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Here’s the FAQ:

QUESTION: Will there be a sequel to PATIENT ZERO?  -Mickey M., Atlanta, GA

JONATHAN MABERRY:  Yes, there are at least two more Joe Ledger novels in the pipeline.  Next up is THE DRAGON FACTORY, due out from St. Martins Griffin in March 2010.  In that one Joe and Echo Team square off against a cabal of scientists who are using advanced genetics for ethnic cleansing and to complete the Nazi Master Race program.

Then in 2011 Joe will be back to hunt down THE KING OF PLAGUES, a scientist who has discovered that the Tenth Plague of Egypt (the Death of the Firstborn) was a pathogen, and he plans to weaponize it for use by terrorists.

There will also be some Joe Ledger short stories.  One will be a direct sequel to PATIENT ZERO, and others bridge the gap between that book and DRAGON FACTORY.  I’ll post details as they become available.

To download, COUNTDOWN, the short story prequel to PATIENT ZERO, use this link:

http://us.macmillan.com/CMS400/uploadedFiles/COUNTDOWN_free.pdf

QUESTION: Are the Pine Deep Novels still available?  -Fayed M., Los Angeles, CA

MABERRY: Absolutely.  Pinnacle Books has all three books –GHOST ROAD BLUES, DEAD MAN’S SONG and BAD MOON RISING—available in paperback.  If they’re not already on the shelves of your local bookstore, the store can order them.

QUESTION:  Will you be writing any more Pine Deep novels?  -Rachel P.., Tulsa, OK

MABERRY:  Probably.  I have several Pine Deep novels outlined, including one that tells the story of the Bone Man’s journey from his boyhood in rural Mississippi to his confrontation with the evil Reaper in Pine Deep.  Another planned novel features

Big Mick Sweeney –Mike’s grandfather—who comes home from four years with the Airborne in WWII to find that the town he left has been invaded by an ancient evil.  And I’ll probably want to tell some Mike Sweeney stories, picking up his tale three or four years after the events in BAD MOON RISING.  All of this is planned, but I’ve got so many other projects on my plate that I have no idea when I’ll get to them.

QUESTION: When do you start your run on BLACK PANTHER?  Paul A., Philadelphia, PA

MABERRY:  My run started with BLACK PANTHER #7, the first installment of the “POWER” arc.  I’ve always loved the BLACK PANTHER character and I’m truly delighted and honored to have been asked to write the book.  I’ll be taking the book into some new directions, with old and new villains, and the storylines draw heavily on the various problems plaguing our own world.

QUESTION:  Any other comic book news?  -Sherry R., Newark, NJ

MABERRY: Lots, though I can’t talk about too many of them.  Marvel likes to keep things under wraps until the catalogs come out.  Also look for MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN in September, which is a team effort.  Fred Van Lente (Marvel Zombies 3, 4) is writing issues #1 and #5; David Wellington (MONSTER ISLAND, MONSTER NATION, etc.) is doing issue #2; I’m doing issue #3; and

Seth Grahame-Smith (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES) is doing issue #4.

My installment pits zombified versions of Spider-Man and Wolverine duking it out.  It was a blast.

QUESTION:  What’s with all the damn zombies?  -Dan McT., Baltimore, MD

MABERRY:  I talked about that in a recent interview in Sci-Fi Pulse: http://scifipulse.net/?p=8536 So far I’ve done a fair amount of writing on vampires and zombies.  Here’s how it breaks down:

ZOMBIES

• “Pegleg and Paddy Save the World” –short story in HISTORY IS DEAD edited by Kim Paffenroth, Permuted Press, 2007
• BAD MOON RISING –novel, Pinnacle Books, 2008.  ***This is the third book of the Pine Deep Trilogy.  Zombies (called ‘dead heads’ appear in this book but not the previous installments).
• ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead  -nonfiction book, Citadel Press, 200. Winner of the 2008 Heinzman Award for Science in the Study of Zombies
• “Countdown” – short story prequel to PATIENT ZERO, available free online.  *** A single zombie appears very briefly. Click COUNTDOWN for a free download.
• PATIENT ZERO –novel, St. Martins Griffin, 2009
• MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN –comic book, Marvel Comics, September 2009
• “Family Business”  -novella, THE NEW DEAD edited by Christopher Golden, St. Martins Press, 2010.  *** This book will also be a signed & numbered limited edition by Subterranean Press.
• ROT & RUIN –Young Adult novel, Simon & Schuster, Fall 2010
• DUST & DECAY  – Young Adult novel, Simon & Schuster, Fall 2011

