James Patterson, JAMES PATTERSON BY JAMES PATTERSON: The Stories of My Life

[1:49]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, moms don't have time to read books. And speaking of books, I have two of my own books coming out this spring and summer. Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19, and A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature comes out on July 1, and it is truly a labor of love. I hope you'll preorder, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country. You can find out more at zibbyowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com. And you can follow me on Instagram at zibby owens because I always post about everything. Enjoy the show. James Patterson by James Patterson, the stories of my life is by James Patterson, who is the world's best selling author. His enduring fictional characters and series include Alex Cross, the women's murder club, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride Middle School, Ali Cross, along with such acclaimed works of narrative nonfiction as Walk in My Combat Boots, ER Nurses, and his autobiography now, James Patterson by James Patterson. Bill Clinton, The President is Missing, and Dolly Parton, Run, Rose, Run are among his notable literary collaborators. For his prodigious imagination and championship of literacy in America, Patterson was awarded the 2019 National Humanities Medal. The National Book Foundation presented him with a Literarian Award for outstanding service to the American Literary Community, and he is also the recipient of an Edgar Award and nine Emmy Awards. He lives in Florida with his family. Welcome, James. Thanks so much for coming on. Moms don't have time to read books to discuss James Patterson by James Patterson, the stories of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they are. Lots of stories.

[3:36]James Patterson: Think if people, if they, if, and I know you say, you know, mothers don't have time, but they kind of make time, especially if they love books. And I think people that really do love books and love reading and love stories

[3:48]Zibby Owens: will enjoy this, I think. I think so too. Particularly the length of all the stories, which are very short. You do that. Yeah, yeah, You could read one and then put the purse down, go pick up your kid, go read another one. Right. And that they're so engaging. You're obviously you're just such an engaging reader. You just jump right in and you read it and you're funny and then you move on to the next story and you never know what you're gonna get. Yeah. No. That's good. Presidents to deeply emotional moments to ad campaigns.

[4:15]James Patterson: There's Yeah. No. There's a lot of, yes, family stuff and and, you know, and different stops that I've made along the way. I mean, working my way through college at McLean Hospital, which was interesting because, know, I met, well, Robert Lowell, the poet and James Taylor. When James was there, he wasn't famous yet. And he used to sing in the coffee shop. He would sing Fire and Rain and Sweet Baby James and some of those songs he'd already written. And you know, you'd sit like 10 feet away from him. It was great. And I don't know, I mean, knew he was wonderful. You never, you didn't expect necessarily he would make it that big, but that was, you know, it was just a wonderful, and what I do, or what I try to do is just, it's not the usual kind of autobiography, don't think, or memoir. It's just these, a couple of stories from when I'm growing up, a couple of stories when I was trapped in advertising and, you know, bad advertising, I can say I've been clean for over twenty five years now.

[5:09]Zibby Owens: You told such a funny story too, by the way, of when you went on a business trip and the other account executive you were with when you were staying over in the hotel ended up sneaking into your bed in the middle of the night. That was a little shocker. Yeah, it wasn't funny at the time. Like a lot of stories, eventually

[5:25]James Patterson: it becomes funnier. But at the time it was kind of like, wow, this is not good. And he was my boss, you know, which made it even more

[5:36]Zibby Owens: surprising, shall we say. I didn't realize you had come up with the Toys R Us kid slogan.

[5:42]James Patterson: The line, yeah. The line. Kaplan was the big brain there because she wrote the jingle and everything. But I did write the line on my Toys R Us kid. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Speaking of advertising, which I Yes. Okay. Sorry. We'll move on. No. It's okay. It's perfect. It's perfect. Yeah.

