So, mr. Patterson, your most recent the house of kennedy is a nonfiction. Ive done a little nonfiction. Welcome to my house. We are sheltering in florida which is a good place to shelter. How many nonfiction february. I dont count. I probably written for five, the first one was jeffrey epstein, filthy rich. Which is now they actually dropped the video today its a four parter, i think it is the 25th of the month, Something Like that im not sure. That was the first one and that was aaron hernandez, i did that and then this one and i have a john lennon coming out later in the year which is really interesting. This house is connected to a house that john and yoko owned, a bridge between the two houses. Who used to live in your house questioning. G, nobody famous. But its a disgustingly big house. As is lennons as well. They were here for a while and then she held onto a while after he was killed. Another famous family, why did you choose to write about the kennedys . It just seemed to me that this was the Great American family story, there are royal family such as it is. This is the american crowd in my opinion. What i wanted to do is write about the whole family, theres plenty of stories about jfk and robert, et cetera et cetera. But in the same way with the crown, they tell the story of the whole era through Queen Elizabeth, i thought it was great to tell the story through the Kennedy Family and almost always, these characters are a lot more interesting than Queen Elizabeth just as a person. Shes a great lady but not as interesting. Joe kennedy senior, the book starts house of kennedy, is starts which sets the tone, joe senior has had a stroke, he cannot communicate very well, he cannot really speak, hes in the house, he is really, really cold and he finally gets the attention of one is his nieces that is cold and she goes rummaging around the bedroom and the first thing that she finds when she can cover joe in bed is a flag, she covers him with the flag and the flag she covers him with is the flag that covered jfks coffin. To me a great scene and thats what this book is, scene after scene after scene. You can tell the kennedy story. Mr. Patterson we often think of the Kennedy Family beginning with joe but it began with the grandfather. Pj . One of the interesting things, he died 105 years to the day jfk was a fascinating. With patrick, my story the story that i tell begins with joe, joe senior. Then it just goes through the whole thing, the boys and people talk about the kennedy curse in the hundreds you with all the tragedies in the family. But on some level, i found the curse that was an unintended one and i think joe and rose to some extent created it, they pushed all these kids to be the best they can be so they were all super motivated including poor rosemary who could not live up to that because she was a little slow and there had been an accident when she was born and in trying to deal with that and get her up to speed, they brought her in for an operation which was considered promising back in those days and it was in a bonhomie. After that rosemary wound up institutionalized for the rest of her life. In terms of the curse, you have all these people, incredibly motivated but also joe is taking a risk, climb the tree, dont worry if you fall and break your arm, climbing again. I think that is the real kennedy legacy, go out there, take the risk, go for it, be great, you can be the president , if we have four president s in the family, thats how it should be. What was his motivation. I think he was driven. My grandmother used to always say that the hungriest dog eats best and i think he was a hungry dog and i think he wanted all the kids to be that way. Was there a desire to rise above the irish. Yes and he did, also when he originally got involved with rose, that was the first halfstep because roses father, he was more established in terms of society, still probably a half step down because he was irish. But a higher station then went joe senior came up with. Weighted his money come from . A lot of it came from liquor sales and it started out. So many things with joe, to have a guy like that winding up running Internal Revenue and at one point fdr, this is really pretty amazing, joe sent them over to the ambassador to home of the irish guy and fdr was in his office and said you want to stop, all right, put on your plans, i have to look at your legs because the new joe is not me. But that was the thing in english society, you would have to show your legs with shorts but i think he was really more than anything else having fun with joe. Were those liquor sales where he made his money legal or illegal. I think it was illegal for most part. What did the boys bring from joe as far as motivation. I think the same thing, its ironically, once joe and john had to go into world war ii, he did not want them in war, he wanted to protect them. But they were, they had the fathers desire to go after him doing, take risks, so they both want to bring very Dangerous Things and joe, several flights and he finally got shot down, that is in the book and once again we try to deal with each in terms of three or four chapters on young joe and take you right to the point where he has a tragic accident and meanwhile, john goes off and winds up on the very famous pt 109 in both of them put their lives at risk. Bigtime. Were joe junior and jack different people . Yes and pretty competitive. Joe was the one that the family that was going to be the star, jfk was very sickly as a kid. And continue to be sickly, one thing after another, he had a terrible bad back, but he had been hospitalized, even as a student its like what kids are going through now, he was homeschooled a lot. James patterson, what was roses role . I wish i had gotten more on rose and were working with barbara, she was a show on madam secretary and she wants to do a big notion of the american crowd and i think she is going to make more of rose, i did not get enough on rose, capturing to get more and more and we went through a lot of the archives and oral history and whatever is available. I cannot get enough on rose. But