Apparently, I Have a Lot to Say About James Patterson

Let me preface this by saying that I really love how crazy kids at the library are for James Patterson's books, and he seems like a nice guy. I tease because I love.

We are consolidating our James Patterson books at the library. This means we are looking everywhere, seeing how many there really are, and removing double copies for storage or for our book sale. We don't need to have the same series of teen novels in YA and in Adult fiction. We don't have enough shelf space for that. So, we found at the most ten books (Who really knows? I forget) that we can be rid of, one to go into storage, and that gives us back maybe six to 12 inches of shelf space in Adult fiction.

And Patterson will undoubtedly fill that tiny space in the next week with his four new novels: I Am Not Even Trying Anymore; This Is My Grocery List, Bet It Outsells The Bible; There Was Nothing Good on TV, So I Wrote Another NYT Bestseller; and 15 Ways to Con Other People into Writing Books for You (and Letting You Publish Them in Your Name)!

I might possibly have made up those titles. But here is his book release schedule, just to give you an idea how many books he writes or co-writes or hires others to write in his name in a given month. That's a LOT. So many that I can't imagine anyone being able to keep up with that publishing schedule without a crowd of writers working under his name. This is it's own problem, but we're not discussing that today. Instead, we are teasing James Patterson because it is fun. He makes it so easy. Who else has TV commercials for their books? Only weird diet book authors who tell you the government is trying to kill you with real medicine and that plants will cure cancer. At least James Patterson isn't doing that! It could always be worse. Instead, we have Castle, and a bunch of reluctant readers who wouldn't ever pick up a book without his series.

Those TV commercials are freaky weird, though. He's a bit scary in them, shaking his books at you like a gospel preacher. Like he's saying, "Buy this, I need another Ferrari!" instead of what I would be saying, which would be more like, "My publisher made me do this, and I have given up on life. Please kill me." But James Patterson and I are very different people.

Good ol’ Jimmy Pats. He’s so fun to joke about. I also love his author photos.

We have the “I feel things” picture:

And the ever-popular “I might look like a 70-something guy, but really I am dark and mysterious” picture:

There are many versions of this one.

The “I wrote all of these books” picture:

The “When will you people stop taking photos so I can go home” picture:

Not to mention, the “I might actually be blind now” picture:

Plus, Zombie James Patterson, a perennial favorite:

Sometime when you're bored, it really is worth your while to go through all the James Patterson pictures. they are entertaining.

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Book Expo America and ran into James Patterson? Neither one of us was looking where we were going, and I thought the guy walking with him (possibly his agent/publicist) was going to have me murdered. I didn't even know who he was until I saw him 20 minutes later surrounded by about a hundred book-industry folk, taking into a video camera about his newest book. Then I was like, “Dude, I just about broke Jimmy Pats’ hip, all to get past him so I could grab the newest Libba Bray book. I am lucky I was not arrested by the BEA police.” Then I shrugged and went to get Maggie Stiefvater's autograph.

This experience is a metaphor for my entire life.

* It goes without saying that I did not take these pictures of James Patterson myself, or digitally alter them to make him look like a zombie. If you know who took them, let me know and I'll give credit. I can't figure it out, because so many people have already posted them without attribution, the original is lost to the internets.