Writing Authenticity in Fiction and Nonfiction

Hey everyone, welcome back to Newsgirls. Today we have such an exciting guest on. It's best selling author James Patterson. You all definitely know who he is, his best sellers span across crime, thriller and nonfiction. He actually holds the record for most number one New York Times bestsellers and today we're having him on it's such an achievement that's so crazy and today we're having him on to talk about his new book called Rocket's Red Glare and very Permanent to newsgirls, the rerelease of his book on Jeffrey Epstein called Filthy Rich, the Jeffrey Epstein story. So James, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you. This is fun. So before we dive into Ep isodes a new and an b oldook book. Absolutely . Old book default with new information in it. Exactly. Yeah, so let's start we'll start with the new book. So we know you just had a book come out Rockets Red Glare obviously that',s a line from the Star Spinkle Banner. The key in terms of that book is my partner in there is Matt Everestman . The movie Black Hawked Down , Matt was the actual sergeant in the movie. He was in Mogadishu . His best friend died in his arms . And so he was my partner with this. And it's about and I think it's very relevant to right now. It's about what will happen if we're attacked again . And I but don't think it's an if it's we will we will get attacked. We keep making more and more enemies. We're making enemies obviously in our hand right now more than ever. Iraq , Israel, you name it. We get enemies there . So we're going to get hit again, and that's kind of what this book is about. And the good thing about thrillers and mysteries is you get the answers. We're going to talk about Geoffrey Epstein. People still don't have answers. It's irritating . You read a book like Rocket's Red Glare, you're going to get answers. You're going to get, you're going to walk away from it sort of satisfied. So it's a wonderful for my mind, a book to read. All right, we'll talk about Geoffrey Epstein. Your favorite subject. Yay, favorite subject. Yes. So switching gears one of your favorite subjects, okay? So reading through it, we could tell just how much research went into this Geoffrey Epstein book. It felt like journalis m. What inspired you to write it in the first place and then re release it all these years later? Yeah , what inspired me is an incredible story . And you know, I have a friend down in Palm Beach , who's a reporter down there Tim Lloyd . And we were in a bar one night. We're gonna do another documentary. We'd done a documentary film and he started telling me about this Epstein story which had happened before that and Epstein had been arrested. I would go, Oh my God, I want to write a book about this. I don't want I don't want to do a documentary. I want to do a book . And it's just an unbelievable . So I just was I had to write about it. It was just such an unbelievable story that billionaire or whatever, whatever he's worth had these, you know , probably a hundred young girls that he had , you know, invited over to his place and his place in New York. And I just found it to be an unbelievable story. The most amazing or one of the most amazing things about the whole thing is, okay, so I write the book. And pretty much anything that you're going to talk about is in the book in some way sha,pe or form. And the other thing that's in the book are interviews with when they were young girls with police interviews. I've never seen those anywhere else. I don't know why , but that's pretty stunning. At any rate, so here's his story, which is a mind blower, okay? I write this book. I know it's spectacular because the subject matter is just unbelievable, which is why I wanted to write it in the first place . And I personally take it to CNN and Fox and the New York Times, et cetera. And nobody thinks it's a story . Seriously, if you can't believe it. I mean, that 's an unbelievable story in itself . And it says a lot about the editors and whatever, whoever the hell is running these places , how could you possibly not know that that was a story? But that was a reality back then. People didn't. And I just find it stunning. They should all be fired, not because they're insulting me, but because they don't know how to do their job. So at any rate, so you know when I heard about the story, I just wanted to write it. No, like you said, we were shocked to read in your book that you had pitch this around and no one wanted to even cover it because now it's like front page news every day, but you were so ahead of the times . Were you ever I assume a lot of outlets were afraid because Epstein had so many powerful allies. Did that ever cross your mind? Did it cross your mind? What if these guys come after me? Did it cross my mind? No, he came after me every two weeks. His lawyer sent me threatening letters . Wisconsin all the time. It was like, you don't do this. You're being an idiot . You know, you can be hurt. He didn't say that. But you know, it was there were warnings every couple of weeks. And I didn't care. I have more money than he does. I'm not afraid of it. And I knew I wasn't going to put anything in the book that I wasn't I wasn't sure about. I don't do that. I don't do these things where somebody told me something but I can't really back it up you know. And so I really felt confident that everything in the book was for real . You know, I mean, one of the interesting stories , you know, people with Trump and was , you know, and obviously he, you know, they knew each other and had joined to, you know, different parties and stuff. And one of the things with this is, you know, various people, I've been had pictures taken with a lot of people. I don't even know who the hell they are. Somebody could sort of bring them up and