I must admit, I’m a latecomer to comics. I never liked them as a child, and aside from the odd Batman and Iron Man issue sometime in the late 1980s, it wasn’t until I was 25 that, on a whim, I picked up my first copy of seminal British weekly, 2000AD. Six years on, my taste is more for the American superhero periodicals of DC Comics (a lot of which, ironically, are both written and drawn by British artists), but two names still stick out as key writers who helped develop my latent appreciation for sequential art.

Leah Moore is the daughter of the legendary Alan Moore – and while I’m sure she’s sick of that being mentioned every time, given her own talent for writing, Alan is to me the greatest writer (comic or otherwise) in the English language, and I’m starting to think there is something genetic going on. John Reppion is Leah’s husband, and together they have formed a mighty writing partnership that has given us Albion (with Alan Moore, Shane Oakley and George Freeman), Wild Girl (with Shawn McManus), and Doctor Who: The Whispering Gallery (with Ben Templesmith), among many other titles. They also share my interest in the strange and Fortean, John having written one of my favourite features to appear in Fortean Times, The Childe of Hale, as well as 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool from The History Press. It came as a surprise to find myself living more or less in the same region as the pair when I moved to the UK in late 2006, and although I’ve only had the pleasure of their company on an afternoon in Manchester hot enough to melt boron, we’ve had many fascinating exchanges on Twitter regarding the importance of tea, the influence of steampunk, and popular moustache styles of the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

Their latest projects as a writing team have all been for Dynamite Entertainment using classic characters from literature – The Trials of Sherlock Holmes (with Aaron Campbell), an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in The Complete Dracula (with Colton Worley), and coming in November, The Complete Alice in Wonderland (with Erica Awano).

Ladies and gentlemen, Leah Moore and John Reppion.

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For those of us familiar with the world of podcast fiction, today’s writer in the hot seat needs no introduction. J. C. Hutchins kick-started the podcast novel revolution in 2006 with 7th Son, a serialised technothriller trilogy dealing the aftermath of the US President’s assassination… by a four-year-old child. While it started life as a podcast novel, the award-winning 7th Son was optioned for development as a feature film by Warner Bros in April this year, and will be released as a print novel trilogy by St. Martin’s Press, starting with 7th Son: Descent in October 2009.

The Hutch’s latest project is a mind-blowing interactive, multimedia, immersive supernatural thriller novel Personal Effects: Dark Art. This book comes with actual physical objects – driver’s licences, credit cards, psychiatric hospital certificates, and much more – that link the reader with the events of the story, and seeded through the book itself are phone numbers and websites which are real and can be called and visited. This engaging and exciting project is the result of a collaboration between Hutchins and game designer Jordan Weisman, and was published by St. Martin’s Press in June 2009. Hutchins has followed this with a Personal Effects: Sword of Blood, a free podcast prequel novella.

On top of all this, Hutchins is a champion of social media and an all-round top bloke. He’s also a frightening creative power, his friendly, charming exterior belying the horrific and twisted stories he delights in telling us with a childlike glee. An evil, evil, childlike glee. If you want further proof of his secret powers and not-so-secret genius, Hutchins teamed up with alt-culture and pin-up site Suicide Girls to create a Personal Effects-themed photoshoot. Suicide Girls is not safe for work and is adults-only, but a PG-13-rated photoset can be downloaded from JCHutchins.net. See? A genius. I wish I’d thought of that first…

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr J. C. Hutchins.

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As if you didn’t know it, Scott Sigler is a New York Times Bestselling author, the king of podcast novels, and our Future Dark Overlord. He’s also a real gent, and his limited edition hardcover of The Rookie is due to ship at the end of the month. Just look at the blurb and pick your jaw up off the floor when you’re done:

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California-based crime novelist Seth Harwood is another podcasting success story. Having introduced his high-octane detective thriller stylee to the podsphere in 2006, in May 2009, the first volume of the Jack Palms series, Jack Wakes Up, was released by Three Rivers Press. Good crime fiction is hard to write, but Seth is on top of the game. I can’t really beat Scott Sigler’s summary of the book, when he said: “Jack Wakes Up is like a Tarantino film pulled off the screen, rolled in a John Woo zig-zag wrapper and sparked up with a vintage Miami Vice lighter. Buy it now and thank me later.”