[5:59]Zibby Owens: In throughout the stories, you talk about your writing process and the inspiration for all the different books that you wrote, from looking at your wife's photo albums of your son, Jack, and coming up with that idea to more of the mystery ideas and the shotgun and, you know, even somebody from the audience talking about if it would be too if they would shoot someone for $2,000,000. So you anyway, you have all these, like, hilarious little stories and and bits of inspiration. I was really interested in what happened to Bookshot, your attempt to

[6:31]James Patterson: Tell me more about Bookshot. It struck me that a lot of people, and this relates to the title of your show, don't have as much time as I'd like you to read. So I thought it would be a good idea to write a lot of novellas, 140, 150 page, which sort of like going and watching a movie. You can do it in a couple of hours. And I thought it was a good idea. And I remember at one point, one of the journalists was here and I'd written like 70, it was crazy. I mean, it was in the same thing. Anyway, so I'm pulling out all these drawers and showing this journalist and he's going, this is crazy, this is crazy. And then he looked at me said, James, you are crazy. Because I had done all these, there was one year where I wrote, I think it was like 2,450 pages of outlines plus two books. Somebody said, you're lucky if you find something that you love to do and then it's a miracle or somebody will pay you to do it. And that's my gig. And it goes from, not thinking that I could ever make any money doing this. And there's one scene where I'm probably just out of college and going to graduate school at Vanderbilt and I was up in Ipswich and I pull into this little crab shack and there's John Updike and he's sitting there eating clams and drinking iced tea. And I love the rabbit novels and I just read rabbit reduction, one of them. And I didn't want to bother him, but I just sat there, like three or four tables away watching him eat clams and drink his iced tea and then leave. That was it. I never forgot it. And that's how impressionable and

[8:08]Zibby Owens: so far away from whatever the hell I am now in terms of, I don't know if I can do this thing, but I love it. You also this thing writing. Yeah. You also told a story though about a writer who and now I'm forgetting who it was, who you approached and they were like, yeah, so? And so you resolved to be much nicer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[8:26]James Patterson: That was Jimmy Braselin. Yeah. Yeah. I never would go to author signings, but he was signing on 5th Avenue very close to where I was working. So I went out, a rainy day, awful day. And I get up there and I, you know, and I'm nervous. I don't know what to say to myself. You know, I just finished the book. He doesn't even look up. He goes, yes, so? I guess, I mean, that's another one. Could be a very funny line or cruel. I don't know which. But I always, I'm always very nice to people who come up and say, this is a funny story. This is a true story. Last night, it's just so weird. My wife had to go out to University of Wisconsin, so she wasn't around. So I went to our favorite Italian restaurant. This is absolutely true. It's so nuts. And I'm walking, they take me to this little table and I'm walking there and this woman jumps up and she takes off her mask and she goes, you're our insurance agent. I go, not really. And she said, oh my God, well, you've got to meet him. He's your lookalike, whatever. This is all true. Then I sit down and I'm, I'm getting, I have my appetizer and the people behind me, they go, are you from Boston? And I go, I turn around and go, no. So I had this on. So they go, well, we thought you were from Boston. Are you Tom Clancy? And I go, no, I'm not Tom Clancy. And they said, and I said, tell them who I was. And he said, oh yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I've read like all your books and blah, blah. And then the waiter comes with a check and they paid for it. And I go, thank you sir, but it wasn't them. It was the table behind them. And I went back, I said, please don't do this. I don't, you know, I'm good. I can, you know, please don't, please don't. I'll come back and talk, but only if you don't pay my check. And then I went back and their daughter was with them. And they said that you got my, our daughter reading and she loved all your books since she was a kid. And we just wanted to pay you back and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm walking out and there was another table looking at me and I go like, I should get an appearance fee for tonight. And they said, yeah, you ought to, you know? And anyway, it was so weird. Know? I go for was in the insurance broker, the career. Insurance broker, Tom Nancy, that's, but that's the kind of stories I tell in the book. Yes. Ones that, you know, they're kind of funny and they have a beginning and middle and an end. And as you said, they go very quickly. They're three or four pages. And I think a piece of it is, you know, I wanted to, I wrote it during COVID. I wasn't planning to write it. And I just started writing this story and said, you know, I kind of liked this process. I liked these stories. And I liked the idea of, you know, a lot of people like my books when some people are a little unpleasant toward my books. I go, well, read this damn thing because I think you're going to like it. And Stephen King, you can no longer say I'm a terrible writer because a terrible writer did not write this book. I'm Yeah,

[11:21]Zibby Owens: that was funny. Said, said, You said you're a terrible writer, you're like, well, I am a writer, and I you know?

