Suspending Suspense for ‘Doorway’ to Kids’ Hearts

Karen Wong sat in the morning sunshine reading silly verses and concocting an excuse to give her boss for taking more than two hours to make photocopies at an Irvine Kinko’s.

The fault belonged to suspense author Dean Koontz of Newport Beach. If Wong hadn’t seen the sign on a nearby store announcing a book-signing later Saturday morning, she’d have been in and out of Kinko’s as fast as a signature.

“I’ve read more than 30 of his books, and I’ve got 20 of them,” said Wong, 23, of West Covina, as she thumbed through Koontz’s latest book--a surprising collection of children’s poems. “They’re really cute.”

It wasn’t exactly a “Harry Potter” moment, but Saturday’s book-signing marked a departure for Koontz, whose white-knuckle novels of murder and suspense have sold more than 225 million copies worldwide.

Unless you count Jilly, an annoying girl who gets eaten in a pie, or the hubris-filled wizard who meets an untimely end, no one dies in “The Paper Doorway” (HarperCollins, $17.95), a collection of sometimes macabre silliness illustrated by Phil Parks.

The book is Koontz’s second for children in five years. The first, also with Parks, was “Santa’s Twin,” a 1996 best-selling Christmas tale about Bob Claus, a Grinch-like ill-intentioned curmudgeon, and a case of polar sibling rivalry that almost derails Christmas. Koontz also teamed up with Parks on 1988’s “Oddkins,” his first children’s book, now out of print.

On Saturday, Koontz’s reputation as an adult writer preceded him. The more than 300 people who filed through Irvine’s Whale of a Tale children’s bookshop were dominated by fans of his suspense novels. Many were there to load up on Christmas gifts and said they were surprised by the book of silly couplets and other rhymes from a writer whose books usually explore dark elements of human nature.

“I’ve always considered him to be a grand master of science fiction,” said Virginia Mead of Irvine. “But it’s the same imagination that you find in children’s books--you just create your own world.”

Koontz said he hasn’t given up writing the suspense tales that have made him rich enough to buy a house on Newport Beach’s Spyglass Hill, another on Balboa Peninsula and a new mansion-in-the-making in Newport Coast. In fact, a new adult novel, “One Door Away From Heaven” (HarperCollins, $26.95) is due in stores the day after Christmas.

Rather, the children’s stories and poems are diversions, something to be spun out in slow moments during the 8- to 12-hour workdays he spends on his novels.

“I’ve always liked children’s books,” Koontz, 56, said in an interview earlier in the week. “One of the three novels that had the greatest effect on me was ‘Wind in the Willows.’ I reread that book every three or four years.”

The poems in “The Paper Doorway” are designed to appeal to a mischievous 11-year-old but embrace themes and twists that have an ageless appeal.

In the “Man With Four Eyes,” a smug wizard brags of his ability to see both forward and backward. “His claims I don’t mean to deride/ But the bus that hit him came from the side.” In “The Reliable Bunny,” the Easter Bunny has a binge-eating problem. And “You Get the Pickle You Ask For” is a morality tale about standing silent while others suffer.

Koontz said the children’s poems erupt on their own during his idle moments, and reflect his own growing interest in reading modern American poetry. In some ways, he said, writing the poems is more gratifying than writing a novel, which can take him a year or more.

“That’s a long horizon from start to finish,” said Koontz, a slightly built man with thick dark hair and piercing black eyes. “Poems have a short horizon. You can sit down in a day and write a few and feel like you’ve accomplished something.”

Koontz makes no pretense that he’s creating American classics with his rhymes, and he describes himself as filled with “self-doubt” about their caliber. He measures his success in quantity rather than in critical acclaim. There have been few reviews of his kids’ books. But he’s sold some 250,000 copies of “Santa’s Twin,” and the initial printing of “The Paper Doorway” was 100,000 copies.

Koontz’s foray into children’s poems began with his adult thrillers. One, “Mr. Murder” (Putnam, 1993) included a father character who makes up--but doesn’t finish--a Christmas poem to distract his children as the family hides from a stalker. After the book was published, Koontz said, readers wrote to ask why the poem went unfinished. So Koontz finished it in “Santa’s Twin.”

While the Santa book was a narrative poem, “The Paper Doorway” is a disparate collection of largely playful verses, as in “Those Weird Guys in Nursery Rhymes”: “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,/ Jack jump over the candlestick./ If the candlestick was lit,/ Jack must be a real nitwit.”

On Saturday, the playfulness came to the fore in conversations with fans that lasted more than 2 1/2 hours. Koontz bantered with the crowd, spending a few minutes with each person as he scrawled personalized dedications.

Sandy Guest, 42, of Laguna Niguel waited for nearly an hour with her armful of books for friends and relatives. As Koontz signed them she asked him to blow a kiss for a photograph she wanted to take for her best friend who “just adores you.” Koontz obliged.

Afterward, Guest listed the people she would be giving the books to but said she wouldn’t be reading any of Koontz’s books herself. She read one once and doesn’t remember the title, but the experience didn’t go well. The writing was so vivid, she said, the story haunted her for days.

“I had to check my closets and under the beds,” Guest laughed as she gathered up her gifts. “You just don’t know.”