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| The Sunday Times - Money The Sunday Times October 09, 2005 Fame & Fortune: Writer is thrilled by his eight-figure salary By Natalie Graham Dean Koontz hoped to make $25,000 a year from his novels — but he now earns 400 times as much DEAN KOONTZ, 60, has written 48 books, published in 38 languages, with worldwide sales of more than 300m copies. His latest thriller, Velocity, is the story of a man forced by a serial killer to choose who will be murdered next. A number of Koontz’s books have been made into films. In America, Intensity was filmed as a mini-series for Fox. ABC has produced a mini-series of the novel Mr Murder. Koontz, an only child, was born in Everett, Pennsylvania. His father was an alcoholic who had long periods out of w**k. His mother worked as a cashier in a department store. He later paid his own way to Shippensburg State College, Pennsylvania, where he trained as an English teacher. He taught delinquent teenagers for a year, before two years teaching in a state high school. At 22, Koontz published his first novel, Star Quest, a sci-fi thriller. Eight years later his 16th novel marked a change of genre, to suspense thriller. He now writes two books a year. Koontz is married to his high-school sweetheart, Gerda, who manages their investments. They live at Newport Beach, California, with Trixie, a 10-year-old golden retriever. How much money do you have in your wallet? Several hundred dollars, because I always feel more comfortable with cash for personal expenditure. You don’t have to wait for a receipt, and I suppose it goes back to the days when I didn’t have much. Do you have any credit cards? We have three, of which two are Amex. One is for personal use, and the other for business expenses. Gerda prefers me to use a card so she can keep track of my business receipts. Are you a saver or spender? I would say we are both. When we did not have the money to spend we saved it, and by the time we had done the proper job with saving we were not inhibited. Our first excessive expenditure was a Mercedes 450SL in 1975. How much did you earn last year? My income is in eight figures — more than $10m (£5.7m). Happily, it has been at that level for a long time. It is a constant source of amazement to us. My original goal was to earn $25,000 a year from writing. Have you ever been hard up? Both of us came from poor families. I was 21 and Gerda was 20 when we married with $150, a used car and our clothes. We both had jobs but they were not high-paying. In 1969, when I was 24, Gerda made me an offer. She would support me while I wrote books for five years, and she said, if you don’t make it in five years you will never make it. I tried to negotiate seven years, but she is Sicilian and a tougher negotiator than me. What is the most lucrative w**k you have done? Did you use the fee for something special? A very lucrative moment was the first big contract I signed for three books, worth $6m. That was in 1986, and every writer I knew said that when I had written them I would never have to write again — as if I then might wish to take up plumbing. We opted for the security of banking nearly all the money, in case I never got another contract. With the next contract we bought our first expensive house. How many properties do you have? We own the house we live in now, two-and-a-half acres, which is a fairly good-sized property. We bought the land in 1991 then spent 11 years designing and building the house. We moved into it a little over two years ago. We also have a small portfolio of other properties in the area, for investment. Do you invest in shares? We did some of that in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The shares didn’t do badly, but I didn’t feel the return justified the time I had to put into the research. Also, I don’t like to put my money into the hands of a fund manager or broker. Do you have a pension? My accountant has told me it does not make sense for me to have a pension, so we don’t. You can only put so much into it by law, so there’s no point in spending time filling out all the paperwork required by the tax bureaucracy. I hope my royalties will be my pension, but you never know. Do you believe pensions are a good thing? They should be, but I think everyone is obligated to understand whether the pension fund’s promise is really going to be fulfilled. People have to look out for themselves. What has been your worst investment? We once bought a house in an adjacent neighbourhood, thinking we were near the end of the downturn in the market. In fact it was at the beginning of it, in late 1989. The property was a four-bedroom house on one-and-a-half acres. I think we paid $900,000 for it. We remodelled the place, but ended up selling it for slightly less than we paid and lost the money we had spent on the remodelling. And your best? Again it is real estate. This time it is the house we live in. We bought two-and-a-half acres of ocean-view land when this was a new area of the coast, and people hesitated to buy into it. In 1991 we purchased four lots at a very low price. Now similar lots sell for five times that amount. When you are sitting on land overlooking the Pacific Ocean there is just