These are your manuscripts of kid books. Are all in process, yes. And theres another nonfiction thing im doing now, a friend of mine matt everson, matt, you remember the movie black hawk down . He was the actual sergeant portrayed in the movie and he went on to become a First Sergeant in the ranger training school, etc. And were doing book right now, walk in my combat books which is an interview with all these people whove gone through combat and ill take the interviews and third turn 30page interviews into five, six, seven pages and our mission is if you went to combat , that youll go these guys got it right and if you didnt and youre one of those people that think they know what soldiers are all about youll read it and say i had no idea and one of the thingswe all say again and again with our fathers and we see it with our loved ones , people will come back and they dont want to talk about it and in this book they talk about it host how manyinterviews will you do for that . Guest its pretty much done, we did 100 interviews and we didnt use all of them obviously. Host when you talkabout all those manuscripts sitting down, do you wake up with an idea . Guest this morning i did. I am in here about quarter after five and my wife is where are you going . Not too long ago i bought the rights to, you know the shadow . Only the shadow knows for sure . I bought that from conde nast and i thought about something to do with the character that would make it more relevant and i woke up this morning and i was mulling a couple of scenes that i thought were important and also the sense of new york in the era that the bookwill take place so i rushed to this room , this computer and started playing with that. Host is that computer offline . Guest yes. Host so nobody can access what youre doing. Guest i hope not. Probably they can, yeah. Host whats the difference betweenwriting nonfiction and a fiction book . Guest i cant make stuff up. But heres the weird thing about nonfiction and bill bryson dealt with this. He wrote a book about shakespeare and a short book for him especially and in it he talks about the fact that nobody knows anything about shakespeare. Nobody knowsanything. We know the place, we have the place and theres one or two images of the way he looks. Theres one piece out of a Court Proceeding where hes in it for about half a page and thats it. And there are hundreds of books about shakespeare. Are you kidding . Are they all novels, are they all fiction . We dont know anything aboutshakespeare but its bizarre so the hard thing is i cant make things up. Early on one of the first ones i wrote about king taught and i wanted him to live. Host one of the things that i learned in the house of kennedy is the number of years they spent in new york. Guest and in london. The family was in london for a year or so. Host but several years up in the bronx. Guest yeah. A lot of that, the little details, one of my favorites is when jfk was president he loved judy garland and they were friendly and he called her up several times and asked her to sing over the rainbow to him over thephone. Its kind of cool. Who the heck was it . A neat thing was when john junior, when he was pitching george magazine, he had this magazine he put out for he died. He would go around to these mainly older investors and he would say the weird thing is you all new jfk. I didnt. And thats an interesting thingabout this book. A lot of people who lived through it will go all my god. I thought i knew everything about the kennedys. I had no idea, theres things i didnt know what a lot of people dont do anything and all younger people, they dont read history, they dont know any of this stuff and its an extraordinary story and i hope a lot of younger peopleread it and when i say young people i mean under 40. Host whats it like to have a bigbook come out in the middle of what were going through . Guest theres been nothing like this certainly in my lifetime. I have nothing to compare it to. I guess the closest and this would be before me is what was going on in world war ii where you had this incredible number of males out of the country in danger, 420,000 americans died during world war ii. But even that probablywasnt as extreme as whats going on now. Books are doing fairly well actually. My books are doing well because people can remember my name and they go online and save do i remember the name . They go patterson. So this book is doinggreat. One of the cool things and this goes to show you about around the world. This is the sunday times, the london times. Front page in the london times and six pages inside. This is how long they were in england in this book. It was just extraordinaryto me. New york times, not so much. Host do you miss the book tour or do you not enjoy those anymore . Guest i did a big one with president clinton. That was fun, really big audiences. We might do another book sowe will probably do another big tour. Ill do speeches now but its more big groups of librarians orteachers. I actually remember i did one right after President Trump was elected, about 3000 librarians in indiana. You can imagine that librarians would be a small number that would have been President Trump fans, whatever so you want to go into a dead room like that at 8 00 in the morning. It was interesting. But i miss things likethat. But im sure we will be doing more in some way shape or form. We do this then, we go and you come to my office and we do it like this. Its okay. Host we would love totake a tour of your office sometime. Guest we wont do it right now but yeah. Host do you consider yourself a historian . Guest a historian . Number i consider myself a storyteller. With kennedy and john lennon to some extent a lot of information is out there but it hasnt been put in one place. One of the things about nonfiction is an awful lot of it is written for academics or people who are worried about we got to get every single, like usgrant. I happen to like the pages on us grants but for a lot of people