go, oh, look, you knew such and such and whatever. So there are some people that have been damnished who are innocent. But with Trump, it's just an interesting thing. I was on an airplane, I think after the book came out and I was shooting the breeze with the woman next to me. She didn't know who I was and stuff. And I said, well, what are you doing? And she said, Well, I run this at Marlago. I said, Oh, did you ever run into this guy Jeffrey Epstein there? She said yes she said that she did and she said that he was not a member , but he would be inappropri ate with the young girls there at the spa and she said I went to Mr. Trump and Mr. Trump banned him from the club that day . So there you are, you know, whatever you want to, you know, and that doesn't change things . But I mean , so there it is in terms of I'm not defending or getting in the way of Trump one way or the other, but I mean there it was , you know, in terms of the reality. I know President Clinton very well because we've done three novels together . And you know and I talked to him about it. He said, look, you know, all those airplane rights, they were in Africa and we were going and we were dealing with AIDS epidemic. And as you go from country to country, it's a different ride. And that's and yes, and Epstein did give them a plane, but so what? You don't go to Africa and during the AIDS epidemic to party. Right . So, you know, there was a lot of things like that where people got to figure out like, you know, what's sort of real and what they should be back and away from. You do find, I mean, it's it's a really terrible thing. And I did a book on the Idaho four The Murders there and just a dam age some of the stuff that shows up on the internet is because it's just wrong . And as I said, I will not talk about anything that I'm not one hundred percent sure about. But you know, just in a innuendo and rumor and that's just, you know, it's not good for me anyway . Yeah, I mean Epstein must have been such an interesting villain to write about because in your book in the re release you say if you wrote a character like him, you'd have to tone him down as a villain because of how over the top and evil he was. Like what struck you most in your research of him ? Oh, I think how charming he was , how he could manipulate people. Unbelievable. You know , you know, one of the interesting things, I didn't get into it in the book, but I got into it. My publisher in England, she had done a book on Galaine's father . And if you read that book , you will come to the conclusion that Galaine's father had all these kids . He apparently used to, you know, beat them . He might have had inappropriate relationships with Galaine. She's a victim . And that doesn't excuse her, but okay, if you look at her as a victim, it kind of changes everything in terms of, you know, how did somebody like that get involved with this guy? I mean, it fits the whole, you know, her past, which is which which is pretty tough , you know, Galaine, I mean, all the money disappeared at a certain point . So she needed, you know just interesting, interesting twists and turns in life . Yeah, like you say, this book is such a trove. So many of the things that are coming out in the files now you actually had kind of written about you go into some topics that we still is still so murky and we don't hear a lot about which is like Epstein's finances you trace the origins of them, but it's still so hard to piece together. Why do you think it's so hard for us to grasp what did this look, I mean, how can you here's President Trump's income tax and they couldn't get that for decade You know what I mean? It's just hard to get into some of this. It's hard to find it. It's hard and then people won't release and people won't talk about it. So I mean, I think we kind of know where some of a lot of the money came from. He was a very smart guy. He was very, you know, his math was good. He was very good at helping people to avoid taxes and big taxes . So he figures yeah, I mean, one of the amazing it's mentioned in the book , he was teaching at one of the elite prep schools in New York. He didn't have a college graduate degree . That's like Once again, the guy he was just such a manipulator. And you think about the people, you know, the chancellor of Harvard, he fooled a lot of people . Fooled a lot of people . It was interesting even the relationship with the girls. It's very , you know, I mean, a lot of them stuck around for quite a long time with them. You put some of them through school. You know what I mean? So it's you know, yes,, he's a villain but it's complicated. I'm just not a big one of the Clinton and I are good friends at this stage and part of it is we see the world as a gray thing. We don't see black and white. All these so many of these things are complicated. There aren't simple answers. That's why we want closure. I mentioned about Brocket's Red Glare. One of the nice things about novels like that is at the end you get closure. Yay , got closure . We're satisfied and then here it here it is with Epstein and we're still talking about him. We're still and we're never going to get closure. We're never going to get closure. You know, did he did he kill himself or was he mur dered in jail? One of the weird things is in addition to like how the hell did they ever mean he was supposed to be on suicide watch, et cetera, et cetera , but his roommate had been this ex cop the weird thing was one night my wife this is in Barcliffe Matter. We have a place up here in the summer in that area. My wife got pulled over by that guy when he was a cop and she sort of maybe did a rolling stop through a stop sign. And it was late at night. Nobody was out. Maybe it was or I think she believed she stopped and he really gave her a hard time. It was like crazy the way he was. And here was this guy was dealing with some drug dealers and he killed two or three people and he wound up roommates with Epstein. And then all of a sudden, oh no , you're not going to be roommates with him. We're going to leave him alone. And then, you know , and watch him either kill himself or get murdered, whatever it is, you know, whatever it is. That's such a crazy story. I can't believe your wife met him . Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not well. Yeah, I met Epstein once briefly it was going into a we were leaving the restaurant. He was going in. He was with somebody, a friend of ours and they blah blah blah blah . I mean, I don't even know why I remember, but I did remember meeting him briefly. Wow. Well, I mean, we know that he knows who you are because we saw in the files that every Epstein's inner circle was kind of freaking out when this book was coming out. That photograph did you see that photograph of him with the book? Well, you know, where he has it in front of his face 'cause the book his face is on the cover and he's holding he's in a Barnes and Noble with that book in front of his face like he thought it was all a big joke. And he said he didn't take the book that seriously, which is interesting. Well, didn' yout just teach just say it on top. Oh, you know what, what's the big deal? Didn't you apparently buy seventeen copies of it and there's like emails of Woody Allen and Michael Wolf and DePaktopra like trying to calm him down about this book? They weren't yeah, when I was writing it, yes, he got a lot of advice from various people about what he could do. And one of the advisers Wolf, who has obviously written to books about Trump , he said, well, you know, we should create a lot of a lot of stuff about Trump right now to just to distract from it. That was one of the salute Michael Wolf, I think is his name. You are obviously an expert in character and putting your mind into the characters that you write about . If Epstein was a character in your book and you were in his mind , how would you write his motivations? Like what was propelling him forward? Why was he making the decisions he was making ? Do you think it's I think I think he was a bit of a psychopath . I think he's one of these people that and I think this is pretty accurate at least it's part of the story that he said, look, this stuff has been going on for centuries. You know, all of a sudden we come up with these rules. You're not allowed to be with a fifteen year old. Well, for centuries, it was just fine, et cetera, et cetera. And who cares because , you know, I'm an anarchist and the world is what it is, and it's all who's making up these rules and I'm not going to follow them because I don't believe in them. Somebody makes up these rules, you know, ethics and morals, whatever that is. I just don't think he believed in any of it. I don't think he cared one with you. I think that's a piece of the puzzle anyway. I'm doing a book now on Mang oni the thing about that book is I know and I'm not telling you, but if we come on after the book is out, I know exactly what his motivation is. Exactly. A hundred percent . So it won't be it'll be one of those where you go like, okay, got it I've seen, you know, I think I think part of it, what I've said is part of with him. It's not even a motivation. He just didn't care . Yeah. He just said, this is cool. I love having whatever massages and all this stuff with these women. I love and I'm going to do it and I don't care. And I can get it I can get away. I can get away with all this . You know, one of the funny things with people that go, Oh , everybody must have known in Palm Beach. Go, what are you kidding? I mean, why would everybody know? One, he did not party down there very much. He wasn't a very social person and two, he's not going to sit there and say, Oh, I bring a lot of fourteen, fifteen year olds over to the house. You know, he just don't do that unless you're a total idiot. So, you know, people didn't know. I actually, a friend of course lived right on that street , that one block street. And they had no idea. Epstein was on the, you know, at the at the end on the on the l the lake But nobody knew. Nobody knew what the hell he was doing, you know ? So anyway, yeah. As a writer, what is more fun for you to write because you talk about how Rocket's read glare? A hundred percent because the thing with the nonfiction is my skill is making stuff up, telling stories and you just can't make stuff. You're not supposed to anyway. You're not gonna make stuff up when you wr're nitoningfiction. I wrote early on I didn't like the book, but I wrote a thing about King Tut , and I didn't want him to die . You can't do that, you know? I mean, we want to get more into Rocket's Red Glare. One of the cool things about that is writing with Matt Erisman who he's the real deal. He's a ranger. Mogadishu was just an unbelievable. And you know, I was having dinner with Matthew Matt one night and I was talking about, you know, hand to hand combat, and he was across the table and I said, Well, how close did you get and you know? And he just put his hand right next to my head. He said, that close. You know what I mean? So this is a real and that's what separates this book from a lot of these kinds of thrillers. It's the authenticity . When I write with President Clinton , even if the story's a little over the top, he goes, well, in this scene, here's what the Secret Service would do. Or you have this thing taking place in this room. That room you can handle only about three people will fit into that room , et cetera. You know, you get the authenticity. So with Rockets Red Glare, it's kind of the notion of it is as I said, what if we're attacked again in this in this country? And it's a group of rangers who are part of the solution