With forensic psychologist, Alex Cross, he created a memorable character. Apart from the super popular series, James Patterson has written bestsellers across genres from romance to thrillers and lately children’s fiction. Patterson’s Private series, where a detective agency solves cases around the world has been written in collaboration with authors from different places. Patterson collaborated with Ashwin Sanghi on Private India . The latest Alex Cross novel, Hope to Die , the 22nd in the series, has an exclusive paperback edition for India. In an email interview, the 67-year-old author talks about his fascination for telling stories and the joy of collaborations. Excerpts.
Could you tell us something about the genesis of Alex Cross?
When I started to write Alex it was Alexis, a woman and the last name wasn’t “Cross.”. I wrote about 60 pages but I didn’t like what was happening, so I changed the character to a male. There was something about creating an African-American character in a woman that just felt a little too daunting for me. And I changed to “Alex,” and the rest is mystery. Oh, yeah. She was a detective.
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I grew up in a town that was very mixed. I watched what Hollywood was doing back in those days in terms of stereotyping black people. So I wanted to create an African-American character who solved problems with his intelligence, who was the anti-caricature. He’s raising kids by himself, he takes care of his grandmother, he solves problems with his head rather than his fists. That moved me to develop his character.
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For me it is all about the stories. I’ve always loved telling stories and even while working in advertising, I felt the urge to write them down. Every morning, I would wake up and write before going to work. I’ve never run out of stories that I wanted to tell and that keeps me writing today.
Having written thrillers, romances and children's books, which genre do you prefer?
Well, my current passion is the books I write for children — the Middle School series, “I Funny,” “Maximum Ride,” “Treasure Hunters.” I’m also proud to have created Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, the Private series.
Writing is considered a solitary pursuit, yet you have done many collaborations. What are the pros and cons of collaborations?
I work really well in a collaborative environment. I just have too many stories. I couldn’t possibly do them all. With the exception of The Quickie , every idea has been mine. I come up with the idea. I write an outline, about which one of my agents says, with this outline I could write the book. Usually, with a co-written book, somebody else will do the first draft and I will do subsequent drafts.
Most movie scripts are teams. Television shows are generally written by teams. In the beginning, a lot of series were written with co-authors. Stephen King has written with co-authors. In America, we get so caught up in individualism and heroes. I’m big on teams. I think teamwork is great. I have a file of stories that’s 400 pages thick, and they’re stories that I want to tell. I like the co-authored books. I think a lot of them are quite cool.
Could you tell us about Hope to Die and the India edition of the book?
I will say that there’s a lot more adventure and more of a certain villain we dealt with in Cross My Heart in this newest instalment, Hope To Die, which picks up right where Cross my Heart leaves off and sees everything Alex loves most at stake. I think that after following Alex on this adventure, his fans are going to be eager to find out what happens next.
After the success of Private India , I wanted to continue to do something special for Indian fans. So we decided to do an exclusive paperback edition of Hope to Die , available only in India which I hope existing fans will love but also hope it will bring new readers to Alex Cross.