[11:29]James Patterson: Was a book I wrote early on, and I said, it was terrible, and I did write it. Yeah. Exactly. It was terrible, and I did write it. So there you go.

[11:39]Zibby Owens: I wanted to talk actually about your conviction widely held that kids need to read more and that it's crazy that, you know, you have this whole passage about Amazon, and I was gonna just read this little section. You said, with all due respect to Jeff Bezos, I don't think Amazon has been on it when it comes to getting kids reading. Amazon has done many good things, but getting kids reading and loving what they read isn't one of them. There's still time, but maybe not a lot of time. You may have noticed that our country is on fire again. At least part of the reason for that is that so many of our kids can't read. Think about it for a second. Over half of our country's kids aren't reading at grade level. Amazon could help solve that problem. Why the heck won't they? Yeah.

[12:17]James Patterson: Well, yeah, why won't they? Or, you know, I'm working I've been working for about five years now with the University of Florida. They have a program that, and this is in the book briefly too, something like 46% of the kids in the country are reading at grade level at this point. It's probably less than that given what's happened in the last couple of years. They have a program where they can bring it up into the mid eighties. And it has to do with making teachers even better at what they do. And it's not difficult and it works. And we've tested it now in like six counties in Florida and they've tested it in South Carolina and it works. And so we have the vaccine. We have the vaccine. Now all the states have to do is use the vaccine and they won't do it. You just can't get them because, oh, we gotta do money for this. We gotta do money for this. And they have the money. They'll spend it on education, but they spend it in goofy ways. It's like, you know, some of the billionaires have given all this big money, but they're just doing it wrong. University of Florida has figured out how to deal with this particular problem, which is getting kids reading at grade level. And that will save thousands of lives, literally save lives. When I go in and talk about this stuff, I say, I'm here to save lives because that's what it is. If you go to the, you know, I go to prison sometimes

[13:33]Zibby Owens: and a lot of young Recreationally, you should say, not like you have to go to prison. Like you visit prisons, you're not incarcerated.

[13:41]James Patterson: That is correct. I visit prisons on occasion. And what you find are a lot of young people and they read a lot now because they're in their cells for long periods. And if they, if they did that when they were in grade school and whatever, a lot of them wouldn't be there. They just wouldn't be because they'd have more options. If you can't, if you can't read competently, your options are just so limited. And that's, and so we could save so many lives. It would affect the economy. It would do all sorts of good stuff. And so, and we don't do it. Like, what are we, crazy? And the answer is yes, we are crazy. So how do we get the states to adopt that? What is the end? Like who has to do that? I know. I don't know. We're beating on them. Well, you know, a piece of it, I won't even reach out. I know some wealthy people. Won't I even reach out to them until I feel that the states are ready. I don't wanna make fake promises and it won't work unless the state commits to it. You know, I've talked to DeSantis. The first time I talked to him, you know, he seemed reasonable about it, but it didn't happen. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Wow. Yeah. But big deal.