its more than they want. They just dont want 1000 pages on us grantso this is more , the house of kennedy reads more like a novel. Its very readable, it really moves and its not everything about thekennedys but its an awful lot. And as i said if people know the story go theres a lot i didnt know or really reminded me of a lot of stuff. Host how did you get into childrens books . Guest i had a kid. I had a boy, jack. Jack was interesting, when he was four or five or so we went out to la and he saidare you going to miss me . He said not really and i was taken aback and he goes, love means you can never be a part and im like wow. I told him right there and i said if you Say Something in our house i know i now own that line so i can use it in my books etc. He was always, he still is that way the interesting thing was he wasnt a big reader. He was a bright kid and when he was eight, my wife and i sue, we said youre going to read that summer and people should be doing this now. Its really important. We went out and got him about a dozen from libraries and local bookstores, got about a dozen books that we thought would turn them on and they range from Percy Jackson to a wrinkle in time and we said youre going to read every day this summer and he said do i have to and we said yes, unless you want to live in a garage, we read in our house and thats the deal but we were careful to make sure these were books that in turn them on and by the end of the summer he had read a dozen books and when he tookhis sats he got an 800 perfect score in reading. Not every kid, its going to happen but theyre all going to get alot better. Right now in this country, more than half the kids in this country do not read at grade level which is disgusting. That should be in every president ial debate. That should be dealt with every day, everybody should be talking about this. Half the kids in this country dont read at gradelevel . And its correctable. I work with the university of florida and we try to work with the governor right now. They have a program and they had that number, university of florida hadthat number back into the mid80s. We can correctthis. I dont know how to correct global warming, going to have water problems. I dont know how to influence that as an individual we can solve a lot of this thing about kids reading at grade level and the people watching, you could do it with your kids and grandkids and i guarantee the books that are for kids, my kids books are the best books by the way you im justdoing one now. Actually the estate came to me and they said james, we want kids around the world to know about Albert Einstein and his scientific theories but theyre very smart as you would expect and they said you have to make it entertaining. I said all i have to do is write about Albert Einstein and his theories and make it entertaining for little kids and they said thats it so i did this series of max einstein books and they are entertaining and i guarantee anybody watching if your kids read one of those by the end of it they will be entertained, they will love the book and know more about einstein than you do which is a pretty cool promise but because of that mohammed alis estate came and they said wed like you to do a book about caches claiming when mohammed was a littlekid at louisville. And i went out and approached lame alexander is a good friend of mine so we did a book together which is going to come out i thinkin november. About caches play. Remembering or becoming mom elliott is the name of the book so i write the pros and quantity write poetry, its very accessible poetry and we tell the story of caches play and how he became mohammed ali. As a little kid though. No answers a lot of stuff and its cool and its fun and exciting. It kept me going during this mess. Host is that one of the goals of read kid over read . Guest yes, thats the make it easier for parents and teachers to find books that will turn their kids on which is important. A lot of times, when i went to a hardwarestore i dont know what to ask and i dont want to look like a fool. I dont know how to nail and i dont want to be made fun of by the person at the counter. A lot of people feel that way about bookstores. They dont know what kids books and they dont want to look stupid. So they dont go. And they dont ask and thats terrible. Its not their fault necessarily although parents and grandparents need to understand its your responsibility to get your kids reading you its your responsibility. You dont let them come in and trackmud all over the living room floor. You make them sit down at the dinner table for a meal a day and you need to get them reading so if theyre not reading at grade level got to take that on your own shoulders because its a terrible burden for the kids if they go to through school and theyre not confident readers. It makes school so hard. Host are you of the school where you see kids on their phones and shake their head . Guest i try to get too crazy about it yes, sure. Maybe a little bit, im not crazy about it. I dont get angry about it, but you do a little bit and its like, new world but same with adults, youll sit there and see people, three people at dinner and theyre all on their phone. Theres people there at the table. Of course they go goes to dinner anymore but in the old days, remember whenwe used to go to dinner . Host i vaguely remember that. During this intuition youve been active in helping independent bookstores, what have you been doing . Host guest we reached out and i got involved with Reese Witherspoon was concerned about authors and bookstores and books and we salvaged a health save in the bookstores. Com. I guess weve raised about 1,000,007 i think and that will be distributed then in the bookstores, all of it, no handling fees. We put in half 1 million or i did. And so thats a good thing that will help. If nothing else bookstore owners will go its not going to solve their problems but dont get somemoney and go okay, people believe in us and