Kathy Reichs, like her iconic character Dr. Temperance Brennan, is a board-certified forensic anthropologist, and creator of the Fox television hit Bones. Reichs has written fourteen books in the Temperance Brennan series, all New York Times bestsellers. With her son Brendan Reichs, she co-writes the Virals series of novels for young readers.From her Q & A with Caitlin Pinks at the Guardian:
I really love your Virals novels and am particularly interested in the supernatural element of the stories, was it hard to think of ways to keep the supernatural element of the story going?--Marshal Zeringue
The hardest part of the supernatural element was keeping that angle in line with actual scientific principles. In the Virals series — which I co-write with my son, Brendan Reichs — we use science in our fiction more so than write “science fiction.” That’s how we like to think about our work.
What made you decide to have a supernatural element in the books at all?
Brendan actually came up with the idea to add a supernatural element, or a piece of “grounded fantasy,” as my editor likes to call it. When we were in the Turks and Caicos my son adopted a dog for me (thanks), but Turk fell sick almost immediately with parvovirus. We’d never heard of it, but quickly learned how deadly an illness it can be for a puppy. Thankfully, Turk pulled through. We’d frantically learned everything we could about the virus when he was battling the disease, and the idea sprang from there. What if humans could contract a weaponized form of parvovirus? The rest is...[read on]