by talking about your decision to stop outlining. It seemed to be a big part of your early career, then you're like, "No, I'm not going to do it. Give my characters free will." >> Well, it There were a lot of reasons for it, but one of the key ones is that uh uh that was a time where I was published and selling well enough that I could write an outline and give it to the publisher, and they would give me a contract and pay half the money up front, then I would write based on their money.

But book after book, your imagination fires greater as the book goes along. Things change. Things get better. The book gets deeper. Then you deliver it, and the publisher says, "This isn't exactly like what we bought." Which annoyed the hell out of me. I think I'm doing something better than I sold you, but you're just stuck on that idea. There have been changes. And that was one of the big motivators. I found I just said, "No, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not opening that door for that complaint."

And that had an awful lot to do with it. And then it was also the moment where I was about to launch on a 300,000-word novel. I didn't realize it would be quite that long, but I knew it would be long, and I just couldn't even imagine outlining all of that. So, when I stopped, I suddenly went from being an okay seller to a best seller. So, it was the best one of the best decisions I may ever made career-wise was to stop the outlining and just write.

>> And tell me about what emerged from that cuz I mentioned earlier you talk about free will in the characters. Also, there's this sense of that I've gotten that you have a very low tolerance for boredom. And so, because of that you're like, "Hey, I got to entertain myself at the page." >> That's absolutely right. Uh people go by the the door outside my office and I can either be laughing out loud at what that's happening or in tears over what's happening and that's because you get so involved with it. And if suddenly I'm not that involved with it, something has gone badly wrong.

And you have to stop and say, "Okay, if I'm not entertaining myself and this isn't moving me one way or the other, then I got to back up and see where it went wrong." So, that's partly it, too. Yeah, and as we talked the last time, giving the characters free will, don't tell them what to do. Let's see what they do. Yeah, it's a very strange, it's very mystical sort of in uh thing. But I've learned um if I can talk a writer friend into working that way, which I have got most resisted because they work in their own way. But one or two I've said, "You know, stop thinking too much about what the character's going to do next. Just keep writing and see what happens if you're not giving it so much of a of a managerial thought. If you're not trying to manage the character, you're just letting them be who they are. It sounds strange, but I've had a couple people my house and they changed and they love it so much more. So, used

the word strange, mystical. The world is a very strange place. Uh I'll tell you a story I thought I wouldn't tell publicly, but now I think I will. The big release. We've been building a house for years and it it became very complicated because so many wonderful craftsmen have left California. California. And as consequence, you have to wait for some of the really good craftsmen, so you can't just schedule them one after the other.

And this house has been building a long time. It's on three floors. We're getting near the end. In the bottom floor, a friend of ours is a realtor and she has bought and sold the houses for us ever since we've been in California. And she called me up one day and said, "I'd like to see the house you're building and see what it's going to look like." I said, "Well, it's just pretty much 3 minutes away, so I'll meet you up there and walk you through it cuz there's a lot of construction."

So, we went up, showed her the grounds, which are almost done. Then, we walked the three floors, starting with the top, and we went all the way down. We were in the bottom floor and the main hallway and we got to the only two things left. On the right was a wine what's going to be a open wine cellar. This side, there was nothing there except there would eventually be wall paneling and it was all drywall. And I showed her pictures of the wine cellar. It's not finished.

And then I said, "Now, here we're going to the manager's." And she said to me, "What's the room over there on the left?" And I turned around and there was no room on the left, but there was a door. An open door with no door on it, just a doorway. And I thought, "Maybe Okay, my age is starting to get into me. I don't remember a room here. I don't know what this is. Uh So, we stepped into it. Now, every other room in the house is under way. So, there are tools, machines, supplies in every room. In this room, there's none of that. It's a drywall. It's about 20 ft long by 16 wide. When I went home, I got the plans out. There was no room there.

And I said to my wife, "Where's the latest generation of plans?" She said, "That's it." I said, I told her then that a real turn out walked into a room there. And we were in the middle of that room, and there is no room there. Uh there is a room there now. We're going to have to find out why the contractor did this and why we don't know about it. So, the next day I went, and we have a personal friend who was hired. He had some really great stone craftsman. And I went up to him, and I said, "Uh Dave, uh can you uh can you explain something to me? What is this room downstairs?"

And I told him where it was down there, but he said there is no room there. And I said, "That's what I thought until yesterday. But I came here with somebody, and there was a room there, and we walked into it." So, we went downstairs to that place. Solid drywall. Worse, there was a an open section beside the the door that was covered in plastic cuz it is going to be a chase for something, and it wasn't fully drywalled yet. And you could see past that into what was behind the drywall over here.

What was behind where the room would have been? And it was a solid 2-ft thick concrete structural support wall. So, there never could have been a room there. And there couldn't have been a doorway unless you cut it through this 2-ft thick wall. That is the strangest thing I've ever You think I'm making this up? Yeah. I am not making this up. >> I'm like, what? >> And we stood there and Dave looked at me and said, "If it was anyone else, I would think you were nuts." But he's known me 40 years. I said, "Well, we we can go get the realtor and come back, and I'm sure she'll tell you." She walked away with me into that room.

My first take on that was how ominous this was. It's my nature to think of the ominous things. For several days, I couldn't get over the fact that that What What are you to take from something like that? And it happened to be at that time I sent a new manuscript to my agent, the one called The Desperate Lover. And it's appears to be a ghost story, but it it isn't. It seems to be a house about a house that's haunted, but it's something nobody will anticipate and will come as a big surprise.