thereshope. That made my day a little better today and hopefully now , as thingsstart to open , hopefully in a lot of these places they will understand that bookstores are essential as Liquor Stores and gun stores. That would be nice. Bookstores again, they should be a reasonable way where we can take three or four people into a bookstore and everybody can wear their masks and stay apart and you can accountable so hopefully we can do it in a nice safe smart way i would hope that bookstores are opening up again now. And do it in a safe way and im sure they will do it in a safe way. Host does a bookstore owner apply for a grant and are there any Strings Attached . Guest we did it through group and im so bad. Thank and they will distribute, i think there are like a couple thousand independent bookstores that are on our list so but the money will go out in thenext couple of weeks. Host and its purely a grant. Guest just here it is, god bless you and hopefully this will help and you can bring a couple of your employees back but i do think were going to have a fair number of bookstores opening in the next few weeks or months. Host are you a fan of amazon . Guest amazon does a lot of good things, i dont think in the beginning they did great things for publishers or books or whatever. I think they can do better. Ive talked to mister bezos about it, especially with kids. They could really do a number if they wanted to. That would be a very useful terrific thing for them. It was valuable , the most valuable thing they could do i think. Host youve worked with bookstores in this crisis and in the past withscholarships and awards. Guest we have a 400 some fellowship for teachers in thirtysomething universities so we do that. And i work with elastic, about bookstore libraries or classroom libraries. And my mother was a teacher. And her classroom library, she bought all the books and we didnt have a lot of money so it was a strain on the family so im very aware of that. When with scholastic we put out the call and we said we want to help, were going to pay for your library so we got 82,000 police to help and we helped 18,000 so scholastic, i would throw the money in an scholastic would give them Half Price Book bonuses so that they could buy the books for a lot less and they were buying it for. So thats a good thing and thats helpful. Of course now schools are closed. But weve already committed to next year. Hopefully they will come september october we will be starting up a bunch of classroom libraries for teachers. I presume by what you mean you and mrs. Patterson. Guest know, me and the frog in my pocket. Yes, sue and i, im sorry. Host how many booksyou have coming out this year . Guest i lose track and i dont count them i just keep writing them and the publisher probably wishes i would slow up a bit. Im working on an autobiographynow. I dont know if i ever publish it but its interesting. Being locked here i have a draft which is i dont know if its any good its been an interesting experience. Guest host how many hours this day, weretaking this interview 3 30. Guest i was in here at five so ill get out of here, sue basically locked me in from 7 to 7 usually. I dont know if shes going to let me out a little earlier because i was here early today. Host you made me lose my train of thought. Guest thats my job. Host if you were to recommend one James Patterson book as you said, you walk into the Hardware Store and you dont know what nails to get. Guest house of kennedy. House of kennedy if you like nonfiction is a cool nonfiction book. Black book for adult fiction. You never know, you always hope theyre going to work andthat one worked out great i think. Potty mouth and stupid with the kids books. The gatekeepers. Its not stupid in the title. Yes, because its about bullying and its a funny good book about wordbullying so thats a good one for the books, potty mouth and stupid. So the black book and house of kennedy, if you want to read a little nonfiction. You start your career as a writer. Guest i was thinking about stuff in my mothers stomach. No, i didnt and i wasnt, obviously i was always agood student. But i wasnt a big reader asa kid. My family moved to massachusetts and i had to get a job to work my way through college. I worked at a mentalhospital in belmont. And i work a lot of night shifts most nights there wasnt a lot to do. At night there. It was an interesting place, james taylor with their and ray charles used to come in and Robert Lowell though it was afascinating place to work and grow up. But i was going to cambridge which is way outside of belmont and i go to the use bookstores there and i started reading the mappers and especially atnight and i didnt read any of the kind of crap that i write. And really turned me on then i wound up going to grad school at vanderbilt, i was in the phd program there. And vietnam got away but. Host why do you thinkyou took off . Guest i think i tell the stories and i was lucky and i feel good stories and alex cross was what made me take off. And the publisher really believed in. And along came a spider, its a very readable book. There are a lot of big fans out there, maximum ride why a wise, a lot of fans. We are just doing a maximum ride, first time in years. We put out a call and its amazing, these kids and theyre not kids anymore, they are older and theyre like oh my god, that is my favorite, they got me reading. There crying and its a cool thing. Host James Patterson, his most recent nonfiction is the house of kennedy and is available now when bookstores reopen or online. Thanks for spending a few minutes. Host guest this was a nice interview, thank you very much. On indepth lee edwards shared his thoughts on the current state of the conservative movement and reflected on its past. I think its an exciting time. People are a little bit, some conservatives are a little bit worried. We are fighting too much. Were arguing too much. We are disputing too much. Likehatfield and mccoys. And i say thats great. That means