Poll of the Day > dean koontz is being a lil bitch rn

(+) Yeah! (+)

he just released a book in a new series

he's also finished the second book in the series

and the third book in the series, he said he'd probably have finished by the time the first book gets published


like what the fuck dude

if you can write three books that damn fast, then there's nothing stopping you from continuing on with the moonlit bay trilogy you started almost 20 years ago.
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Authors do their best to not finish their series' nowadays though.
Right Jim?
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Yeah, the Moonlit Bay trilogy just might be dead in the water by now. :(
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Zangulus posted...

It's almost like an author can have more than one idea and get a complete block for one story while being able to write another.

it's been 19 years dude


DarkwingDidi posted...

Authors do their best to not finish their series' nowadays though.
Right Jim?

ugh. that fucking guy.
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I've always felt like the guy mostly owes his career to the fact that he closely followed Stephen King in author lists and wrote books in a similar genre.
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his books are way better than kings though

even in kings heyday, koontz books were typically more engaging and fun.

and now kings son, joe hill, is pretty much the love child between king and koontz
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To be fair, Koontz has pretty much always been discount-bin Stephen King, and King took about 25 years to finish The Dark Tower.

It's also entirely possible that he just doesn't feel like finishing the story and has no plans to ever write it. Which might be even more likely if he had publisher issues in the meantime (ie, he may have been contracted to write a trilogy for one publisher, but the deal fell through, so he's no longer obligated to do so and doesn't feel like trying to get a different publisher to take over).


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NlNETEEN YEARS
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helly

no
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helly

yes

mead

no
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I was hoping this was about the moonlit bay trilogy

it is!
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I've given up hope though. Dean Koontz has forsaken us.

If it's been that long maybe he's changed enough as a person that he wouldn't even be able to do the book justice. It could end up feeling like someone else wrote it and you just be disappointed.
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idk, seems like you're being the bitch about this. Dean Koontz is just doing what he wants to do.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also entirely possible that he just doesn't feel like finishing the story and has no plans to ever write it. Which might be even more likely if he had publisher issues in the meantime (ie, he may have been contracted to write a trilogy for one publisher, but the deal fell through, so he's no longer obligated to do so and doesn't feel like trying to get a different publisher to take over).

Yeah, with such a massive body of work, I can imagine that he'd lose interest in stuff. That's assuming that no deal prevents him from finishing it.
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Bugmeat posted...

If it's been that long maybe he's changed enough as a person that he wouldn't even be able to do the book justice. It could end up feeling like someone else wrote it and you just be disappointed.

not possible

Zeus posted...

idk, seems like you're being the bitch about this.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also entirely possible that he just doesn't feel like finishing the story and has no plans to ever write it. Which might be even more likely if he had publisher issues in the meantime (ie, he may have been contracted to write a trilogy for one publisher, but the deal fell through, so he's no longer obligated to do so and doesn't feel like trying to get a different publisher to take over).

Yeah, with such a massive body of work, I can imagine that he'd lose interest in stuff. That's assuming that no deal prevents him from finishing it.

idk seems like you need to leave my topic before i kick your ass again like usual
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He obviously doesn't give a shit. Get over it.

He's also rich so I doubt he cares what you think of him.
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DarkwingDidi posted...

Authors do their best to not finish their series' nowadays though.
Right Jim?

DON'T get me started on Peace Talks...
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I would pay dollars to watch Zeus and helly fight
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

DarkwingDidi posted...

Authors do their best to not finish their series' nowadays though.
Right Jim?

DON'T get me started on Peace Talks...

peace talks deadline was literally a year ago, january 1st, 2016. before that, october something, 2015. before that? idk, but it was something else
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I'm a sad panda...I want my Dresden fix:(
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helIy posted...

his books are way better than kings though

even in kings heyday, koontz books were typically more engaging and fun.

Cannot agree with this.
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Yeah, King until his accident made some masterpieces, he was a god of writing.

Never been a big fan of Koontz tbh, some of his stuff was alright, but I honestly can't remember any of it anymore.
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helIy posted...

Zeus posted...

idk, seems like you're being the bitch about this.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also entirely possible that he just doesn't feel like finishing the story and has no plans to ever write it. Which might be even more likely if he had publisher issues in the meantime (ie, he may have been contracted to write a trilogy for one publisher, but the deal fell through, so he's no longer obligated to do so and doesn't feel like trying to get a different publisher to take over).

