Leslie (3:38)

Did you leave because you went to Vietnam or was it.

James Patterson (3:41)

No, I left because at that point, they had the lottery.

Leslie (3:45)

Oh, right.

James Patterson (3:46)

Actually, I remember going to a bar when I was down in Vietnam, that. When I was down in Nashville and.

Leslie (3:52)

Not a Freudian slip, I went with.

James Patterson (3:54)

A bunch of guys and we. And they had the lottery and we were all going to sit in this bar and. Because it was on television, which was. Which is bizarre. And then. And my date came up and I. My number was like, 265, which meant that I would not go if to Vietnam. It was a high number. And. But the trick was you then had. You had to leave school by the end of the year or you would go into the next lottery. So at that point, I said, well, you know, I'll leave and I'll go get a job and whatever the heck. And. And I also had figured out at that point I did not want to be an English professor. That's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to write and, you know, that's what I wanted to do.

Leslie (4:34)

So were you. Were you getting your Ph.D. then in.

James Patterson (4:37)

Yeah, I had a full ride. I mean, it was a great. It was a great thing that I had. I. I mean, at that point, they were paying me R and board and 200amonth. So I was like, in heaven. I was in heaven. But. But I said, I'm. I'm just gonna go. And I'd been encouraged by Professor Sullivan down there, and he said, you can do it. And I went out and I. And I wrote a novel, which actually is about a reporter, a newspaper reporter in Nashville.

Leslie (5:05)

Oh, stunning.

James Patterson (5:06)

And I was 26 or whatever. And then it won an Edgar as best first mystery.

Leslie (5:11)

Yay.

James Patterson (5:12)

Having been turned down by 26 publishers. So what do they know? So anyway, Tim. Tim started playing football and he took a few hits to the head and then he moved to New York and he became a famous on air journalist.

Leslie (5:30)

I know, I know he did. I know. And you know Tim. You know, it's. It's amazing to know, like, the breadth of Tim's. Tim's fan base. When we were down in Palm beach. This is years back, her daughter. Oh, yeah, Tim's an old friend, but our daughter.

James Patterson (5:44)

No, no, I met you a couple of his fans. I thought you meant him both.

Leslie (5:48)

Yeah, I met both. I met two of them. Anyway, our daughter had to go to the hospital and we were waiting in the emergency room. We're supposed to meet Tim for lunch. And I said, we're at the hospital. And he said, oh, I'll come down to meet you. And who knew? It was like bringing in like Bono and Bill Clinton combined. I mean, the seas parted when Tim.

James Patterson (6:04)

Malaysia. I know the feeling.

Leslie (6:06)

You know what I mean? Happens all the time when you two are out to dinner.

James Patterson (6:09)

Who knows that? Interesting that Tim and I did a documentary and then we got involved and we were talking about another documentary and we were going to do it. Tim told me the story about Epstein, which a lot of people at that point didn't know that story. And I said, I don't want to do a documentary. Let's do a book. So that's how Tim and I really got into it, doing the book on Epstein, Filthy Ridge.

Tim Malloy (6:33)

I was a reporter down here at the time, before anybody was really paying any attention to him. I had a cop source who said, there's this strange guy and there's little girls coming across the bridge and da, da, da. And couldn't really put it all together, but they were the police department of Palm beach, knew who it was and eventually got him. And I had known Jim a little bit from the Palm Beach Grill.

James Patterson (6:54)

And well, there's that.

Tim Malloy (6:58)

The documentary we made, we worked together on. So I said, you know, the worst person in the world is living about three blocks from your house. And he was all in. Leslie and I, of course, Epstein was a dangerous and menacing guy. And Jim said, it's gonna be all right. Let's go get him. I'm tougher than he is. And so we wrote this book which did pretty well, but really was the first time anybody really went after this dude. And so I think we kind of, I will say, take this much credit. I think we lit the fuse on Jeffrey's eventual demise.

James Patterson (7:27)

The book did real well. But when. And I knew it was like, wow, this story is billionaire and these young girls. And it's, it was horrifying. And we had the police interviews with the young girls, which is just stunning and sad and tragic and unbelievable to read. And so I took it out to myself. I went to CNN and NBC, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And everybody goes, what's the big deal? I go, what, are you kidding? I mean, you do this for a living and you don't see it's a big deal in this story. And the, and the only people. The Wall Street Journal covered it and the Miami Herald. Miami Herald, is that right?

Tim Malloy (8:03)

Yeah, Miami Herald did a big job.

James Patterson (8:05)

And so the Miami Herald had had our part of the story, and then eventually they, they did their own series three or four years later. Yeah. And the reason that broke, and Tim knows this, it's really weird. Acosta had been, who was at that point, Trump had invited. He had become Secretary of Labor, whatever hell it was. And that's why all the papers and the online stuff picked up the story because of the Acosta thing, which was nuts. And people are going, who cares about Acosta? But suddenly they heard this story about Epstein and these girls and the billionaire and all and the injustice, and that's when the story exploded.

Leslie (8:48)

What was the connection between Acosta and Epstein?

Tim Malloy (8:52)

He became the U.S. attorney down in Miami from a cabinet post, and suddenly.

Leslie (8:56)

Okay, so he was willing to shine light on that. And then, Tim, I want to.

James Patterson (9:00)

He, he, he's the one that helped Epstein get the very short 13 month sentence.

Leslie (9:06)

Oh, right, okay. Sorry.

James Patterson (9:07)

He never even went to court. Yeah, yeah.

Leslie (9:09)

Okay, this is coming back to me and. Oh, I see. So just because he. Now I'm remembering him.

