You've written horror novels and now a thriller that seems to straddle the genre line between horror and thriller.  Talk about why you crossed that line.

I've never seen that line, to be honest. People tell me it's there, but I guess I'm line-blind. I've always considered myself a "suspense" guy. Sometimes what comes out when I sit down at the keyboard is supernatural in nature, sometimes not--but it's usually dark, and one hell of a fun ride. That's what I want to do--create something that readers of edge-of-your-seat fiction love.

Will the supernatural always play a role in your stories?

That's a good question. I guess it depends on how you define supernatural--most of those elements in my fiction have some basis in science. THE REACH, for example, deals with telekinesis--but the mechanism is genetically based, and the research behind it is pretty solid. With BONE FACTORY, there's a scientific explanation for most, if not all, of the bizarre stuff that goes on, and it's probably not what you think. BLOODSTONE (my first novel) is the most purely "supernatural horror" novel I've done, and strangely enough, I found it the hardest to write, although I think it came out all right in the end.

So I guess the answer is, never say never. But I remain intrigued by human psychology, and the part of biology we still don't fully understand. We're manipulating our own genes these days with very little idea of what's going to happen. If that's not scary, I don't know what is--and boy, does it make for great "what if" moments in fiction.

What's your favorite scene in the book?

Probably a scene where the little girl Jess thinks she sees something out in the woods near their home, and her father goes to investigate. He's walking out through thigh-deep snow, everything silent, and inside the first row of trees he starts feeling like someone is watching him. It's intensely creepy (an early reviewer said she actually had to put the book down to take a quick break, the tension was so high). And nothing actually happens, at least, not yet--but it's that feeling of claustrophobia with the branches closing in, the cold, the feeling of being watched, that gets to him. We've all felt it--that moment walking through a dark room alone, or outside at night, where you just get a shiver down your spine and bolt out of there in complete and total panic.  That's what I wanted to capture.

You're known for crafting complex and conflicted characters.  Talk about character building in your fiction.

I LOVE my characters--the good and the bad. This is probably the most important thing to me when I write. My feeling is that you can write the biggest, craziest thrill ride ever, but if readers don't care about and identify with your characters, it won't work. A reader has to be rooting for people to live and die, they have to feel the tension along with the main character.

To do this, I think we need people in our fiction who are multi-dimensional, conflicted, and "real." I want my readers to know WHY my bad guy does what he does--they may not agree with his choices, but they understand how he got to that point. Likewise, heroes need to be flawed, to have gone through tough times and emerged at the other end, a bit bruised and scarred, but stronger for the experience. They may have made mistakes, but they want to make things right.

Take us through your process for conceiving, researching and writing a novel.

I usually start with some sort of strong image or scene in my head, something I can't get away from until I write it down. In the case of BONE FACTORY, I woke up around 2 am with an image of a man in the woods in the middle of winter and the dead of night, searching for a body. It was so creepy and vivid, I got right up and wrote the first couple of pages. From there, I started to brainstorm--who was this guy, and who was the dead body? What had happened--and what would happen next? I started taking notes like crazy, working through the plot in my head, and it took off from there.

Are there any other genres you have your eye on?

Heck yeah--my first attempt at sci fi, the short novel PRIME, is out from Apex Books July first, and it is one of my favorite things I've ever written. I love this story--a hardened bug hunter, down on his luck with a checkered past, hired to find out what's killing users of the world's biggest online virtual world. There are so many twists and surprises and action it's crazy. I can't wait to see what people think of it. I also have a middle grade dark fantasy novel I'm finishing up now that I wrote for my daughter, and hopefully that will find print someday.

You've written stories for magazines as diverse as Nude Beach, The Belletrist Review, Nocturnal Ecstasy and Terminal Frights.  You gotta talk about that.

Ha! Pretty strange range there, huh? They're all out of business now, too--maybe that means something? Those were all from years back, when I was first trying to break through the business, sending short fiction out to any place I could find. Some of them might surprise you--Nude Beach was a literary magazine out of Connecticut, and Nocturnal Ecstasy was vampire fiction, not really erotica. I'm sort of nostalgic for that time, to be honest--it was wild and tense and fun. Lots of rejections, but a few triumphs too.

Will you be attending ThrillerFest this year?

Absolutely! It's my favorite con.

What's next for you?

Oh, boy. Let me tell you, I can't wait for readers to get a taste of the novel I'm finishing up now, SPARROW ROCK. It's about a group of six teenagers who go looking for a place to party and end up trapped underground as the end of the world comes. Nuclear Armageddon, man-eating plagues of creatures nobody has ever seen, and a very unusual and conflicted protagonist--it's wild, tense and shocking, and I'm pretty sure no one is going to see the ending coming.

Beyond that, I have another suspense novel out now looking for a home called RIDING THE WIRE, which is a medical thriller crossed with THE MATRIX. Love that book and I hope it finds the right editor. I'll be doing edits on that middle grade fantasy I mentioned very soon. And, if the chips fall, I'll be announcing some big movie news about some of my projects before long.

Visit Nate online: Website: http://natekenyon.com/  
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Jonathan Maberry is the multiple Bram Stoker Award winning author of PATIENT ZERO (St Martins Griffin), THE WOLFMAN (Tor), BLACK PANTHER (Marvel Comics) and THEY BITE! (Citadel Press).  Visit his Big Scary Blog at www.jonathanmaberry.com