Master of Suspense: Dean Koontz
His books line the shelves of every local library from Maine to Oregon. Bookstores carry racks of his many novels and readers everywhere are familiar with the man critics call “The Master Of Suspense”, Dean Koontz.
With ten best-selling novels he reaches a level that only a dozen living authors have also scaled. New books appear each year and several of his works have been made into movies. From the December 2004 released Life Expectancy to his older works such as Lightning, Koontz has carved out a place as a top modern novelist.
His origins, however, are more humble. Born Dean Ray Koontz on July 9, 1945 in the samll town of Everett, Pennslyvania., his childhood was not a happy one. Raised by an abusive alchoholic father and a mother who was often ill, Koontz was not encouraged to be a writer.
Both parents saw no value in the books he loved to read and neither felt writing was a solid occupation. Despite their lack of support, Koontz penned his stories and began selling them at the age of eight for a nickel. At twelve, he won $25 and a wristwatch in a nationwide essay contest.
He later attended and graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). During his senior year, Koontz won a fiction contest sponsored by The Atlantic Monthly. He married his wife Gerda on October 15, 1966 and began working with the Applachian Poverty Program. He continued to write nights and weekends before becoming an English teacher in a suburban high school near Harrisburg, PA.
His wife then made him the offer than launched his career. She promised that she would support him if he wanted to write full-time for five years. At the end of that time, he would be successful – or not. He accepted her offer and by 1969, Gerda quit her own job to mange the business portion of her husband’s now succesful career.
For the past thirty six years, Dean Koontz has penned his novels and short stories for an ever widening audience. He and his wife moved to California in 1976 where they remain in residence in Orange Hills. With their dog Trixie, the Koontzs enjoy a comfortable life although Koontz continues to work with painstaking insistence on excellency.
The couple has no children.