James Patterson (9:14)

Get. That's why the story got picked up by everybody. And then, and then, and then regular people who are smarter than the people that on these news shows went, wow, this story is unbelievable. And what we did, Tim and I, we did were involved with the documentary which was on Netflix. Yeah. And it was, it ran during COVID and 100 million people saw it in the first 10 days. That's the power of, of, of Netflix. Yeah. And the story. And the story.

Leslie (9:44)

Yeah, but did you, but so Jim, when you were saying that you were bringing all these interviews to the press and they were kind of saying, so what's the big deal?

James Patterson (9:53)

What brought the book to the press? I said, we want to talk about the book. And they're going, what's the big deal, really? What do you mean, what's the big deal? This story is unbelievable.

Leslie (10:03)

Stop it. So what year is that now?

James Patterson (10:05)

Is this like 2015, 2016, 2017, 18, something like that? Tim?

Leslie (10:10)

Yeah, okay, 2018. So. And then, Tim, the cops were coming to you. Were they coming to you for help, like, we need you?

Tim Malloy (10:18)

No, no. There was one cop I knew who his security at a club, and he knew me just because I was the local news guy. And anyway, he told me, and actually my wife and I, Susan, who, you know, Leslie, would be over near the Colony Hotel, and we'd see this guy driving by, riding by on bicycles with These beautiful little 15, 16 year old blonde girls. And Susan kept saying, what is the deal with that? And then we figured out it was Epstein and the cops weren't coming to us for help. They did a hell of a job in Palm Beach. They nailed the guy, as Jim just said, then went across the bridge to the. To the U.S. attorney and to the state Attorney, and they all kind of let the guy off. He got nothing. Year and a half in an ankle bracelet and went back up to.

James Patterson (11:01)

Gone out. I think he got out in 11 months, something like that.

Tim Malloy (11:04)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot.

James Patterson (11:06)

Good behavior. Of course he had good behavior. They let him out every day to go to his office. Yeah. Picked him up. Jail, I work 9:00 in the morning. He had to be back by six or something. What is this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so that's how Tim and I started. And then we just kept going and we said, let's do something else. And we got involved with Matt Eversman, who's a friend of Tim's, and. And I. I don't really like Matt that much, but hang out.

Leslie (11:35)

I heard that. I heard that. That you're. You're not.

James Patterson (11:37)

Yeah. Talk about Matt and. And you guys did a documentary Matt and T. Tim did over in Afghanistan. Right.

Tim Malloy (11:45)

I went four or five years ago, I took Matt to Afghanistan with me to do a story on. We got embedded for a week with the Air Force and the army, and I was doing aeromedical stories, basically medical stories and trauma and ptsd. And I said, matt, will you come? And he went. And then he ended up narrating and hosting this thing we called Send Me and played on local PBS and did really well. And then Mr. Patterson here, which people.

James Patterson (12:09)

Don'T know, Matt Eversman was the sergeant who was portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down. Amazing guy. And Tim and Matt would do the interviews, and they were. They were just stunning interviews. And, and then we talked about doing this book, Walking My Combat Boots. And our mission was that if, if people in combat read it, they would say Eversman and Malloy and Patterson got it right. And, and people who think they know what, what the military is like would say, I had no idea. And I understand the military better than I ever did after I read it. And then we've continued and that's where eventually we got to American Heroes.

Leslie (12:46)

Tell us about you get to this idea for this book for American heroes and then what's your first step, Tim, how do you. You kind of helped source idea.

James Patterson (12:56)

Tim said, let's do this one.

Tim Malloy (12:57)

Jim and Matt had already, they partnered on three books, which are very cool. One about cops, one about nurses, another one. And it seemed logical to continue with the military stuff because the, the first book, military book did really, really well. So I thought, why don't we try to interview as many Medal of Honor recipients? There aren't that many alive anymore. And then Silver Star and Distinguished Cross are the three top honors you can get in the military. And then I had James Patterson's name and Matt Eversman's name, and I just basically located the people. Matt and Jim took over. Matt interviewed them. Jim crafted the cut, you know, edited, crafted the stories, and like 10 page chapters on each one of them. And it's Leslie, absolutely riveting stuff.

James Patterson (13:47)

And one of the things that separates this series of books, Leslie, is we do the interviews tend to be 40, 50 pages, which nobody particularly wants to read. But we take them and we turn them into these five, six, seven page stories in which you get a sense for the person and also their story. So for example, one of the stories, this guy, Woody Williams, and it's just a great story. And this is back in Iwo Jima, what he did on the beach there was, he had a flamethrower. And this flamethrower is like 90 pounds on his back and they're getting just massacred on that beach. And he just goes and runs at these encampments where the Japanese are and, and does the flamethrower and takes out these people who are shooting up the beach and he does it to seven or eight and then he gets the Medal of Honor for that. But it's the kind of stuff he just like, nobody could ever do that. Oh my God, it's unbelievable. And all these stories are like that. You just, you, you read them and you go, I. I can't believe what they did.

Tim Malloy (14:46)

Yeah, as you read it, you go, geez, would I have done that. I mean, sort of the parameters are if you had never done anything like this, nobody, nobody in the military would have criticized you. It's way over the top hair. Was it?

Leslie (14:58)

Well, I think that, you know, the thing that really struck me, you know, and by the way, as I was reading it, and I was on a plane reading it, crying at certain points, just by these people's heroism and their courage and how they were willing. I mean, in that particular case, Woody Williams, it was almost like a suicide mission, or at least he thought it was. But it was the only thing was the only way to stop them from.

James Patterson (15:19)

A lot of them. Dwayne Dewey, I mean, this grenade, you know, in the middle of. And to save his buddies, he put it in his pocket. Yeah. And he lived. He lived. It blew up and he lived somehow, you know, it's just stunning. You can't. You say it is impossible. But, but there was, you know, it's story after story like that. Yeah.

