I'm curious to know what your research process is.
- The process is like this. - Okay.
If it's Hawaii, I will tend to go.
If it's a, you know, crack house in the Bronx,
I tend to send another researcher.
I'm about to meet and interview...
- The one and only... - James Patterson, the thriller writer.
He really is a literary hero for me.
If you haven't read any of his books, what are you doing?
Get off your phone. Get off of TikTok.
Go get a book. Read it, please.
( theme music playing )
Is this my liquor here?
- Nai'a: This is yours, yes. - Okay, good.
James, we are so excited to have you here with us.
Well, we'll fix that very quickly.
As you know, "BookTube" is a vibrant community...
- Yeah. - ...of people who come to YouTube
to share their love of reading and learning and books.
And to have you, the bestselling author
in the world, here with us today...
- Is that your mom? - Yep.
My name is Rosanna, but I'm better known
as MamaBee from the Eh Bee Family.
This is my love, is reading books,
sharing them with people who ask big questions.
These are my inspirational books.
I think that we all assume that being a hit writer
is something that came very naturally for you from day one.
Yeah, it came naturally when I was around my forties.
- In your forties? - Yep.
And your first book, is it true
that it was rejected over 30 times?
Yes, "The Thomas Berryman Number" was rejected 31 times.
So if you get rejected, pay no attention to it.
It means that you're on the right track.
I remember I was in college,
it was a writing class that you had to take.
And the teacher said that-- he said, "James,
you write well enough, but stay away from fiction."
- ( gasps ) - So, of course, when you get
that kind of encouragement,
you go and write even more fiction.
- Right. - I wish Ali Cross had come out
when I was younger because I hated reading
until I was 10 years old because the only books
I was introduced to were classic books.
- So I love that-- - Listen, I was a high school valedictorian.
- I did not like to read. - Nai'a: Yeah.
The books that they gave us all the way through high school,
- just nothing-- - They were slow.
- Nothing turned me on, blah, blah, blah, blah. - Yeah.
I then worked my way through college at a mental institution,
and I would-- if I did night shifts, there wasn't much to do.
And I started reading my brains--
I would go into Cambridge, like, three times a week
and just get a stack of books.
And that's what turned me on.
I've heard that you said that Max Einstein
is the most important book
that you've ever read. Why is that?
Well, the task that the Einstein estate gave me
was to create a series of books
that will turn kids on to Einstein's theories and Einstein.
And they said-- but they're very smart,
as you would expect the Einstein people would be--
they said, "But you have to make it entertaining."
I said, "So, I just have to make
Einstein's theories entertaining
for little children. Okay, got it."
Hey, guys. My name is Roberto,
but you guys know me as Mr. Bee.
That's when the real magic happens.
- What is your favorite book? - "One Hundred Years Of Solitude."
- Your current read? - "Thirteen" by Steve Cavanagh.
- Favorite place to read? - Oh, anyplace.
- Favorite place to write? - Same thing.
What did you want to be when you grow up?
I still haven't grown up. Still working on that.
Reading is-- it's vitally important.
It is a life-saving thing.
When I'll go to, you know, in front of,
you know, big librarian groups or big teacher groups,
I always say that I'm here to save lives,
and I try to remind them that they've done this.
I have a friend who was a teacher
and he taught special needs kids.
The class was bright, but they couldn't stand being in school.
So he had to just keep stimulating them every day
so that they didn't mind too much being in school.
And I met these brothers, I'm gonna call them
the Yanelli brothers, later in life.
They were in their late twenties at this point.
And I told my friend Ned, I said, "I met the Yanelli brothers."
He said, "Oh, those kids. I couldn't stand them.
They drove me crazy every day."
I said, "Well, it's interesting,
because they told me that you saved their lives
and they're both teachers now."
Anybody that's watching, if you got kids or grandkids,
it is your job, it is your responsibility to get your kids reading.
- Right. - It's just like, "You can't track mud on the floor."
"You gotta show up for dinner," whatever.
You gotta get your kids reading.
And that's why I write a lot of kids books.
And it's actually kind of my passion now.
I think we're gonna do a spin-off, "Life Lessons With James Patterson."
- No, I don't think so. - Yeah!
I was wondering, do you think authors
have an obligation to teach and guide younger generations?
I think, you know, writers have to make up their own minds
about how-- what they're gonna do.
I never try to lecture to people.
I'll just throw stuff out there,
"Think about this, think about this."
Are there certain strategies you use
to get through to the youth, to get them interested?
No, I tell 'em stories that they're gonna like.
- Just tell 'em stories. - Yeah.
- For me, less is more. - Right.
My writing is very colloquial.
It's the way we tell stories to one another.
That doesn't mean it's the best, but it's the way I write.
I feel like your characters are so familial
because you write with that colloquial style.
And I feel like that's why so many readers do love your books.
When I sit down to write, I like to pretend
there's somebody sitting across from me.
I'm telling them a story. I don't want them to get up.
- Yeah. - If I'm talking to you,
I don't want you in the middle of a sentence
to go, "See ya."
I definitely see that in my type of storytelling, too.
