Horror and fantasy novelist Dean Koontz picked up this Edenic estate in Irvine; it’ll make an ideal setting for a California holiday season. The prolific writer paid $11.6 million for the house, a contemporary hacienda with lavish outdoor living spaces and nearly 13,500 square feet of interiors.

The property incorporates Spanish colonial, mission, and Italianate design elements, and features the extensive patio and terrace space that is the foundation for the Mediterranean lifestyle. The 2009-built house boasts an intensely warm, engineered period feel; details include aged plank hardwood, plentiful arches, Spanish Colonial-style chandeliers, stenciled ceiling and wall embellishments, crown moldings, and a limestone living room fireplace.

The kitchen’s rustic Mediterranean country house design is also very intense, and represents this turnkey lifestyle very well. There are 6 bedrooms and 8 baths, with the master receiving a separate sitting room with sliding glass opening onto the terrace. Amenities include a games room and lounge with a wet bar, guest quarters, a theater with tiered seating, and a fitness room.

The property’s exterior likely sold the home to Mr. Koontz, though. The half-acre lot features landscaping lush enough to be called storybook, a loggia, a small colonnade and enclosed dining space, a covered living room, a fire pit with crescent seating, and a pool with a pair of neoclassical benches.

Koontz has written more than 100 novels, including this year’s Jane Hawk book ‘The Night Window.’