Nope, it was definitely Seize the Night. The dog’s name was Orson.
Which evidently means that Koontz has written more than one book about sentient dogs. I find that rather hilarious.
I suspect that a lot of these sorts of plots originate through some kind of creativity exercise where a horror writer will challenge themselves to come up with the silliest, most all-out unscariest premise, and then try to make it scary. Stephen King seems to do this a lot. I suppose in a genre where the same basic archetypes have been used over and over-- haunted houses, monsters, ancient curses, etc.-- writers must occasionally get desperate for new ideas. I can imagine a writer looking frantically around his study:
“Evil… pencils! No… um… how about a killer… throw rug! No… wait! A stapler with a deadly secret!”
Koontz from what I can tell is more then a little obsessive compulsive. In one of his author’s notes he mentioned the fact that he re-writes the same page up to a dozen times before he feels he’s gotten it ‘right’. For years I had wondered why he’d go through spurts of putting out the same books with the same characters in very slightly different situations over and over before moving on. After reading that I realized he was doing the same thing only in book form.
I bloody love that story. I love all of his stories. The Books of Blood is a great set of short stories.
My favorite ridiculous-plotted horror book is The Manitou, by Graham Masterton. Here’s the plot:
A Native American medicine man from the 1700s is reincarnated by implanting his manitou, or spirit, in the body of the ex-girlfriend of a middle-aged charlatan psychic named Harry Erskine. But not in her womb–on her neck. When she goes into the hospital to get it checked out, the spirit (who nearly kills the doctors) is messed up by the X-rays and becomes even more vengeful and insane. Harry and a modern-day Native American medicine man he has tracked down must deal with the ancient evil while trying not to kill the girlfriend.
The book spawned three sequels, but the first one was the best. Total guilty pleasure. And the movie (starring Tony Curtis) was pure '70s cheesy horror movie goodness as well. 
Is that the one where
a bunch of kids get lost in this weird kind of ghost town and they keep having dreams or images of grisly, freaky shit happening (one I remember is this kid dreamed he was walking along the wall and the wall became thinner and thinner until it was razor sharp and he fell and was cut in two–then later in RL he got stabbed with a pitchfork in the crotch.)? Because if that’s the book I remember, that scared the bejesus out of me and I’ve never been able to forget it.
A few things come to mind here:
Clive Barker: Great writer. The mentioned “In the Hills, the Cities” was sort of made into a commercial (I think for Pepsi), where two rival groups of friends use their bodies to build giant people to compete in a dance competition, or something. I haven’t seen it for a while, but it reminded me of that story. The “Books of Blood” series is really worth getting.
Dean Koontz: Like Stephen King without an imagination. Like Piers Anthony trying to write horror. I won’t deny that I’m jealous of him, because he can evidently make a living by feeding the same crap to the public over and over. I am poor because I have more of a conscience than that.
My own vote for this thread? As a horror fan, I could come up with several, but in keeping with Terrifel’s criticism, I’d have to pick a story by Stephen King (“The Moving Finger” published in the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes), where the evil monster is a finger coming out of a bathroom sink drain.
It fits Terrifel’s description, but I think it also proves the talent of a writer: if you can take something so random and nonsensical and make it scary, it still counts.
I thought Stephen King’s “Rose Madder” would have been a much better story without the horror aspect. The major scene would be Rose kicking the snot out of Norman, even killing him. She’d teach him never to fuck with her again.
Robeert E. Howard wrote a novella/short story entitled Pigeons From Hell.
No shit.
And brilliant.
I’ve always believed that the title was changed by some dimwit asisstant editor.
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Anthony was good up until Question Quest, and after that he seemed to have finally exhuasted all ideas. (Specifically, #1-8 and #14 at least are pretty enjoyable. #9-13 is where he began to develop “The Formula”, but it’s readable.)
But anyhoo, I don’t have anything to add to the thread other than to plug Dean R. Koontz’s Oddkins.
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Well, I’ve already confessed that I thought Phantoms was a hoot (and, frankly, a more satisfying read than King’s suspiciously similar take on the same basic concept, It. However, even being unfamiliar with Koontz’ other work, I still think you’re probably selling him short here-- because I’ve also read Piers Anthony’s attempt at writing horror, the eye-bitingly awful Shade of the Tree. It contains all the elements that make a Piers Anthony novel so readable; the personality-free male protagonist, the barely legal female with gorgeous attributes, the precocious child, the comic relief-- all coated with an extra layer of ickiness because Anthony’s personal issues are that much more disturbing in a non-fantastic setting. It barely misses qualifying for this thread due to its central premise:–a psychic tree (hence the punning title-- ‘shade’ = ‘spirit,’ oh Anthony, you and your puns, you wacky slyboots)– but I can’t imagine anyone actually enjoying this book (other than Anthony himself, repeatedly, stickily).
