Alicia Rancilio, Associated Press

Updated

10:55 am EDT, Friday, October 9, 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — Dean Koontz admits it was “kind of frustrating” a few months back when an idea that he predicted the coronavirus in his 1981 novel, “The Eyes of Darkness” took on a life of its own online.

“It was one of those internet things that’s mostly bogus,” said Koontz. “I had a book 40 years ago mention the Wuhan virus and it came from a lab in China. I didn’t make a prediction of a pandemic, it was a totally different story. My first strategy was just, ‘don’t engage in this and it will go away.’ And it just didn’t go away. Social media has got a light side and its dark side.”

The author, 75, has a new book out called “Elsewhere” about Jeffy and Amity — a single father and his 11-year-old daughter — moving through life as best they can after their wife and mother, Michelle, disappeared seven years prior. Dad meets an eccentric scientist who presents Jeffy with what’s described as a “key to everything,” holding the ability to time jump among among parallel universes. The discovery opens up a bevy of possibilities for Jeffy and Amity (including meeting up with Michelle) but also danger — because there are people who really want that key, and would kill to get it.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Koontz talks about his well of untouched ideas, adapting his writing for Hollywood and publishing with Amazon. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: You’ve written more than 100 books. Do you ever have trouble coming up with new ideas?

Koontz: I have a drawer in my office that when I get an idea that’s not too horrendous, I scribble it on a piece of paper. I put it in that drawer. And I’ve always said, “When I run out of ideas for my next book, I’ll pull one out.” I’ve never had to. There’s always new ideas. I think imagination is like a muscle and the more you use it, the more ideas come to you.

AP: “Elsewhere” paints such a vivid story. You haven’t had your writing adapted in awhile. Would you be open to that again?

Koontz: I am open to it but I never have any high expectations. My film agent has “Elsewhere” out to market. I just haven’t had a lot of luck with that. After the 1995 film “Hideaway” (starring Jeff Goldblum), I considered tying an anvil around myself and leaping off a bridge… Stephen Sommers made a very nice version of “Odd Thomas” (starring Anton Yelchin in 2013) but it was crimped by the fact that about halfway through the money ran out and he had to cut the budget, but it was still good.

AP: You now have a publishing deal with Amazon. What’s that like? A lot of authors have a love-hate relationship with Amazon.

Koontz: It always comes down to the people you deal with. It’s astonishing that everyone that I’ve been working with at Amazon have been very creative, very efficient, just fun to work with. A lot of it is it’s a younger group and that sort of astounded me, too.

AP: Do you see a point where you would want to stop writing? (Koontz has already delivered book No. 79 to his publisher.)

Koontz: I’ll probably stop when I fall dead and hit the keyboard. Time will stop everybody but I’ve had some reviews saying that the books are almost better than ever and that’s gratifying. As long as it’s still play and it’s still fun and I get positive letters from people, that’s better than sitting by the pool with an umbrella.

She was struck by how much was said – about family, teachers, boys – and how much was left unsaid. After examining the diaries, Markoe realized she wanted to understand this “stranger” and memory itself. That’s when she picked up her drawing pencils.

Markoe is best known for her work in comedy (co-creator of “Late Night with David Letterman”) and writing (10 books and counting). But before she did standup, Markoe studied painting and earned a master’s in art from the University of California at Berkeley. “We Saw Scenery,” a graphic memoir of those childhood diaries, covers roughly a decade, from the days of spelling bees to the time she went to one of Ken Kesey’s acid test parties. Markoe observes her childhood self from the present, even planting adult Merrill into several conversations. (“WHO ARE YOU? WHY do you care? Leave me alone,” the younger girl complains.) The result taps into not only the challenges of a girl growing up in the 1960s, but also Markoe’s special ability to use traditions and American consumerist culture as fuel for her absurdist humor. Markoe, who lives in Los Angeles, spoke recently about some of the subjects that inspired “We Saw Scenery.”

– – –

– Hippo

(Page 15)

I started just thinking, “Oh, I want to read about memory. Why do I remember only half of what’s written in this diary? Where do you store memories, and how do you store memories?” That’s how I got to the hippocampus. Which led me to draw a hippo. It was just a dumb joke, but I was wanting to ask somebody . . . why we decided to black this one out. It said it was “the worst day of my life.”

