Thorne was born in Washington, D.C. After a successful career as a television actor including portraying police officer Wilson Sweet in the television series In the Heat of the Night from 1988 to 1993, Thorne began writing professionally, winning Second Prize in Simon & Schuster's sixth annual Strange New Worlds anthology with his story "The Soft Room." He went on to publish more stories in several media tie-in anthologies as well as the Star Trek: Titan novel Sword of Damocles.
As a screenwriter, Thorne was a writer for season 9 of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, multiple episodes of the Ben 10 and Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man franchises was a writer on season 3-5 of TNT's Leverage and a writer-producer on the Electric Entertainment's The Librarians.
In 2014 Lion Forge Entertainment and NBC-Universal tapped Thorne to reboot the global fan favorite TV series, Knight Rider in comic book form. Thorne is also the co-creator of Phantom Canyon, an audio drama from Pendant Productions.[1]
In 2017 Marvel Entertainment tapped Thorne to be head writer and showrunner of the animated Avengers series, retitled Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, and in 2019 he became Co-Executive Producer of Ghost, the first spinoff of the STARZ network global smash hit, Power[citation needed].
Thorne is also a co-founder and writing partner of GENRE 19, a studio he formed with artist Todd Harris in 2008[citation needed].
The Winterman Project is a small press established by Thorne in which he produces shorts, comics and ebooks.[2] Thorne describes it as "a place to play, a place where I could write what I want, make what I want without worrying about clients or editorial oversight."[3] In the end of 2017 he launched "Winterman Comics", a line of comics including an anthology series and a series of titles.[4]