Wise words. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Seth Harwood.

Seth Harwood

Name
Seth Harwood, aka the Palms Father of Soul, The James Brown of Podcasting

Location
California, USA – the Berkeley Hills

What do you write?
I write crime novels in the Jack Palms series and literary short stories… so far. Who knows what I’ll get into next? More crime, definitely more crime!

Jack Wakes Up: A Novel, by Seth Harwood

What are your writing habits?
I write first thing or as close to first thing in the morning as possible. The sooner I can get from bed to keys, the better it seems to flow. I’ll go through periods where, honestly, all I do is work on promotion of my work. That can take the form of podcasting, blogging, interacting with fans online, and building in new media. Fortunately there are times I get excited about this so it’s not a grind.

Then there are the writing drafting times. When I’m in this mode, I’ll avoid the internet altogether until I’ve done my word count for the day. I usually set a goal of however many words (1,000 when I’m starting out and then 1,500 and 2,000 or above when I’m really into a project.) But I try not to overdo it. I’m a big believer in feeling out your limits and not going beyond. That’s how I think people get “blocked.” I’ll try to write as many days a week as I can, but usually not more than 6. Every day I make sure to stop at a point where I know what’s going to happen next; this makes starting up the next day a lot easier.

I don’t write with an outline. I like getting to know the characters and their situations as I go. If I’m getting surprised, it usually amounts to good writing, exciting for the reader. I believe in writing each sentence as best I can, and letting that one lead me on to the next. Then in revision I try to find out what I learned about the story along the way, then try to build that in from the start.

What software or tools do you use?
I use Scrivener for writing my novels and a MacBook. I used to use Word, but literally I can’t imagine how I’d write a novel without Scrivener now. I guess that’d make me do outlines – outline as I go. There’s nothing that can match Scrivener’s chapter view for seeing where the book has gone and is going. I title my chapters so I know a bit about what happens in each one and just look back at that list as my outline. I can also jump right to the parts I need to see with it, instead of massive scrolling and reading movements like I had to do in Word. Blech!

If you’ve got a Mac and want to write a novel, you’ve got to get Scrivener!

I also use 3″ x 5″ notecards. I jot stuff down on them all the time, like crazy. Stick them wherever I can.

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Seth Harwood, thank-you very much! Seth can be found online at his website, sethharwood.com, and also on Facebook at facebook.com/sethharwood and twitter as @sethharwood. The Jack Palms series of podcast novels can be downloaded for free from Seth’s website, and the original podcast novel version of Jack Wakes Up is also available for free from iTunes, while the print version can be found at Amazon.com and your local bookstore.

Take Scott’s advice and buy several copies today.

Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jonathan Maberry is responsible for one of the most entertaining books I’ve read this year. When someone says they can’t put a book down, it’s such a cliche, but in this case it’s entirely true. His 2009 bio-tech thriller, Patient Zero, is 24 meets Dawn of the Dead, an action-packed story in which terrorists are bent on releasing a pathogen that turns people into zombies. It’s fast and furious – more than 100 chapters packed into just over 400 pages – with police detective Joe Ledger finding himself recruited into the mysterious Department of Military Sciences after a run-in with the undead. Jonathan’s tight prose skips the story along, and will have you believing that infectious animated cadavers are a perfectly realistic terrorism threat. The good news is that Patient Zero is the first of a three-book deal with St Martin’s Press, which means more trouble for agent Joe Ledger and more fantastic thrillers for us fans.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Jonathan Maberry.

Jonathan Maberry

Name
Jonathan Maberry. I have published one nonfiction book under the pen name of Shane MacDougall, and the textbooks I wrote while teaching at Temple University were written under the name John Earl Maberry.

