Dean Koontz: On Writing Novels That Make Your Publisher Extremely Uneasy ‹ CrimeReads

I am a bad boy. I have spread mustard on a sandwich as much as ten days after its use-by date. I have loitered where signs are posted that forbid loitering, not because I wanted to loiter; I was in a hurry to be elsewhere, but I wasn't going to let anyone tell me where I couldn't loiter. I have washed garments that I was commanded to "dry clean only." Really, when it comes to obeying the rules, I am a dangerous nonconformist. This has also been true in my writing life, and while I'm not proud of it, I'm not ashamed, either.

When I began to write cross-genre novels with Strangers in the early 1980s, my publishers knew I was doing something unconventional, and they knew they didn't like it, but at first, they couldn't put a name to it or explain why such work made them uneasy.