Leslie (15:39)

And the thing too, I think, you know, there's a, or at least there is a conception by some that sort of like, you know, those in World War II were the greatest generation. And, and they, and they were in so many ways. But then you see the acts of heroism encouraged from our guys today who've gone to Afghanistan or in Iraq. And it's the same courage, it's the.

James Patterson (15:58)

Same bravery Tim and I have talked a lot about. It's really useful. And they should actually teach this book in schools or however they want to get to it, because young people in high school and college, it would be really useful for them to understand duty and sacrifice.

Leslie (16:16)

Yeah.

James Patterson (16:16)

Because they don't, they don't know what things that men and women did in this country to get us to the point that we're our good and bad. I mean, some bad things too, but, but we don't understand, we don't understand duty as much as we ought to and sacrifice and what people have done. You know, people that went before us and what, what they did.

Leslie (16:37)

Well, you know, it's so funny you say that because there was one of them, Patrick Brady, who was the helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

Tim Malloy (16:43)

Yeah.

Leslie (16:44)

At the end of his chapter, it's a quote from him or you know, summary of your interview with him where he said, I think that young people today need to have the same opportunity to serve their country, to do something for somebody else besides themselves, which is what military service is all about. I mean, it was really moving. And actually my 12 year old who's a history nut, I said to him, you need to read this book. And it's, you know, it's the perfect book, as you remember talking about, Jim, for having schools and for kids to read. Because it's, you know, there's five or six pages or, you know, there's no more than 10 pages.

James Patterson (17:17)

Very readable story. Yeah, yeah. Which is. It's important that these things are readable. You don't, if the job is to get kids reading and loving reading, don't give them things that they're going to turn them off. If that's your objective, don't do things they're not going to lead to your objective. And they do it over and over and over again. School boards do. It's ridiculous. No. Especially when they're under 12, 13, 14. Do not give them things to turn them off. Turn them on, turn them on, turn them on, turn them on. And this kind of thing, even if it's just a couple of stories, it will turn kids onto reading. It helps. And you know, one of the interesting things about these medal winners too, and Tim and I have talked about this a lot. When you interview them and when you read the book, they all talk about they're so modest. All they talk about is the people around them and how everybody around them should have gotten medals.

Leslie (18:08)

I have.

James Patterson (18:09)

And again and again the same thing.

Tim Malloy (18:11)

And almost all of them, at least the modern day ones that we talked, not a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we did. All of them said they'd like to go back and they'd do it all over again. Yeah, they always want to go back.

James Patterson (18:22)

As long as I live. No, no, no. Just kidding.

Leslie (18:26)

Well, I thought, I mean, you brought up Woody Williams, which is the Iwo Jima for the people that are listening. The soldier who went and did all the flamethrowers to stop the Japanese, but his grandson then went into the military, had ptsd, you know, became an alcoholic. I think he was homeless for a bit and his grandfather kind of pulled him out of that. And then the grandfather was making, I guess making money speaking. Right. Wasn't Woody making money speaking? And then the first thing that Woody wanted to do was start monuments for Gold star families, which are families of soldiers who died. And I thought that was, I mean, that was a chapter, Jim and Tim, where I was sobbing.

James Patterson (19:08)

No. And you know, Matt Eversman, that's been his life since he's going out helping veterans, getting people over the hump. We were talking, actually, we all went out to dinner, Matt and Tim and I preferring for this, getting ready for this.

Leslie (19:23)

Thank you for that.

James Patterson (19:24)

You're welcome. We were talking about how it would really be useful to start a company, and there probably are small companies that try to do it anyway. And the whole objective of the company would be to really prepare vets. All right. They've all. They've all gone through and they. And they've been prepared to. For warfare. They've been prepared for that, and they've been prepared and they've gone through and done amazing things, and they've been, you know, the duty and sacrifice, et cetera, et cetera, to prepare them for the next war, which is to go out into the. Into the world once they're back and get jobs, and how do we prepare them and get them ready for that war? That thing of how do they present themselves? How do they talk about themselves? How do they talk about their experience? How do you prepare or help them prepare their own resumes? Because most of these people are tremendous in terms of workers, and they just need. They need the confidence to go out there and present themselves in a way where people can go, yeah, I want to hire that person immediately.

Leslie (20:24)

Yeah, it's that transition, right. From being. Because it's such a regiment. It's. Right. They have military, and then it's a little less obvious or clear what the steps are once they get out. I think that's a great idea. I don't know what.

James Patterson (20:39)

Yeah, we'll try to figure out whether we can do something with it, but. Yeah. Or somebody's listening or watching.

Leslie (20:46)

Yeah. Well, let me know if you need help with that project. I think that's such a meaningful thing to do because it's shocking to me that people leave the military and they don't get the support that they. That story of Woody's grandson, I'm thinking, why is he. He's homeless and he's, you know, he's drug addicted, clearly because of his ptsd, and there's no one there to support him.

James Patterson (21:07)

The vet that Tim and I know, and. Well, Matt knows it too, and she came out, she was a sergeant, and she had 12 people under her and. And these very dangerous missions and. And whatever. And all of a sudden she's out here and she says, I'm starting this job, and they're teaching me, like, how to fold napkins. And again and again. And she said, now what the hell is this? You know, I had 12 people, life and death stuff working for me, and now you're. You don't think I can fold a napkin? You know, and it's so like what? You know, what is this? Yeah, so. So below their, their ability and their rank and whatever and that experience is. There's nothing like that. That's, I mean, versus even going to. A lot of times when people go to college, that experience in the military is so much more valuable to prepare you for the real world for sure.

