Koontz Is Hard Act to Follow, Even for Koontz

Bantam Books is banking on Dean Koontz’s new suspense novel, “Seize the Night,” to be the Newport Beach writer’s usual blockbuster.

Given that Koontz is one of the most successful authors of popular fiction--worldwide sales of nearly 200 million, with more than 17 million copies sold every year and a string of No. 1 bestsellers--it’s a good bet “Seize the Night” can deliver.

The new novel, a sequel to his best-selling “Fear Nothing,” continues the story of Christopher Snow, 28, of Moonlight Bay, Calif., who has a rare disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light.

Bantam’s publicity campaign features TV ads and online teasers including a first chapter and a consumer contest on Bantam’s Web site for Koontz (www.seizethenight.com). Add to that a telephone conference call with Koontz and a dozen newspaper reporters, two radio satellite tours and a television satellite tour in the first two weeks of 1999.

Just don’t expect Koontz to do the usual cross-country author tour: The man Rolling Stone calls “America’s most popular suspense novelist” has a fear of flying.

“I’ll fly when I absolutely must, but I totally avoid it if I can,” said Koontz, 53. “I’ve had bad experiences with flying and decided at one point, ‘I don’t need to do this anymore.’ ”

But Koontz aficionados in Orange County can rest easy.

He’ll do his annual book signing at Book Carnival in Orange at noon Sunday. Come early, owner Ed Thomas advised.

“One year we had people show up at 1 o’clock in the morning and sleep in a sleeping bag outside,” Thomas said. “The last few signings, there were already 100 people when we got there about two hours before [the start of the signing.]”

Last January, Thomas said, one couple flew in from Alaska for Koontz’s “Fear Nothing” signing, which drew a crowd of more than 500. “And we just got an e-mail the other day from [people in] Rhode Island saying they are coming just for the signing.”

Koontz’s appearance at Ed and Pat Thomas’ bookshop has been a tradition since 1986, when the author showed up to promote “Strangers.”

“That was the first signing he had ever done, not just for us, but anywhere, period,” said Thomas, recalling that his wife, Pat, had asked Koontz to make an appearance a year or two earlier, but Koontz turned it down, fearing no one would come.

“It was kind of twisting his arm until he did it,” Thomas said. “Although the signing was nowhere like now, it was still a very good signing--probably 60 or 70 people.”

At the “Fear Nothing” signing last January, Thomas sold more than 1,100 copies of the book, including a hefty number of telephone orders. Koontz signed every one.

“Dean has been there when we have said the signing is from noon to 5, and he’s there until 7:30. He will not abandon a signing; he will stay right to the last second.”

“Seize the Night,” Koontz’s first sequel, is part of a trilogy featuring Snow. This time, the 5-year-old son of Snow’s former girlfriend is abducted from his bed. Other children disappear from the town; the closed military base, where secret genetic experiments were conducted, holds the secret to their disappearance.

In writing “Seize the Night,” Koontz said, he felt an obligation to the reader--and a challenge to himself--to make the second book stand alone.

“That turned out to be a pretty hard challenge,” Koontz said. “One of the reasons I’ve always avoided trilogies or series is that, for the person who comes to the series in the middle, [a book can] become incomprehensible because the writers require you to know everything that came before.”

In a series of detective novels, each book stands alone, “but when you’re going to do a trilogy where there is an overarching story line and thematic lines, it’s much harder thing to do,” Koontz said.

A typical novel takes Koontz six to eight months; this one took 11 months to write.

“Oh, it was a bear,” he said, joking that “there were days when I thought I’d take up plumbing or something.”

Judging by early reviews, he has pulled it off.

Kirkus Reviews calls “Seize the Night” (Bantam; $26.95) a “tour de force,” and Publishers Weekly proclaims it “vintage Koontz. . . . [A continuation] of what’s shaping up to be his masterwork.”

Koontz will sign from noon to 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Book Carnival, 348 S. Tustin Ave., Orange.