Suggestaholic!

 I took a fiction writing class when I lived in California, and the teacher was a big fan of Dean Koontz. At the time I didn’t know much about Koontz, but I had opinions about him. Snobby, snobby opinions.
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I mean, he was always on the best seller lists, his books were mass market paperbacks, and every yahoo at the beach was reading him. He had to suck, right? Well, of course he did.
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But our instructor told us Koontz should be an inspiration to us all. He told us the man wasn’t blessed with great natural abilities, but learned the craft through determination and hard work, and is now one of the best in the business.
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He’s the Pete Rose of novelists!
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At first his speech didn’t cause me to be more interested in the writer, it worked the other way around. I thought the instructor must be cursed with really bad taste, and didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I didn’t think better of Koontz, I thought worse of the teacher.
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But as the weeks passed, I saw that our instructor was no hack; he knew his stuff. He had strong opinions about fiction writing, and they seemed sound to me. I wrote detailed notes during each class, trying to bottle his knowledge for later use.
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And I went out and bought a Dean Koontz book. I believe the first one was Lightning, and I liked it very much. It wasn’t a horror story, as I’d expected, but more of a suspense novel. It was, as they say, a page-turner, and the characters and dialogue seemed especially real.
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So I bought another one, and enjoyed it as well. I realized Koontz wasn’t trying to create High Art; I’m almost certain he wasn’t competing with Cormac McCarthy or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I believe he was simply trying to tell exciting stories, and succeeding, big-time.
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And what’s wrong with that?
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Since taking that class I’ve probably scarfed down a baker’s dozen Dean Koontz novels. And they’ve all been expertly crafted, filled with characters that live and breathe, and a blast to read.
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Hey, my snobbery is usually right on target, but occasionally the calibration is slightly off. You can file a lawsuit if you’d like.
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Buy Midnight.
Buy Odd Thomas.
Buy Sole Survivor.