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.
Other stories he has written include contributions to Flying Pen Press's anthology Space Grunts, MV Media's Steamfunk anthology, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
As a screenwriter, Thorne has worked with Kickstart Entertainment to develop two of their properties, Of Bitter Souls and Sword of Dracula, for television. He was a writer for season 9 of the USA network's 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.
Thorne is also a co-founder and writing partner of GENRE 19, a studio he formed with artist Todd Harris in 2008.