Location
I live in Warrington, a small town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA. About twenty-odd miles north of Philadelphia. I was born in Philly.

What do you write?
I write techno-thrillers for St. Martins Griffin (Patient Zero, The Dragon Factory, The King of Plagues), supernatural thrillers for Pinnacle Books (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song, and Bad Moon Rising), movie adaptations for Tor (The Wolfman), Young Adult post-apocalyptic thrillers for Simon & Schuster (Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay), nonfiction books on the occult, paranormal and related pop culture for Citadel Press (Vampire Universe, The Cryptopedia, Zombie CSU, and Vampire Hunters and Other Enemies of Evil), and comics for Marvel (Punisher, Black Panther, Wolverine, and Marvel Zombies Return. I write a monthly interview column for The Big Thrill, the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers, and have so far sold over twelve hundred feature articles to a variety of magazines. I write short stories by invitation only, and have stories scheduled for The New Dead edited by Christopher Golden (for St. Martins), and others that have appeared (or will appear) in anthologies of horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Bio-tech thriller Patient Zero, and forthcoming non-fiction title They Bite

My agent typically sells books for me based on 75 pages and a synopsis, so I have a number of books sold that are not yet written. At the moment I have two or three books due out each year. Next out for me is a nonfiction, They Bite: Endless Cravings of Supernatural Predators, co-authored by David F. Kramer. It’s a follow-up to our Bram Stoker Award-winning book, The Cryptopedia. That’s due out at the end of August from Citadel Press. Also in August I begin my run as the regular writer of Marvel Comics’ Black Panther (starting with Issue #7), and in September Marvel will release Marvel Zombies Return, for which I’m doing one installment and David Wellington (Monster Island), Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and Fred Van Lent (Marvel Zombies 4) will write the other installments. At the end of October, Tor Books will release The Wolfman, which is my adaptation of the new Universal Pictures film starring Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...

What are your writing habits?
I write every day. On weekdays I generally write ten hours a day and aim for a total word count of 3-4 thousand words each day. On weekends I generally do 1-2 thousand words. Part of my work day, however, is given over to marketing and publicity – such as doing interviews, working on pitches and proposals for future projects, arranging talks and appearances, working with my agent and publicist, posting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., and writing my twice-weekly blog. I usually find a coffeeshop where I can camp out at a table for about four or five hours, then go to the gym for an hour, and then find another coffeeshop where I finish my day.

I don’t rewrite until I finish a complete first draft, and I generally do research for the next project while writing the current one. I also alternate projects based on deadlines. I might, for example, bang out a comic book script in the morning and spend the afternoon working on a novel.

Before beginning a new novel I outline it completely and write a ‘preliminary synopsis’ of what the book would be like once it’s done. This helps me work through the logic and events of the book. However, once I start writing the book tends to grow organically and I don’t try to impose too much order on it. When it’s completely done in first draft, I read it aloud (often with my wife during long drives), and then do a comprehensive second draft followed by a polish draft. My first novel, Ghost Road Blues, took fifteen months to write. The Wolfman took seven weeks. I pay attention to my process so I know when I’m doing my best work and when I’m going completely off the rails. It helps smooth out and speed up the process of writing a book.

I also type very, very fast. I took typing classes in 9th grade, mostly because it put me as the only boy in a class of thirty girls (and that’s damn good math!), but as a result I type about 130 words per minute.

What software or tools do you use?
Microsoft Word for all text projects; Final Draft for scripts; and Photoshop CS4 for any graphics associated with my nonfiction work. For hardware I use a Dell laptop that still has Windows XP… I’m resisting moving to Vista because it has too many bells and whistles and I can’t waste time learning a new system!

Jonathan’s website can be found at www.jonathanmaberry.com, where you can find his blog and details about his writing and projects. You can also download Countdown, the short story prequel to Patient Zero, for free. Jonathan can also be found on Facebook and on Twitter as @jonathanmaberry. Patient Zero is available in all good bookstores, and of course Amazon.com.