Dean Ray Koontz was born in Everett, PA, on July 9, 1945, and grew up in nearby Bedford. Ray Koontz, Dean's father, was a mentally ill alcoholic and filled Dean's childhood years with violence, confusion, and even abuse. Dean's mother, prone to sickness, aided little. In such an environment, where many give up hope, Dean Koontz decided to enter the realm of the written word not only as an admirer but as an author.

Koontz, who received no support from his parents, would not be deterred. At the age of eight he began selling his stories, adorned with covers of his own creation. Four years later he won a small cash prize of $25 and a wristwatch in a national newspaper essay contest based on the theme, "What Being An American Means to Me." He also won the Atlantic Monthly fiction competition during his senior year at Shippensburg State Teachers College (now University). From that point on Koontz wrote, sqeezing time from nights and weekends to pursue his vivid imagination.

Koontz's first real sale of fiction came at twenty while he was still in college...a story called Kittens. But that was a long way from a best-selling novel. He was hired on with the Appalachian Poverty Program to counsel and tutor underpriviledged children. He later found out that the very children he was trying to help had badly beaten his predecessor, who required extended hospitalization. But it was during this uneasy time that he met a woman named Gerda Ann Cerra and fell in love. On October 15, 1966, they married.

Koontz left the APP and landed a teaching job in a school near Harrisburg, PA. And still he wrote. Gerda, knowing how much this writing meant to him, made an offer he literally could not refuse. She would work and support him for five years, giving him the chance to build a writing career. If he had not succeeded by the end of the five years, they would assume he never could. He would resume working an ordinary job and leave his writing behind. Koontz accepted the proposition and started immediately. And when the five year time limit had reached an end, Gerda quit her job to help run the business of Koontz's successful writing career. The rest, my friends, is literary history. Today, Dean, Gerda, and their dog Trixie live in southern California.