Leslie (21:54)

Tim, were you going to say something? I thought.

James Patterson (21:56)

No, no.

Tim Malloy (21:56)

I just got to say a lot of them come back either through injury or just through emotion, in trouble, post traumatic stress on some level and they get just over medicated by the, the va. Matt can talk about that. It's you, you know, there's sort of a zombie veteran and then the veteran under the bridge is probably over medicated. And plus the injuries were horrifying. IED is different kind of warfare. I mean, things blown off, generals blown off, to be blunt, because when those go off them, that's the, these guys coming home, a lot of them. And some women are in disastrously bad shape and they need psychological counseling and what you guys are talking about, they need jobs.

James Patterson (22:40)

So.

Tim Malloy (22:40)

Yeah, no, it's just I flew on those planes many times with guys just blown to bits that they're getting them back Germany to try to get them over to Walter Reed. I saw one guy die on a plane. And you know, it's when you, when you do that, you really get a feeling for the sacrifice. And these are not people getting medals. These are grunts. These are people who went out.

James Patterson (23:00)

You know, we try to get as much variety as we could. It's a little harder with women because when you go back, there wasn't most of these medals have to do with combat. And just recently when you had more and more women involved in combat and now, I mean, what the hell is going to happen now? But which is another political thing that I'm not going to step on that particular one this morning. But like Cindy Pritchett and her story, you know, when she was in basic, they wouldn't let her actually handle weapons. This is in the beginning as we're starting to get women into combat a little bit. And it's just, it's an amazing story. And I remember she showed up at one of her postings, you know, they were clearly expecting a man. And they said, oh my God, you're a woman. He said, and she said, yes, I am, and here are my credentials and.

Tim Malloy (23:48)

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

James Patterson (23:49)

And she really did know her stuff. Just in terms of the breadth also. I mean, we had at this Tom Bennett, a conscientious objector and the way he threw himself and he did wind up getting killed, but, I mean, the bravery he showed was unbelievable.

Tim Malloy (24:04)

Yeah, he went to serve his fellow man, not to serve the country in a war, but he went. His brother was the one who helped us tell that story. That was really something.

Leslie (24:12)

Tim, tell me about that. So you are the reporter extraordinaire, so you know kind of how to navigate these things. But where do you start when you're trying to find these. These people?

Tim Malloy (24:21)

Well, there's a Medal of Honor society, which. And they're a little wary of the media, but when I integrated Jim Patterson's name and Matt Eversman, suddenly the game was really wary. They said, stay. That fell away from us.

Leslie (24:35)

They hung up. Yeah, they hung up the phone, those guys.

James Patterson (24:38)

So that.

Tim Malloy (24:39)

That really. And then immediately we had 5. 5 or 6 of the medal of Honor recipients. And then there were ones that are just. We went to a dinner with about 60 of them, and a lot of the most recent ones, Iraqi, Afghanistan guys are really screwed up. And they were there bouncing off walls and drinking and all that. But Matt interviewed several that were really squared away guys who did. Incredible. Earl Plumlee, unbelievable story for him. We got lucky because I've got. Not lucky. We have Jim and Matt, so that makes it different. But you start on the Internet, basically.

James Patterson (25:10)

Once you talk to people and you say, do you know anybody else we should talk to? And frequently they do. Frequently they do. They know their interviewers.

Tim Malloy (25:20)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

Leslie (25:22)

Yeah. And I guess having Matt, you know, the credibility of Matt. Right. And his experience.

James Patterson (25:26)

Oh, yeah.

Leslie (25:27)

These people are. Would be more compelled to kind of open up to him. Right. Because they knew that he can.

James Patterson (25:32)

He knows the kind of questions He. He's. He's been there. He knows the right questions. He knows the right responses. At one point, my agent in Washington, Bob Barnett, who knows everybody and, you know, he represents pretty much everybody that comes out of Washington, wants to do a book. And I said, you know, one of these networks, cnn, ought to pick up Matt because he knows how to ask the questions that most of these people don't because they haven't been throwing. They don't know what questions they ask. They don't know how to respond when. Yeah. When it's. When it's a military story, most of them don't.

Tim Malloy (26:10)

Then he was a Delta guy. He was in Iraq during the surge, kicking indoors and trained the Iraqi army. So he had a couple of war theaters. And so his legitimacy is exceptional.

James Patterson (26:24)

Yeah. Once again, he's Such a modest human being.

Leslie (26:31)

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James Patterson (29:43)

And obviously, Tim talk about some of them. I mean, another one was Ralph Puckett, who was just a huge deal in terms of the Ranger world from. From, you know, when he was in the, you know, serving overseas to. To when he came back. And then we actually dedicated the book to him because he died before the book came out. That's correct. Am I right, Tim?

Tim Malloy (30:06)

Yes, he did. Matt actually went to his home. We used A lot of. All the interviews were done by phone. He. Matt went to go.

James Patterson (30:13)

That was the one that Matt.

Tim Malloy (30:14)

Right. To interview with.

James Patterson (30:16)

In terms of the. The experience that we used in the book was, you know, they were just being overwhelmed. His. His. His battalion or whatever. And he said, leave me behind. Leave me behind.

Leslie (30:27)

Yes.

James Patterson (30:28)

He'd been wounded, you know, and they wouldn't. They wouldn't leave him.

Leslie (30:31)

Yeah, I remember the story. I remember the story because weren't there, like, there were hundreds of Chinese? I didn't realize the Chinese were so. Were so deeply involved in that conflict. So, Jim, Tim referenced this a little bit earlier, but this is sort of not. This is not your first book where you have kind of honored or talked about people that serve others.

James Patterson (30:50)

You. What.

Leslie (30:51)

Did you do a book with Matt on. On nurses and.

