Dean Koontz - House of Odd

DEAN KOONTZ is the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers. He lives with his wife, Gerda, in Southern California.

QUEENIE CHAN was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Australia when she was six years old. She is the creator of the mystery-horror graphic novel series The Dreaming and has illustrated three graphic novels based on Dean Koontz’s character Odd Thomas. She provided art for the Boy’s Book of Positive Quotations by Steve Deger and draws a number of online comic strips on her personal website: www.queeniechan.com/

LANDRY Q. WALKER has been writing comics for twenty years, and is the co-creator of Kid Gravity and Little Gloomy—two comics that were featured prominently in Disney Adventures Magazine. He is best known for his 2008 reinvention of the DC Comics character Supergirl and is currently looking forward to seeing his comic series The Super Scary Monster Show adapted into animation.landrywalker.blogspot.com

This is the third graphic novel to star Odd Thomas, following In Odd We Trust and Odd Is on Our Side. In the first book, artist Queenie Chan established the appearance of Odd and Stormy. In House of Odd, her challenge was to come up with the look of Hollywood producer Nedra Nolan and the members of the CISI team whose investigations would form the center of the plot. On the following pages are Dean Koontz’s descriptions of each character, plus Queenie’s sketches and comments as she sent them in for Dean’s approval.

NEDRA NOLAN

“A successful film producer among whose hits were two films based on Ozzie’s novels. She should resemble Helen Mirren.”

VERN

“A forty-something guy with Einsteinian hair, who talks about ghost chasing as if it’s as refined a science as quantum mechanics, but it’s really just idiot jargon.”

CASSANDRA

“A thirty-something true believer who comes with her cat, Houdini, which she sometimes holds and points like a dowsing rod to lead her to the haunting spirit.” Queenie argued that Cassandra should have dark hair, saying, “Honestly, few psychic ladies are blonde. It doesn’t seem to fit the image.” But Dean liked this first sketch, asking only that Cassandra’s “gypsy shawl” be deleted.