Begrudging a Book

I get such a kick out of Dean Koontz's newsletters. The guy may not read his own e-mail, but he's sure got somebody doing some online marketing for him. The latest one talks about writing his novel Phantoms. Apparently he was rather arm-twisted into it. Years later, does he love the book--or hate it? You decide.
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Writing Phantoms was one of the ten biggest mistakes of my life, ranking directly above that incident with the angry porcupine and the clown, about which I intend to say nothing more. Phantoms has been published in thirty-one languages and has been in print continuously for fifteen years, as I write this. Worldwide, it has sold almost six million copies in all editions. It has been well reviewed, and more than a few critics have called it a modern classic of its genre. Readers write to me by the hundreds every year, even this long after first publication, to tell me how much they like Phantoms. I enjoyed writing the book, and when I had to reread it to create a screenplay for the film version, I found it to be just the thrill ride that I had originally hoped to produce. Yet it is this novel, more than any other that earned for me the label of "horror writer," which I never wanted, never embraced, and have ever since sought to shed ...

Read the rest here.