James Patterson (30:54)

Yeah, we did ER Nurses. It's another one. Once again, the mission is that ER nurses would read it and say Erisman and Patterson and Malloy got it right.

Leslie (31:03)

Yeah.

James Patterson (31:04)

And. And they would say, oh, my God, I don't know. How do people do this? You talk about ptsd. I mean, in theory, every. Every ER nurse in the world. I mean, because what they deal with. And Matt would do most of the interviews, and he said, I can only do one a day. And this is a guy who's seen heavy combat, because it's like they pull one curtain and here's a kid who just lost his hand and they pull the next curtain, and here's somebody that's having a heart attack, and they pull the next turn and it just goes on and on. And on day after day after day, I don't know how people do it. And then we tried not to make it a Covid book. All of the nurses had Covid stories. I mean, just lots of COVID stories. But we didn't want the book to be about COVID We wanted it to be about AR nurses. We're doing teachers now. And that's once again, that's another incredible story. People. You start thinking, my mother was a teacher forever. And so in theory, I know that category. But what teachers have to go through now, I mean, they got, you know, the kids are more unruly than they've ever been. The parents are more involved in unfortunate ways than they've ever been. You've got people from the right pressure. You got people from the left pressuring them. You have school boards more involved, you know, not letting teachers teach. So it's a really fascinating area to me. And the book is pretty stunning and useful.

Leslie (32:27)

Yeah, I'm seeing a theme here with you, Jim, that you like to sort of highlight those that are kind of helping others and on the front lines.

James Patterson (32:35)

And you know what I think a lot of it is. I mentioned before, I'm doing a business book. It's about disruption. And my whole career has been disruption. I was in advertising, but I've been clean for 40 years. In my 30s, I was running J. Walter Thompson North America, and it was all about disrupting. It was about change. I will look at things and go, this doesn't make any sense. Not everything, but if it didn't. And I would just say, we're going to fix. And then in publishing, it's the same thing. Who says, I'm supposed to write one book a year, I don't want to do that. Who says, you know, I wrote a whole series of books that were novellas. One year there were, you know, these bookshots and did like 90 of those that year. I did 2700 pages of outlines in addition to two books. It was insane. You know, whatever. I am insane. But it's always been disrupting. You know, little Brad had never done a TV commercial. I said, why not? And they said, I don't know. We just don't do them. So I went and made one for $1,000, and they went, oh, that's pretty good. Well, we'll do that. But it was just, why not? I mean, it's not that you have to. But why aren't you doing that? And if you look at the world right now, I mean, this is the age of disruption. We're in it. You just, you know, whether it's, you know, artificial intelligence or Covid, in terms of what that is doing still to the workplace or what's going on in Washington right now, it's just all bets are off, man. And disruption comes fast and hard and you got to be ready for it. But that's been my whole. Everything I've ever done, it's been. We don't have to do that. Like Tim and I, let's do a documentary. And when we did the first documentary, we bid it out to two companies, one in LA and one in New York. And both bids were like around $750,000.

Leslie (34:31)

Yeah.

James Patterson (34:31)

And Tim and I had both done a bunch of film and we said, that's bs and we did it. We did it and edited it for 51,000 and it won two Emmys. So I mean, you know, I don't know, we just said that doesn't make any sense. That's stupid. We can make this film.

Leslie (34:48)

I mean, I love how you though, like, you, you, you sort of pursued any subject that you find, you know, as you said that you either that you're looking at things that you think are disruptive or you're just pursuing kind of stories and subjects that, that interest you.

James Patterson (35:04)

Yeah, well, yeah, look, I. A couple of years ago, this is not my quote, but it came across and I think it's more useful for, for you and for your, your, Your children or. Than it is for me. But the, the quote is my time here is short. What can I do most beautifully.

Leslie (35:23)

Yeah.

James Patterson (35:24)

And it really, it focuses you and it also helps you to make good choices. So I had the opportunity to write a novel with Viola Davis. And I said, yes, that will be a beautiful thing. And we had a good idea for a book and we're almost done now. Might be doing something with Mr. Beast. Have you heard of Mr. Beast? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I went up to North Carolina and saw him two weeks. I don't know if we're going to do it for sure. But once again I went like, this is interesting. I find this person and what he's doing fascinating. And yet maybe we can do something together if he wants to.

Leslie (36:01)

Yeah. You mentioned Bob Arnett, your agent, who knows everybody. Is he. So will Bob come to you with an idea like Bill Clinton wants to write a book?

Tim Malloy (36:09)

No.

Leslie (36:10)

By the way, I read that book.

James Patterson (36:11)

Well, the Clinton thing there a little bit. Really what it was, was Bob had been trying to get President Clinton to write a mystery.

Leslie (36:20)

Okay.

James Patterson (36:20)

Because he loved. He. First of all, Clinton reads everything. He just. He doesn't sleep. He's a vampire. He's a reading vampire. No, he's not a vampire, but he reads, reads, reads, reads, reads. And he reads a lot of mysteries and thrillers and he had read some of mine and, and finally Bob went to, to, to the President and he said, well, what about. Would you write a book with James? And, yeah, and. And Bill said, why would James want to write a book with me? And then Bob came to me and I said, yeah, well, you know, I'm assuming. Let's see. Let's see if we have an idea that we like. And then. So we did. We wrote, you know, but that was, that was one where Bob did come to me and he said, would you like to do that? The others, I mean, with Dolly Parton, I just.

Leslie (37:03)

Tell me about Dolly.

