Few writers have captured my imagination the way Jonathan Maberry has. His Joe Ledger novel series -- which chronicles the adventures of the "Department of Military Sciences," a secret government rapid response team that handles horrific technology-created terrors -- has entertained and inspired me in countless ways. Maberry's horror fiction always bets big, the stakes are always high, and the payoffs always rock your socks. This dude can write. When Maberry recently gave me a shout, eager to tell me (and you!) about his latest novel Dead of Night, I leaned in and listened good. I've never been much of a zombie fiction guy, but Maberry's zombie fiction is smarter, meatier -- and sometimes, just plain meaner -- than most zombie stories out there.  Maberry delivered the goods in his 2009 novel Patient Zero ... and he's done it again with Dead of Night. This is a helluva good read -- so good, in fact, that I asked Maberry if I might share an excerpt of it here via my blog. Maberry did me one better: He not only hooked us up with an excerpt; he agreed to an author Q&A, and tossed in access to seven Dead of Night bonus scenes.  Hot damn, it's Christmas all over again! Maberry has been one of my favorite storytellers for years now, and Dead of Night didn't disappoint. Let's dig into my Q&A with Maberry, and afterward, I'll provide links to that PDF excerpt of Dead of Night and a link to bonus material! ~ ~ ~ J.C. HUTCHINS: We all have a scary memory from our youth. What's one of the scariest things you recall from your childhood? Has it directly influenced your work? JONATHAN MABERRY: I grew up in a fairly violent and abusive household, so just waking up was scary and coming home from school was scary.  Two things happened as a result. First, I began studying martial arts with a friend and his dad –and later in one of Philadelphia’s major dojos -- which made me tough enough to survive and ultimately escape that environment.  And second, I escaped into my imagination -- and in that world the ‘monsters’ could be defeated.  Both of those informed my whole life, my outlook, and certainly what I write. People often ask me why I write about monsters, and I tell them that I don’t.  I write about people who overcome monsters. Big difference. HUTCHINS: I'm head over heels for your Joe Ledger novels and Dead of Night. One reason is because you infuse elements of other genres into your horror fiction. What are some of those genres, and why do you enjoy bringing them into the mix? MABERRY: I’m a total science geek.  I love cool science and freaky science and totally weird science.  So, pretty much anything I write is going to have some kind of science back-story.  That’s actually how I came to write both the Joe Ledger series and my my latest novel, Dead of Night. Back in 2008 I was approached by a publisher to write a nonfiction book on zombies.  This was a couple of years after Max Brooks lit the world on fire with the Zombie Survival Guide.  There weren’t too make nonfic zombie books out there apart from either books on zombie movies or attempts to rip-off Max.  I had no interest in doing either, so I told the publisher that I’d like to write a zombie book with some hard-core science in it.  Since one of my other loves is forensic science, I pitched Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead. I interviewed over 250 experts in a variety of fields (police, science, medicine, the clergy, the press, psychologists, etc.) on how the real world would genuinely react if something like Night of the Living Dead actually happened. Not one person turned me down for an interview, and I’m talking Homeland Security, SWAT teams, award-winning journalists, celebrities and even priest, pastors and rabbis.  Every single one of them already had some sort of opinion about zombies.  Crazy, right? So I wrote the boo