Interview: Jonathan Maberry by Nancy O. Greene
I recently had the opportunity to interview author Jonathan Maberry about his work. If you don’t know, Maberry is the writer of the popular Joe Ledger series, including the book Patient Zero. He’s not exactly your typical writer. He writes comic books, novels, short stories, guides, etc. He’s an educator. But Jonathan Maberry has also been inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame and has taught combat techniques to CIA agents and Special Ops.
Here’s what he had to say about the Ledger series, Ghost Road Blues, fighting styles and writing:
NG: I’m fairly new to your work. After learning a little bit about your books, I bought Patient Zero and Ghost Road Blues and enjoyed both of them.
JM: Ghost Road Blues was actually the first of a trilogy. Unfortunately, the publisher did not write anywhere on the book that it was book one of a trilogy. It leads right into Dead Man’s Song and Bad Moon Rising without a break. And it doesn’t say that on the book, so it’s very confusing and has caused a lot of frustration among readers.
NG: I got the impression that there was more to it. In the middle of Ghost Road I figured that there was no way it could end with just the one book. I haven’t gotten the rest of the trilogy yet, but I’m looking forward to it because it seems like there’s a lot going on.
JM: That book was just intended as a set up. The big book of the three is the last one where the forces of darkness go to war against the entire town. Big, big action story. There are also a lot of guest stars, a lot of folks in the horror community. Actors from horror movies and so on. I wrote them into the story. Ken Foree, from the original Dawn of the Dead; James Gunn, the screenwriter for the new Dawn of the Dead. They’re appearing as themselves in the town at a convention when bad things start to happen. So the celebrities get into some of the action.
NG: That’s one thing I noticed. You have a lot of real-world details in Ghost Road Blues. Wasn’t David Boreanaz also in there?
JM: Yeah. And Stephen King’s mentioned. I write the stories as if they’re happening in our world. To make everything fake is, I think, poor writing because it doesn’t show any faith that the reader can suspend disbelief. Also it’s just not fun. If you say a character is drinking a cola when you can say Coke or Pepsi, well it doesn’t attach to the reader.
NG: The fight scenes in Patient Zero and Ghost Road were also detailed and really flowed. The scene between Crow and Kruger in Ghost Road was a scrap-out, knock-em-down, hit ‘em with whatever you can kind of fight. The difference in Patient Zero is that Ledger is very precise.
JM: Ledger’s a much better fighter. Crow is a good fighter, he’s an advanced fighter, but Ledger is a superb fighter. Big difference.
NG: So that comes from your martial arts background? Your experience gives you insight into how a more advanced fighter would fight vs. a street fighter or a novice.
JM: I’ve been involved in martial arts—primarily jujitsu but also hapkido, kenjutsu and other things—since I was six. I’m 51 now, so I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. I’m a former bodyguard, having worked as a bodyguard in the entertainment industry for years. I was a bouncer for years. I’ve taught women’s self defense, and I’ve formerly taught workshops for law enforcement and Special Ops. I have a lot of practical experience from my work and from teaching people of all kinds how to fight, so I’m very comfortable in writing a fight scene and knowing that it’s going to be believable.
The way Ledger fights is also closer to the way I fight. I’m an 8th degree black belt so I’m a fairly advanced martial artist. I don’t waste a lot of time in a fight. I don’t fight sloppy. Even though I haven’t had a fight in a long time, thank god, and don’t expect to have another one, when I have fought I’ve been very … you might say ruthless, very true to point. Because a good fighter will do everything in his or her power not to get into a fight. But if the other person has pushed to the point where you can’t walk away, and you feel your life or the life of someone you’re protecting is in threat then you have to respond appropriately. Ledger has that view.
What separates Ledger from Crow also is that he’s military trained, he’s bigger. He’s an active police officer which means his training is more up-to-date than Crow’s. He’s also about 10 years younger.
Ledger’s also based in part on a couple people I’ve known in Special Ops and SWAT who are the best of the best. Sometimes in reviews people will say that what Ledger does is unrealistic but it’s actually not in any way unrealistic. The people who are at that level—the Delta Force level or Navy Seals or British SAS—they are truly at this level. They are that good in a fight, they are that efficient and they do not hesitate in a fight. They’re the guys you want in the front lines if you have a real catastrophe. I’ve gotten mail from guys in those types of fields, from all over the world, who praise the book for its accuracy.
NG: I didn’t see anything that seemed unrealistic. Knowing people that are skilled with their advanced training or that have done extremely well in the military, talking to people like that, there seems to be a lot that goes into their training and how they use it. One of those things is just having a very sharp reaction time.