VAMPIRES

• THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’S FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDEAD –nonfiction book, Strider Nolan Press, 2001  ***Written under the pen name of Shane MacDougall
• VAMPIRE UNIVERSE  -nonfiction book, Citadel Press, 2006
• THE CRYPTOPEDIA -nonfiction book, Citadel Press, 2007; co-authored by David F. Kramer.  *** Bram Stoker Award winner for Best Nonfiction)
• THEY BITE! -nonfiction book, Citadel Press, 2009; -co-authored by David F. Kramer.
• VAMPIRE HUNTERS and Other Enemies of Evil -nonfiction book, Citadel Press, 2010; co-authored by Janice Gable Bashman
• THE PINE DEEP TRILOGY
  • GHOST ROAD BLUES novel, Pinnacle Books, 2006.  –Bram Stoker Award winner for Best First Novel
  • DEAD MAN’S SONG novel, Pinnacle Books, 2007.
  • BAD MOON RISING novel, Pinnacle Books, 2008.

QUESTION:  Are you a horror writer or a thriller writer?

MABERRY:  I’m whatever kind of writer serves the story I want to tell.  THE WOLFMAN is a horror novel.  The Pine Deep Trilogy are ‘supernatural thrillers’, which is a fancy name for saying that they’re horror novels for the mainstream market.  They have vampires and werewolves in them, but the story unfolds like a thriller with a big race against time to prevent something very bad from happening.

The Joe Ledger novels are techno-thrillers.  Even though Joe goes up against zombies in PATIENT ZERO, the book is a thriller in which zombies appear.  The zombies in the story are deliberately created by scientists working to release a doomsday pathogen.  The second and third books in the series do not have zombies.  Nazis are the bad guys in THE KING OF PLAGUES and a rogue scientist is the villain of THE KING OF PLAGUES.

I’m a member of the Horror Writers Association and a member of the International Thriller Writers.

I should also note that since all of my novels, horror or thriller, have a strong element of mystery to them, I also consider them to be mysteries.  So…I’ve also been active in the Mystery Writers of America.

I recently sold a pair of dystopian novels sent fourteen years after the apocalypse.  The apocalypse in question involved zombies.  Are they zombie novels?  Yes.  Are they thrillers?  Yes.  Are they science fiction?  Yep.  Where will you be able to find them in the bookstore?  Probably under Young Adult, because I believe that’s how Simon & Schuster is going to market them.  But, let’s face it…a hell of a lot of adults (myself included) are reading Young Adult.  Everyone from Neil Gaiman to Robert B. Parker to James Rollins is now writing YA.  Like me, they believe that the writer is defined by his story rather than the genre in which his first works appear.

QUESTION:  What happened to THE WOLFMAN?  I thought that was coming out in November?  Andrea B., Indianapolis, IN

MABERRY:  Universal Pictures decided to move it back to February in order to give it a big four-day weekend release..  Just in time for Valentine’s Day, and nothing says romance more than a bloodthirsty werewolf.

Actually, the movie is terrific and I hope I did it justice with my novel adaptation.  Tor Books will release it a few days before the movie takes a bite out of the Valentines Day theater-goers.  The flick stars Benecio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving.

QUESTION:  You use a lot of martial arts in your books.  Do you have a black belt?  -Tonya W., Bensalem, PA

MABERRY: Yes, I’ve been practicing Japanese Jujutsu, Korean Hapkido, and Kenjutsu (Samurai swordplay), for well over forty years.  I hold an 8th degree black belt in jujutsu and a 5th degree in kenjutsu.  In 2004 I was inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame.  I’ve also written a number of nonfiction books on the subject (JUDO AND YOU, ULTIMATE JUJUTSU, ULTIMATE SPARRING, and others –all of which are now out of print); and did a video, FIGHTING JUJUTSU.  I worked variously as a bodyguard in the entertainment industry and a bouncer; I ran Temple University’s Women’s Self-Defense program for fourteen years, and also taught a course on Martial Arts History; and most recently was the chief instructor for COP-Safe, a company that gave arrest and control workshops for all levels of law enforcement.  I was also the Expert Witness for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office for murder cases involving Martial Arts; and provided Expert services for civil cases related to martial arts.

