JONATHAN MABERRY is a multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author. He is a professional writer and writing teacher and since 1979 has sold more than 1100 articles, eighteen nonfiction books, six novels, as well as short stories, poetry, song lyrics, video scripts, greeting cards, and two plays.

JM: In a way. I write thrillers. My first three were horror thrillers--or supernatural thrillers--but they were written with the thriller format. The new book is a bio-terrorism thriller.

JM: PATIENT ZERO is the first of a new series of thrillers that star Joe Ledger, a Baltimore cop who gets recruited by a secret government Rapid Response group to combat terrorists who have a plague that turns people into murderous zombies.

JM: Not really. It has horrific elements in it, but it’s a thriller. The villains have created a plague based on existing disease pathogens, so their weapon is just outside the reach of modern science. So if I was forced to put a specific label on it other than 'thriller' I might reach as far as 'speculative fiction'. Maybe even sci-fi, though really PATIENT ZERO is less about the science and more about the social, psychological, and political impact of a doomsday weapon. Who would use such a thing? Why? How could it be stopped? What are the ethics involved?

JM: Fingers crossed, but I think everybody will like it. PATIENT ZERO isn’t written to include one demographic and exclude others. I love storytelling and I love this particular story so much that I’d like everyone to share in the fun.

JM: Absolutely. I need to have fun while writing a book, and I really want my readers to have fun reading it.

JM: It has something for everyone, and it moves really, really fast. The core of PATIENT ZERO is Joe Ledger. On one hand he's an extremely capable man –a police detective, a former Army Ranger, and a top-grade martial artist; on the other hand he’s an emotional train wreck. He’s suffered great losses in his life, and experienced some trauma as a teenager that’s left him with a slightly fractured personality. His best friend, Rudy Sanchez, is also his shrink. When Joe is pulled into the story he’s not a suave James Bond type, nor is he a one-note always-vicious Jack Bauer. Joe is funny, a bit of a smartass, romantic, and good natured. Just don’t piss him off.

The second thing that makes the book fun are the supporting characters –heroes, traitors and villains. I love creating characters with unique and quirky personalities. And, yes, I draw on the personalities of the unique and quirky people I know in real life. Even prior to its release the book was read by hundreds of people and it’s fun to see which of the supporting characters the readers bond with. Quite a lot of them really like Sebastian Gault, one of the three central villains of the piece. Gault is very smart and charming and layered. Another very popular character is Joe’s enigmatic boss, Mr. Church. Church is a lot of fun to write because he has a very, very dry sense of humor and plays subtle mind games on everyone around him.

JM: Thrillers are all about the race against time to prevent something very bad from happening. As opposed to mysteries, which are about solving a crime; and suspense which is about maintaining a level of nail-biting tension. With each chapter of a thriller the pace gets faster and the threats get bigger. The hero becomes more and more emotionally invested in stopping the Big Bad from happening, so it gets very personal.

JM: Nope. Each book has its own unique threat. I just finished writing the second in the series, THE DRAGON FACTORY, which deals with transgenic science being used to restart the Nazi Eugenics program. I’m working on the third one now, THE KING OF PLAGUES, the villain of which sells weaponized plagues to terrorist groups, and his latest item up for sale is a weaponized version of the Biblical Tenth Plague of Egypt. DRAGON is due out in April 2010, and PLAGUES in 2011.

JM: Not at all. I’ve had very strong and positive reactions to PATIENT ZERO from female readers. Although there’s violence in the book the story isn’t defined by the violence. Nor are the characters. These are people thrust into a dangerous situation who are trying to make the best possible choices. The group that Joe joins, the DMS (Department of Military Sciences) is neither right nor left wing. If anything it’s a group of clear-headed idealists who would rather see a peaceful solution but who will pull a trigger if it means saving innocent lives.

JM: To a degree. I’m not much for political proselytizing. There are characters in the book who are very right wing and others who are very left wing, and a bunch in the middle. I guess the closest my own views enter into the story is in a comment made by Grace Courtland, a female Special Ops commander (and potential love interest for Joe) who observes that “Terrorism is an ideology, not a nationality.”

PATIENT ZERO isn’t an attack on government except when government fails to do the right thing; and it’s not an attack on Islam. If anything it paints a fair view of politics and religion, but we see how violent people can take nonviolent beliefs and turn them into weapons.

The book does reflect some of my views about international corporations, and how they sometimes put profit ahead of human life. When I was in the corporate world I saw that kind of greedy, grasping sociopathic behavior, and it chilled me to the bone.

JM: My day-to-day process is divided between writing –usually about six hours a day—and business, most of which involves using social networking to build and maintain buzz. I’m all over Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Publishers don’t --and in the economy can’t—put a lot of money into promoting their authors and books. However they know that using social media authors can do a lot of it themselves.