Yeah, with such a massive body of work, I can imagine that he'd lose interest in stuff. That's assuming that no deal prevents him from finishing it.

idk seems like you need to leave my topic before i kick your ass again like usual

Because whining and throwing a tantrum is the perfect way to respond to that kind of a criticism.
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Zangulus posted...

or you can get a pile of shit he forced out simply because you wanted it.

at this point i would take this

because regardless of how good it is or not, if he does eventually write it, it's not going to be near as good as it would have been around the time the first two books were published. he's changed too much as a writer.
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wolfy42 posted...

until his accident

What accident? Incidentally, I am quite enjoying that novel he wrote about stopping the Kennedy assassination; I only got past the point where he helped murder Frank Dunning.
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helIy posted...

he's changed too much as a writer.

This is why that damned Aeronaut's Windlass series concerns me. I mean I know the first few Dresden Files novels were done to mock the entire genre, but he did it well. Meanwhile, he thinks people will take his other main series seriously when it's largely derivative drek. I get the feeling that he's grown to despise Dresden despite it providing him a rather comfortable income, and that can only impact the Big Apocaliptical Trilogy that he's been teasing all these years. He's already half assing the comics for paychecks, and that does not bode well.
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helIy posted...

Zangulus posted...

or you can get a pile of shit he forced out simply because you wanted it.

at this point i would take this

because regardless of how good it is or not, if he does eventually write it, it's not going to be near as good as it would have been around the time the first two books were published. he's changed too much as a writer.

What if I wrote it?!

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I get the feeling that he's grown to despise Dresden despite it providing him a rather comfortable income,

aka Sherlock Holmes Syndrome
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Zeus posted...

aka Sherlock Holmes Syndrome

I did my senior paper back in highschool on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He'd created such an iconic character that he'd tried unsuccessfully to kill him off just to get some bloody peace.

I'm not sure if I'd put Harry Dresden on the same pedestal, but I get what you're saying.

The real problem with Dresden is that it's based on a deep understanding of memes and tropes and that's really Butcher's wheelhouse, I'm just not sure how much he wants to acknowledge that.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

I'm not sure if I'd put Harry Dresden on the same pedestal

I'm not sure anybody but Helly would put him on the same pedestal.
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Zeus posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I'm not sure if I'd put Harry Dresden on the same pedestal

I'm not sure anybody but Helly would put him on the same pedestal.

I'm not gonna lie here. I've disagreed with helly on MANY things, but he's the one that turned me on to Dresden in the first place and I've genuinely enjoyed the DF novels. I wouldn't put Jim on the Asimov/Clarke tier, but I'd squarely place him in the Niven & Weiss/Hickman tier of my personal rankings.
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i'm usually always right about everything
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EclairReturns posted...

What accident?

He was hit by a car while walking on the side of the road.
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Bugmeat posted...

If it's been that long maybe he's changed enough as a person that he wouldn't even be able to do the book justice. It could end up feeling like someone else wrote it and you just be disappointed.

Arguably, that would be ANOTHER way he'd be just like Stephen King with the The Dark Tower!


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Bugmeat posted...

If it's been that long maybe he's changed enough as a person that he wouldn't even be able to do the book justice. It could end up feeling like someone else wrote it and you just be disappointed.

Arguably, that would be ANOTHER way he'd be just like Stephen King with the The Dark Tower!

Or Robert Jordan with TWoT.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

EclairReturns posted...

What accident?

He was hit by a car while walking on the side of the road.

He never mentally recovered from the accident. Here is an excerpt from the Wiki, though more info is out there. Some think he had the guy that hit him murdered but made to appear accidental btw.

"On June 19, 1999, at about 4:30 p.m., King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Edwin Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet (4 meters) from the pavement of Route 5.[22]:206 According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.[114] In his book On Writing King states he was heading north, walking against the traffic. Shortly before the accident took place, a woman in a car also heading north passed first King and then the light blue Dodge van. The van was looping from one side of the road to the other and the woman told her passenger she hoped "that guy in the van doesn't hit him".[22]:206

King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family, but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston. His injuries — a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip — kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered that doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator.[115] After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could sit for only about forty minutes before the pain became unbearable.[22]:216

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he fantasized about smashing it up. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted the vehicle destroyed at a charity event in which individuals would donate money for an opportunity to smash it with a sledgehammer.[116][117]

During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story (2006).[118]

In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website:

I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be.[119]"
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Metalsonic66 posted...