[14:49]Zibby Owens: It is. It is a very big deal. You wrote really

[14:53]James Patterson: poignantly, beautifully, emotionally about the loss of your late wife. Not my wife. Not my wife. I lived with Jane, Bren, when I was 26 to 34, 35, something like that. She'd been married. We didn't, right at the end when she, and she, she got up. Well, we were going for a walk one Saturday morning. We went to the post office and she fell over in the post office and she was shaking and there happened to be a nurse in there and she didn't know whether it was my wife or my girlfriend. She said, well, whatever she said, and I think she's having a seizure. And it turned out she had a brain tumor and they gave her about a year to live. She went up living for over two years, which was a blessing. But, you know, she was the love of my life. And, you know, I mean, I am married now and Sue is the love of my life now. And it was a, and she was just such a special person. She would wear all these funny hats because she never wanted people to come, her friends, she didn't want them to see her and get depressed and feel sad and da da da da. That's just the way she was. Her parents had a house down on the Jersey Shore. And I mentioned this, and it's one of these things, I'll never forget this. And I had to go to work. I would get down and visit on Friday and then, you know, head back to New York on Sunday. This was in the summer and she would stay there maybe for a month or so. And I was taking this cab back to the train station and I'm just looking out of the window and she was in a wheelchair in the street and she was just getting smaller and smaller and smaller in the window. And, and I never forgot that. And anytime I left, I never knew whether I would ever see her again, you know? And it was, it was, it was just horrifying, horrifying. You know, growing up and I remember my grandfather, I was very close to my grandfather. And when he died, I remember going into the woods outside of my grandparents' house up in Newburgh, New York, all woods, woods, woods. I couldn't cry. It was just, I just wanted to cry. So I couldn't cry, couldn't cry. When Jane, after Jane got sick, I cried every day. After she died, I cried every day for a couple of years. Every day it was ridiculous. I couldn't, you know, now I go to the stupidest movie in the world. I'm like, Oh, it's, you know, I don't know. I don't know why it was a weird thing. It just, all of a sudden it, I don't know what it did to me. So that was the only good thing about it is I can cry now. I'll probably cry during this maybe.

[17:17]Zibby Owens: Go ahead. I

[17:18]James Patterson: know you do have this funny way of turning every story into something you can laugh at at the end, Like Well, this do. Within reason. If you can, you know, I mean, there's so many things in the world and you know, like what's going on right now with the Ukraine and it's a beautiful day today. It's a really sunny day. Now you can give some money. You can really do something positive. You could go there. A friend of mine went over there to do some reporting. If you're not gonna do something, it's not doing any good for you to sit there and feel bad about it. If you can, if you can manage that with your, with your brain and it's a nice day. I'm gonna take my kids out. I'm gonna, whatever the heck it is. And that's a terrible thing. And, but if I can't do anything, you know, people, Princess, remember when Princess Diana, oh my God. Yeah, that's terrible. Really a waste and seemed like a very wonderful woman in lot of ways, but you have to move on. Think somehow try,

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[20:35]Zibby Owens: So do you feel like your early loss equipped you for moving on? Like, how do you think that really affected you? What I think it did

[20:43]James Patterson: is it gave me a sense that one, was lovable and two, that I could love back. So I became very positive about the possibilities for being with someone. And I think that's a gift and not everybody is lucky enough to meet the kind of person and get in that kind of wonderful relationship where they go, okay, I can do this. I can, and I think a piece of it was when you're with somebody like that and with Sue now too, I don't wanna mess it up. I don't, and it's so precious to me that I, you know, my funny line about Sue is if Sue ever leaves me, I'm going with her. And the thing, and I mentioned this a couple of times in the book and it's true, we fall asleep every night holding hands. So sweet. You know, which is great. I mean, I'm, we're both so lucky and, but it is luck. It is luck. I mean, because, you know, I mean, you go and you think you and you whatever, and sometimes you just, whatever, something happened or the attraction was too, whatever, whatever happens, which, which, you know, we're all subject to that. But I've been very lucky with, with, with Jane and Sue. Very lucky. I loved your story too, about getting kicked out of the matchmaker as they were Oh taking my God. Yeah. We won't name, we won't name the group. Yeah. It was, I went in and I was so desperate. I didn't think it was that desperate. When I went into one of these places where they're, you know, let's call it the matchmaker. They have this long form, you know, and I'm reading this form and I'm really, I'm just a little confused by some of the questions. Want it because I, obviously I want to do it as honestly as I can because I'm there. I'd like to beat somebody, you know, but I couldn't answer some of the questions. So I went up to the woman who had given me and I don't know why she thought that I was, and she said, well, you can just leave. You can just leave. I wasn't insulting. I would say like, it's not the questionnaire. I just, I just wanna be, you know, so I couldn't even get a date with the matchmaking company. That's how bad it was.

