His novels are billed as suspense thrillers, but frequently incorporate elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire.

Many of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, with fourteen hardcovers and sixteen paperbacks reaching the number-one position.

[1][2] Koontz wrote under a number of pen names earlier in his career, including "David Axton", "Deanna Dwyer", "K.R.

[3][4] He has said that he was regularly beaten and abused by his alcoholic father, which influenced his later writing, as also did the courage of his physically diminutive mother in standing up to her husband.

[5] In his senior year at Shippensburg State College, he won a fiction competition sponsored by Atlantic Monthly magazine.

[7] In a 1996 interview with Reason magazine, he said that while the program sounded "very noble and wonderful, ... [i]n reality, it was a dumping ground for violent children ... and most of the funding ended up 'disappearing somewhere.

In his book, The Dean Koontz Companion, he recalled that he "... realized that most of these programs are not meant to help anyone, merely to control people and make them dependent.

Koontz has stated that he began using pen names after several editors convinced him that authors who switched back and forth between different genres invariably fell victim to "negative crossover" (alienating established fans and simultaneously failing to pick up any new ones).

As Brian Coffey, he wrote the "Mike Tucker" trilogy (Blood Risk, Surrounded, Wall of Masks) in acknowledged tribute to the Parker novels of Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake).

His first bestseller was Demon Seed, the sales of which picked up after the release of the film of the same name in 1977, and sold over two million copies in one year.

[2] Bestselling science fiction writer Brian Herbert has stated, "I even went through a phase where I read everything that Dean Koontz wrote, and in the process I learned a lot about characterization and building suspense.

[20] Koontz was taken with the charity while he was researching his novel Midnight, a book which included a CCI-trained dog, a black Labrador Retriever, named Moose.

I did Gothic romance novels under a pen-name ... Like many writers, I did some pornography too, and a variety of other things, none of which required me to commit my heart or my soul to the task.

(This is not to say I didn't bother to do a good job; on the contrary, I never wrote down to any market, and I always tried to give my editors and readers their money's worth.)"