EclairReturns posted...

What accident?

He was hit by a car while walking on the side of the road.

More specifically:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King#Car_accident_and_after_effects

He actually references this in his later Dark Tower books, and a lot of people tend to believe that his writing definitely changed (usually the assumption is that it changed for the worse) afterward.


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DarkwingDidi posted...

Or Robert Jordan with TWoT.

Nah, Robert Jordan with TWoT was more a case of, "Hey, this trilogy I was planning on writing is gaining huge traction. I can make a TON of money off this! I'd better stretch it out as long as I can and milk it for all that it's worth!" The downside being, when you start writing a story that is meant to cover three books, and you stretch it to FOURTEEN, the plot is going to wear paper-thin in places.

Which is why the entire series basically becomes a giant snowball of constantly introducing new characters and subplots just to fill time until he eventually gets to the point where he starts getting back to the actual important parts of the story (or, you know, dies before he can actually finish the book with the actual important parts of the story in it).

George RR Martin is in much the same boat (ASoIaF was originally only supposed to be a trilogy, now it's already six books long and potentially may go to eight if he doesn't die first), though Martin also straddles the other line of writing a series where every successive book takes longer and longer and longer to write, so that the later books barely feel like they're part of the same series (people forget, but the first ASoIaF book came out 20 years ago). Arguably, he may also share the same fault as King with The Dark Tower, in that some of those later books feel much, much weaker than the originals (though that's also a trait of Jordan and TWoT, so it's hard to say whether it's merely time or more the constant padding out of the story that is weakening the plot).

ASoIaF is probably going to follow Dark Tower in that a ton of people are massively disappointed by the ending, though. Which might honestly be part of why George RR Martin shows no real inclination to actually finish it (actively hating the fans is another reason).


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I read the whole wheel of time series over every time a new book was released till like book 11. Same with Laurrel K Hamiltons series (till it became horrible porn only pretty much).

Last couple of WoT books before Jordan died where so dull/boring that I would only read the parts with Mat or Rand in them. Didn't actually bother reading the one or two after he died.


I think I have also just become more jaded as I have aged and just don't appreciate books as much anymore, which is really sad. Reading used to bring me such joy, but it's been a decade since I have stayed up all night to finish a really good book. I still love the dresden books, but unless I finish them in a day (before going to sleep), I don't stay up super late to even read those.
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Back on the topic of Steven King, he was a freaking genius in my opinion.

The Long Walk which he wrote under then pen-name Backman is my favorite short story of all time (not that i'm a prolific short story reader, but I love it).

While many love The Dark Tower series, I'm more a fan of his classics like Firestarter (movie meh....although often his adaptations rock.....book was great though), and of course The Stand.

The Stand happens to be my favorite mini series of all time as well, also a great book.

He has a ton of books on my top 20 list (don't really have a list, but they would be there).
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wolfy42 posted...

I read the whole wheel of time series over every time a new book was released till like book 11.

I started reading them in 1994, because a friend of mine was already reading them and loved them. After that I mostly read each book as it came out.

I'm in the same boat for A Song of Ice and Fire - as much as people who only discovered the books because of the TV show whine about how long he's taking to finish book six, I started reading the series back in 1998 (when A Game of Thrones was recommended to me by multiple friends), so I've literally spent 20 years trapped in this damned series.



wolfy42 posted...

Same with Laurrel K Hamiltons series (till it became horrible porn only pretty much).

Became? Her books were pretty much ALWAYS mostly porn.



wolfy42 posted...

Last couple of WoT books before Jordan died where so dull/boring that I would only read the parts with Mat or Rand in them. Didn't actually bother reading the one or two after he died.

I always felt like the first two books of the series felt a bit lame because the "I'm totally ripping off Tolkien!" vibe was strongest there, but it sort of found its own voice in book 3, and started to peak around 4-6. 7 is around the time it started to feel more and more like a chore to read through, with each successive book worse than the last, right up until book 11 (the last Jordan wrote before he died).

The Brandon Sanderson books (12-14) actually sort of redeemed the series for me. It kind of distilled out all the best elements of the series back before it became bloated, with the added benefit of tying off all the various loose ends and finally giving closure to all of the various never-ending narrative elements. And Sanderson kind of avoided a lot of the writing flaws that Jordan was mired in, letting the work flow much better.