James Patterson (37:04)

If, you know, I just. Her manager. And I said, I want to come down. I was thinking we might write a children's book because we both, you know, try to get kids reading. And then it went down and I spent a couple hours with her. We just hit it off. We decided not to write a kids book. We do an adult book. And I brought a little bit of an outline and. And she's. My grandmother has a lot of Hungry Dogs run Faster. And we're both hungry dogs, Dolly and I, and we just got a kick out of each other. And she said, you know, Jim, I've. She called me Jimmy, James, J.J. and she said, I've written thousands of country songs. She said, I could write one standing here on my head. Want to see? So it was like that. It was like that, but that's kind of how it goes. And if we hit it off and we did. So we did something. And then with Viola, same thing. I had a little bit of an idea for a book about abortion in the south novel. And she really liked the idea. And then we worked on the outline and now we're almost done with the book.

Leslie (38:06)

So you'll meet with them, you see if there's, you know, kind of chemistry. Right. And then from there you'll. The ideas will evolve.

James Patterson (38:13)

See where it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. That's. Yeah, that's kind of how it works. And then, I mean, there's other. I mean, the regular novels that I write with co writers or whatever, that's.

Leslie (38:22)

Yeah, yeah.

James Patterson (38:22)

It generally tends to be people that I've worked with before in some way, shape or form. I have a book out, just came out, Holmes, Marple, And Poe right now. And that, weirdly, this is a guy that I work with, and we did a kid series which won a bunch of Emmys. Kids do. But he had never written any fiction at all. And he's like, in his late 60s now maybe. And he's great. He's great. I don't know how the hell it happened. Tim and I, as he mentioned, we met in a bar. His mom was there. And Tim goes. And I really liked. I didn't really like Tim that much, but I really liked his mom. She was great. Great, great, great. And then, I don't know. I think after that, we might have gotten together another time, and we started talking about things we might do. And we. And then we went out and did this documentary, Murder of a Small Town, which was about. Tim had done a lot of reporting about West Palm Beach, West Palm beach county, which is very poor. It's the opposite of sort of Palm beach, the town here, and fascinating area. And gets a lot of bad press, which it shouldn't get. And then my hometown, Newburgh, New York, which at that point was ranked the sixth most violent small town in America, and Belglade had been. Was ranked first. So we said, well, let's try to do something that would correct the bad reputation these two towns have. Yeah.

Leslie (39:49)

So remind me about that documentary, though, because I remember Tim, when you were working on it.

Tim Malloy (39:53)

Yeah, it was called Murder of a Small Town. Jim narrated, hosted it. We just went out to Belglade and Pahokee, the flyover towns that nobody gives a damn about and still don't. And found that there are wonderful, inspiring, incredible people. We profile some of the football players, but that's sort of the way you get out. But there was the other stories, and these people 45 miles from paradise, we called it. Jim called it Murder of a Small Town, which is a great murder by neglect. Yeah, it was fun working on it with.

James Patterson (40:26)

Yeah, we did one. It would turn out to be a spectacular interview. And this young guy, ex football player, never had any trouble. I think he got pushed into robbing the local. The little, you know, market in town. But he went in with a gun. I think he. I think he didn't have any choice, but he did went in with a gun. The owner was sort of a tough guy, grabbed at the gun, gun went off. Oh, well, it bounced off a bone and killed, you know, so it was. It was really a tragedy. The owner died, and I don't think the kid had anything in his mind to murder anybody or whatever. And then anybody's got life sentence. He'll never get out unless. Unless a governor pardons him or something, which they probably should do at this stage. Anyway, so we went up, Tim and I went up and interviewed him and it was spectacular. It's just a spectacular interview. And we had footage about his father and his father's reaction. You know, this kid had been a great kid for most of his life and he just made this terrible mistake and, you know, and tragedy. And tragedy, obviously, for the family that owned this store.

Tim Malloy (41:32)

He killed the, the white owner. A beloved white family in a very African American town.

Leslie (41:39)

Yeah.

Tim Malloy (41:39)

So he killed a beloved guy. And he probably. He didn't know what he was doing. He's just a dumb 17 year old kid.

James Patterson (41:46)

He sends these letters. I don't know how the hell he does it. He prints them and the words are so little, I have to get a magnifying glass. But it's incredible. He can get about 10,000 words on a piece of paper. So we do. And I send him books and a little extra whatever every month. It's nothing.

Leslie (42:07)

But does he have a life sentence or is he without parole?

James Patterson (42:11)

Oh, a double life sentence. You know, it would take a parole. The president could have done it, but he didn't. But, you know, you know, other people to parole. I don't know.

Leslie (42:21)

Yeah, just.

James Patterson (42:21)

I'm just saying.

Leslie (42:22)

I know. I mean, the fact that they're, you know, they're, you know, as you said, Tim, like they're those communities that. And they just seem to. They're there and.

James Patterson (42:30)

Yeah.

Leslie (42:31)

You know, and, and they're. In this particular case, it's so close to, I mean, just the, the contrast, right. Between having Palm beach there and then having, you know, this community so close.

Tim Malloy (42:43)

I will say this, it's not just because he's my friend, but even before I knew him, Jim Patterson was going out there and giving books away and pushing for reading initiatives. And so this was something he, you know, since he just picked up on the documentaries. But he had done this kind of stuff before. So not many people are doing. Leslie, they're going to balls.

Leslie (43:01)

I know, Jim, that's really, I mean, it's those kinds of things. I think, you know, when you're, you are in prison. And I interviewed actually for the podcast, a friend of mine who was in prison but did have his sentence commuted by President Bush. He was, but it was a very. Because of federal guidelines, long prison sentence for drug trafficking. And he, he made a mistake and, and he takes full ownership of it. But anyway, just, he was Talking a lot about what it's like being in prison and just having books and having access to learning or something. Where you're. Is just so important for.

James Patterson (43:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leslie (43:35)

Their survival.

