Dansco asked Jonathan Maberry:

Where did you get the idea to use Zombies as the main character of your book?

Jonathan Maberry I've always loved zombies. When I was ten, I snuck into the movies to see the world premier of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and have been a fan ever since. Then, in 2007 I was hired by Citadel Press to do a nonfiction book about zombies -ZOMBIE CSU: THE FORENSIC SCIENCE OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was all about how the real world would react if there were walking dead. While writing that --and after interviewing SWAT and Special Forces experts I had the idea of a novel in which tier one special operators were up against zombies. That novel, PATIENT ZERO, launched a whole series of weird science thrillers (only the first dealt with zombies). I then wrote the ROT & RUIN series, about growing up 14 years after the zombie Apocalypse. Marvel Comics reached out and asked me to co-write MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN, and shortly after that I decide to write a series of novels that not only explain how the zombies rose in the first place (DEAD OF NIGHT, and its sequels), but gave the actual science. That became George Romero's favorite zombie book. As a result, he and I co-edited an anthology of original stories set in the 72-hours around the events of his first zombie movie.

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