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Continuing its spooky roadtrip across the dark heart of America, the Supernatural TV series has just been renewed for a fourth season of adventure-packed demon hunting. The merchandising departments are now catching up (with what most of us have known since season one, about how good this show is) and we can finally get our sticky mitts on Companion books to the first two seasons of the show.

The Season Two Companion was released last week and joins the Season One Companion, released last October. Both volumes were written by Nicholas Knight and give an excellent insight into the inner workings of the show with episodes summaries; interviews with the cast and crew about the overall show and individual episodes; and snippets of trivia about dialogue, place names and music. Plus a sixteen page full colour glossy picture gallery featuring behind the scenes photos and those all important publicity shots of the Winchester boys, Sam and Dean.

Author Nicholas Knight thinks it may have been good karma that landed him the job of penning the Companions: "Networking is very important for freelance writers," he said, "so I keep my eyes and ears open for any interesting job openings that come along. Another writer mentioned that the project's editor was looking for a writer who was familiar with the show and able to travel to Hollywood and Vancouver.

"I'd been a big fan of the show since the pilot, I'd been a fan of Jensen and Jared since Dark Angel and Gilmore Girls, and I live near Vancouver...so I jumped at the opportunity. Most of my writing experience is in fiction, but my enthusiasm for the show must have won the editors over, because I got the gig supernaturally fast."

Putting together the content of the Companions meant he needed to interview a range of Supernatural staff about every episode. "Obviously I'd loved to have interviewed every single person involved with every single aspect of the show...but I'm constrained by deadlines and maximum page counts (and eating and sleeping). [Creator] Eric Kripke, Jensen Ackles [Dean Winchester], and Jared Padalecki [Sam Wincehster] were absolute musts. Likewise, I wanted to talk to all the writers and producers, and at least one person from every department of the show (set design, visual effects, editing, etc.).

"The way the timing of it worked out, I conducted the interviews for the first guide during the filming of the last few episodes of Season Two, and then the interviews for the second guide were conducted early on in the filming of Season Three, so everybody was very busy and I was lucky to get the people that I did. I did my best to interview all recurring cast members and notable guest stars, but most of them were busy with other shows. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, for example, was on at least three shows at once."

Knight has also included special feature interviews with individuals at the back of each volume. "Supernatural is unusual in that it only has two main characters (Sam and Dean Winchester), but I didn't have any difficulty choosing who else to profile. I believe I covered everyone who had a significant impact on the show's myth arc.

"There's one notable group of exceptions, however. For the psychic kids [featured in the season two story arc], I chose to focus on their powers rather than their personalities, so I placed them in the 'A Closer Look At' section…but their spread landed immediately preceding the Season Two profile section, so they're essentially in the same part of the book."

And then there's a special section for the brother's 1967 Chevy Impala car. "The car has been called the third star of the show by everyone from creator Eric Kripke to the rabid online fans, who nicknamed it the Metallicar. I honestly never considered not giving it a section of its own. And while I didn't give it a full profile in the Season Two guide, I made sure to feature it in a box-out in the introduction ('Escalating Supernatural') section."

Knight's experience on the Season One guide helped when he came to write to second volume. "Not surprisingly, since everyone I talked to was very busy, I couldn't get everyone to talk about every episode. What I found with doing the Season One Companion was that I ended up with an abundance of quotes about some episodes (the most and least liked ones) and very few about other episodes. So when I conducted the Season Two interviews, I noted which episodes people weren't talking too much about and then specifically brought those episodes up when interviewing the last batch of victims."

Other experiences also fed into the Companions, like Knight's other writing projects. "When I write graphic novels, my intention is to grab the readers' attention with the first page and hold their interest right through to the last page. Simply put, I want to entertain the readers. And I approached the Companions the same way. Some non-fiction is quite boring, really, but I knew that the Supernatural fans would salt and burn me alive if I wrote the Companions like school textbooks."

Of course, the Season Three Companion is on its way too. "It's still in the early stages of development since I won't be able to do the bulk of the work until after I've watched the last four episodes. I have, however, watched each of the first twelve episodes twice so far, and I've already asked Jared and Jensen a few questions about the season. Because of the writer's strike, there will only be sixteen episodes this season, but the Companion will still be the same length as it would've been for twenty-two episodes…so I've been brainstorming ways to fill those extra pages with material that will excite the fans.

The Season One and Two Companions are available now. The tentative release date for the Supernatural Season Three Companion is February 2009 in the UK.

For more information about the Supernatural Companions, check out the Titan Books website. More about Nicholas Knight (a.k.a. Nick Andreychuk) can be found at the Glass House Graphics website.

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