How did you end up writing a Supernatural novel?

Since I've been asked this question more than once lately, I thought I'd take a moment to explain how this happened.

It was never my intention to write a Star Wars novel or a Supernatural novel. I enjoy both Star Wars and Supernatural, but until recently I was quite content to maintain my spectator status. In fact, with the exception of some internet parodies about ten years ago, I've never written anything using existing characters. Just not my thing. Until...

Last summer I was chatting with Chris Cerasi, who's in charge of licensing at DC Comics, about possibly doing a Batman novel. I wanted to write a sort of cold-case Silence of the Lambs type thriller with Bruce Wayne venturing out in the country to investigate a missing persons case. We kicked it around for a week or so, and then Chris asked me if I could write a Supernatural novel instead.

"What kind of supernatural novel?" I asked.

"No," he said patiently, "a Supernatural novel. You know, like the show. We're doing them with Titan Books. Are you interested?"

Ah, I said. All right, then.

What followed was a pretty intense crash course in the show's mythology, complete with all the magazines, season guides, reference books and action figures that I could handle. FedEx began arriving at my doorstep with packages of screeners and scripts. In a way it was similar to the research I'd done for Death Troopers, except on speed -- this was late August, the manuscript was due October 15th, and I still needed an idea.

I came up with several different takes and sent them to Chris, along with Cath Trechman at Titan in London, who would actually be publishing the book, and Eric Kripke and the show's creative team at Warner Brothers. The list of possibilities went something like this:

1) BARCODE BABIES - Sam and Dean encounter the children of former cult members, all tattooed with ritualistic bar-codes that have supernatural powers over machinery and human beings.

2) GHOST MULES - The boys discover a Midwestern airport that serves as waystation for the souls of the dead...and a smuggling ring that helps people take worldly possessions to the other side.

3) I DON'T NEED YOUR CIVIL WAR - In the middle of a Civil War reenactment, an ancient occult relic turns up -- a knotted piece of the actual rope that Judas used to hang himself -- that infests both sides with betayal, trapping our guys in the middle of a demon possessed Antietam.

4) DRAWKCAB - In his continuing search for God, Castiel and the guys manage to provoke an angel (or demon) whose M.O. is temporal dislocation, reversing the flow of time itself. Told backward, MEMENTO-style, this would unfold at a blinding, figure-it-out-on-the-fly speed, with every revelation and reversal changing the way the reader looked at the story's secrets.

5) BLOODRUNNERS - "Wages of Fear" meets "Salem's Lot" - In an effort to ward off the apocalypse, the Winchesters get roped into helping deliver a truck full of blood and dynamite to a mountaintop vampire nest in the middle of a raging blizzard.

I don't remember which one of these I liked the most -- it might have been the backwards one, because I thought it would make a fun episode -- but I distinctly recall thinking I'd be fine, just as long as Cath, Chris and Eric didn't like the Civil War one. Basically I'd only thrown it in there to pad the list out, and I didn't want to do the research.

Of course, that was the one everybody really liked.

Thus began my second round of authorial legwork. In extremely short order, I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Civil War re-enactment, including Tony Horwitz's excellent Confederates in the Attic. I walked the battlefields of Gettysburg and hung out with some re-enactors. And, with one eye on the deadline, I started writing.

(Keep in mind that right around this time, I was finishing up my first draft of my second Star Wars novel, which also had an October 15th deadline, and preparing to go on a two-week nationwide book tour to promote Death Troopers and No Doors, No Windows, as well as working a full-time job. I'd never been through anything like it in my life. Chaos was an understatement. My children didn't recognize me. My wife occasionally spotted me wandering through the house and called 911, thinking I was an intruder.)

I finished my first draft at on Monday morning, October 14th, in Los Angeles, on the first day of my book tour, and sent it to New York and London. Three weeks later the notes arrived, and I went back and started revising -- plot, character, dialogue, tone, all aspects of making it the best and most satisfying possible addition to the Supernatural universe. I worked on it between signings and readings and in-store appearances, in an airport in Detroit and a hotel in Tulsa and my mom's house in Michigan.

And by Thanksgiving it was finished.

Is it any good?

I think so. I know I had an absolute blast working on it, and my editors were pleased. As a writer, I try to say "yes" to things that I haven't tried before, and this project certainly qualified. I enjoyed my time hanging out with the Winchesters down south, and all I can hope is that you will too.