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
And I was on the Jersey Turnpike or one of the roads going north. And it was like five mile an hour traffic. It was hideous. And I'm on that road and I don't want to go back to New York anyway. It's a beautiful day. I just left the beach and it's like one o'clock in the afternoon or something. And on the other side of the road, like about every 15 seconds, a car went by. Whoosh. Another 10.
Whoosh. And I watched this for about an hour or so. And here was this object lesson. And it occurred to me that I'm on the wrong damn side of the highway. And my whole life is on the wrong side of the highway. And I got to get on the other side, not the side that's going into New York at five miles an hour to someplace that I don't want to go to.
The other side where cars are going at whatever speed they want to go and they're going where they want to go. And that's when I decided. And within a week, I told the guy that I worked for, I said, look, I'm going to give you time to replace me, even though I'm irreplaceable. But I'm gone. You want more money?
You're right. But I think he got it. And he did let me go. He's still a good friend, which is nice.
No, I don't think I ever had it big time. But the first book that I wrote, Thomas Barham, that was turned down by, I don't know, 31 publishers. Then, like, a year finally picks up, and it wins an Edgar. And I was working at J. Walter in advertising. I got this call from this woman. She said, this is a mystery writer who's American.
Your first book has been nominated for an Edgar in the Best First Mystery. And I said, oh, my God, that's really great. When's the date? And she told me, I said, I can't go. I don't know why, but I said, I can't go. And she said, no, no, no, no. You've been nominated. I said, I know I heard you, but I can't go. And she said, no, you have to go. You won. I said, OK, well, I'm going to go somehow.
But the weird thing was, so I get there. I brought my parents. This is so cool. I'm 26 years old, 27 maybe. And I still I sat in the audience. I go, maybe she lied to me just to get me there.
Well, in other words, there was still some tension. Anyway, when I got up, my whole speech was, I guess I'm a writer now. Huh. That must have killed. Yeah, right. They never stopped clapping. Oh, my God. But what I meant by it was, especially in those days, if you told somebody you're at a bar and you're meeting a nice girl, what do you do? You're a writer. Oh, have you published anything? No.
And they just immediately walk away. Nowadays, you could say, oh, I published on the internet or something. Oh, that's interesting. But in those days, you were considered a fraud if you call yourself a writer and you hadn't been published.
Well, the worst thing is that they say, I am too. Let me tell you about mine.
Yeah. John Grisham, his first book, which I think is still one of his best, A Time to Kill. And none of the big publishers wanted it. He sold it to a small publisher in New Jersey. And then I think his next one might have been a firm. And then everybody wanted that one. And he broke that big time. But the first one, nothing. Yeah. Ellen Hildebrand, she had a lot of trouble in the beginning.
Baldacci wrote about hundreds of stories, couldn't get them published. Yeah. I never sold a short story. The first thing I sold was a book with a full-length novel. Yeah.
No. No. No, I think they're good stories. I am confident that I'm a good storyteller. The end. And I'm still driven in a big way because I always hope the next one will be the best one or one that I really like. I have a series with Mike Lupica, who's become one of my best friends, sports writer, Hall of Fame. He was on ESPN, the sports reporter show for about 20 years. And we have a series.
Jane Smith is the lead character. And I think that it's the best character since Alice Cross that I've done, I think. The initial thing was going to be three books. It was going to be 12 months to live, eight months to live, four months to live, because she gets a death sentence in the first book. And just the way Jane is, Jane Effing Smith, that was going to be the first title.
She had been a cop briefly, and then she was a private investigator briefly, and now she's a defense attorney. She's never lost. She curses in court. She's really interesting, funny, presses around. She's a really cool character. And when she gets the 12 months from the doctor, she negotiates it up to 16 months. So whatever, that's the spirit of it.
But it's just been so much fun creating that character. Renee Zellinger has signed on to play it. She'll be great. We sold it to HBO Maramax. And one of the writers from Mickey Johnson, who's a writer on Ozark, and then on the Presumed Innocent, the newest version of that, she's a great writer. David E. Kelly is involved. So I am hopeful that will be not just a series, but a really good series.
Yeah, I did the first love of my life who died in her 30s. And after that, I could not write. I tried to write. To this day, I don't remember the title. I don't remember anything about the book. And eventually I shredded and people go, no, you didn't. I said, yeah, I did. I knew it was awful. So it wasn't writer's block, but it was. I just could not do it. I don't even know why.
I mean, there was something dead in my brain. There's no imagination there. It just couldn't do what it had been doing. One other time, I had a little operation. And they say sometimes after you've had an operation, there were a couple of weeks when I was fuzzy and foggy and I really couldn't write well. I was sort of like, okay, this is not good. Oh, from anesthesia? So now no anesthesia.
Okay.
Very simple. One of two things. One, I just go to the next chapter or two chapters later, just write TBD for that chapter number, meaning the next time around or the next time around, because I'm a big rewriter. And sometimes you just go, okay, this is going to become a paragraph leading off a chapter.
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