My agents suddenly called me up, and they just gone out and I'm going to say love this manuscript. And uh So, I was happy about that. And then I suddenly realized in that story, which purports to be a ghost story, there are hallways in a house that go places they didn't used to go. And there is a room or two that isn't where a room supposed to be. And I had totally forgotten that. So, now I looked at it and said, "I don't know if it's ominous or some power that be is just saying, "Attaboy, you got the details very convincing."

Uh I don't know what to make of it. And to talk about it openly, once you're on the air with I thought I'll seem like I've lost my mind. But it's the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. And I'm thankful I didn't walk into that alone. There was somebody else with me and we both looked into it. And neither one of us was willing to say we were somewhere else in the house cuz I know we were directly across from the wine cellar.

>> Forgive me for the extremely imprecise language here, but I'm trying to get at something. Do you feel like there's something with the supernatural, the mystical, where there's like some sort of portal that you can open either consciously, unconsciously, and then more of that can appear or you can be aware to more of that? >> I don't think it can make it happen. Uh otherwise I'd be sitting here right now trying trying to show you how cool this is. Uh I think the world is Well, I read a lot of quantum mechanics and other science, and I know the world is much stranger than the whole universe.

It's a very strange arrangement, and there's much about it that we don't know and probably will never know. So, I think it's possible that once in a while in your life something of that truth of things manifests for you, and you can do with it as you do. Uh it could be that when you have an experience, you kind of open a door for more of that. I think once you sort of have you blunder in to some element that's mysterious but true about the world, you may blunder into others in the future.

Just keeping yourself open to the idea as a writer that the world is beyond comprehension. Uh if you think about science uh and you hear this again and again. The science on this is settled. The science on that is settled. Science is never settled. It isn't possible. That isn't science. Uh science overturns everything it thought it knew over the centuries. When you even think about what people thought about the human body or the nature of the universe 200 years ago and thought it was truth and actual Almost all of it's been overturned. Stuff Stuff we thought we knew 40, 50 years ago is totally overturned. So uh to think that you can explain any of it uh is not going to be the case. But I do think if you are just willing to relax about your view of the world and everything in it and say it's all beyond comprehension, things start coming to you as a writer that are much more valuable. And I don't

just mean strange storylines. I mean the way you handle a character, how you get into a character's depth. You stop thinking about psychology in the same way cuz we don't understand the human mind any more than we understand much of anything else. We like to tell ourselves we do because we're human beings and we're scared of reality enough, so we want to feel we can control it. Um and uh I think if we're just throwing your hands up saying, "I don't really control anything." opens the door to a better understanding of people and the world and how it works.

>> Yeah, the words that are coming to mind for me are awe, wonder, mystery, and all of those words have at the same time this, the humility of knowing that we don't know everything, but also, uh, curiosity that never ends. We are searching and trying to yearn for more. >> Yeah, and just thought of somebody else whose early work is amazingly this way, Cormac McCarthy. >> Mhm. >> You go to his early books like The Orchard Keeper or Out of God or any of that, it's very strange.

But it's uh it's also as strange as it all is, it it feels utterly real. Uh and when he started drifting away from that, when he wrote No Country for Old Men or, uh, The Road, uh, great books on their own, but I I kind of miss the way he used to write because I thought it it was very his take on the world was so mysterious and yet very compelling and felt like the truth. And later is is they were still good books, but yeah, he sort of gone away from that.

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What are some of the things in your writing that you tried to cultivate over the decades that you were like, "I'm want to expand in this way and that way." >> Uh a lot with me has to do with the English language, which I think is an absolutely beautiful language. And we sort of gave up using all the tools in a writer's toolbox. Uh once Hemingway was so successful at minimalist uh approach to things, he got the most imitated writer, I think, in in history by a lot of people who couldn't do what he did.

Uh under his simplicity is is a great sense of the unknown and the mystical dimensions in people's lives that are not spoken of, but are perceivable. So, I just got tired of reading that kind of flat prose. Uh and so, I started saying, "I'm going to use all these. I'm going to do a lot of metaphor and simile, but it all has to be done in in a cautious way." And uh so, the biggest thing with me has been polishing language. I think we talked about this before. I've consciously moved at one point to uh trying to bring the reader along not just with the story, not just with the character, but with the use of the language. And if you can combine that with it and that language kind of flows in a way it can be highly compelling.

And thinking about getting into character background backstory in ways that there's quick and simple but deeper uh than just uh uh his mother died when he was six and he has never been quite the same since. That That is not wonderful characterization. But there are uh there are ways to do it that brings the character more alive and uh character and to me is number one in all fiction. If the characters aren't well conceived and appealing or disgusting uh if somehow or other uh emotionally involving then the story ain't going to work.

>> And what does a good character need to have? Do you need to love them? You need to have compassion for them? You need to see understand their motivations? >> Yes, certain of them you have to fall in love with. This book, The Friend of the Family. In this one the character is uh so immensely appealing book I sent in the '30s and '40s. And uh the character you have to fall in love with because of what the book is talking about, how it works.

