David Baldacci

Civil Rights Act had not been signed yet.

And books were sort of my safe space.

And that's where I got my worldviews from, just reading lots of different books.

I like to say I sort of traveled the world without a plane ticket or a passport through books.

And my mom gave me a journal when I was seven or eight years old because I like to tell stories and tales.

And I guess she needed a little bit of quiet.

She told me later she just wanted to shut me up when she came at the journal.

So I started writing little short stories.

I still remember she said, you had gotten on my last nerve, boy, which was, you know, quite clear.

And I just kept, I kept writing, you know, through high school and college and law school.

I wrote short stories and novellas and screenplays.

I just loved to tell stories.

But I went to law school.

I became a lawyer.

I moved to Washington, D.C.

to practice law.

I did that for about 10 years.

But I was writing that whole time.

I'd written a script that has gotten a lot of hot, you know, attention out in Hollywood.

I thought that was going to be my big break and it fizzled out, didn't happen.