EXTINCTION MACHINE
NOVEL #5/Published in March 2013 by St. Martin’s Griffin
The President of the United States vanishes from the White House for five hours. Next morning he is found, apparently safe and sound. Except that he claims that during the night he was abducted by aliens. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. North Korea’s ultra top-secret weapons research lab is destroyed by a volcano — in an area where there has not been an eruption for forty millions years. All over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. Key military personnel, politicians and scientists begin disappearing. And in a remote fossil dig in China, dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences rush headlong into the heat of the world’s strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone — or something — wants that technology back.
ARTIFACT
Short Story
Joe Ledger goes after an enigmatic device that could hold the key to permanent sustainable energy — or could become the most dangerous weapon on earth.
THE HANDYMAN GETS OUT
Short Story
Joe Ledger is naked and unarmed and has to escape a high-security facility armed with whatever he can find. Expect Joe to get cranky.
CODE ZERO
NOVEL #6/Published in March 2014 by St. Martin’s Griffin
A direct sequel to PATIENT ZERO. A rogue scientist within the DMS takes the Seif al Din pathogen (and dozens of other deadly and exotic weapons) and begins selling them to the highest bidders. Bizarre science-based terrorist attacks tear the nation apart — and at the heart of it are new outbreaks of the zombie plague that first brought Joe Ledger into the DMS. Joe and his crew team up with Arklight (from Assassin’s Code) in a running battle that leaves a trail of bodies from Los Angeles to the steps of the White House.
THREE GUYS WALK INTO A BAR
Short Story
Joe Ledger teams with Malcolm Crow (from the Pine Deep Trilogy) and Sam Hunter (from Strip Search) to tackle a team experimenting with genetically engineered werewolves.
***This story will be included in the anthology, Limbus II, available in 2014 from JournalStone Publishing.
PREDATOR ONE
NOVEL #7/To be published in March 2014 by St. Martin’s Griffin.
Someone is turning airliners and fighter jets into murderous drones. Joe Ledger needs to discover if the enemy is a supercomputer hacker or an advanced Artificial Intelligence program gone rogue.
Also….JOE LEDGER makes cameo appearances in…
FLESH & BONE
Book #3 of the ROT & RUIN series from Simon & Schuster.
TOOTH & NAIL
Ebook tied to the ROT & RUIN series.
FIRE & ASH
Book #4 of the ROT & RUIN series from Simon & Schuster.
ROT & RUIN: THE COMIC
Coming in Fall 2014 from IDW Publishing.
A Conversation between Jonathan Maberry and Ray Porter
NOTE: Actor Ray Porter has become the official ‘voice’ of Joe Ledger since his first performance on the audiobook of Patient Zero. Since then Ray has read all of the novels and a slew of novellas and short stories. Author Jonathan Maberry discusses with Ray the process of bringing Joe Ledger to life in the audio performances.
JONATHAN MABERRY: What’s your process for preparing to read an audiobook?
RAY PORTER: I like to familiarize myself with the characters. Often I can gain insight into how the character sounds from a gentle pre-read of the text. I say “gentle” because I don’t want to get too heavily into the read until I am recording. “Save it for the stage.” Most important for me is to get an idea of the author’s “voice.” Nine times out of ten, the author will help me find the voice of the book just by the way they have chosen to tell the story. As much research as necessary before recording is a good idea. Thankfully, Blackstone Audio has great proofers but I always feel a little embarrassed when I have pronounced something so hideously wrong that I feel like taking an English class.
JONATHAN: Walk us through the steps of recording a book?
RAY: Well, as I said before, a gentle pre-read helps me a great deal. Since I record at home, I am the narrator and engineer. I read the book from my iPad, which is mounted to a music stand next to my microphone. There is a monitor above me and a mouse and keyboard handy so that on the very rare and vastly infrequent times that I make a mistake (between 1 and 1000 times per page), I can simply punch-in in ProTools and continue recording. I also have to stop for helicopters flying overhead. No matter how well insulated your recording space, some sounds just get through. Los Angeles is sometimes not the most tranquil place, and I have had to take extended breaks at times to wait for the noise to lessen. We live near Forest Lawn, and on the day of the Michael Jackson funeral there were so many choppers in the air that I just took the whole afternoon off.
JONATHAN: How do you pick the voices for each character in the Joe Ledger books? What goes into that process?
RAY: It’s hard to describe how that happens. Sometimes the author will say “He had a high, thin reedy voice and a thick Bulgarian accent that still lingered behind his Texan drawl and cleft palate” (don’t get any ideas, Jonathan!) and so you just do that. Other times, it just kind of happens. I don’t know how to describe it better. When I first came across Mr. Church, I saw him in my head. I had a clear picture of his face. His voice just sort of fell out of my mouth. I tend to get a clear visual of faces and then their voices arrive from that. There are also clues from the author. The description of the way a person looks can tell me what they may sound like. You gave me such a gift in your initial description of Rudy that I only needed to follow suit. Others can be tougher to find, but it is so important that the person listening knows who is talking and when. In a scene between two women I really need to be as specific as I can so you don’t get lost.
JONATHAN: What’s the role of the director in the performance process?
RAY: I usually work alone but when I have worked with directors it is always a great experience. I am fortunate to work with Grover Gardner at Blackstone and I can get his input whenever I need it. Imagine getting help with your science homework from Stephen Hawking and it is kind of like that.
JONATHAN: You read books all day long. Do you still have the energy to read for pleasure?