And uh my I'm I've gotten lots of mail now where everybody talks about how much they cried in the course of it. And it's funny you will often get mail from women who say they cried. This book is bringing me mail men's mail that have to tell me it's first time I ever cried reading something and I couldn't stop crying and I'm not sure yes broke you down. That's very good but it can't be done cheaply. You have to care about the character and what the character goes through and it's not just the suffering of the character that makes you brings you to tears. It has to do with the suffering of the character that you have come to feel bears many resemblances to you or that you can understand that character's way with the world or the way they handle life and then you can begin to think what happened to them could conceivably happen to you and that's where empathy arises. So it's all told from her point of view but

then she brings in a lot of other characters including some famous people because she is adopted by a film family film producers and uh she moves in new circles and she herself was once in a carnival freak show so she is not used to moving in circles like that and so you have to fall in love with her and have to believe her perception of other people and then the emotion can come. It's trying to touch people is the other aspect of this.

First part of my career of this about exciting and thrilling people, you know. Edge of your seat suspense kind of stuff and then as you go through your career you think boy I'd like to make somebody think about this and be moved by it. Moved to tears, moved to laughter moved to anger and it becomes important that the longer I've been writing that that emotional content is touched upon uh and actually works with the reader.

>> And is there a way that he informed your characters? >> Yes, and in a key way because uh I've talked about this. I don't know if I did with you, but uh I don't talk about other writers writing particularly, but this person has gone and everyone knows the novel Fury Road Jaws. There's nothing compelling about the characters. That is the situation, story, and the shark. And that's what compels it. Uh if the characters had been more compelling, the book would have been even more huge than it was, I think. Um and uh so McDonald for character and uh Twain secondary, but there's a lot of writers that are uh pretty good at character. Except one If I can believe other people, one of the most successful scenes I've ever done is in it one of the five Jane Hawk novels.

And she's this rogue agent that the FBI is just looking to kill. And so, she's always moving, and at one point she ends up in uh Arkansas, and she ends up in this one place, and she is trying to get a car that nobody is going to know she has. And because of things she has done as an agent, she knows this backwoods guy who's a crime boss produces drugs, but it's all backwoods. It's not like the mafia or something. It's It's hillbilly kind of uh operation.

And he is a very wise, but very uh all his education is street education. So, he's going to talk in a particular way. And he's going to have to have little bit of You don't fake the accent cuz it always sounds funny. But in the way you structure the sentences and the words he uses. And that was some of the most fun that sequence that I've ever had writing dialogue. And it must have worked because I've gotten huge amounts of mail on it.

>> I meant to ask you this. But given everything you've said, how do you feel about AI as it pertains to writing? Are you like writers should not be using AI? Are you like I'm not going to use AI, but hey, it's the new technology. Creators have always embraced new technologies. Where you at with that? >> Well, there's practical matters and then some that are just personal. But uh the practical matter is if you use AI for more than fact-checking and if you actually use it in construction of the story and stuff, you can't copyright it.

Exactly. So, nobody wants to publish what they can't control. Uh secondly, I don't think that's going to change for one big reason. What the AI does, it scanned millions of books and it's built itself out of scanning books. And inevitably, when it writes, it creates a pastiche. It puts things together and you're going to find sentences in those books that came out of somebody else's book and you're going to get sued. Uh and I don't think we could ever get past that.

Uh and so as a consequence, I don't use AI. I have no desire to. >> You were talking about AI being a pastiche. It can't see, it can't hear. Psalm 115. You got to listen to this. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them. Everyone who trusts in them.

>> Oh. Chills just went up my back. That >> kept us all. >> Is that And then what Psalm is it? >> 115. Verses 4 through 8. >> Wow. That just may have told us our fate. You are never going to get an artificial intelligence that can have a sense of touch, a sense of taste. It could see, but it can't have touch, can't have taste, can't have smell. And therefore, it can't experience the world the way we do. And that's essential to writing the best possible work. It's to know the world in all of its sensuality.

And no artificial intelligence can have that. Uh they're always going to be alien to some degree. Okay, it could do wonderful things, but there is the potential for it to become completely beyond our control. And endless people in that field who are aware of that and and it terrifies them. But are you going to stop it? No, because what is it ultimately about? It's about the drive for power. Are we going to have it or are the Chinese going to have it? Who Everybody is going to have a different AI. The question becomes who's going to have the dominant AI.

And And anything that is all about power at its core is not going to end up being more beneficial than not. That's just my personal opinion.

>> Can you paint a picture for me of how you daydream? And how you think through these plots and narratives? Like I'm hanging out with you now. I don't know, is there like 5% of Dean Koontz's RAM thinking about your story right now, what book you're working on? >> I don't know, but it's easy to explain how these books evolve. I do not daydream about the future. I As I said, I don't work on an outline, so I don't even think about it. I have the opening sequence in mind.

I start writing that, and as it proceeds, there's a part of the mind that's saying, "Where the hell does this go?" Cuz I don't know, and I get 30,000 words in, have to throw it away cuz I have no idea where to go from there. So, I think your subconscious works on part of it. And then, as you're going, ideas come to you. And I have to believe they're coming from my subconscious, or otherwise, I have to believe there is a higher power feeding you stuff. Because it things happen that you think, "Where did I get that?" So, it is either coming from some source outside of you, or it's coming from some place deeper inside of you that you're not fully in touch with.

>> Make the best case for each one. >> I would say it's because I do tend toward the mystical. I think it has a little of both. There are things that you write about, and then, in retrospect, you look at it, and you can say, "At the time, I didn't know why that turn of events occurred to me, but I can see now that it was related to something that happened to me, or something that happened to a friend. And it was buried down in here, and it came out when I needed it. Then there are other things that are so strange that I literally will always in every book have a few times I just look up and go, "Thank you."

