I haven't read Koontz in a long time, but I did used to enjoy him.
Starting with the early 1990's his books become choked with reactionary old fart rants about society going to the dogs because of all that permissiveness, and you call that music? and damn kids get off my lawn, but I've learned to recognize this as his right, just as it is my right to rant about stuff I want to rant about.
Good for him for being able to embody both perfectionist and pantser at once! I couldn't do it long-term without giving myself an ulcer, haha. So much harder to murder your darlings when they're all bright and shiny and presentable...
He murders no darlings whatsoever starting with Strangers. He pours out what he wants to, then instead of axing it, he whips it into shape until it works, not least of all by being a master of chapter structure--he can insert all the ramblings and all the scenic poetics he wants to into the structural scaffolding--and still make the reader keep turning the page to find out "what's next". It's like taking James Patterson's page-turning structural skeleton, and filling up the spaces between the action beats with anything you want to as an author, but still retain the thriller dynamic flow.
Consider this opening of By the Light of the Moon where he writes basically anything he wants to after his hook, but manages to make it all double as atmosphere setting and early glimpses of character:
[1
Shortly before being knocked unconscious and bound to a chair, before being injected with an unknown substance against his will, and before discovering that the world was deeply mysterious in ways he'd never before imagined, Dylan O'Conner left his motel room and walked across the highway to a brightly lighted fast-food franchise to buy cheeseburgers, French fries, pocket pies with apple filling, and a vanilla milkshake.
The expired day lay buried in the earth, in the asphalt. Unseen but felt, its ghost haunted the Arizona night: a hot spirit rising lazily from every inch of ground that Dylan crossed.
Here at the end of town that served travelers from the nearby interstate, formidable batteries of colorful electric signs warred for customers. In spite of this bright battle, however, an impressive sea of stars gleamed from horizon to horizon, for the air was clear and dry. A westbound moon, as round as a ship's wheel, plied the starry ocean.
The vastness above appeared clean and full of promise, but the world at ground level looked dusty, weary. Rather than being combed by a single wind, the night was plaited with many breezes, each with an individual quality of whispery speech and a unique scent. Redolent of desert grit, of cactus pollen, of diesel fumes, of hot blacktop, the air curdled as Dylan drew near to the restaurant, thickened with the aroma of long-used deep-fryer oil, with hamburger grease smoking on a griddle, with fried-onion vapors nearly as thick as blackdamp.
If he hadn't been in a town unfamiliar to him, if he hadn't been tired after a day on the road, and if his younger brother, Shepherd, hadn't been in a puzzling mood, Dylan would have sought a restaurant with healthier fare. Shep wasn't currently able to cope in public, however, and when in this condition, he refused to eat anything but comfort food with a high fat content.
The restaurant was brighter inside than out. Most surfaces were white, and in spite of the well-greased air, the establishment looked antiseptic.
Contemporary culture fit Dylan O'Conner only about as well as a three-fingered glove, and here was one more place where the tailoring pinched: He believed that a burger joint ought to look like a joint, not like a surgery, not like a nursery with pictures of clowns and funny animals on the walls, not like a bamboo pavilion on a tropical island, not like a glossy plastic replica of a 1950s diner that never actually existed. If you were going to eat charred cow smothered in cheese, with a side order of potato strips made as crisp as ancient papyrus by immersion in boiling oil, and if you were going to wash it all down with either satisfying quantities of icy beer or a milkshake containing the caloric equivalent of an entire roasted pig, then this fabulous consumption ought to occur in an ambience that virtually screamed guilty pleasure, if not sin. The lighting should be low and warm. Surfaces should be dark – preferably old mahogany, tarnished brass, wine-colored upholstery. Music should be provided to soothe the carnivore: not the music that made your gorge rise in an elevator because it was played by musicians steeped in Prozac, but tunes that were as sensuous as the food – perhaps early rock and roll or big-band swing, or good country music about temptation and remorse and beloved dogs.]
Also,
chapter 7 of Dark Rivers of the Heart is a masterclass in how to maintain an undercurrent of dynamism in an otherwise boring conversation scene, through the use of parallel micro-subplots.