– Adult Merrill vs. Child Merrill

(Page 50)

The younger me wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me. The younger me was way crazier. Later in life, not in these diaries, I did stuff like jump in the San Francisco Bay. . . . But I was inexorably headed for some career. I never wanted to have a family, and I went ahead and didn’t. I sort of wrote my own destiny that way. I really wanted to fall in love. Those were things I was interested in, the creative life and a love life. I went ahead and did it.

One thing I’ve learned is that everybody, before they are 27, does all that crazy stuff because your frontal lobe isn’t attached. That’s really big. The part of our brain that contemplates the idea of consequences isn’t really connected.

– Roadside Psychiatry

(Page 136)

I thought that would be a good way to meet cute guys. They would sit down. I would tell them they have mental problems. Why else would you do it? It was mostly Rorschach tests, which I was aware of because of Mad magazine. It was modeled completely after Lucy and Peanuts, and it was there for months. We were very proud of it. It was obviously the one place I was functioning. I wanted to be funny, and there weren’t a lot of venues for being funny for a girl that I was aware of. Girls were squelched at that point in pop culture. And school was all about home ec and learning recipes.

– Angry Mother

(Page 235)

My mother is to this day a real enigma. She was a really, really angry person. Like a lot of women in that era. During World War II, she was working at Time magazine and was working at some risque magazine . . . but then World War II ended, and all the guys came home, and she was angry for the rest of her life. And she would never tell you why.

She used to tell me that she had created her own Frankenstein. Looking back on that, I thought, “That’s pretty flattering.” She started finding me a nightmare when I started differentiating myself from my parents, which was about 15, and it lasted for the rest of her life.

– – –

It doesn’t take long for Bianca Vogelsang’s new boyfriend, Joshua, to discover some red flags after they meet at Cal State Fullerton. Bianca carries around a plastic doll she calls “Jubilee” as if it’s a real baby, pretending to feed it with a toy bottle. Bianca, the protagonist of Jennifer Givhan’s new novel “Jubilee,” has traumatic reasons for calling a doll her daughter, but even as Josh’s skin gets “prickly like he was watching a horror movie” while Bianca soothes Jubilee, he continues their relationship.

Yes, curiosity is a powerful force, but Joshua has his own burdens – he’s the legal guardian of his young nephew – and seems to understand that Bianca is more than just wounded or different. She’s also funny and smart and beautiful and alive. Bianca’s half brother Matty and his partner, Handro, also recognize that Bianca’s behavior stems from trauma – perhaps because she’s shown up at their Santa Ana house exhausted and bloody, requiring a hospital stay.

Once Bianca is healed and established in their home, the men accept Jubilee as part of their family. “Matty watched Jubilee while Bianca went to school and during her therapy sessions.” Bianca isn’t completely oblivious; she sees the way the men glance at each other. Still, she “needed this to be normal. And soon it was. They were family. And family protected each other.”

The book continues, alternating between two narratives – “With Jubilee” and “Before Jubilee” – that shed more light on Bianca’s situation. Her high school boyfriend, Gabe, gets her pregnant and insists she have an abortion, then sexually assaults her. Her family, mother and Matty included, then begin to act as if Bianca “was made of china and would break apart at any moment.”

Bianca will have to rescue herself, and what saves the book from melodrama (it’s well written, but heavy on emotion) is its through line: Bianca’s devotion to poetry. Like her idol, Sandra Cisneros, Bianca wants to be a voice for her people, the Mexican American working-class residents of Southern California, whose lives contain, like everyone’s, sadness and miscommunication, but also community and celebration.

Which, Bianca tells Josh, is what Jubilee’s name means: “celebration. I grew up Catholic, and we memorized all the verses. In the Bible, Jubilee is the time of release and universal pardon. Slaves set free. Land returned. Debts forgotten. All kicked off with a trumpet blast.” Bianca’s passion for the trumpet-blast verses of Emily Dickinson and Spoken Word, Shakespeare and Ana Castillo gives her a life of the mind that lifts her away – sometimes temporarily, sometimes for much longer – from the circumstances and memories that haunt her, helping her find her own release and pardon.

However, before Bianca can move on, she has to move through, and that means facing good truths, like her healthy love for Joshua, and hard truths, like a secret no one in the family wants to acknowledge. Givhan manages to tell a story about Mexicali culture that, by focusing on one young woman’s hope, avoids cultural generalizations and tells, instead, a story of family growth and personal triumph.

– – –

Patrick is the editor, most recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People.”