His own father had grown up in Newburgh’s poorhouse. I had this fantasy that he would show up in a big limousine and say, ‘I’m your father,’ and take me to New York.” I found out that the guy who’d owned the Daily News was a Patterson. Nothing against Newburgh”-his home town, on the other side of the river-“but it was: get me out of here, get me out of this life, get me out of the woods. Cowboy stories and war stories and fantasies. Why did he become a writer? “I was a lonely kid in the woods,” he said. Don’t miss it.” The sin that pays the wage. He starts a chapter by talking about a forthcoming book of his wife’s: “It will be published in the spring of 2023. The book consists of scores of anecdotes, a page or two long-“dirt poor” childhood, first kiss (Veronica Tabasco), advertising career (“I’m a Toys R Us kid”), hobnobbing with famous folk-sprinkled with the odd sales pitch. Patterson, who is seventy-five, was resting up for a thirteen-city book tour for his autobiography, which he’d begun as a COVID project: “James Patterson,” by James Patterson. “The occasional thing with people like President Clinton and Hillary, which is nice,” Patterson said. Later, a nap would probably be in order, and then maybe dinner out with his wife, Sue. But this”-the view-“does interest me.” He’d been up since five-thirty- Times, Journal, nine holes at Sleepy Hollow. It doesn’t interest me to have a big house, per se. “I have nothing against people who want to drive Rolls-Royces. “I don’t think about success,” he went on. It was a pleasant late morning in late spring. “Here’s the wages of sin,” he said the other day, sitting on the patio of his estate in Briarcliff, in a long-sleeved shirt and boat shoes. The writer James Patterson is not the type of rich person who refuses to talk about being rich.

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