[22:58]Zibby Owens: But you did say something so beautiful about Jane in terms of dating. Because you said, you know, when you go out looking for somebody to fall in love with, you don't, like, see necessarily a person who's lost all their hair. They're in a wheelchair. They're in this state. But you'd never loved someone so much as one she was going Yeah.

[23:15]James Patterson: Yeah. I mean, here I was with, yeah, this woman, she's in a wheelchair, she's lost all her hair. And you know, if it was a blind date and that person, a male or female, came up, you'd have trouble. And

[23:28]Zibby Owens: that's understandable up to a point, but it's like, no, here I was just why I'd never been more in love with her. That's so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the idea that you have this whole file of ideas and you just go in and look through all your clever ideas and that's how you start your next book. Is it

[23:44]James Patterson: full right now or is it yeah, flip yeah. Always full. Yeah, yeah, now it's ridiculous. And it has the clever title Ideas on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now there's always something. I mean, off to the side here, there are just piles of manuscripts. And there's usually a couple that I'm doing myself. And then, you know, one of the nice things about doing the autobiography is I really focused and I focused more than I had, I think in several years, and I enjoyed it more than I'd enjoyed anything in a while. And I think it really got me going in a, in a, I, the books I've done recently, I've done a couple with Mike Lubica, they're coming out next year. And I think they're the best stuff I've ever done, which I, it's great, you know, at a certain age, you know, I'm almost 50 now or some other age. You know, to be that stimulated and that excited about doing things. I mean, obviously I just did the book with Dolly Parton. Yep. And that was just spectacular in every way. You know, I had this note, I thought maybe we might do a kid's book because we both, you know, try to get kids reading. And I talked to her manager and he talked to Dolly and she said, well, you know, come on down. I went down to Nashville and I like Nashville anyway, because I went to Vanderbilt, as I mentioned. And we sat around for a couple of hours in her little office, which is very down home kind of office. And we made the deal right there, just the two of us, no lawyers, no agents, no BS. And that was a deal and we stuck to it. And we're both kind of go chop wood kind of people. It's like, get it done. My grandmother used to say, it's in the book, Hungry Dogs Run Faster. And I think Dolly are kind of like that. We've become like great friends, but within two weeks we had done five drafts of the outline of this book, Run, Rose, Run. And she had literally written seven songs. I tell you, this is a cool thing. Actually for my last birthday, she sang happy birthday over the phone. For this birthday, she sent me a poem. It's like 12 lines. And she calls me JJ, Jimmy James, JJ. And she calls it new old friends. And she says, happy birthday JJ. I've come to love you so, even though we only met a year or so ago. I feel I've always known you. That's how it happens when you're meant to be together. I've made a new old friend. I sang a song with Kenny, Kenny Rogers, saying you can't make old friends. And I believe that to be true to the day that you walked in. Happy birthday again, my new old friend. I will always love you, Dolly. You know, and how can you beat that? I mean, all the Hollywood crap and whatever, blah, blah, blah, you know, to be with, you know, and I have a really nice relationship with president Clinton because we did a couple of books together and, know, we talk pretty much every week and what he gave me for Christmas, Monopoly for Socialists. So, you know, but it's funny. I mean, we're, you know, we both like to smile at stuff and Hillary has become a nice friend too, which is a, so it's very special and cool. You know, and I, I I'm very lucky in that I look at the world with the eyes of this kid from Newburgh, New York. And it's like, isn't this cool? Now I'm with Zebbe Owens. This is really, this is cool. This is a neat thing. Or, you know, Dolly Parton or whatever the heck it is, or, oh my God, I just put out a book. And don't be corny about it, but it's, I think it's a nice way to go through life. That is a nice way. Yeah.