she was behind the scene she was strong in her own way and the influence in terms of the kids being driven to be as good as they could be where you simultaneously writing the thriller, and a kids book . You cannot see it in here but along this wall there was stacks of manuscripts, 12345678, 910p20 manuscripts on the shelf along here. There is a shelf back here, im not making this up, you have your books, these are manuscripts of kids books. All in process. It is another nonfiction thing that im doing now, a friend of mine, matt you remember the movie black hawk down. He was the actual sgt and its an interview with all the people who gone through combat and then ill take the interviews and turn 30 page interviews into five or six pages and our mission is if you went through combat that these guys got it right. And if you didnt and youre one of these people that they think they know what soldiers are about you will read it and said had no idea. One of the things that we all see again and we see with their fathers and loved ones, people will come back and they wont talk about it. In this book, they talk about it. How many interviews will you do for that . Its pretty much done. We do a couple hundred. We didnt use all of them obviously. When you talk about all the manuscripts sitting around, do you wake up with an idea . Yes, this morning i did, i was in here a quarter after five and my wife said where are you going. An a while back not too long ago i brought the right to the shadow only knows for sure, i had an idea about something to do with that character that would make the character a lot more relevant, i think i woke up with something and i was mulling a couple of scenes that i thought were important. In the sense of new york in the era that the book will take place and so i rushed to the room and started playing with that. Is that computer offline . And so nobody can access what you are doing in there . I hope not. Whats the difference between writing a nonfiction and a fiction book. I cannot make stuff up. Here is the weird thing about nonfiction. Bill bryson dealt with this, he wrote a book about shakespeare. A short book for him especially. In it he talks about the fact that nobody knows anything about shakespeare. Nobody knows anything. We know the place, we have the place, there is one or two images that kind of like the way he looks, there is one piece out of a Court Proceeding where hes in it. That is it. There are hundreds of books about shakespeare. Are you kidding, what are these. Are they all novels, are they all fiction, we dont know anything about shakespeare. Its bizarre. At any rate, the hard thing, i cannot make things up. Early on one of the things i wrote, i wanted him to live. [laughter] one of the things that i learned in the house of kennedy is the number of years that they spent in new york. The family was in london for a year end a half or so. Several years in bronxville. Yes they are down here in brownsville exactly. A lot of it are Little Details and so one of my favorites is when jfk was president he loved judy and they were friendly and he called her up several times and he asked her to sing over the rainbow over the phone. It was kind of cool and who the heck was that, a neat thing was when don jr. Was pitching the magazine that he put out before he died, he would go around to the mainly older investors and he would say the weird thing is, you all knew jfk, i did not. And thats an interesting thing about this book. You know, a lot of people, people who lived through it will go, oh my god i thought he knew everything about the kennedys, i had no idea, theres so much i did not know. But for a lot of people they dont know anything. They dont read history now, they dont know any of this stuff. Its an extraordinary story and i hope a lot of younger people read it. When i say younger i mean under 40. James patterson, what is it like to have a book come out in the middle of what were going through right now . There has been nothing like this certainly in my lifetime, i have nothing to compare it to. I guess the closest, this is before me what was going on in world war ii where you had an incredible number of males out of the country in danger 420,000 americans died during world war ii, even that probably was not as extreme as whats going on now. Books are doing fairly well actually. My books are doing well because people can remember my name so they go online and say who do i remember the name and they say patterson. So we are doing fine, this book is doing great. One of the cool things, this goes to show about around the world, this is the sunday, the london times, frontpage in the london times in six pages inside. That is so interesting in england which is really it is extraordinary to me. New york time, here not so much. Do you miss the book to her or do you not enjoy those anymore . I did a big one with president clinton when we went around with the president. That was fun, a really big audience, we might do another book so will probably do another big tour. I will do speeches now but it is more big groups of librarians or big groups of teachers, i actually remember i did one right after President Trump was elected, it was about 3000 librarians in indiana, you can imagine that librarians would be a small number that wouldve been President Trump fans so you want to go into a dead room like the next morning at 8 00 oclock in the morning it was interesting. But i miss things like that, i am sure we will be doing more in some way shape or form. We do this and then we go and then you come to my office and we do it like this. Thats okay. We would love to take a tour of your office sometime to. I would do it right now but yeah yeah. Do you consider yourself a historian . No, i consider myself a storyteller and with kennedy and john lennon to some extent, a lot of information is out there but it hasnt been put in one place. In one of the things about nonfiction, an awful lot is written for academics or people worried about are we going to get every single. I happen to like the thousand pages on u. S. Grant but for a lot of people thats more