What lead you to use that as the setting for the book? MD: This story is based in the world of Civil War re-enactors and history buffs.

There were a few details that didn’t get corrected until I turned in my first draft and at least one night in a hotel room in Tulsa where I basically drank a six-pack of Blue Moon beer and beat my head against the desk trying to figure out how to explain the corner that I’d painted myself into … but in the morning it was all right.

JS: If I had specific mythology questions along the way, I usually got answers pretty quickly from the production company - demons, ghosts, corpses, etc., what I could and couldn’t use - either because it wasn’t kosher, or they were planning on doing something similar themselves on the show. Tell us a little about how you interacted with the folks from the show while laying out the plot for the book. MD: How much room did you have to play in the “Supernatural” universe? Obviously you’re not going to haul off and kill Castiel or anything that dire, but you definitely got to add to some of the major elements of this season’s arc. They were sending me drafts of scripts that hadn’t even been filmed yet, and we were all holding our breath and basically hoping for the best. I was like, how am I supposed to approach this? You’re like the child of divorced parents hoping it all works out. At one point, at the beginning of the season, Sam and Dean weren’t even together. How much detail about this season’s arc did they have to give you in order to ensure its proper place in the canon? How difficult was it to work within that tight framework (what had happened, what had yet to happen) before the season was finished and still tell your story?

MD: This novel clearly takes place during the current season of the show. But until you get to that point, it’s rat-bastard panic, where you’re like, “Is ANYBODY having a good time?” After that it doesn’t feel like work anymore - it’s like that point at a party when all the guests have arrived and the thing takes on a life of its own. The challenges are basically the same … crawling inside the narrative world, hanging the lights, and finding a way to make it fun for myself first and foremost. JS: After the initial getting-to-know-you technicalities, it’s actually not all that different.

The Unholy Cause by Joe Schreiber