In the following email interview about his new novel The Forest Of Lost Souls (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Dean Koontz says this “suspense novel with fantasy elements” is “a story about myths, how they are created, why they endure, and how they shape us.”
To start, what is The Forest Of Lost Souls about, and when and where is it set?
Vida is of the Jane Hawk School of Take No Crap And Take No Prisoners. She lives alone in the mountains and knows the forests as if she created them. She is friends with wolves. There are some people not so friendly to her, and when they come after her, one after the other, she knows what to do.
This is a story about myths, how they are created, why they endure, and how they shape us.
Where did you get the idea for The Forest Of Lost Souls?
A line from Eric Hoffer, 1967: “What starts out here [in the U.S.] as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”
So, is there a reason why you set it in and around a forest as opposed to a jungle or some other kind of natural place?
Jungles have too many snakes and large bugs, too much rain, in general too many things that would have to be incorporated to make it real and would distract from the story. Deserts suck. I could have set it on an ocean, but the characters would have immediately drowned. In the Arctic, they would have frozen. Really, I had no choice other than to set it in a forest or else a shopping mall.
Is there also a reason why Vida has a particular affinity for wolves as opposed to owls or rabbits or some other woodland creatures?
Vida is not an incarnation of the Roman goddess Diana, but she is the kind of woman who would have inspired the myth of Diana in the first place. Diana was the goddess of the moon and the hunt, and she ran with wolves. My Diana would have seemed ridiculous if she were running with rabbits. And why would owls toddle along at her side when they can fly? Sometimes, Paul, I wonder about you. I really do. “Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt, racing through the night with and her pack of running owls.”
I wonder about me, too.
The Forest Of Lost Souls sounds like it’s a supernatural fantasy story….
It’s a suspense novel with fantasy elements, but no damn unicorns or wizards with wands. The setting is recognizably our world.
The Forest Of Lost Souls is not your first novel. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had any kind of influence on Souls?
It’s not my first novel? I thought it was. Let me research my life and get back to you.
How about non-literary influences?
It was influenced profoundly by Chinese Checkers.
And how about Elsa? What influence did your dog [pictured above] have on The Forest Of Lost Souls? Because I would imagine she’d like to run around a forest…y’know, for research.
You’re really into this influences thing, aren’t you, Paul?
Maybe, just maybe, once in a quarter century or so, I am able to write a novel that comes only from my mind and heart. Yes, dogs come into the story in the third act, and there are wolves throughout, and some mornings when I came into the office, I found that Elsa had spent the night at the keyboard expanding on what I’d written the previous day, but this is my book, and it certainly did not borrow any material from an unpublished and never discovered manuscript by Robert Louis Stevenson.
You’ve also had a bunch of your novels adapted into movies. Do you think The Forest Of Lost Souls could work as a movie? Or maybe a TV show?
I don’t have a clue about that screwy business. That’s why I have agents. I also have agents to make book deals, represent translation rights, remind me to brush my teeth each evening, be sure I don’t eat too much junk food, and remind me that this is not my first novel. Agents are invaluable.
Finally, is there anything else people need to know about The Forest Of Lost Souls?
It was not written by an AI. In a major university study involving an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of computer keyboards, they could not produce even the first page.
Well, all right, they did produce the first page, but there were 56 errors of grammar and 68 errors of syntax. And they weren’t just monkeys, they were chimpanzees. And when the errors were pointed out to them, they flew into a rage and slaughtered most of the university staff. This is why nothing will replace human beings as novelists.
