People Magazine said that True Detectives is "...adrenaline-fueled read."  You get that kind of comment for each of your books.  What's the trick to establishing and sustaining tension?

I try to write the kind of book I'd like to read.  Each time I finish a manuscript, I sit down and try to cut out what Dutch Leonard calls "the parts the readers skip."  Though I've always enjoyed playing with language -- since early childhood -- over nearly three decades of publishing fiction, I've become less enamored of style, except as it serves to move the story forward.  And I grow less and less patient with self-indulgent fiction -- writing as masturbation rather than communication.  Life's tough and if we expect someone to plunk down their hard-earned dough on our books, we should darn well entertain them.

Your Alex Delaware novels draw heavily on your experiences as a psychologist.  How has that training influenced the writing of this new book?

Given nearly two decades of practicing psychology, I'd like to think that my exposure to a wide variety of people under an equally wide range of circumstances has given my books a certain degree of accuracy, sense of place, and emotional evocativeness.  But that judgment is really up to the readers.  There is a certain commonality between psychology and fiction:  both deal with the human experience and attempt to understand motivation and such.  However, psychology, as an aspiring science, aims to establish rules of human behavior, while fiction prefers to deal with the exceptions.

Take us through your process from 'I have a good idea for a book' to 'it's on the bookshelves'.

I never try to "get" an idea, having found that a certain passive openness to what's out there combined with rabid curiosity tends to supply more than enough stories.  I've also learned to write stuff down, because as I near 60, the old short-term memory ain't what it used to be.  So now I've got plotlines for about 60 books in my files.  My books rarely emerge from one idea -- they're not easily summed up, which is why they're not always adaptable as films (e.g. dinosaurs in amber invade the earth.)  Rather, they tend to spring from a variety of interlocking characters cast in what I hope are interesting situations. Once I figure out what I'm going to write about, I construct a general outline, then a chapter-by-chapter outline.  After I feel I've got sufficient control over the story, I sit down to write.  Interestingly, I rarely consult the outline and the finished books are usually quite different from what I thought they would be.  Contrary to the oft-portrayed notion of the artist/writer/musician as drug-addled, seriously impaired, etc, I believe that the best art emerges from a physically and mentally healthy artist.  So I try to take care of myself and I approach the job as...a job.  E.g. I do a bit of exercise each morning, shower, shave, dress as if I was going to the office, or to testify in court (my former life)  then I walk downstairs and start typing away.  I aim for five decent pages a day.  Sometimes I end up with less, sometimes more, but it averages out to five.  Meaning in 100 or so days, I've got a manuscript.  Then I rewrite.  And rewrite.  

Will we be seeing more or Moses and Aaron?

I'm always led by the story, so if the right story comes along, sure.

Your books are as much about complex relationships as they are about solving a mystery.  Discuss the process of developing deep friendships within your fiction.

That seems to evolve naturally, within the framework of the story.  The old cliché about characters becoming real in the mind of the writer has endured because it's often true.  That's what happens to me.  Once I'm in that subjective frame of reference -- writing the story but experiencing as well, dialogue and events seem to present themselves.  It's a somewhat magical experience and part of what I love about my job.

Do you and Faye help each other on your novels?  Discuss the creative cauldron that's the Kellerman household.

We used to read each other's stuff weekly.  Then we grew increasingly confident and the intervals between critiques stretched.  Now, we present each other with finished manuscripts.  I love Faye and, thank God, I also love her writing.  The same goes for our son, Jesse, whose third novel, The Genius, was published in England under his original title, The Brutal Art, and achieved five weeks on the London Times bestseller list.  The kid's brilliant.  Good guitarist, too.  And -- at the risk of being obnoxious -- I would like to note that our youngest of 4 kids, 16-year-old Aliza, will be publishing a young adult novel, Prism, with Faye this June.  Our other two daughters are pursuing Ph.D's in psychology - isn't genetics a funny thing?

TRUE DETECTITVES is available now in Hardcover from Ballantine. ISBN: ISBN-10: 0345495144 Visit Jonathan online at http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

JONATHAN MABERRY is the multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning of PATIENT ZERO (St Martins Press, March 2009), ZOMBIE CSU (Citadel Press) and WOLVERINE: GHOSTS (Marvel, April 2009).  Visit his author website: www.jonathanmaberry.com