Audio Interview with James Patterson

 James Peterson says in this 1986 interview with Don Swaim that he always loved writing, but he never thought he was good enough to pay the bills. After he graduated with a degree in English from Manhattan College, he began what would evolve into a sucessful advertising career and continued to write on a regular basis on the side. Writing was his release from advertising, a profession he enjoys just as much as writing.

"My grandfather told me he didn't care what I did when I grew up, whether it was the sanitary guy or the president," Peterson said. "He told me, 'Just go over the mountains singing,' and I do that."

Despite his previous notion of his writing abilities, Peterson wrote some of the most-read novels of our time:
London Bridges, Kiss the Girl, Along Came A Spider, and Black Market - some of which were made into films.

To hear more about his advertising and writing careers and about the motives behind his novel, Black Market, click on the link below.

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For over a decade, many of the best writers of the English language found their way onto Don Swaim's daily two-minute CBS Radio show, Book Beat. His New York-based program was derived from longer interviews, sometimes 40-minutes in length. Found exclusively here, Wired for Books proudly webcasts these conversations in their entirety using RealAudio.