>> [laughter] >> Because that's the only way you can explain it. And those are often some of the best that moments in the book. Uh and and it's if it wasn't so mystical a process when it's working well, I don't think I'd want to do it as long as I've done it. It's that mystery of how this comes together and why it does in ways that can excite you very much because you didn't see it coming. And you get, "Oh, wow, this took a sudden turn. It's going to add depth and quality to this."

>> And what kind of routine are you writing with these days? >> Same. >> Same as it's always been. As it's always been. So, that's how many hours every day, 7 days? >> I stop a little sooner now than I used to. I stop at 4:00. Uh but I'm up around 5:00, 4:35. By 6:00 I'm at work, and I work straight through until I quit. Uh I don't eat lunch. Uh and so, that that's about 10 hours a day. Uh and when you're on something, stepping out of the world we live in for 10 hours a day, entering a world that you're making up, uh I think that disassociates disassociates you from the real world in a way that then becomes beneficial instead of landing you in an institution.

There's people who land in who are disassociated from reality. Uh but when you control it, it's great it's a great thing. >> What is it about the craft of writing that you just love so much that you're just like I'm never going to stop this? >> What else would I do? >> [laughter] >> Uh except getting into trouble with police. That's uh >> Yeah, come on. We can go commit some crimes. We can get into all sorts of hooligans out here.

>> Oh, yeah. Give me something for writer's mic. I don't know. >> Exactly, you know? >> It's about getting in the beauty of the language. A lot of what I read for pleasure is poetry. So, I'm focused on language for that reason, also. And uh um it's it's just uh I love doing it, creating something that wasn't there. I think it's one reason that most of my friends that I've developed over the year are not necessarily writers.

Cabinet makers, specialists in stone fabrication. Uh they're often in the building trades. And the really good ones approach their work with the same kind of passion that any good filmmaker or good writer approaches it.

>> I'm going to describe the aesthetic of your house, and I'm curious to hear how you think it is similar and different to your writing. I think it's very intentional, it's precise. Um the things have character from a few different places. There's a lot of editing in terms of removal. And I've noticed throughout that you're very intentional about where the eye goes. That as I walk through your house, I can see, boom, I want you focus there. Boom, I want you to focus there.

Is that like your writing? >> Yeah. No, I hadn't thought of it, but yes. Now, they Now, you made me think about something else. The biggest complaint I've had from publishers all my career is I don't write the same book every time. I don't write in in the same genre every time. I combine genres. In fact, I was the first writer I think who did that. I have had long arguments with publishers about they just hate a book and then it comes out and the public like it. So, then it becomes all right with them that the public liked it, but then they want you to write the next book like that one.

And if we open ourselves as a designer as an architecturally uh to being unafraid to mix certain things, you can come up with the uh tableaus or vignettes that are so much better than if you just did cookie-cutter design. And that turns out to be true in novel writing. If you say in the midst of this novel that seems largely like a character study, I'm going to throw in this incredible twist into it. And you know publishers are going to say, "No."

And you learn over time that that willingness to be eclectic with with foresight about it will work just as well in a novel as it will in a room you're trying to make beautiful.

>> When I think of you and your output, I think of ambition and I think of determination. And when I think of ambition and determination, I think of tension and I think of a kind of uh almost like a negative self-talk sometimes. Kind of will myself into it. And when I hang out with you, I feel exactly the opposite. A tremendous sense of peace and calm. How's that make sense? >> Uh it makes sense cuz the two can coexist. Uh Uh sometimes it's the it's it's that absolute obsession and the tension of getting this damn thing done the way you want to get it done that gives you the peace as you start to achieve it. It's it's attacking things that don't work and you keep trying to make them work upset the balance of your mind and also attacking something and making that work that you subsequently realize that was a fool's game. Shouldn't waste the time with that. You have to be very self-critical about your own things.

I've always been amused when you run into one of those critics who really gets vicious and they think they're You can always tell they're really going to upset you. It's the worst way they phrase things and so forth. And I always think, boy, if you can understand how much of that I go through myself every day, there's nothing anybody else can say that would upset me as much as I upset myself every day going through it.

We try to surround ourselves with people who are not problematic. >> [laughter] >> That surrounding yourself with people who don't disturb things, who are like family to us, but have a similar attitude about life. Uh That gets you into a place that you can deal with all the other troubles that come in any career. I don't care what the career is. You're going to have things that uh happen that upset you in the career. Certainly as a writer, you have that a lot because you're turning your work over in some instances to people who don't understand what you're doing and then try to tell you you're doing it wrong.

>> Yeah, I think last time you said to me the thing about common wisdom is that it's not very common. Little of it is wisdom. >> [laughter] >> Peace is important to me. Peace of mind in my writing. And that's why the house has to be someplace that relaxes me.

>> Whose books should I read to learn about character and what will I learn? >> Well, the one that taught me first about character writing was uh suspense writer named John D. MacDonald. He had a series with a character called Travis McGee. They were usually popular bestsellers. When I found MacDonald, I was uh uh just gotten out of college and I read first book and then read 34 books in 30 days. I couldn't get enough.

>> Wait, you said 34 books in 38 days? >> 38 days. >> [laughter] >> That's all I did was read MacDonald's books. Uh and his books were mostly 60 to 80,000 words. They weren't 100, 120, 150,000. And then he'd want to tell you about this character. So, he'd just stop. And he'd write three or four or five pages about this character. And the first time I hit this, I went, "What is this? I want to read the rest of the story."