So, I'm a YouTuber, so I make videos,
and I often pretend my camera is, like, my best friend.
Hello, everyone. I'm Linh Truong.
I've recently picked up some books.
I love discussing books.
I do it a lot on my YouTube channel.
But I also used to be in a book club.
I hate to brag, but as a kid,
I could finish, like, 50, 60 books in a summer
'cause I had no friends. Yeah.
On the back of the new Alex Cross book,
"Criss Cross," it says,
"James Patterson is the world's bestselling author.
The creator of Alex Cross,
he has produced more enduring fictional heroes
than any other novelist alive.
He lives in Florida with his family."
If you had the chance to spice up this bio a little bit more,
give it a little bit more pizzazz--
Ah, "James writes a lot of books.
- He wants to keep you entertained." - Yeah.
The creating a lot of characters, I like that notion.
You know, to have created Alex Cross
and the Woman's Murder Club and Michael Bennett
and Maximum Ride.
Uh, I think that's-- I'm cool with that. I like that.
- Cool with that? - Yeah.
I need to feel emotional about the story I'm gonna tell.
Like "Suzanne's Diary For Nicholas"
is one of the more popular books,
but it's a love story.
I remember when I went into the publisher
and I said, "One, I want to write more than one book this year."
He was like "Mm-mm." And then I told him the story
for "Suzanne's Diary For Nicholas"
and he literally started crying
when I told him what the story was about.
And then, at the end of it, he said,
"Well, you don't want to do 'Suzanne's Diary'
'cause it's not your brand."
I don't consider myself a brand,
but I think if there is such a thing,
it's that whatever kind of story I tell,
it's gonna really flow quickly.
So if it's gonna be a love story,
it's gonna be a very fast-paced love story.
- Rosanna: Right. - Kind of a twisty love story.
So they eventually did publish "Suzanne's Diary For Nicholas"
and it wound up being, I don't know, my third or fourth best-selling book,
'cause it's a good story.
Hey, I'm James Patterson,
and I'm here to tell you a story.
Announcer:
( robotic ) James Patterson is a funny human.
Do you ever Google your book reviews?
No, my stock line for it
is thousands of people don't like what I do.
Fortunately, millions of people do.
So, I kind of go with that little fantasy world.
That's my way of dealing with it.
Hey, everybody. It's Nai'a from the channel
Naya Reads & Smiles.
I read books all day and then talk about them.
Okay, so, I got more books.
There we go. Look at that.
I'm a huge thriller and mystery fan.
Even if you have no interest in thriller books,
you read an Alex Cross book, or even this new
"Ali Cross" book if you're younger,
you will get hooked.
He'll make you want to become a detective.
What was your writing process like for "Ali Cross"?
My process is always the same.
Do an outline, do several drafts of the outline, usually.
One year, when I was doing the BookShots,
which were a lot of novellas,
I wrote, I think, 2,600 pages of outlines,
just outlines, in addition to two full novels.
I remember we had the "CBS Saturday Morning Show,"
he was in my office, I was pulling out these drawers,
and I pulled out a drawer, and he said,
"This is crazy. This is crazy."
Around the seventh drawer, he said,
- "James, you are crazy." - It was all outlines?
It was all outlines and/or completed manuscripts just for the novellas.
We are gonna be doing a segment called "The Last Line."
Now, normally we have James here
read the last line of his book,
but for "Ali Cross," it is a bit of a spoiler.
So instead I'm going to ask what your favorite last lines are.
One is from "The Book Thief." "I am haunted by humans."
Another one, which is from "A Moveable Feast," which is a Hemingway book--
"But this is how Paris was in the early days
when we were very poor and very happy."
I came from a small town in upstate New York.
My father grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse,
which was the equivalent in those days of being homeless.
His mother was a charwoman there.
She cleaned up the bathrooms and the kitchen, whatever,
and for that she and my father got one room.
I've been poor, I've been middle class,
and then was poor and middle class again, and now I'm rich.
On balance, I prefer rich.
But I'm really happy that
I went through a lot of stuff.
I think it's helped me as a human being.
I think it's helped me as a writer to understand
where people are coming from, what their needs are,
what it's like to have different socio-economic class.
It is December, and it's a time of giving,
and you have done so much philanthropy.
Can you please tell us a little bit about that?
You know, it's all in the area of books and teaching.
My mother was a teacher, and we have 450 scholarships
for teachers in, like, 31 colleges. We do that.
We do holiday gifts for booksellers.
I think we gave out 500 apiece last year.
And you'll get letters back like,
"Thank you so much. I got to go to the dentist."
You know, I mean, and that's the reality
for a lot of people working in bookstores.
They just don't have money.
- Thank you for giving back. - Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.
Thank you for inspiring minds.
Thank you for encouraging us all to read more.
Books are so much better when you can share them with your friends,
and this has been an opportunity that we will never ever forget.
Thank you so much for joining us
for our book club on "BookTube."
- Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. - Yes!
Can we do a heart like this?
- Oh. Sure. - Sure?
Me and James, we're on a first name basis now.
Can you-- can you peace, James?
Oh, peace. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Double peace.