I like doing it because it gives me a more direct contact with readers, and that’s always fun.

JM: Only when I’m closing in on a deadline. Often I’ll spend the morning on one project and do a couple thousand words on a novel or short story; then switch to a comic book script or a nonfiction project in the afternoon. My total daily output hovers around three thousand words, but days where I crank out five or even six thousand words happen during crunch time. I love writing fast.

JM: Yes, though when I’m just starting a project, I like writing the opening pages by hand. Mechanical pencil and a legal pad, usually at a diner. That’s how PATIENT ZERO got started -over several cups of outstanding coffee and a feta cheese omelet at the Red Lion Diner in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. So far each project I started by hand has resulted in a strong and unique voice for the story. I also write a page or two by hand before bedtime.

The main bulk of the writing is done on computer. As is all of the revising and editing.

JM: My first novel was GHOST ROAD BLUES (Pinnacle Books, 2006), the first of what became the Pine Deep Trilogy. It’s a horror story with ghosts, a werewolf (in flashback) and vampires. It’s set in the small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. The town’s fictional but based largely on New Hope, PA., which has a long-standing reputation as one of the most haunted towns in America. I thought it would be fun to explore the potential inherent in that kind of reputation.

To construct the story, I mined folklore rather than tapping into the standard models for vampire and ghost behavior in pop fiction and film. I wanted to be able to throw a few curves that even a jaded horror fan wouldn’t see coming. Over the last eight years I’ve written several nonfiction books on the myths and legends of supernatural predators, including vampires and werewolves. There are a lot of fascinating things about those monsters that haven’t been tapped for fiction. One of which is a legend that appears in a few European countries that if a werewolf dies it comes back to life as a vampire. That’s damned creepy.

GHOST ROAD BLUES starts off as a hunt for a serial killer, but as the killer is stuck in the town of Pine Deep, very bad things start happening all around. We learn that he was drawn to the town because something older and far more menacing has been preparing for a return from the grave, and when it rises it intends to attack humanity with an army of the dead.

The second in the trilogy, DEAD MAN’S SONG, picks up where the first book leaves off, and this one follows characters as they investigate the current mystery and its ties to similar bloody events thirty years go. The villains are moving behind the scenes, slowly building their strength and preparing for the Red Wave –the attack on humanity.

In the final book, BAD MOON RISING, the town is plunged into a war with the undead –vampires and zombies. It’s a big, sprawling battle. It also includes guest stars. I tapped some folks I know from the horror industry to let me write them into the book. They appear as themselves –celebrities who are in Pine Deep as part of a massive Halloween Festival. So horror fans will encounter Tom Savini (make-up effects wizard, actor and the director of the 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD),, Ken Foree (star of the original DAWN OF THE DEAD), James Gunn (screenwriter for the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD), Stephen Susco (screenwriter for THE GRUDGE and THE GRUDGE 2), scream queens Brinke Stevens and Debbie Rochon (now host of Fangoria Radio), faux drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, and stuntman Jim O’Rear. And my favorite bluesman, Mem Shannon, makes an appearance.

JM: I wrote a novelization of THE WOLFMAN based on an excellent screenplay for the new film remake starring Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt. The movie comes out in November and there’s already some Oscar buzz from people who have seen the early cut

JM: I intend to keep Joe Ledger in action as long as I can. I have a lot of ideas for him. However I have other thriller books in the planning stages, including one that will be a kind of spin-off. Details to follow.

JM: Lots of stuff. I like keeping busy and I enjoy shifting gears. I just started writing comics for Marvel. My first story is an 8-pager that appears in WOLVERINE: THE ANNIVERSARY. Mine is a back-up story called GHOSTS, gorgeously illustrated by Tomm Coker. I also did a 32-page feature, PUNISHER: NAKED KILL, which will be released through their adults-only Marvel Max line, and illustrated by Laurence Campbell with a Tim Bradstreet cover. And I’m in discussions to join the creative team on of one of Marvel’s hottest new books, but it’s too soon to talk about that.

I’ve also sold a number of short stories to anthologies. And I just gave a Young Adult novel to my agent to shop.

JM: Nah…I love what I do, and I love taking on new projects, finding new stories, discovering new voices. I’ve been a writer for over thirty years now. Most of my early career was dedicated to writing magazine feature articles, columns and nonfiction books. In 2002 I wrote my first book on supernatural folklore, and in 2006 I sold my first novel. So, even though I have enough years under my belt to know the business and know my own process, I’m still new enough to fiction, comics, and other genre to groove on the freshness.

But even if I’m in the business for another thirty years, I don’t think fiction is going to lose its shine for. Neither will writing comics.

As nine to five jobs go, being a self-employed writers absolutely kicks ass.