JM: It’s funny about a fight. Most people lose a fight because they’re really not willing to hurt someone else. They don’t have the experience of hurting. Even if they feel the need to fight, it’s very difficult for the average person to want to hurt another human being. And that hesitation will often make them lose. Most people have no idea how to do that. You can have the most well-intentioned person, put them at the controls of an airplane and the airplane is going to crash. So you need to have an expert in there. Motivation helps too. With Ledger, he’s up against some bad guys. Hesitation is not going to help the situation.
NG: Right, very true. So you have two more books in the Joe Ledger series coming out.
JM: So far. (laughs)
NG: Right, so far! The Dragon Factory and King of Plagues. Dragon Factory doesn’t deal with zombies, correct?
JM: Joe only faces the zombies in the first novel, and I also have a short story that will be out later this year called “Zero Tolerance.” It’s a direct sequel to Patient Zero and it takes place in the hills of Afghanistan. It’s a short story that will be in an anthology, The Living Dead 2, edited by John Joseph Adams.
Joe deals with other types of threats. In Dragon Factory it’s people that have kept alive the goals of the Nazi Party and are using cutting-edge science to further those aims. In King of Plagues it’s an organization that is trying to destabilize the world in order to profit from swings in the stock markets. There’s also a short story that deals with insect DNA.
NG: Right, I read that. It kind of reminded me, in some ways, of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station.
JM: Someone else mentioned that to me, but I haven’t read the book yet. I went out and bought it, and I’ve heard great things about that book.
NG: It is really interesting. You also have a lot of scientific detail in these novels. Do you do a lot of research?
JM: Well, I’m a knowledge junkie. I love research and I do a ton of it. The research for Patient Zero, for example, came on because I was writing a book called Zombie CSU. I interviewed hundreds of experts from different fields—from 911 operators to molecular biologists to homeland security—on how the real world would have dealt something like the living dead. It was talking with the molecular biologists on that where I got the idea for the plague in Patient Zero.
For the other books, I don’t do the standard of book research—read a book and go through it and put together information from there. I find out who wrote the books and contact them directly and ask them questions as well. I like to go directly to the source. On my acknowledgment page for Patient Zero there’s a long list of scientists from all over the world. Also people on SWAT and so on. I like to have the opinion of someone that is an expert currently working in the field. Because one of the things that makes storytelling so much fun is when I do an interview—say I’m doing an interview with Mark the Biologist on something—I’ll know the kind of story I want to write, but then I’ll run the idea past them and say, “What’s a question that I should ask that I didn’t” or “What’s the weirdest thing going on in your field of science that you’d like to see in fiction.” I get good directions from that. So I stay tapped into the science community quite a bit.
NG: I’ve also heard that Patient Zero is being turned into a movie or television show?
JM: It was optioned by Michael DeLuca, the producer of Se7en and Magnolia and Austin Powers, on behalf of Sony for television. The only information I can really share is it is in development for TV. There’s a lot of enthusiasm on this.
NG: I can see that, especially with shows out like “Human Target.”
JM: We kind of pitched the series as “X-Files” meets “24.” That kind of vibe: weird, spooky stuff with a team of first responders.
NG: I don’t know if you can say, but who do you see playing Joe?
JM: Well, that I can’t discuss, but I do know who I had in mind when I first created the characters. When I first wrote about Joe Ledger, I had in mind a number of actors. Matt Damon; Leonardo DiCaprio; and Mark Valley, who’s playing Christopher Chance on “Human Target.” A guy who’s smart, funny, and can handle those kinds of things. For Mr. Church—who is my personal favorite character—I wrote him with Alec Baldwin in mind, you know that big, blocky sort of guy. Nobody else sees him that way, but that’s who I had in mind. About halfway through the book I was also thinking maybe Laurence Fishburne or Bruce Willis. Really, anybody that can pull off the smart, mysterious middle-aged guy who looks like he’s been tough his whole life. Even Terry O’Quinn who plays John Locke on “Lost” would be great.
NG: When I was reading it, I imagined Patrick Stewart as Mr. Church.
JM: Who knows who it’s going to be. It’s amazing what an actor can do to pull off a roll. I always saw the guy as big and physically imposing. Even though I describe some of what he looks like, when I ask people at readings, everybody has a different take on the characters. Like with Joe, most people see Joe as kind of smallish but tough with dark hair. And I clearly say he’s over 200 pounds, over six feet tall and has blond hair.
NG: I think that’s a testament to the writing, because people can just get into the head of the character. So even though you have that description there, people can put in their own perceptions of how someone with those kinds of emotions and mannerisms might look.
JM: That’s a good thing too. Because if you over-describe a character, then you take away the participation a reader has with that world. Robert B. Parker never really describes the character of Spenser, other than he has a broken nose and I think he mentions that he had dark hair. That was about it; he never really gives a physical description of him. And yet I had a clear description of him in my mind when reading the series. It only occurred to me later that he said he never described the character.
Stay tuned for more! In the meantime, check out Jonathan Maberry’s site at www.jonathanmaberry.com for the latest updates.
