Tell us about the spark for Never Look Away. What drove you to write this one?

I'm always looking for a good hook, a way into a story. I was thinking about one of those urban legends, about kids getting kidnapped at theme parks, and thought: How could you start a book like that, but then make it something entirely different? I'm hoping I pulled it off.

You have quite an interesting background, including running a cottage resort and trailer park and working as a newspaper columnist writing humor. You've also written non-fiction. What made you turn to thrillers? Is there a really fine line between funny and terrifying?

Writing thrillers isn't new for me; it's coming back to what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. I started writing stories around third grade, and had written two or three mystery novels by the time I was in my early twenties. Thankfully, they were not published, not that there was even a remote chance of that happening. And around the time I was 25 or 26 I wrote another novel that I tried, without success, to sell.

When an opportunity came up at the Toronto Star for me to write a humour column, something I had done at a smaller paper, I jumped at it. Writing about 140 columns a year led to three humour books and a memoir that really traded on my reputation at the paper. Now that I had written several books, the time seemed right to take another shot at a novel -- a funny thriller -- that became Bad Move. Although my standalones are darker than my first four novels about Zack Walker, there's still humour in them. A lot of people can't get their head around my going from funny columns to creepy thrillers, but it never seemed like a stretch. If Martin Short can play a diabolical lawyer on Damages, well...

Your thrillers are about relatively normal families getting into a mess of trouble. What draws you to this type of story?

I'm a -- relatively -- normal person with a normal family. All our friends are normal people. These are the kinds of people I know. Wouldn't a thriller that involves people you can identify with be every bit as exciting, maybe even more so, than one about CSI types or CIA operatives or ex-military guys or tough private detectives? When I read a James Bond-type thriller about the hero smuggling plutonium past customs or something, I might find it exciting, but I don't really identify with it. It's been ages since I smuggled plutonium. But a kid who doesn't come home on time, that's what keeps me and the people I know up at night. That's the kind of anxiety I'm trying to tap into.

As a Canadian author, did you find it difficult breaking into the UK and American publishing world?

The irony is, it took me longest to find a Canadian publisher. My first novel, Bad Move -- the first of four funnier mysteries about a character named Zack Walker --  was bought quite quickly by Bantam, in New York, and I started getting published in the UK with my first standalone, No Time for Goodbye. Canadian publishers, with their strong tradition of favouring literary fiction over genre, were a little slower to come around, but after No Time for Goodbye became something of a global hit, I ended up signing with Doubleday Canada for future books. And they've been terrific.

You're known for your killer twists--do you plot all of them out ahead of time, or do they come to you as you write?

I have an overall plan when I start, so I may have the big twists mapped out, but many of the smaller ones become evident as I'm writing. I get to a point and think, "Whoa, I could do THIS here."

Do you have a favorite of your own novels? If so, why?

I really like Fear the Worst. No Time for Goodbye was my breakout book, and has done very well for me. but Fear the Worst just really came together in a way that pleased me. It features my all-time favourite character -- a young girl named Patty -- and it has the ending I'm most satisfied with (even though some readers don't share my feeling on that) from an emotional point of view. And it's the book where, when my wife was reading it for the first time and got to the best twist in the book, she said aloud, "Holy shit!"

What's next for you?

At the moment I am rewriting the book that will come out in 2011. I am contracted, for now, to produce a thriller a year through to 2014.   I'm having a great time, and just want to keep getting better with each book.

Nate Kenyon is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist, P&E Horror Novel of the Year Award winner, and author of BLOODSTONE, THE REACH, THE BONE FACTORY and the upcoming SPARROW ROCK (May 2010). THE REACH has been optioned for film. He also has a trade paperback science fiction novella, PRIME, from Apex Books. Kenyon lives in the Boston area, where he is at work on his next novel.