James Patterson (43:36)

Unfortunately, for a lot of these people, it's. The prison is even so much worse than that. We live. We're in the north for a couple of months in the summer. We're like a mile from Sing Sing. So we go there, and that is just a hellhole. Yeah, it's just so, so difficult for the people who get thrown in there. And. And one of the weird areas is plea deals where certain people, they'll take because they have, you know, where the. Where the DA Says you're going down. So you can take your choice of going down for 50 years or going down for five years, and they go, but. But I'm innocent. Yeah, okay, well, you can take your chances in court or, you know, so that. I mean, plea deal, that's another thing. In terms of the justice system, it's. It's really tricky.

Tim Malloy (44:16)

Yeah, mostly. You're an attorney, aren't you?

James Patterson (44:18)

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Malloy (44:19)

Yes.

Leslie (44:20)

Yeah. You know, I'm actually.

James Patterson (44:22)

That's enough that I didn't know that. You know what? I stopped this interview. Oh, my God. We expose ourselves so much.

Leslie (44:29)

I know I should have. It's like. It's like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Sorry about that, Jim. I didn't mean to.

James Patterson (44:34)

Yeah, okay. Wow me.

Leslie (44:36)

But I don't. I don't practice anymore. I don't practice anymore.

James Patterson (44:39)

You're for real now. You don't need to practice.

Leslie (44:41)

All right, so wait, Jen, you told me, you mentioned. Did you say your mother. What is Hungry Dogs Run Faster as your blog?

James Patterson (44:47)

Did you say mother?

Leslie (44:48)

Your grandmother.

James Patterson (44:49)

Grandmother, yeah. Hungry Dogs run faster. That was one of her lines. She was. She was the person that basically said, you can do it, whatever you want to do. Although she said I would never play in the NBA. She said I could. I couldn't go to my left, so forget about it. But most stuff she would. She would say, you can do it, you know, and that's a big deal for people to have somebody that's going, yeah, okay. Yep, go for it. You can be a writer. I don't know why you would want to be, but you can be one, you know?

Leslie (45:21)

So did you come to her after you had this. You had the professor who was like, you've got a real talent. Did you then go to her and.

James Patterson (45:26)

Oh, sure.

Leslie (45:27)

What you were doing, and you know.

James Patterson (45:28)

You'Re going to get bagged like, you know, yeah, you. That's what you want to do. You better get a. You better get a real job first. But go ahead. That's always my thing about, you know, we have a bunch of scholarships at Iowa's Writers Workshop, which is one of the best, maybe the best in the country, has been for a long time. And I go out there and I don't want to say it to the kids, but, you know, you know, give a talk, and you don't want to say, listen, dudes, you guys are all good writers, but the shit you're writing, you're not going to be able to sell it many places. So unless you want to be a barista who really writes great stuff, and you. Every couple of years, you get one published by the New Yorker or something. Maybe you need to be a little realistic about it and use that. Maybe it's not so bad to do a commercial novel every couple of years rather than. Than working at Starbucks. I don't know. That's just me. But it is, you know, where. Where are they going to? What's going to be the outlet for that talent? Yeah, you're that good. And, you know, then what? You know, you give it to the Sawani Review, which is great. Yeah. Which is great. But you can't earn a living doing that.

Leslie (46:37)

You know, it's funny, I had a friend on the podcast who's a book agent, and she was saying that once writers kind of get to a certain point, even studios or people are going to them saying, we're looking for this kind of content, they're almost. They're able to write kind of, you know, to deliver, you know, a certain.

James Patterson (46:55)

Yeah. Which is a drag. Which is a drag.

Leslie (46:57)

Sure. It might. It might feel sort of not so compelling for them to do it that way.

James Patterson (47:02)

Yeah, it's better than. Yeah. If you can do it still, you know. Yeah. But writing for Hollywood, to me is like, not blowing my brains out at this stage. I can't do it. I'll go on these calls because we have a lot of projects out there, and the screenwriter will be taking notes from, like, 30 people. You go, like, what? I mean, who are these people and who gave them the right? And why are they experts? And why did, like, 90% of these notes make no sense at all? And why is this poor screenwriter who's, you know, and. And, you know, and I have read the script and go, this script is really, really good.

Leslie (47:34)

Yeah.

James Patterson (47:34)

And then. And then you go, like, what? What, What? You know, it's like crazy. Don't become a screenwriter. Don't do it. Your children. No, I don't care how. Tell them right early on, we should. We. There should be some horror book. The kids at like six, you know, this. This kid that wanted to be a screenwriter and becomes a screenwriter at six, and it's horrifying and it's. You know, and so that they would never, ever want to do that. What do you want to be when it grow up, Mommy? Anything but a screenwriter. I'm kidding a little bit, but kind of not.

Leslie (48:06)

Tell me, though, because you mentioned, like, sort of your calls with Hollywood and stuff. I mean, Alex Cross obviously is, you know, your biggest fictional characters. How did you come up? How did you.

James Patterson (48:16)

I have one now with Mike Lupica, and he's six'nine so he's bigger than Alex. He's gonna be my biggest fictional character. Yeah, six, six foot, nine. Yeah.

Leslie (48:25)

What was Alex, six, two? Was Alex six, two? I don't remember how.

James Patterson (48:28)

No, exactly. Six'two six'three something like that.

Leslie (48:32)

But I mean.

James Patterson (48:33)

Well, that's great. I mean, the new series, which is on. On Prime Video. Yeah. It's done incredibly well, which is great. So they're all happy, and I'm happy. And it's Aldous Hodge who is. The plays. Alex, he's great. Yeah. And he does the two important things. He's got that intensity. The cop part's great because he's so intense. And then he's great with the kids.