a limited amount of it. There are only three bedrooms, but we have a home cinema and two swimming pools. Do you manage your own financial affairs? We have an accountant who does tax preparation for us. Gerda does everything else. What is your financial priority? We have done everything we have hoped to achieve for ourselves. For the next 10 to 15 years we would like to w**k for causes we are passionate about. For a long time we have worked with Canine Companions for Independence, a charity that provides service dogs for paraplegics and quadraplegics. These dogs can do 89 separate tasks that allow disabled people to be independent and autistic children to be somewhat socialised. Do you have a money weakness? It would have to be books. I am a book collector, and when there is an author I particularly love I must have the first edition. My own library has more than 50,000 volumes. What is the most extravagant thing you have ever bought? Seven or eight years ago we bought an 18th-century Chinese rosewood and jade screen for $500,000. It’s in the living room and is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen. Do you play the lottery? What if you won? There is a lottery in America but my wife and I have never bought a ticket for it. It lives off impossible hopes and dreams, which can be a danger. I feel like I have won the lottery by the success of my books, something I could never have imagined. Right now we give away a seven-figure sum each year. Our ultimate goal is that when both of us die all of it will go into our personal charitable foundation. What is the most important lesson you have learnt about money? Treat it with a mixture of respect and contempt. In my business the less you worry about making money the more likely you are to make it. It is partly because when writers worry about making money they put up the periscope to see what is wanted. Then they write what is wanted but by the time they have finished there are new trends. When you write according to your passion, in my experience the money then comes to you. |
| QUOTE (little pixie @ Oct 11 2005, 12:27 PM) |
| Woof ! Drank out of the toilet again ! Woof ! :lmao: |
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| Have decided bacon is good. Dad tells me I am good. If I am good, and bacon is good, why am I not bacon? |
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| Dad writes Frankenstein book. Trixie (who is dog) reads book. Trixie scared. Me, who is Trixie, hide under bed. Am freaked out by dust ball under bed—think it is alive! Get out from under bed, run, run. Hide in closet. Overcoat on hanger looks like hulking monster. It’s alive! Bolt from closet. Hide in library, in maze of shelves. Maybe safe. Look up at shelf. See FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley. Floor creaks. It’s alive! Under floor, alive! Will smash through! Will kill first dog it sees, which will be me, who is Trixie and too cute to die. Sprint out of library. Race to kitchen. Open door of fridge. Get sausages. Eat sausages. Feel better. Feel safe. Here is advice from me, Trixie Koontz, dog: You go to market, buy sausages. Having sausages make you feel safe. Only after you buy sausages, then buy Dad’s new paperback—DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN, BOOK ONE: PRODIGAL SON. Read with sausages, and you will not get so scared you’ll hide under bed with hideous living dust ball. |
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| MY HALLOWEEN PLANS By Trixie Koontz, Dog Dress up like witch. Tour neighborhood. Fill bag with goodies. Return home. Dress up like Frankenpuppy. Tour neighborhood. Fill bag with goodies. Return home. Dress up like terrifying ET. Tour neighborhood, demand goodies or will kill with ray gun. Return home. Insert in mouth set of giant wax fangs, spray whipped cream on muzzle to fake rabies, chase neighborhood children who are trick-or-treating, terrify into dropping their bags of goodies. Snatch bag. Return home. Pee. Dress up like Lassie, go to bakery, convince everyone that Timmy is trapped under overturned tanker truck. Get everyone to leave bakery to help Timmy. Loot store. Experience moment of guilt. Chastise self: “Bad dog. Bad dog. Bad, bad dog.” Go to butcher shop. Convince everyone that Timmy is trapped in burning sawmill. Get everyone to leave butcher shop to help Timmy. Grab all the frankfurters and steaks. Experience a moment of guilt. Decide can live with it. Go home. Eat. Eat, eat, eat. Throw up. Write memoir of criminal activities. Sell to Bantam Books. Sell film rights to Steven Spielberg. Go on book and movie tour. Stay in 4-star hotels with room service. Order six dozen frankfurters every night. Go to Betty Ford clinic to take cure for serious frankfurter addiction. Do spot on Dr. Phil’s show. Weep. Win audience sympathy. Sneak into Dr. Phil’s dressing room, get his American Express card number, order one million frankfurters. Take vacation in Tahiti. Plan for next Halloween. |
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| Will kill first dog it sees, which will be me, who is Trixie and too cute to die. |
| QUOTE (little pixie @ Oct 11 2005, 02:28 PM) | ||
:lmao: :lmao: Thanks for posting those Karen - they`re great ! :lmao: |