Vengeance Road launches a new series.  Give us the lowdown on the book.

In Vengeance Road, the body of Bernice Hogan, a troubled young ex-nursing student with a tragic past, is found in a shallow grave near a forest creek. Jolene Peller, a single mom struggling to build a new life with her little boy, vanishes the night she tried to find Bernice. Hero cop, Karl Styebeck is beloved by his community but privately police are uneasy with the answers he gives to protect the life -- and the lie -- he's lived. The case haunts Gannon who risks more than his job to pursue the story behind Styebeck's dark secret, his link to the women, and the mysterious big rig roaming America's loneliest highways on its descent into eternal darkness.

You've written a number of thrillers now.  What's your process from 'I have a good idea' to 'I just finished the new book'.

I like to start with a seed of truth, something that I know has happened. This would form the foundation. It could be drawn from a story I covered or an interesting fact I'd learned. I'll mull it over for a while, give it a lot of thought while casting the story with the characters. Often the characters emerge first and their problem is the story and I'll set it against a something factual. Then I'll used a general outline, that's just my process. But things change on the journey. It's like this for me, an outline is a road map, you know you want to go from A to B and you have some notes on what you want to do in between. The actual writing is the trip and with apologies to T.S. Eliot, between the idea and the reality, emerges the book.

You're a former journalist and you've really gone the extra mile to get some solid crime stories.  Talk about some of the highlights of that part of your career.

My career as a journalist started as summer student cub reporter at The Toronto Star. At the Star, I learned the news business by reporting craft working in the suburban bureaus and the metro news desk at One Yonge Street. I covered a range of stories, including a murder trial, and a takedown by the SWAT team looking for an escaped killer. I also did time in the, "torture chamber," the cell-like room housing banks of chattering police scanners where you kept your ears pricked for the first hint of a story that could stop the heart of the city. Or break it. After I left The Toronto Star, I embarked on a news career that would span three decades and several newsrooms. Over the course of that time, I would write about death in all of its terrible manifestations. I interviewed the families of victims, detectives, and murderers, including corresponding with a serial killer. I remember entering a prison, interviewing a double-killer who told me how the ghosts of his victims haunted him in his cell. Reporting on death never got easier. If anything, I grew more philosophical, searching for deeper meaning in its aftermath. In the courage of families, in the determination of detectives and in the lives of reporters who struggled to make sense of the chaos unleashed on them all.
 
My job as a journalist also took to a number of places around the world, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean. There were many adrenaline-fueled days. Most reporters know that nothing really prepares you for the things you'll experience. You see what cops, paramedics, firefighters, emergency experts see. For me, as a reporter by day, novelist by night, a light had been switched on. Covering human tragedies and dramas up close was overwhelming. But on another level, having a university degree in English Literature, Journalism, and having studied religious responses to death and American Detective Fiction, I felt I was equipped to try to make sense of what I was experiencing. To try to convey through fiction, the truths I'd learned.

Among the many highlights of my reporting days, a few come to mind. There was a little girl who had a terminal brain condition and her dream was to meed a certain music star. When her family's situation was made known to my news organization, we wrote about it and her dream came true. The family invited me back stage for the meeting, there was not a dry eye there. One of the more disturbing things happened one quiet night I was working alone in the newsroom on the cop beat. A call came in for me. It was a convicted murdered who was calling from prison. From the psych ward. I didn't know him, but I had written about him. That night he confessed to me how he tricked his way to get access to a telephone because he needed to talk to somebody outside of the institution. So, I said, talk. He then went into to every detail, every vile, disgusting detail, of how he abducted two young women then held them hostage in a suburban home. Then he told me exactly how he murdered one but decided to let the other live. He was not remorseful, or even emotional. He just wanted me to have a clear accounting. Then he hung up. My spine rattled for hours after. I had trouble sleeping that night. That's only one strange experience from the beat.
 
What's next for Jack Gannon?

I've just completed book two in the series which is to be released in the summer of 2010. It's called The Panic Zone and it will put Gannon's reporting skills to the test.
 
Will you be returning to the Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski series?

That five-book series, my first,  is on hiatus. Two of the books were optioned for film and while the options have expired there's renewed interest in possibly publishing the series in a number of foreign editions. Stand by on that. The series is enormously popular in Norway, where every Norwegian translation as had best-seller status. In fact, my publisher in Oslo is planning to combine the first two books of the series, If Angels Fall and Cold Fear into a special single volume.

What about the Jason Wade series?

The Jason Wade trilogy has been very well received. In fact, the Wade series will be introduced to UK readers, and those in Australia and New Zealand starting mid-September and October with publication of The Dying Hour. It will be followed by Every Fear and A Perfect Grave at approximately six-month intervals. Other translations may follow.

Any chance Jack Gannon will run into Reed, Sydowski, or Wade?

As detectives often say, "I wouldn't rule out anything."

What's next for you?

At the moment, I'm polishing the fourth draft of The Panic Zone, book 2 of the Gannon series. Then I'll start planning Jack Gannon's next assignment and possibly a standalone thriller after I have three books in the Gannon series down. I'll be contributing to a short story anthology and possibly attempt a novella as well. I am looking forward to Bouchercon in Indianapolis in October and ThrillerFest next year.

Writing, promoting, doing the cons -it's a lot of hard work.  What keeps it fun for you?

I do enjoy it for all it offers. The crime fiction family is large and generous, the conferences are great for talking with readers and discussing all aspects of writing with other authors. And, of course, to star gaze. In Chicago, I took a picture of Dennis Lehane with a fan, in New York, I managed to get a few minutes with Lee Child, James Patterson. In Las Vegas, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Im Austin Michael Connelly and Peter Robinson. They're all very kind. David Hewson and Linwood Barclay, being ex-journalists, are fun to hang around with as well.
As for the writing, as most authors know, it's the readers who ultimately make it worth while. You appreciate all the nice comments like 'you kept me up all night,' and 'you need to write more books faster'. But one that stands out came from a lovely handwritten letter from a woman in Indiana. Seems she was on vacation in the west and bought my first book, If Angels Fall, in a used book bin for 25 cents. After reading it, she liked it so much, she cut me a personal check for the full cover price, $7.00, which she'd attached to her letter. She told me I'd earned it. I was blown away. I thanked her. And yes, I cashed the check, but I've kept a photocopy that I intend to frame some day.

JONATHAN MABERRY is a multiple Bram Stoker Award winning author and Marvel Comics writers.  His books include PATIENT ZERO, which has been optioned for TV, THE WOLFMAN, and THEY BITE!  He is the regular writer for Marvel's BLACK PANTHER comic.  Visit his publishing industry blog at www.jonathanmaberry.com