than they want. They just dont want 1000 pages on grant. The house of kennedy reads more like a novel, its 407 pages, is very readable, it really moves in the people that know the story, theres a lot i didnt know and its a lot of the stuff i did not know. How did you get into childrens books . I had a kid i had a boy jack, jack was an interesting dude, and i said i you going to miss me. And he said not really. And i was kind of taken aback and he says love means you can never be apart. Im like wow, i told him if you Say Something in our house, i now own that line. I can use it in my book et cetera et cetera. And he still is that way but the interesting thing, he was not a big reader, when he was eight, my wife and i said you are going to read that summer, people should be doing this now, it is really important. We went out and got them about a dozen libraries and local to enter bookstores that we thought would turn them on, they range from Percy Jackson to a wrinkle in time. And we said youre going to read every day this summer and they said i have to, and they said yes unless you want to live in a garage. But we were really careful to make sure to read books that we thought would turn them on and by the end of the summer he read a dozen books and when he took his ss atc got in a hundred perfect score in reading. Not every kid is going to happen like that but theyre all going to get a whole lot better. Right now in this country, more than half the kids in the 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 that, are you kidding half the kids dont read it grade level, it is correctable. I work with the university of florida and were trying to work with the governor right now, they have a program and they had that you number, the university of florida up into the mid80s, they figured out some things, we can correct this. I dont know how to correct Global Warming or water problems, i dont have an influence as an individual but we can actually solve a lot of this about kids reading at grade level in the people watching this, you can do this with your kids and grandkids. I guarantee, kids books are the most read books by the way. Im just doing one now, the eyesight came to me and they said james around the world we want kids to know about Albert Einstein in the scientific theories but theyre very smart as you expect and you have to make it entertaining, all i have to do is write about Albert Einstein in this series and make it entertaining for little kids. They said that is it. So theres a series of books and they are very entertaining and i guarantee you anybody watching, if your kids read one of those, by the end they will be entertained and love the book and they will know more about einstein than you do. Which is a pretty cool promise. But because of that, muhammad ali said we would like you to do a book about cashs claim meaning when mohammed was a little kid in louisville and i went out and approached alexander who is a friend of mine and so we did a book together which will come out in november and remembering or becoming muhammad ali. It is a combination, i write the pros and quantity writes poetry. Its very assessable poetry. And we tell the story of how he became muhammad ali. So it is a lot of stuff, its cool and its fun and exciting. It keeps me going during this mess. Was not one of the goals . Absolutely. That is to make it easier for parents and teachers and whatever to find books that will turn their kids on which is important. A lot of times, when i went to a Hardware Store, i dont know what to ask for and i dont want to look like a fool in a noy need nails but i dont know what kind of nails 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 do not want to look stupid so they dont go and they dont ask, that is terrible, it is not their book necessarily although parents and grandparents need to understand it your responsibility to get your kids reading. You dont let them come in and track mud all over the living room floor, you make them sit down at the dinner table at least four email a day and you need to get them reading. If theyre not reading at grade level, you have to put that on your own shoulders, its a terrible burden for the kids if they go through school and then not reading and not confident readers. It makes school so, so hard. Are you of the school where you see kids on their phones and you shake your head . I try not to get too crazy but absolutely. Kind of maybe a little bit. Im not crazy, i dont get angry about it but you do a little bit. Its a new world, same with adults, youll see people at dinner and theyre all on the phone and youre like oh my god, theres people after table. Because of course who goes to dinner anymore but in the old days. Remember when we used to go to dinner. I vaguely remember that. During the Current Situation you have also been active in helping independent bookstores, what have you been doing . We kind of reached out and i got involved with Reese Witherspoon who is very concerned about authors and bookstores in books and we established bookstores. Com and i guess we raised about 1,000,007 and that will be distributed to the bookstores, no handling fees, we put in a half a million, i did and thats a good thing. It all helps, if nothing else books will say, its awkward to solve their problems but they will get money and they will say people believe in us and there is hope and that made my day a little better today and hopefully now as things start to open. Hopefully in a lot of these places they will understand the bookstores are essential as Liquor Stores and gun shops, that would be nice. Once again, there should be a reasonable way that we can take three or four people into a bookstore and everybody can wear their masks and stay apart and you can pick out a book. And hopefully we can do in a nice smart way. But i hope the bookstores open up again now and deal with it in a safe way and im sure they will do it in a safe way. Is a bookstore owner apply for a grant and are there any Strings Attached . Do you have time employees. We did to it group, im so bad, they will distributed. I think there are a