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Some lessons I picked up from our time together:

1. Dare to love the English language.

2. Characters come alive when they're given free will. Instead of constraining them in an outline, let them go where they want. You know they’re alive once they start surprising you. He says: “I give the characters free will like God gave it to us.”

3. Everything a writer believes about life and death, culture and society, relationships and the self, God and nature will wind up in their books. A writer’s body of work, therefore, reveals the intellectual and emotional progress of its creator, and over time, becomes a map of their soul.

4. To think you understand the world is to be foolish in the extreme. The world is too complex for us to understand it. To see reality clearly is to be utterly enchanted by its staggering complexity.

5. Where should you look? Well, the supernatural enters the world in mundane ways, and rarely the great and glorious flashes of drama.

6. Dean writes his novels page-by-page, and doesn’t move onto the next page until he nails the existing one. There’s no messy first draft. Because of that, he’s basically done with his novels once he finishes the final page.

7. Where does a unique writing voice come from? Three places: style, perspective, and a philosophy of life.

8. Be skeptical of conventional wisdom. There’s an encyclopedia of common wisdom in publishing. All of it is common and none of it is wise. You have to become aware of that, go your own way, and just stick with it because there are so many ways you can be sent wrong based on "that's the way we always do it."

9. The aesthetic plainness of contemporary writing (and culture at large) is crushing our souls.

10. Contemporary fiction is suffering from plainness in particular. It started when writers started imitating Hemingway (who stripped his prose down but kept the mystery and underlying strangeness of the world by implication). But the imitations that came later stripped the prose down while also removing the underlying depth that made Hemingway so great.

11. Koontz Law of Writing #1: Never go inside more than one character's mind in a scene. Each one should come from a singular viewpoint.

12. Koontz Law of Writing #2: Metaphors aren't meant to dazzle readers, but to seduce them into a more intimate relationship with the story.

13. Koontz Law of Writing #3: Metaphors and similes describe a scene more colorfully than a chain of adjectives — while reinforcing the mood. The point is that you can create depth by describing things metaphorically instead of using blunt adjectives. That’s what poetry does: it uses words to say more than the word itself says, which creates a mood.

14. Great prose doesn't come from piling on adjectives. It comes from finding the perfect metaphor that does triple duty: describes the scene, reinforces the mood, and reveals something about the character.

15. The goal is for metaphors not to pop out like showmanship, but to flow into the music of the language.

16. Develop an ear for the musicality of language.

17. A book can succeed with a mediocre plot if the characters are compelling. Character is the center of good fiction. If the characters work, the story works.

18. From the afterword of his book, Watchers: “We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love, and it is in these aspects of ourselves that we can glimpse the face of God; and through the exercise of these qualities, we come closest to a Godlike state.”

I adore Dean Koontz. Back in the '90s when he was getting over 10,000 snail mail letters a year, I wrote him three fan letters at different times. Each time, he answered with his newsletter, and one time with an autographed book. On each newsletter he addressed something specific in my fan letter, such as when I told him I had noticed he had a lot more hair in his latest photos! He wrote back in his own writing that yes, he'd had lots of painful transplants! And the kicker is, my name has a unique spelling. Each time, he wrote out my name correctly! Even my lifetime friends don't do that when they send me a card. My favorite Dean Koontz story is the story of his life, and how he overcame so much in his life, has an indomitable, humble spirit, and cares about his fans.

"If you have no self-doubt, you may not have any self-judgment."  That's deep, man.

I don’t recall how I came upon it, but in the midst of a deep depression decades ago, I the picked up a paperback copy of Dean Koontz’s Strangers. A strange thing happened; hardly able to focus, I began to read. I was so absorbed I couldn’t put it down. I then went to the village library near me and read every book he’d written. I began to focus on the stories, as dark as they sometimes were, the mystery and magic of his story telling called me back into the world. Thank you, Dean. I found the joy of reading again.

This was a wonderful interview and how nice to hear Dean talking about his creative journey.

I started writing when I turned 60 a few years ago.  It turned into a book, which I self published.  I use the pantser method and can't imagine doing it any other way as the directions I'm led I could not have scripted ahead of time.  I'm now on the 4th book of the series and it's been great.

Talent is not a gift to you. It is a gift to the world. You are just the conduit. Look at all the amazing music, literature, and art that we would not get to enjoy, if the creator had not chosen to share their gift with the world. Thank you, Dean Koontz, for your great stories and wise words.

I loooove Dean Koontz so much. I grew up reading his books.

Years ago, I was in Heathrow airport in London and I was reading Intensity. My mom elbowed me and gestured, and to my utter shock Dean Koontz was seated literally right across from me. He smiled and seemed open to an interaction but I was so starstruck I just panicked went back to reading, lol! I’ll always wish I’d just told him how much I love his books.

Side note—I loved Intensity so much I finished it in two days.✨

This might be the most extensive interview with Dean Koontz I've ever come across. Thank you for be able to do this. It is a masterclass from a legend.

An editor thinking that Lightning was a career killer is absolutely wild. Proof, if it were needed, that you should always have faith in your characters and your stories.

LOVE this man so much. When my beloved wife died, he was so kind in sending a letter and a book in which he inscribed something very heartfelt. God bless him, Gerda and  all his loved ones,,, two legged or four.💖

What a kind soul to care for someone who treated them so poorly.

Regarding Dean’s self doubt, I feel it’s like a form of checks and balances. This has been the most intriguing interview I’ve heard. I am a fan of his novels, and the discussions were heart felt. Your questions and commentary were well thought through and spoken with respect. Thank you for this gift, and please thank Dean for all of us.

My dad always said, "Beware the dry-eyed pastor.". I've since added politicians and artists to the list. I now know Dean Koontz isn't a bestselling author. He's a human and a writer, just like me.

I notice there's a lot of "Why can't I do that?" That's really inspiring.

I've read exactly one book by Dean Koontz, It amazes me that at 80 years old he's still coming up with new stories and trying new things.
Another thing that stands out for me is how his upbringing still affects him. You can see it in the way he talks about his father and the humiliation that came from everyone being aware of it. Many people think that when you go through something traumatic that you should just get over it and move on, but experiences like that become a part of who you are. I'm glad that he's been able to make his peace with it and use it as inspiration.

So many nuggets just in the first 15 min alone for me!! I have ADHD and the thing that has been my biggest barrier to writing a novel has been adopting the idea that I have to write the entire messy first draft, and then go back and do multiple rounds of revision and it always fills me with intense dread because I don’t like open loops. It never even occurred to me that I could work the way he describes - page by page, edit as I go. So simple, and I couldn’t think of it lol I’m going to try this with my new project (that I’ve been procrastinating on starting 😅). Thank you for this interview, going to finish listening to the rest of it now! :)

Thanks for this wonderful interview with Dean Koontz. He's such a great writer and a thoughtful person. He used to have an address to write to him in his earlier books. I wrote to him several times and he replied! The first reply, signed by him and his first dog Trixie, is framed on my office wall to help me to keep writing my own stories.

I'm not familiar with his work, just his name, but if I stumbled on to this interview I would have thought he was a brilliant literary theorist with a trophy case  full of Pulkitzer Prizes. He is the embodiment of the maxim, "Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius."

Koontz means "crafty trick" in Yiddish. Fitting 😄

Dean Koontz hair is a living thing. Perched upon his head, it controls his creative process.