My weekend was a quiet one. I puttered around my gutters a bit and washed my car, but didn’t accomplish a whole lot. Today I had to go in to work for a while, because every year on September 1 it is my obligation to give an orientation lecture on the library to our new students. Such are the sacrifices I make for my calling.
I read Leif Enger’s new book, So Brave, Young and Handsome. I’ll review it tomorrow. I’ll just say now that I liked it quite a lot, and would have been surprised if I hadn’t.
Then I read a Dean Koontz, Ticktock. Delightful. I started another, The Voice of the Night, which is an early book, and quickly gave me hints that it was one of the unpleasant ones he wrote before he found his voice, so I cast it aside into the outer darkness. Now I’m reading Twilight Eyes, and liking it a lot.
Hope you had a good holiday.
Hello Lars; I’m not sure if you know, but there’s a long (50-60 pages) interview with Koontz that reveals a lot of his early background. (‘The Dean Koontz Companion’ – edited by Martin Greenberg.)
– in a biography of Koontz I learned that he works out for 2 hours before writing. Ouch. (He’s clearly a driven man, writing 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.) Ouch.
If I followed such a program, I’d be a better man for it. Certainly a better writer.
As an aside; Dean started early, he began writing stories when he was 8 years old. He’d staple them together and try to sell them to relatives and neighbors! This despite there were no books in the house as I recall. (Eventually his parents had to insist he stop this practice :=)
– as seemingly most? writers, he had a lonely childhood.