The first book, Ghost Road Blues, was completed in late 2004 and I landed an agent pretty quickly.  She sold it to the second publisher who read it and suddenly I was in the fiction game.

I'd pitched the book to my agent as a 'supernatural thriller' rather than a 'horror' novel, partly because horror as a genre is doing poorly in the market and because I used the thriller format to tell the story.  A lot of stuff happens in a very short time; there's a lot of character movement, plenty of changes of venue and POV.  It was received as a thriller as well, and got support from the thriller, mystery and horror communities, as well as a chunk of the mainstream audience.

I was surprised and delighted that it did so well, and then really surprised when it was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award - something I'd never imagined for my fiction.  It was nominated for two awards, actually: Best Novel and Best First Novel.  It won the 'Best First' category.  Some guy named Stephen King won for Best Novel (maybe you've heard of him?  Pretty good writer.)

The publisher opted not to put the label Pine Deep Trilogy on the cover, nor even mention that Ghost Road Blues was part of a series.  That got me into a little hot water with some readers who got to the end and wondered where the hell the rest of the story was, because even though one major storyline is resolved in the first book, there are plenty of others that lead right into book 2, Dead Man's Song.  And that also didn't have anything on the cover to let readers know they were stepping into the middle of a series.

So, with Bad Moon Rising I deliberately built in a fair amount of backstory so that new readers could jump right in without having read the first two books and still get the story and be entertained.
 
Is Pine Deep based on any particular town?
 
New Hope, Pennsylvania is the model for Pine Deep, though as described in the book it's closer to the way New Hope was back in the 1970s when I was in High School: far more rural and very spooky.  But a lot of the basic geography and even some of the specific locations, like the town library (where very bad things happen in Bad Moon Rising) are based on real places in New Hope.  And New Hope has always had a reputation as one of the most haunted towns in America.
 
Did you have to get permission to include real people in Bad Moon Rising?
 
I did, and the stars were very open about letting me write them into the story.  A few requested that I not kill them off.  Everyone was good natured about it, and some of them are now close friends.
 
How does music play into the titles and the narrative?
 
I'm a big music fan, particularly of the blues and classic rock.  In High School during the 70s I was in a bunch of bands (Poverty is No Crime, Unknown Heroes, Skeleton Jam -all bands you've never heard of, and for good reason).  I'm also a collector of historic blues records.
 
After High School and before college I hitchhiked across country for about a year or so, and I spent some time in the South, looking for out of the way blues clubs, juke joints and other places where I could hear some burn-your-fingers blues.  For a couple of days a bluesman named Tom Cross walked the roads with me (and my buddy, Mike O'Brien), telling us stories about the blues in his day, which was the 30s and 40s.  He summed up all his life and struggles with a smile and a fatalistic comment of: "It all ain't nothing but the blues."  To me that was like a Zen aphorism, and Tom Cross became the model for the character of Oren Morse.

In Bad Moon Rising, though, there's a point where the hero, Crow, is making a psychological change from being a victim of circumstances to becoming a true combatant.  Right before he does something incredibly brave and reckless, he tells his partner: "This ain't the blues anymore...this is rock 'n' roll!"  
 
What constitutes good horror as opposed to lousy horror?  Is there a line that you can't cross?  
 
Bad horror is all about shock rather than suspense.  It is cheap-shot stuff that is indulges in pain, misogyny, humiliation and violence as the reasons for its own existence rather than as elements in a story about people in crisis.
 
Also, bad horror does not involve the reader.  It doesn't respect the reader, or understand that you need to let the reader participate in the process of storytelling.  A lot of my readers tell me that the book and its characters stay with them, that they keep imagining what happens next.  I feel the same way when I read really good horror.
 
For me, some of the best and most compelling horror includes The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Ghost Story by Peter Straub, Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons,and Mystery Walk by Robert McCammon.  And there are a number of great non-horror books that still manage to send a real chill up the spine: Burning Angel and Last Car To Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, and the whole Charlie 'Bird' Parker series by John Connolly.
 
What scares you?
 
I get asked that a lot, and I don't scare easily.  I'm a big guy with over forty years as a jujutsu expert, bouncer and bodyguard behind me.  I've been in real life-or-death confrontations, and I've been knifed, shot at, and run over.  I used to skydive for fun, and I find rollercoasters very relaxing.  So...what scares me?  Global politics will do for now.
 
What is your next book, Patient Zero, about?
 
Patient Zero is a new direction for me, and I had an incredible amount of fun writing it.  It launches a new series of novels featuring Joe Ledger, a Baltimore detective recruited by the DMS (Department of Military Sciences), a secret government organization composed of science geeks and first-team shooters who go after bioterrorists.
 
In Patient Zero a group of terrorists have a genetically altered pathogen called Seif al Din (The Sword of God) that will turn people into mindless and murderous zombies.  If the pathogen is released there will be no chance of stopping it, so Joe and Echo Team -his elite special ops squad-literally race against time to stop the terrorists.  It starts fast and ends with heckuva big running battle.
 
Joe Ledger is a fun character.  He's described by his former Army commander as a 'hero waiting to happen' -- someone who has all of the right skills but has never had to really use them.  Mr. Church, the mysterious head of the DMS, recognizes Joe's potential and throws Joe into the path of Seif al Din.
 
The book has gone through a lot of hands already--my first readers and editor have passed it around quite a lot even though it's not due out until early 2009--and we've found that it speaks to a pretty broad demographic base.  Women seem to dig it as much as the men do.  
 
Patient Zero is a thriller, but it uses a police procedural structure.  It also retains my own smartass sense of humor.  And I can promise some of the most realistic fight scenes around.  I even teach workshops on writing realistic fight and action scenes, and will be giving that talk at ThrillerFest.
 
What can one expect when picking up a Jonathan Maberry novel?
 
Real characters in unreal situations.  As a writer I'm a 'characters first' kind of guy.  I like layered, often damaged characters, and I like to build the story in ways that twists them and forces them to react and adapt.  And I use a lot more humor than readers might expect in either horror (which isn't known for it) or action thrillers.

Jonathan Maberry is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, writing teacher, and motivational speaker. His books include GHOST ROAD BLUES, DEAD MAN'S SONG, BAD MOON RISING, VAMPIRE UNIVERSE, THE CRYPTOPEDIA, and ZOMBIE CSU. Jonathan is co-founder of the Writers Corner USA, a writers' education center. He's a member of the HWA (Horror Writers Association), ITW (International Thriller Writers), MWA (Mystery Writers of America), and SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) and is a speaker for the National Writers Union. He lives in Warrington, Pennsylvania with his wife, Sara, and son, Sam.

ITW contributing editor Jeff Ayers is the author of VOYAGES OF IMAGINATION: THE STAR TREK FICTION COMPANION Pocket Books-November 2006. He frequently reviews thrillers for Library Journal and regularly interviews authors for LJ, the Seattle Post-Intellgencer, and Writer Magazine.