James Patterson
James Patterson
James Brendan Pattersonis an American author. He is largely known for his novels about fictional psychologist Alex Cross, the protagonist of the Alex Cross series. Patterson also wrote the Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch and Wizard series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels. His books have sold more than 300 million copies and he holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person to sell 1 million e-books...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 March 1947
CityNewburgh, NY
CountryUnited States of America
What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school, it's really going to be hard for them in high school.
For many years I had heard about an underworld consisting of people who act out a vampire fantasy while I was living in New York. Fortunately for me there are also several books on the phenomena.
A good love story always keeps the pot boiling.
Every once in a while, I'll have a 'Do you know who I am?' moment, at least in my head. I hate that.
I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.
Hollywood is a peculiar beast - people in Hollywood are nuts.
I'm a very good storyteller; I have a lot of compassion for people. That's very useful for a novelist. A lot of novelists are snots. They're just mean people. I'm not a terribly skilled stylist, nor do I want to be. I want a lot of people to read one of my stories and go, 'That was pretty cool.'
I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.
I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.
I'm very emotional. I do feel stuff, for better or worse.
My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.
A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.
Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.
Assume nothing, question everything.