Speaking as someone who doesn't actually like any of Brandon Sanderson's own books, I feel like the combination of his writing style and someone else's story/setting made a combo that was stronger than the sum of its parts.



wolfy42 posted...

The Long Walk which he wrote under then pen-name Backman is my favorite short story of all time (not that i'm a prolific short story reader, but I love it).

My favorite Bachman book is probably The Running Man, but I admit that's more because of the movie than the novel itself.

I think my favorite novel of his in general might be The Dark Half.



wolfy42 posted...

While many love The Dark Tower series, I'm more a fan of his classics

I loved the original Dark Tower book, but that's another series that sort of gets worse as it goes. Wizard and Glass was great, but Wolves of the Calla really kind of annoyed me. And the last book is incredibly uneven, wobbling between brilliance and bleh.



wolfy42 posted...

The Stand happens to be my favorite mini series of all time as well, also a great book.

I loved the book when I read it, but the mini-series really kind of suffered from its low budget. And some of the casting was kind of bleh.

I did get a kick out of them using Don't Fear the Reaper as the opening song of the first episode, and Don't Dream It's Over for the second.


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Be it noted that Helly turned down my *generous* offer to write those sequels. tbh, it's one reason why I never took up writing my own novels, as ingrate fans would feel that they're owed sequels. Otherwise I would have written a series of supernatural detective novels called the Cresden Files.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Metalsonic66 posted...

EclairReturns posted...

What accident?

He was hit by a car while walking on the side of the road.

More specifically:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King#Car_accident_and_after_effects

He actually references this in his later Dark Tower books, and a lot of people tend to believe that his writing definitely changed (usually the assumption is that it changed for the worse) afterward

Keeping in mind that his decision to give up drugs could have also influenced it. >_>

ParanoidObsessive posted...

My favorite Bachman book is probably The Running Man, but I admit that's more because of the movie than the novel itself.

It was a hilariously awesome movie. Probably my favorite SK adaptation.
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You gonna get the new plum book in November, po

I just finished up the last Jones book the other day, it was pretty lackluster.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I loved the original Dark Tower book, but that's another series that sort of gets worse as it goes. Wizard and Glass was great, but Wolves of the Calla really kind of annoyed me. And the last book is incredibly uneven, wobbling between brilliance and bleh.

I loved the Dark Tower all the way through, but there were definitely some weird moments, and I really wanted a better "final boss".

As for Dean Koontz, my favorites were Life Expectancy, Intensity, Phantoms, Tick Tock, and Velocity.

My mom lent me the full Frankenstein series, but I haven't started it yet.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

As for Dean Koontz, my favorites were Life Expectancy, Intensity, Phantoms, Tick Tock, and Velocity.

Not dark rivers? Seize the night? Thomas?

PSH.
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Honestly barely saw any resemblance between King's Running man and the movie. Much prefered the movie TBH, only think I read the short story ...maybe twice.

Didn't really like rage, the boat one, or thinner either (think that was all of his short stories as Bachman), but The Long Walk made up for the rest.

I may give WoT another shot some year, and read it all from the start again....by book 10 then, I had given up re-reading them (maybe even book 9), and started just reading the parts with Mat and Rand. I love wolves but the wolf guys (Was a smith..name started with D I think) got really old for me. All the chicks got ridiculous as well, and there was just too many characters. It stopped working for me probably by around book 7, but I perservered in re-reading the series till book 9 or so proably before giving up and just skimming (probably book 8 was the last one I re-read them all for).

And yeah, the soundtracks King often used for his shows, from MAximum overdrive to The Stand, was often a big part of why I liked them so much. Don't fear the reaper was PERFECT for the intro to the stand...I absolutely loved it. I was pretty ok with the cast as well, loved Randal Flag (think that was epic casting), and even liked Rob Low in his role (usually not a fan of his).
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wolfy42 posted...

Yeah, King until his accident made some masterpieces, he was a god of writing.

Never been a big fan of Koontz tbh, some of his stuff was alright, but I honestly can't remember any of it anymore.

I'm not one for fiction outside of horror anthologies, but I could never really read Stephen King. His writing style and my brain just aren't friends. He's probably the only author I have had this problem with. It's almost like reading something that has been translated to me.
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no, king is stupid long winded.

i don't need 17 pages of a character deciding they need to go take a shit.
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