My favorite was The Party or something of the like, maybe Slumber Party. It was the one where
A group of HS seniors (I think he always used seniors) go to a house in Mexico for their senior party. There was a party earlier in the year where one girl was (accidentally on purpose) dosed with insecticide and lost her kidney function. Turns out she was adopted and her twin brother had been found to be pressured into giving her a kidney, but he wanted to know what kind of person she was and her sister wanted to know who had done the poisoning. So they separately arranged their own plans for this party, so that only the ones that were at the original party were there.
It’s very strange to describe. But I definitely remember the Final Friends books fondly as well as Remember Me
And how about Queen of the damned, by Anne Rice, where…
…the vampire Lestat becomes a rock star, making music that wakes up the Vampire queen Akasha. Now the movie was crap, but the book was really good, despite all.
Nope, I don’t remember the one you’re talking about. Road to Nowhere was the one with …
A girl is driving along and picks up two hitchhikers who are weird and scary hitchhiker types and everything is very strange and they appear to be convincing her not to kill herself. Eventually she wakes up from the “dream” she had after slitting her wrists in the bathtub only to discover the doctor watching over her is the son of the two imaginary hitchhikers. Or something.
Lsura, I’m so completely embarrassed I remember this, but the one you’re thinking of is Weekend. Slumber Party was …
The one the group of girls in a ski lodge having (naturally) a slumber party several years after a previous slumber party ended in a horrible fire that left one girl dead and one burned severely. I remember the ending–the “new girl” is actually the girl that supposedly died, out for revenge. I believe there was a bit about spontaneous human combustion, as well.
I read too damn many of those books.
I don’t know about the people who made the commercial but I’m willing to wager that Barker got his idea from the original cover of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan”.
I’ve commented on this book before in different contexts-
THE DEAD by Mark Rogers
The Rapture happens. All truly good people are taken, regardless of religious affiliation. Hordes of cannibalistic zombies arise to feast upon those left behind.
Salvation is only in becoming righteous & faithful in the midst of being beset by the zombies.
It sounds ridiculous. When it first came out years ago, I took a look at it on the shelves & passed it up with derision. Only after seeing an Internet recommendation a couple of years later did I read it, finding it at HalfPrice Books, and was totally rocked by it.
Stand-out points- some standout defenses of Catholic Christianity, which would be worthy of GD; the POV of some damned souls inside the zombies- including one which retains enough of his human self to commit one decent act; the control of the zombies by the Legion Demon (the AntiChrist character); the “Rapture” being the splitting of the Universe into the Good Eternal Realm and the Dying Evil Realm.
Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed Koontz before…“Midnight” and “Lightning” come to mind. But after I read the third Koontz book with the same plot (family gets chased across the country by crazy/evil people until they confront each other at the end and all the bad people die), I gave up on him. There always seems to be either a disgruntled teen or precocious child involved, as well as Ring-Dings and Cheese-Doodles…all staples of King’s work.
As for Anthony, I haven’t read “Shade of the Tree,” but I have read a few things that I liked: the first 3 and 1/2 Xanth novels (after that, I got bored), a short story (published in “Again, Dangerous Visions” by Harlan Ellison) called “In the Barn,” and a horror novel he wrote entitled “Firefly.”
“Firefly” is probably the best thing I’ve read by him. Racy, controversial, pervy in places (if one is so inclined to read it that way), but enjoyable enough:
A protoplasmic alien exudes pheromones to immobilize its prey in a coma of sexual ecstacy while it sucks out their bodily fluids for sustenance.
Seriously.
It’s actually not a bad book, as his work goes, and it served as a vehicle for him to voice his perspective on sexual issues and prejudices and whatnot.
Have you seen “The Lost Room”? 
That story scared the hell out of me! Anyone I’ve ever described it to thinks I’m nuts.
Yes! That’s one of the greatest short stories he’s written. I have to consciously put it out of mind when I enter a bathroom now. :eek: Really that entire collection, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, is one of my favorites. ‘‘Chattery Teeth’’ is another one of those hard-to-believe story premises that somehow manages to work:
‘‘Chattery Teeth’’ is about a pair of wind-up Chattery Teeth’ capable of heroic and dangerous acts. What?