Leslie (48:55)

Yeah.

James Patterson (48:56)

Yeah. And that was never in the movies. They never had room for the kids. And also with Morgan, it's sort of like, well, how. How old do the kids have to be? But these are little kids in the series with. With Amazon.

Leslie (49:08)

I've watched it. I've watched a couple.

James Patterson (49:10)

Oh, good. Okay. All right.

Leslie (49:11)

Excellent. Well, you're so right. It's. It's able to kind of gives the opportunity to kind of really explore his character. But, I mean, was he something. You're just home one night, you're Had a glass of wine, and you're like, I've got this idea. Or did he, like, where did he come? Was he inspired by anybody? Alex Cross himself, Like the character, way back. Yeah.

James Patterson (49:30)

Oh, yeah. In those days, I didn't have a glass of wine. I couldn't afford wine, man. Might have a, you know, Ripple. No. Maybe a beer, you know, water? No, I actually, it was right after I went to Vanderbilt and I just. I don't know, I started writing a little piece of. It was. My grandparents had a very small restaurant upstate New York and the cook chef was a black woman. And at one point, she was having problems with her husband, and she moved in with us, and she didn't have any duties in the house. She just was, you know. But I spent a lot of time with her family, and they were smart and funny, and the music was great and the food was great. And that was a little sense of where the Cross family came from. Not directly, but a little bit of that. And in those days, Hollywood, and they're so, you know, like, full of themselves, how sacrosanct they are and what. You know, in those days. But pretty much, Sidney Poitier was allowed to sort of be an actual black person, but almost everybody else in the movies had a boombox on their shoulders, and they went like, that's just such crap. And that's why I sat down and created Alex. But now that I know that you're a lawyer, I'm out of here.

Leslie (50:44)

You got to go.

James Patterson (50:45)

Jim, thank you so much. That was great. You're really good at this. Tim. Since you were off for a while, Tim, a few more things. I have to go, but thank you. Thank you.

Leslie (50:55)

Thank you really good much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

James Patterson (50:59)

That's what we call the Vanderbilt people. Doors, not Commodore Doors. Bye.

Leslie (51:03)

All right, well, let me know next time you're down to visit Dolly. Tim, listen, he's so terrific. I mean, I'm so kind of take the time and so interesting. And, you know, Jim mentioned, you know, that he's. He's working on. This book's coming out with Viola Davis, and he's working on this business book with someone at Vanderbilt. What's going on? What's next for Tim Aloy? What are you. What.

Tim Malloy (51:24)

Believe it. One of the reasons I'm in New York is I'm interviewing a veterinarian who treats snakes. Now, the reason I'm doing is that we're kicking around the idea of doing a book about veterinarians. All these books are the military, nurses, Cops who Serve Other people is basically it.

James Patterson (51:40)

Yeah.

Tim Malloy (51:40)

Veterinarians, once you start digging into it, you know, hippopotamus docs and things like that are fascinating. So we're kicking around that idea. So I'm just starting up in New York at a research trip to work on that. I work for a political. Another career, too. So I. But the. The James Patterson part of my life is absolutely spectacular. So much fun.

Leslie (51:59)

Oh, well, he's such a terrific person. And I just. I was saying to him when. When you had that for listeners, Tim Had a little tech. Tech glitch. So he was off for a second, then joined us, came back. But, you know, I just love how he's interested in so many different subjects and kind of pursues.

Tim Malloy (52:15)

He's on fire. How old? I think he's 76, 77. He just very quickly. I don't know if we're still recording or not. It's fine. He is so lightning fast with ideas for like, the other day, he said to me, all right, well, what about this? He's not proposing I do this, but if he had a writer he wanted to work, whether his own idea. Train pulls into Grand Central Station on a snowy morning. Everybody gets out of the cars, except for one car, and everybody's dead. Write me 30 pages. Show me that 30 pages, and we'll pick it up from there. I mean, that's sort of the way he comes in. Like a little girl wakes up in the morning, she knows more about butterflies than any person on earth. Write me pages. But he'll start with a little tiny concept and then just edit his way through it. You know, he does partner with people, but his. He is. His hand is in everything, you know?

James Patterson (53:06)

Yeah.

Tim Malloy (53:06)

And he's an editor, writer, publisher. I mean, he's a very interesting guy.

Leslie (53:11)

Oh, my gosh. And a great, great person and a great American. This is like those. This is my first podcast, Tim, where I've. Or episode where I've done like a. I'm discussing the. I'm discussing with the other guest out. I like that we get to do a full, you know, forensic on.

James Patterson (53:28)

He's. Well, he's.

Leslie (53:29)

Patterson is. But yeah. No, fascinating. And I. I just love, you know, how he's so, you know, compelled to tell the stories of, you know, people's stories that aren't always told. Right. And those that are, as are you speaking of terrific people. But I. I can't wait. I mean, that's really interesting. Keep. Keep me posted on what's going on with the. With the veterinarian book. And I know you've got a thousand other things that you're working on.

Tim Malloy (53:56)

Maybe firefighters. I went out to LA for two days last week and did some interviews there, but we'll see veterinary. I mean, firefighters, obviously. That'd be good.

Leslie (54:03)

Yeah. I'm so happy to see you. I can't thank you enough for taking the time this morning and for connecting me and connecting me to the Tim Jim Show. It was really spectacular.

Tim Malloy (54:14)

Thanks, Leslie. Thank you, your family.

Leslie (54:17)

You too. That brings us to the end of this episode of the interview. A huge thank you to James Patterson and Tim Malloy for joining, and as always, thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate or review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. A new episode is released every Wednesday, so until next Wednesday, this is Leslie and thank you for joining the interview.