James Patterson
speaker
661 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 5 Jun
James Patterson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I turn around and he goes, oh my God, you're Tom Clancy. Same night. I said, if I'm Tom Clancy, you're in big trouble because this means you're in heaven or hell, one of the two.
I still haven't figured that one out. What I discovered was that I loved doing it. I had not been a big reader in high school. I was a good student because I wanted to get out of my hometown. And then my family moved to Massachusetts and we were near this mental hospital, McLean, very famous. And I used to work a lot of night shifts. I was getting money to pay for college.
And I started going into Cambridge. And then I started writing stories. And I just loved it. I didn't know whether I was any good, but I loved doing it. And I would just write, write, write, write, write. When the first book came out, Thomas Behrman number, famous writer John D. MacDonald gave Little Brown a blurb. And at the time, I'm like 26 years old.
And he said that, I'm quite sure that James Patterson wrote a million words before he started this book. which is a great quote. John D. McDonough, smart guy. Reality of it is I hadn't because I hadn't been living that long, but it was a great compliment. He'd written story after story, and then I decided I'd try novel, which I was lucky.
I have no idea. I don't count.
They're all Guinness World Records, and I know that, and they were a long time ago, so presumably they still are. It's all fine, and it's nice, and I enjoy laughing at myself, so I smile at that. I don't take myself that seriously. Do you know how many were made into movies? I don't know how many. I mean, there were three Alex Crosses. We now have the series.
There was a series for Women's Murder Club, which I hated. Kids movie, a couple of documentaries, Filthy Rich, big documentary. We just finished a documentary on the murders in Idaho before college students. And that's really a good documentary because it doesn't sensationalize. It just puts you there in that town and you feel it the way the people in the town felt it and still feel it.
I'm really happy with the way that turned out.
No. I remember with, I think it was Along Came a Spider, and they asked me, there's a character, Gary, S-O-N-E-J-I, in the books. They said, how do you pronounce it? I said, Soniji. So in the movie, of course, they call him Sonji. which is fine, but they asked, and then they could care less. It's gotten a little better lately.
With the cross stuff on Amazon, we talked a lot about it, and Ben Watkins, the showrunner, wanted to do a new story as opposed to one of the books, and I was all for that.
One of the things I don't like is somebody says they want to do one of the series, Michael Bennett or something, and then they send me like an eight-page outline of the first book, and I'm going like, okay, that doesn't seem very creative to me. I think there should be a difference usually between the book and the movie. So I like the fact that this is a brand new story.
Women's Murder Club, everything went wrong with that. You look at it and a postman gets killed in the first scene. You go, OK, am I supposed to care? And then they go and interview the postman's grandmother and the postman's uncle. And you go, seriously? And they go, yeah, because it's going to be the dialogue between the women. I'm going like, I don't know, man. I mean, that's a piece of it.
But there's also a mystery story here. And that ain't it. Right. So they sort of missed the point. Yeah. Plus, a couple of cast members really didn't like each other. Angie Harmon was one. She was great. And she would call me pretty much every week and go, please help me. And a couple of the women, they were just bad news. It was painful. And there's always ways to make these things work.
All of the books, it's all problem solving. How do we solve that problem? I have a whole series, Walking My Combat Boots. We just did American Heroes about Medal of Honor winners. And Matt Eversman, who I deal with, Matt was the actual sergeant who was portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down. Great guy, good friend of mine. has seen a lot of combat.
And I saw him doing some interviews with men and women who had been in combat, and he'd get them to talk about it. And I was watching these interviews, and I went to him, I said, Matt, and I had the title, Walking My Combat Boots, I'd like to do something. And the mission will be that if you've been in combat, you'd say Everson and Patterson got it right.
And if you're one of these people that like to BS, that you really understand things that you don't, You would read it and go, OK, I really didn't understand the military at all. And now I understand a lot better. But the problem was, OK, so Matt did most of the interviews. I did a few, but they're like 50 page interviews. That's not a book.
And the problem solving was my saying to Matt, look, I want to turn these into five or six page stories. So each person that's interviewed, you're going to get a sense for who that person is. why they went into the military, and then a couple other stories that are going to really be really interesting to read. So it's going to be a Pacey and read the American heroes.
Every single one of those stories could be a movie. It's just amazing. One of these guys was at Iwo Jima. This is way back, obviously, World War II. And he had a flamethrower. And each flamethrower was a 90-pound flamethrower. And he went running with this 90-pound thing. And he would go into these places where snipers were and flamethrow the snipers.
He did nine of these sniper outposts with a flamethrower on his back. And he had to reload it every time. Oh, my God. It's unbelievable. And it's hard to come by now. Duty, honors, things like that. And you just go like, well, I don't know, man. I think we need a little sacrifice. We don't seem to want to sacrifice. Well, you become pretty greedy, I think, about stuff. It's interesting.
It's the kind of thing that can get you in trouble. But part of it is, stop thinking that the government or the president is going to solve all your problems. Dude, take some responsibility for your life. You did some of this to yourself. And you kind of sit there and go, OK, I screwed up a little bit. And not all on the government. There have always been problems.
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