Jeff Mariotte was born in Park Forest, Illinois. He moved away from there at the age of six, when his father, a civilian working for the Department of Defense, was transferred to Paris, France. Since then he's lived in Arlington and Reston, Virginia, Worms and Schriesheim, Germany, San Jose, San Diego, and Arizona.

He graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Radio/TV/Film. He has worked delivering the Washington Post, in a comic book store, fast food, selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and as maintenance supervisor for a large regional shopping center. He was the manager of Hunter’s Books, La Jolla when his first fiction was published. He has been VP of Marketing and Senior Editor for comic book publisher WildStorm Productions, Editor-in-Chief for IDW Publishing, and a freelance writer. He and his wife Maryelizabeth Hart and partner Terry Gilman are the owners of Mysterious Galaxy, an independent bookstore specializing in mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

He currently lives on the Flying M Ranch in Arizona with his family, cat and three dogs, in a house filled with books and comics and toys and music and laughter.

He is passionate about-among other things-reading, the deserts and mountains and forests of the American West, modern and historical, politics, photography, independent bookstores, and whatever else strikes his fancy at any given moment.

Jeff's Website: www.JeffMariotte.com
Jeff's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/JeffMariotte

Jeff: I've written stories for literally as long as I can remember, or nearly so. I don't think I started thinking about it as a career until high school, and even then not seriously. In college I won a literary award for a short story, and I kept working on projects, but except for some journalism didn't have anything published for quite a while after that. My first short story was published in 1988, and between that and my first novel, in 1999, the only things I had published were comic books. So I guess my literary career had a long gestation period. Once I started getting published, I was able to stay pretty busy, but mostly with tie-in works—as you said, moving between various existing fictional universes before being able to start doing originals like the Witch Season books and others.

Jeff: Actually, in my case it was the other way around. As alluded to above, I was writing comics for years before my first novel was published--and even then, my first novel was about comic book characters. Specifically, it was Gen13: Netherwar, written with my friend Christopher Golden, based on characters from WildStorm Productions. I've written novels about other comic book characters since then, including Superman, Spider-Man, and the world of 30 Days of Night. But I definitely moved from comics to novels, not the other way around.

As for the reason--different stories lend themselves to different media. Some are much more visual, some require a lot of internal stuff that's hard to do in comics, and so on. I try to pick the medium that will work best for the story I have in mind.

Jeff: Zombie Cop is a one-shot graphic novel rather than a comic book issue. It’s a full-length 96-page comic story, fully painted by a rising star named Szymon Kudranski. So there won't be any more, because the whole story is told right there. It's about a cop who is infected with the zombie virus plaguing his city. As he's losing his mental and physical faculties, succumbing to the virus, he's trying to solve the mystery of how the virus came about, knowing he has limited time to do so. Most zombie stories focus on the survivors, but this one is about the gradual deterioration of one decent man and his search for answers.

In the back there's also an original prose novella called "The Strip," set in a different part of the same city. So whether someone is a comics fan or a prose horror fan, there's something for everyone!

Jeff: I was approached by DC Comics, which was handling the license for the CW. I had done another novel for them, the aforementioned Superman novel (called DC Universe: Trail of Time), and several years ago, when DC Comics acquired WildStorm Productions, I was a senior editor for the company. Although I never worked in the licensing department, I knew people there and they know my work.

Jeff: As is usually the case with tie-in books, the story is an original story created by the novelist. The show writers have enough to do getting the show on the air, so tie-in writers have to make up the plots of their novels, using the existing characters (and creating whatever incidental characters they need).

Jeff: I haven't met anybody from Supernatural. I have met people from some other shows I've written tie-ins for--I've met most of the Buffy cast and crew, and a lot of the Angel people, for instance, because I also co-wrote behind-the-scenes series companion books about those. I've been on the CSI: Miami set and met that cast. I was once allowed to sit in on a DVD commentary recording session for CSI, featuring creator Anthony Zuiker and Gary Dourdan. And even in cases where I haven't met people in person, sometimes I've been able to talk to them on the phone, as was the case with Gary Scott Thompson, who created Las Vegas, and Shawn Ryan, Michael Chiklis and CCH Pounder of The Shield, among others.

Jeff: As David said, River Runs Red combines spy fiction with supernatural horror. It's about some people in West Texas who, twenty years ago, were exposed to something in a mysterious cave on the Texas/Mexico border...something that has had a profound, but until now unknown effect no their lives. They find themselves mixed up in an eons-spanning occult war, and...well, stuff happens. It's a story I've wanted to tell for a long time, and mixed in with all the horror and action I hope I get across my deep and abiding love for Western landscapes and history.

Jeff: There have been so many. I remain terribly proud of my original novels The Slab, Missing White Girl, and River Runs Red, as well as the teen horror Witch Season quartet. My western/horror comic book Desperadoes is more than a decade old and still going strong, and the most recent miniseries, Buffalo Dreams, was picked as the Best Western Comic Book of the year by True West Magazine. My comic book Presidential Material: Barack Obama is going into a fourth printing, and I've heard from some retailers that it was their best-selling comic of 2008--plus may have helped bring people into the political process (as well as bringing people who like politics into comic stores) so that's definitely a high point.

Jeff: Being a professional writer is always a struggle, and a very precarious existence. The best advice remains true--keep your day job! If you have a day job then you don't need to worry about selling, you can worry about writing the best book you can, then try to sell it (or better yet, let an agent sell it). I left my day job when I was just too busy to do both the writing and the full-time work, but I also had a financial cushion that helped me make the transition.

A freelancer never knows when the next check will show up in the mailbox, so it's a lot like being unemployed except you don't qualify for unemployment benefits. It's not a lifestyle for the faint of heart, or for people who can’t manage their money, on those rare occasions that they have any.

Jeff: There is some secret stuff, but if I told you then my publishers would come after me with poison darts. It's a thing they do... in not-as-secret news, IDW Publishing is about to release a trade paperback collection of Graveslinger, a horror/Western comic I wrote with Shannon Eric Denton, with art by John Cboins and Nima Sorat. In March they'll release the Desperadoes Omnibus, which collects all the Desperadoes stories ever printed, with art by John Cassaday, John Lucas, John Severin, Jeremy Haun, and Alberto Dose. There are more comics on the way this year, but those are the secret ones. In May, Penguin/Jove will put out Cold Black Hearts, third in the loose trilogy that began with Missing White Girl and River Runs Red. I just today turned in a CSI novel called Brass in Pocket, but I'm not sure when it'll be released. And there are other books on the way too...

Jeff: Thanks, TNB!