And then by the time I got to the end of page five of the character stuff when the story started again, I actually was saying, "No, I want to know more about this character." And that was where I first realized, my god, the character can carry the entire novel. And if the character isn't compelling, the novel will never work as well as it should. Kurt Vonnegut actually said about John D. MacDonald, "If thousands of years from now, some alien race came to Earth in which no human had been in existence for millennia, and they stumbled across the work of John D. MacDonald buried under the ruin of the house. It would be the greatest finding they could ever make to understand how the human race work.

And he he's all right. And it was all because of character. The stories are compelling, they move, but the character, nobody was better. He was as good as Dickens with character. >> Who could I read to learn about dialogue from? >> Is there Is there Was there a writer named uh Evan Hunter. Uh it wasn't his real name, but he was famous. He wrote The Blackboard Jungle and a number of famous novels under that name. And he was very facile, but he also was uh um excellent at dialogue. And it's what compelled the story within was dialogue.

>> What matters in good dialogue? Like when you say, "Hey, this person was good at dialogue." What did they get right? What did they fundamentally understand? >> Y- You have to get the the rhythm of the speaker. You have to think about how they construct sentences, cuz we all construct them differently. You have to think about where they're from and whether an accent. You don't want to generally write an accent. And uh what makes good dialogue is just keep in mind who the character is. And they shouldn't sound all alike.

>> Is it too much to say that you should be able to read any sentence and know who's talking? >> Yeah, that might be a little tough, but I you read that uh a page of two characters talking in in a book that you've read and you go pull some paper off the shelf and read an exchange of page, you should be able to tell what those characters are by how they sound. Now, look at this. He's going to >> Well, when you have a >> You're humiliating me.

>> [laughter] >> I was going to ask, when you have a book that's set in different time period, how do you think about writing a different time, making that scene feel real, the attention to detail, all learning about the different time period, all that jazz? >> is to go to movies of the period that were good. Uh because there was a lot of great dialogue in the movies of that era. Uh but you go back to that and there was a double challenge in the friend of the family because famous people keep coming into the story because the people who adopt this girl out of a freak show and give her a real life at the age of 19. They're successful film producers.

And they have people at dinner like Groucho Marx. And you'll have to research those lines. You got to find out who is that person married to at that time. You got to find out what who that person was, how they would have talked to their spouse, and that These are the things that I don't think are often thought about, but they are interesting [clears throat] when you're doing books. It's It's the kind of research that's kind of fun to do.

>> You were talking earlier about poetry, reading poetry. Can you talk to me about the kind of poetry you read and how it's expanded your sense of reality? >> Well, the number one with me was T. S. Eliot. Not the cat poetry so much. It's wonderful cat poetry and it's amusing, but the Four Quartets were as strong as they are those. I've probably read any of them hundreds of times and every time you read it, there's something you didn't see before.

And it was that richness of language and way of achieving a depth to it uh that impacts you. That is highly, almost affected intellectual language. >> What do you mean? >> He wants you to be impressed >> Mhm. >> with And uh at the same time uh Robert Frost, very down-to-earth, colloquial kind of writing of poetry. Very clever in some of it. Haiku has had a lot of that effect on me because of the succinctness with which things are said.

And you think you've got the point of that poem whether it's just a little glimpse of nature, and then you start thinking about it two or three or four more times, and you realize, "No, that's a poem about death." Or that's a poem about love. But they never mention the word death or the word love. Uh, and that, I think, is a valuable for a novelist because of what we're talking about earlier. Of writing about something with out writing about it on the nose, writing about it, describing something in a way that's different than somebody would normally describe something. And that's the kind of thing that works with your soul rather just your mind.

>> You've been able to stay pretty sane and do high-quality work for many decades. >> There's different opinions. >> [laughter] >> But, you know, there's there's there's artists who they make great art for 8, 10 years, sometimes even less, and then they kind of just go insane doing it. And they kind of have a crazy hot streak. And then they don't really achieve much for the rest of their life. Do you think that maybe there's things in that way of living, I don't know, maybe it's a more extreme way of living that you're able to do creatively that you give up if you try to pursue a more sane creative process? Or are you like, "No, just just be sane. It's It's your job. Just be sane, have a discipline, do your work.

I had a friend uh who was whose career was exactly that way. He was a brilliant cartoonist. His name was Vaughn Bodé. And uh he had a big following for a portion of his career. And uh he he was a genius at this, but he was extremely out there. And he got more extremely out there, and he ended up committing suicide. And uh it was I he could never find peace. He was always looking for that more extreme thing. It only leads to one place.

>> Yeah. >> And right before he Well, it wasn't right before, within a year of when he died, somebody had just put in together a book of his work. And they wanted me to write an introduction to that num- book of Vaughn had said I would write it. And uh I said, "Yeah, I'll I'll write an introduction." Uh I said, "I know Vaughn well enough to know that he'll be okay if I write exactly what I think." Cuz he was very blunt with everybody, you know, in his life.

So, I wrote that uh what I thought was true about the artwork, and I was very praising in it. But at one point, I said, "It all comes down to somebody who's trying to understand death and has been obsessed with understanding it." And he got very upset uh about this and refused to allow that to be uh published in the front of it. And we didn't exactly fall out, but we became a little bit estranged because of that. A lot depends on how uh you stay grounded. I think it's harder for a novelist >> to stay grounded.