[27:17]Zibby Owens: That's amazing. You've done so much to help booksellers. You wrote about it in the book, but of course I knew about it already. And even just how difficult it is for booksellers to make it and how you got notes about how now they could go to the dentist because of the gifts that you gave at the holidays or something like that. Talk a little bit about Well, the holiday gifts are,

[27:39]James Patterson: all we do is ask somebody in the bookstore or a patron, you just send us a note. And then we try to send out, you know, the checks to these booksellers. And the amazing thing is almost everyone writes back and they write these amazing, I mean, literally like I got to go to the dentist and I wouldn't be able to, or for the first time in five years, I bought my parents some Christmas presents or things like that. And people don't realize one, how hard that job is, the bookstore job, in terms of here come the new books every day and we've got to get them stocked and we've to get, I mean, it's just like, people think they're gonna just sit there and read all day. They don't, they don't have time for it. And for the most part, they don't make much money. So it's hard work, not much money, and they just do it for passion. I'm actually, I have this series of books started with Walk in My Combat Boots and it's true stories. And my objective was at the end of it, people would actually understand the military, which they don't. I'm doing one about cops and we're just finishing one about booksellers and librarians. And it's just, I worked with Matt Erisman. Matt was the actual Sergeant in Black Hawk Down, the real guy, not the movie guy. And I watched him interviewing some soldiers one day and they don't like to talk about what they've done, but he could get it out of them. And then we get ER nurses and he could get it out. And then what I do is I'll take those stories and turn them into these five, six, seven page things, which you get a sense for that soldier or that nurse or that librarian, whatever very quickly, and one or two of their stories. So you really get a sense for it and saying, like, so with librarians and booksellers, get a sense for how hard they work and what it's like in the passion and what books they love. So it's gonna be a cool book. I think, I don't know, we'll see what happens. Oh, that's exciting. But I'm really glad that

[29:30]Zibby Owens: we're doing it. Yeah. Do you know when it's coming out? It's coming out next year. I think relatively early next year. Good. I'm excited for that one. Yeah. So you've been in the publishing world for a long time. What changes, if any, do you think there need to be in the way things Oh are set

[29:48]James Patterson: gee, I don't know. I think, you know, bricks and mortar, I mean, who knows if that will go on and on and on. I mean, what's great about it is you can go in and talk to somebody and they're passionate and they read a lot. And for a lot of people, that's really helpful for all of us. Think it's helpful. I don't know how long that will go on. And it's doable probably on the internet eventually, if somebody really brings the passion and the love to it. I mean, look, I mean, you're doing stuff now and you're bringing that passion for reading and books and everything, which is so it's doable. I think that what would be really useful in the book world is if a spokesperson, really a great leader evolved from one of the book companies, just somebody who could capture people's imagination, go on television, talk about it. I mean, people are the movies, the the movies, the movies. Movies are good, but books are better, but we don't have anybody out there shouting book news. You know, there's, I mean, there's, there's almost no book reviews anymore. I mean, you got the Times and the LA Times a little bit, and most of them will close down and you know, and then you'll get the New York times and they'll do whatever, you know, I mean, not much. USA Today, it does as much as anybody, but not enough. So we can't get the word out. So that's a big problem. A lot of good books out there, but how do people find out about them? And that's huge. And how do we have somebody there and trumpeting? Books are great. Grips are wonderful. Books are exciting. Books are exciting. I mean, you know, movies have not caught up to books yet. You know, there were some, you know, there's some terrific movies. They're easier to sit down with for a couple of hours and they're good. And I like, I like a lot of that, but I think getting the word out is huge. And I think it's, I think it's harder than it's ever been. I think that even this, the autobiography is interesting in the sense that, you know, there was a time and not that I'm a star, but there was a time when there were, you know, here's Fitzgerald and here's Hemingway and here people would talk about them and they'd be interested in them. They'd want to hear their stories. And why should a writer's story be less interesting than an actor story? A fricking writer. I'm going to write a better book than an actor, maybe better than a lot of them, you know, but, and that's, I think a cool thing about this book and there should be more of them that give that sense of like, what's it like to be a nobody and to desperately want your book published and how difficult to know. The first book, the Thomas Berman number was turned down by 31 publishers. It then won an Edgar as the best first mystery. So go figure that. Obviously it had something going for it and yet 31 publishers turned it down. And that's, you know, so God knows how many incredible books have never surfaced, how many Infinite Jests or whatever that they just, they never got published. You know, so I think that's one of the huge problems. I think, you know, on some level it's good that people can go on the internet and get their stuff published now. It may not get much of an audience, but there it is. It's out And if you're lucky, I know a couple of people who have broken books on the internet. Yeah, it's better than, it's better than nothing. And there aren't enough publishers. I mean, when I was first starting out, there were, I don't know, 30 or 40 publishers. There were so many, I could get so many rejections. Now, I mean, you get five rejections and that's all there is. There is no more, you know. Anyway, so that's, that's a piece of it. I don't know how, you know, elegant that was, but yeah, it's a little piece of the puzzle. Or maybe more than a little piece.