QUESTION: Are you an occultist?  -Dawn H., Ocean City, NJ

MABERRY:  Hardly.  More like an amateur folklorist.  I’ve written several books on the myths and legends of the supernatural, often following monsters from legend and into pop culture.  My first book on that subject was THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’S FIELD

GUIDE TO THE UNDEAD, written under the pen name of Shane MacDougall.  In 2006 Citadel Press released the first of a series of books on the supernatural and paranormal, beginning with VAMPIRE UNIVERSE, a look at vampire and werewolf legends around the world and throughout history.  I followed that in 2007 with THE CRYPTOPEDIA, an occult & paranormal dictionary co-authored by

David F. Kramer.  The book won the Bram Stoker Award for Nonfiction.  Then I jagged a bit into pop culture with ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead, in which I interviewed over 250 experts in law enforcement, forensics, medicine, the clergy, the press, Homeland security, the military and other fields to determine how the real world would react, research and respond to events as shown in films like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEADA and 28 DAYS LATER.  That one won the Black Quill Award and the Heinzman Science Prize, and was nominated for a Stoker Award.  That book includes interviews and comments by just about every key figure in the zombie world

This year David Kramer and I have a new supernatural book coming out in August –THEY BITE: Endless Cravings of Supernatural Predators, which is a companion to the first two books.  It includes interviews with John Carpenter (HALLOWEEN), Adrienne Barbeau (THE FOG), Holly Black (THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES), Peter Straub (GHOST STORY), Jack Ketchum (THE GIRL NEXT DOOR), Ray Garton (Ravenous), Ramsey Campbell, and I’m working on VAMPIRE HUNTERS and Other Enemies of Evil.

QUESTION:  What’s the PHILLY LIARS CLUB?  –Alan H., Charlotte, NC

MABERRY:  The Philly Liars Club is a group of thirteen professional writers of different kinds who fell in together to do readings, talks, workshops, and have some fun.  The name comes from the fact that we ‘make stuff up for a living’. The current line-up includes L. A. Banks (New York Times best-selling author of paranormal thrillers and spooky romances); Gregory Frost (fantasy author);  William Lashner (NY Times bestselling author of legal thrillers); Laura Schrock (Emmy Award-winning TV producer and scriptwriter and co-creator for ON THE SLAB for ABC/Disney); Jon McGoran (author of several forensics thrillers for Penguin as D H Dublin); Kelly Simmons (women’s contemporary fiction author); Ed Pettit (book reviewer and renowned expert on Edgar Allen Poe); Dennis Tafoya (celebrated crime writer); Don Lafferty (publicist, social media guru, and magazine feature writer), Merry Jones (mystery novelist), Keith Strunk (actor, playwright, historian and children’s storyteller), and me.

QUESTION:  Do you ever do any short stories?  –Christopher A., Vancouver, BC

MABERRY:  I’ve only written a few so far, although I have several that I owe to various anthologies.  “Pegleg and Paddy Save the World” (HISTORY IS DEAD, Permuted Press 2007), The Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost” (LEGENDS OF THE MOUNTAIN STATE 2, Bloodletting Books, 2008), “Clean Sweeps” (AND SO IT BEGINS, Dark Quest Books, 2008), “Family Business” (THE NEW DEAD, St. Martins Press, 2010), and “Doctor Nine” (KILLERS, Swimming Kangaroo Press, 2008), “

QUESTION:  I once saw a play you wrote called ‘The Fire Zone’.  Whatever happened to that?  –Lorie Y., Memphis, TN

MABERRY:  Tales from the Fire Zone was an experimental play I wrote in the early 80s.  It was performed as part of a graduate student project (not my own) at Temple University, and then again in San Diego.  I did a fast pass on it to adapt is a novel, but several other book projects came along and it’s been sitting and waiting patiently for me to revise it.  The working title of the novel adaptation is INDIGO HEART, named after the protagonist who is a lost and emotionally damaged young man who has discovered that he’s not able to live in the world.  So he escapes into another world –called the Fire Zone—searching for his soul.  It’s an urban fantasy built on the framework of a psychological thriller.  I hope to get to it in 2010.

QUESTION: What is the WRITERS COFFEEHOUSE?

MABERRY: I believe that writers should be around other writers.  Too much of what we do is solitary, and too much time in our own heads can make Jack a dull boy and a bit of a weirdo.  A few years ago, while I was the Executive Director of the Writers Room of Bucks County I started a free monthly get-together that was basically a bunch of writers sitting around talking about writing…with coffee.  No agenda…just chat about the latest trends in the industry, about markets, about pitching and selling, about frustration, about keeping the inner fires alight, about dealing with our families, about how damn tough it is to make it as a writer at the best of times and what writers can do to stay afloat in these troubled economic waters.

Nowadays the Writers Coffeehouse meets on the last Sunday of every month, from noon to 3pm at Saxby Coffee in Doylestown (in their basement conference room).  It’s free and open to all writers, from absolute beginners to NY Times bestsellers.  It’s always a great time.

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