>> Or it's easier, I think, for novelists. >> You think it's easier? >> Than for someone like a cartoonist or a Why? I think because you can move so fast in artwork. I mean, you could do a amazing work in a day. Uh and some of the like some of the most famous artists of our time uh have uh done thousands of canvases. So, it's uh uh you're with a novel, you're having to spend a lot more time on the same thing. Uh and you can't go quite as far over the top as you can when you're doing like the visual art. But, I don't know.

I I I also think I lucked out many ways. I had that horrible tumultuous childhood that was of no value except that it taught me how to write about a sociopath. Then, at some point when I made a conscious decision my life wasn't going to be as dysfunctional as that whole family and and as my father's life was.

Let's >> Fast forward to the year 21 2150 2100 2150. And there's historians who are writing about the writing of our time, the style, the approach. What will they say about our age right now? >> It'll probably be something with a You know, it was an age an age of pessimism. >> That's for sure. >> Uh I and yeah, and it's been going a long time. Uh in in fact, I think the root of it is the bomb. I think that's in the back of everybody's head. Uh even if they don't think about it openly, it's there.

Uh I mean, we are now capable of destroying the world. Uh and uh uh I don't know why uh so many people are so negative. But, I have seen people who get negative about certain things and and then the culture starts change, politics start to change, and the very things that they approved of, they now disapprove of because people they disapproved of have now adopted some of their and the anger level always just amazes me.

And I think we all get one life uh and so make what you can of it and being perpetually upset about things. Uh and it comes out in very odd ways. There's in my lifetime, I have seen panics set in to to the large swath of the population. >> What kind of panic? >> Well, let's look at I you're you're so much younger than me. I don't know how well you're Well, you are even know this, but uh Y2K. You know what that was? >> Yeah, I think I do. Yeah.

>> I mean, everyone I knew thought the world was going to end. The computers are going to all stop, blow up, they're going to trigger the nuclear arsenal when it clicks. And no matter what knowledgeable people said, that panic just grew and grew. And then, of course, we came to that midnight cook nothing happened. Uh that's one of them. The COVID response. I mean, I thought I'm out of my mind if if if I'm wrong, but I would see people alone in cars wearing a mask.

And I watch this where you went into supermarkets and they had these squares on the floor and you had to stay 6 ft apart. 6 ft isn't going to keep anyone from getting something if it's out there. You also know that paper mask isn't going to stop it. >> Anything. >> But it Not partly they were encouraged by that a lot of stupid people in the higher office, but uh but how easily people flew into a panic. Uh and yes, we wish the planet was in some better shape than it is, but this planet has gone through much worse than anything human beings have done with it. Uh and it's still here. Uh and the panic over global warming uh In periods of human existence, this planet was 4 or 5 degrees warmer than now. And now we're in a panic that it might get a degree or two warmer. It's been far warmer than that periods in the past. There was a time when Greenland had vineyards.

>> Greenland had vineyards? >> Yes. Uh and it's that that goes back on they said a few centuries. Uh there are It It's just this doomsday quality in thinking that uh bothers me because I think people are almost uh They almost think if you think too truly that way that everything's hopeless that one way or another we're all going to kill our civilization. Then you're either going to talk us into it or you're going to talk to yourself out of having joy in life.

>> And now, what would they say about the writing style of this time? I mean, certainly this isn't the age of romanticism. This isn't the age of maximalism. >> I always want to see something new comes along and successful and I I want to go buy the book even if I know it's not my kind of thing. I'm going to read it to see why is this suddenly so popular. What I keep noticing is the the more negative it is, the darker it is, the more likely it is to be a success.

One thing that's going to be the negativity of all of the writing in our time. And the kind of I don't know. It's it's sad because I I think fiction can be greatly uplifting. And life is hard enough. We need a certain uplift. Dickens wrote novels that were true to life, but left you feeling that life had value and meaning and purpose. And I think the writing of this time shows very little of that. >> I think there's something in your work in your worldview that is kind of this insistence that life does have meaning, that there's a purpose, people have souls.

Wake up, people. >> If if everybody came to the opinion that life has no meaning, we'd be living in Mad Max. Because what would be the point of going to work? What would be the point of treating anyone fairly or humanely? It's like the this insurance executive that got shot in the back and killed. >> Yeah, in front of the Hilton in in New York. >> And how many people online celebrated it? And I think, first of all, he didn't own the insurance company. Secondly, of all, it wasn't even the insurance company that the killer had insurance with.

So, what sense did any of that make? None whatsoever. And also, if you don't have respect for the life of somebody you disagree with, then it's going to be a war of all against all, and there will be no civilization. So, I think we're walking on a very tight rope in our time, and I think somebody from centuries hence in the future will be sort of taken with that, and think how strange it was uh of how in a time of unprecedented plenty, which is what we're living, uh that people were so negative about life.

>> As you think about writing and selling copies of books, first of all, do you think about, "Hey, I want to sell a lot of books." Like, how intentional have you been about going about that? But then also, let's say that the goal is, "Yes, I want to do that." How much do you think about, "I'm just going to write what I think is a good story, and I'm just going to trust my gut and intuition." And how much of it is getting in tune with where the culture is at, and giving the culture almost a product, people a product of something that they want.