[33:31]Zibby Owens: Totally agree. I think writing is the most, reading rather, is the most magical thing. I think it needs a rebrand. Maybe you should put on your advertising hat, go back for a second. Mean, it's really like you're it's magic. You're inside someone else's head immediately. Yeah. That is the coolest thing ever. And especially in this time

[33:49]James Patterson: now where we seem to have less and less tolerance for the way other people live their lives. What easier way is there to find out what's it like to live in Pakistan? What's it like to be such and such? What's it like to be a they? What's it like to whatever? We can meet all these people you know, expand our knowledge of what they are and have a realistic point of view of how we really feel about it, about it, as opposed to these, you know, you get this little sound bite and people make up their minds. It's insane. It's just like, you know, and that's the, it's the books can save us from that. I don't know if they will, but yeah. And that was the whole thing behind Bookshots. This notion of the problem with it was the publishers were afraid of it because they were like $4.99 or something. And they're like, oh my God, what if people start buying the $4.99 books and you know, dah, dah. So they did it, but, but they were afraid and it, you know, and it made a profit in the first year, which new things don't necessarily make profits. So there was, you know, and you know, what I ultimately did is I bundled them now. So I'll take three of them and put them in a book and they go, okay, now we can charge whatever, you know, and people like them because people like stories. And that's, I mean, that's the thing with the autobiography. It's just story after story, after story, after story. In fact, I even make fun of the usual kind of, I like Robert Carroll very much, but that kind of, I write that one long paragraph about, if you're looking for that, it's not going to be here. It's a thing about Newberg and all the different historical,

[35:27]Zibby Owens: whatever. Yes, that was so funny. It's not happening.

[35:31]James Patterson: Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. This was great. I love, I love, is that actually your office? It is, yeah. Oh, it's great. I need an office like that, damn it.

[35:41]Zibby Owens: I'll come down and rearrange your bookshelves, you know. Yeah, no, is it that simple? Maybe. It's that simple. These are just my books. I just reorganize them by color.

[35:48]James Patterson: All All right. Well, thank you very much. This is very nice. You for your time. I appreciate Fun

[35:53]Zibby Owens: talk. Oh, good. All right. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye Bye bye. Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have time to have kids. Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things moms don't have time to do. All the authors have been on this podcast. Also, check out my TikTok at with Zibby and Tracy, my other podcast, sex talk with Zibby and Tracy. Check out moms don't have time to Write on Medium, and of course, my new publishing company called Zibby Books. And now, back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids. Hi. Hi. Hello. Enjoy the show.