>> I always say to writers, don't young writers who are just starting, uh and the ones that seemed to have talent, so they're disappointing talking to them. I say, "Don't scope the market. Don't look for what's popular and write that. Write what you love as a reader." Uh and uh I believe that's the only way to go, cuz otherwise, it going to come point you don't like what you're doing. Also, the other problem there is you can spend all kind of time scheming and saying well this works and that works and why don't I just somehow put jaws together with uh uh some alien invasion story and and on and and uh come up with something uh that never works and it when you're at it well at least in my case you get to point where you can have no idea what's going to sell or not sell.

You can think you've done the best book you've ever done and it sales will be 20% less and people will say I was good but it well I didn't like it as much as this or that and sometimes they'll like a book you think well they're not going to like this one as much when you get to know it and it brings through with a mail. You're not in a seat where you can determine that.

>> What have you learned about writing a plot twist? >> Plot twists are best if you don't I don't see them coming. >> You as the writer? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Or me as the reader? >> Me as a writer. Uh there was a novel called Intensity but I published quite a number of years ago. It's the clearest example I can give you but I have to ramble a little bit and tell story a little bit. It's uh I'm condensing it okay but it's it's the whole book is intense and it never lets up for a second. And the lead character is uh girl she's a waitress and she goes away for a weekend with a friend of hers uh that she works with and her friend's mom parents live in Napa up in wine country and they go up there. Now our lead is somebody who had a rotten childhood whose mother was useless who that was always with different men the men were all dangerous and so forth and our lead China is her name uh she has this little mantra

that she used as a child uh when things got really bad, she would say to herself, "China Shepherd, untouched and alive." So, even as an adult in a panic office situation she finds herself in, she does that. And the story I started out knowing only this much. She goes away to Napa with this friend of hers. They're going to have a wonderful weekend, but the very first night they're there, this psychopathic serial killer who travels around the country in a motorhome, pulls up his motorhome and he has been surveying their property and family habit, and comes into the house and kills everybody in the house except her. And she's the only one that is quick enough and timely enough to realize what's happening, and she hides and she successfully hides.

But then, she thinks that she knows he took her friend to the motorhome. And she thinks he took her friend alive. And she go gets out of the house and he's back in the house. She don't know what he's doing, but she gets out and she goes to motorhome with the intention of untying the friend and getting her out of there. She gets into the motorhome and discovers the friend is dead. He took the dead body. Why? We won't go ahead there. But, he took the dead body. Now, she just wants to get out of the motorhome. He comes back and gets in and closes the door and drives away. He doesn't know she's in this large motorhome at the back in the room. She I is there and he doesn't know it. Now, how is she going to get out?

And I thought it was going to be a about her getting out. And the very first place he stops is for he to gas up his vehicle and to go into the convenience store. And that's where she gets out of this. And I'm giving something away, but it's very early in the story. She goes into He after he gives fuels up his vehicle, has gone in the unlocked the pump. This is if someone in the past If unlocked the pump, he's come back out, put the gas in. She's when he's in there gotten out and hidden under the motorhome while he's getting gas. She goes in there to where she believes there's help. And she before she can tell them she just got out of the motorhome that he knew he is, she sees him coming back. So, she has to hide again in this convenience store. She goes running to the back end of the aisle. And he comes in with the purpose of killing this people, the two guys running this store. But first he has to

tell her about this beautiful young girl who he keeps in his basement at home. And it all is more real than it sounds when I said it this way. But she hears this. And when this started happening, I thought, "Oh, well, now she's going to tell the police." And all of a sudden I thought, "Oh my god, no. She because of the childhood she had of constant terror at the hands of these men around her mother, now she knows there is this girl of like 14 being held hostage. And there's no license plates on this guy's vehicle cuz he doesn't put them on. If a cop had stopped him, he would shoot the cop. And it's not cell phone time. This is before everybody had cell phones. She had got to find a phone. And then she begins to realize, "I know it's a motorhome, but by that time I tell them, where will he have gone?

By the time I can get to a flanker's ease. Shut up the phones in a convenience store. She may be at 15 3 minutes to find a phone. And he could disappear. So, the moment this came into my head, I went, oh my god, this is a twist that no one will be able to resist in the book. You're only in the first 20 15 20% of the book. She goes back out to that motor home just after he's killed these people in the store and before he gets back in there, but she gets back into it to hide out and go to the home he is and try to get that girl out. And my first thought was, no one would do that. And then I started thinking about her past and her self-respect.

>> And then it makes sense. >> And her image of herself. And yes, it makes sense. And then it becomes this a book you can't stop because he does And even when you finally realizes he's brought her home and starts playing a cat and mouse game with her, that one twist turns it into something that nobody can stop reading.

>> I have this image of you that just popped in my mind of you just like hammering the keyboard and it's coming to mind and like something is you're channeling something greater and you're just totally in it. Is that what it's like or is it a lot more calm than that? >> Well, because I polish every page dryer three times, it's incremental movement through. But yeah, there come moments where you'll you get swept up in in a moment with it.

Uh and uh you you know it's not real, you know, it's easier for a reader to fall away into a story and accept that it's real than there's for the creator of that story, cuz you have all the connections. You've made them with it. It's like a cabinet you've built. And then so you know all the secrets of how it's built. But there's times when you get so captivating and uh hell, I'll go I'll finish the chapter and then I'll go back and do each of these pages over and over until I get it smoothed out, right? I realize, you know, I just have fun when I'm doing it. I mean, there's days when it isn't fun where something happens with your body chemistry or whatever.

You just can't make it work and those days are depressing. But more days than not, it's a lot of fun.

>> I went to the movies yesterday and they had some horror previews and I was like, this is the worst thing ever. I do not enjoy it at all. What is it about those kinds of stories that you love? >> I don't love those kind of stories too much. I like suspense, but I don't like horror. And I've always fought to keep that word off my books. Uh I cannot watch a bloody movie. Uh if there's a lot of blood in it, no. I'll stay away from that. I turned off movies that have violence too much for me.

Uh I do like suspense and I have said I may have said it to you. Uh a book without suspense is not a realistic story cuz suspense is the center thing in our lives. We don't know what's going to happen to us an hour from now, a day from now. We live always on the edge and we put it out of our mind cuz otherwise life wouldn't be very tolerable. Uh but it is the essence of our lives. So if you're going to write something realistic, there is going to be suspense in it. But there doesn't have to be horror.

Uh and there doesn't have to be things so disgusting that yeah. >> And what creates suspense? Is it some combination of desire, uncertainty, stakes? What I'm hearing you say is, hey, life is intrinsically, inherently suspenseful. You just have to bring that onto the page or something. >> I think one thing that's always worth keeping in mind, and no matter how down you may be on humanity at any time in your life, uh that it's human nature, except for the sickest among us, when you're reading a story and you like the character, it's human nature to want to see them succeed. Just as it's human nature, I think with people in our lives whom we like, we like to see them succeed and we feel bad when they fail. So, if that character can be shown to logically succeed, and move forward, that's what lifts a reader up. It doesn't have to be something that makes the makes you more noble as a human being. It's that aspect

of seeing someone succeed at something in life and gain an understanding of something, and achieve a goal, uh after a lot of hardship, that can be very satisfying to a reader. Uh and that's why books in which a bad guy dies at the end, uh don't often succeed all that well.

>> What is it about the Catholic worldview that has most informed your writing, how you think about great storytelling? >> Uh yeah, I think that it came down to I mean what I got out of it was my family was totally dysfunctional. My mother was a great human being, but my father was a mess. A lot of people on my father's side of the family were just as messed up as he was. Yeah, it was a family wide thing. Uh he had two brothers that committed suicide.

One of them probably was about 50 something and one of them was in his 20s. Uh and one was a twin of my father. >> In-law. So your dad would have been older. Your dad would have had you after one of his brothers had already committed suicide. >> No. >> No. >> No, cuz the youngest was uh yeah, about 28 or something and my father's twin. So I was born at that point. There also is the issue whether my father was actually my father, which I don't know if we talked about before, but uh there's reason to believe he wasn't. And uh uh but anyway, I I saw on his side of family so much dysfunction. And then on my mother's side of the family, people weren't quite so messed up psychologically, but there was a lot of hostility among family members and people would suddenly decide they weren't speaking with each other and it would last for years.

And uh so there was a dysfunction in there as well. Then when I started dating my wife, uh uh she was Catholic. I wasn't. And uh we didn't I didn't have much money. So when it came to a weekend we'd do a date. We would drive to um Johnstown and we would spend the day going to each aunt and uncle's house and they were all this Italian families. And everywhere you went it was uh first it was you were welcomed, no matter who you were.

>> That was nothing like an Italian family. >> And then his mom was there, mom was there, and the food was being put in front of her. >> They're so loud, they're so fun. >> And they all had made homemade wine in the basement. And I would come back from that and and it started to get to me on a fundamental level. I thought, I've never seen so many happy families. And you would go and people were having fun and they were welcoming. And that was the thing I started to attribute to when Catholicism works. When it works, it produces loving families. When it doesn't work, it produces some of the stuff we've seen in the news the last couple of decades.

That in my family wasn't possible because there wasn't that faith element that kept them all hinged together and that was there. I think also in equal measure it was all coming from the Italian background too and that gave them all a connection. Although my father's side were all from the same background, that didn't help them stay together.

>> I'm listening to this conversation and I want to invite more of the mystical into my writing. And not in the I want to be more spiritual, I want to find God, but like I want to channel something deeper. What would you tell me? >> Have a very open mind to everything. Uh Uh that's if if you if you're going to be a dyed-in-the-wool uh atheist, you're not going to get in touch with the mystical. No matter what the mystical is.

You I I think you have to have an open-minded the notion that the universe is stranger than we'll ever understand. And once you get into an educate yourself about the human cell there are thousands and thousands of parts in every human cell. Without any one of which the cell doesn't function. We didn't know this until the 1800s. This is actually we know this in the last half century. Uh and all we keep finding is new chains of proteins that are in the cell that are unique. Some of those protein chains are uh hundreds of molecules long and every molecule has to be exactly where it is.

Uh there's something about the intricacy of the world uh that it doesn't matter whether you believe in a religious faith or not. You just have to be open to the fact that it's not just there. It's It's there with intention. And if you open your mind to the intricacy of it and learn some about it that wonder will just overpower you. And uh there's not a day doesn't go by that there isn't something I see here or I don't know what I'm on that that I have to say it to Reeta Jerta in the evening or to tell her about because could you believe this would happen or could happen?

It doesn't I matter if you have doubts. It's just opening yourself to see the wonder of everything and how astonishing it all is. >> Dean, thank you very much. It's good seeing you again. It's great to see you. That was my second time having Dean Koontz on the show. And if you liked it, well, go check out the first conversation we recorded together.