>> you're watching book tv on c-span2 and we are showing you the most top 10 events on book tv, best selling novelist david baldacci and discussed 35 novels including absolute power and most recently the falling. >> now book tv's monthly in-depth program with best selling novelist, author of over 40 books, most recently the fallen. >> you have been on tour for the last several weeks talking about your 36 adult novel the fallen. features number 4 in line for

character of amis decker, if i were to meet amis decker, what would i see? >> a large guy. if you stopped him and asked him a question, he would blow you off and keep on going. he lives in his own world and i think people takes his aloofness for rudeness which is not that at all. you know, he used to be very outgoing guy and had traumatic brain injury. living in the body that's the same body but not the same person. my wife is funny. i finally like him. took me 4 books to get there. i like complicated guys and he's complicated. >> thanks for being in in-depth series, 3 hours talking about life and their work, david

baldacci will be spending time today we hope very much that you will be part of the conversation. as we continue along here we will put the phone numbers on the screen and our facebook and twitter handle so you can join in the conversation and we have like to hear your questions about his writing, the characters and why you're intrigued about them which is the key to his success over the years. so what makes amis decker a hero especially for thriller series? >> what would be good to do? he doesn't get jokes, he doesn't pick up social cues, he would be very popular, but he just spoke to me. i've been fascinated by the mind and this is a guy whose mind changed and had no control. had to rebuild his life. when you're developing a series you have to have enough material to justify more than one book,

it's like developing a television series. people can relate to and enjoy, change. if the character doesn't change there's no point writing another book. with him there was enormous amount of material, story about brain injury, family being murdered. perfect memory. when i first went on tour memory man everybody in the audience, raise your hand if you think it's cool to have a perfect memory, yeah, it would be great. raise your hand if you have something in your life that you would rather forget, everybody raised their hand. that's his dilemma. he has lots of things he would rather forget. for me what's cool about him, every time i get him on the page i have no idea what he's going to do. >> when you start and think about a series, all books are series, you have a sense of what -- how many you can play out with him or is it just evolve as you write? >> yeah, i'm not good at predicting stuff like that, i never had -- i'm not like jk

roweling. for me i've written series that have 2 and series that have 5, i've had series that will have more than that. do i want to keep discovering things about him and i'm excited about writing him or her on the page. if the answer of that is yes, i keep going regardless of what the book. >> was there a model in the real world? >> no, it was like frankenstein. >> i knew i wanted a large guy, intimidateing presence and i knew he was going to be a football player, that was sort of the source of the brain injury which it's all too prevalent these days in

football. a lot of the players i loved growing up watching either passed away or in wheelchairs, dementia. at 60 year's old they are still going, i want to write a story where they are grappling with those issues as well. large presence and then build them into, detect with unique feature to not being able to forget anything and all the baggage that went wit. he doesn't pick up on social cues anymore. it's hard for him to relate to people and as detective it can be difficult. it's difficult for you to relate to people which is a downside for detectives. it's always a struggle with him. i love struggle because struggle traumaizes things and makes people, what makes him tick. >> the setting for the fallen is

barrenville which is fictional, can you tell us about them? >> much like thousands across the country and thousand across other countries in pennsylvania, coal-mining-steel territory. a guy named john figured out a way to make money. there's coal there, river, textiles. i need people to work on it and he paid them whatever he paid them and they put down roots, had lives, had kids and the coal went away, textiles went away and everything went away except the people that live there. they have to live somehow. they very lot of challenges in this novel and sometimes those challenges take you down a dark path. so in barronsville we come to a town that has lots of secrets. >> one of those is opioids.

>> yes. >> we are all seeing so much the travesty. >> first and foremost i wanted them to understand this is a man-made problem. this is not a problem that started with drug dealers on the street. this started with prescription medication by doctors, pharmacists, when you have west virginia town of 900 people and 13 million opioid prescriptions, you know, there's a problem. we want to sell a lot more. they made pain the fifth element of diagnosis. a lot of the opioids were prescribed for back pain and has no affect on back pain. this is not addicted, don't worry about it. it was all addictive. i wanted people to understand this was a man had had made problem and now it is decimating communities, the drug of

despair, a lot of rust belt towns, people have no hope, spiraling and i want them to take away the fact it's a problem that we have and not getting better, it's not being addressed and advertising campaign that says no it's not going to be work. when you talk about fentanyl, just saying no really doesn't work. there's a whole lost of factors that need to be addressed through to the get the country to it. we have to. if trends continue, a hundred thousand people are going to overdoes on opioids. that's the population of a small city. i want people to take away the fact that even though the novel fiction all of this stuff is nonfiction. >> narcan debate, what do you think about that? >> a lot of places are give to go first responders and now they are saying we will give it to everybody, if you're there and doing drugs as well and the person you're with overdoses, take out the narcan and save his

life because it's a lifesaver. people say will that encourage, no, it will save lives until we can figure out how to solve the problem. you don't want to say don't do it and let them die and we will figure out the problem later, let's do both at the same time, time,narcan, needs to be out there. everybody needs to have it particularly in towns. give it to family members, first responders, give it to everybody where there might be an issue. have it in restaurants and bars because a lot of people people don't realize it and people overdoes in public place. put it in bar, restaurant, public places. somebody goes in the cardiac arrest, break the glass, same thing with narcan. same thing, pop it in their nose and bring them back to life. >> do you see a lot of this when you travel? >> absolutely. i my family came from rust belt towns, coal mine town in

southwest virginia. a place where once there was coal-mining jobs, you make 70, $80,000 a year without college education, they are all gone. the town is still there. when you drive through the places you drive through the midwest, it's unlike washington, d.c. area that's possible to be. a lot of people have never been to high school, they don't have college education, the work there is service oriented, low-paying, no benefits, people have very few properties, they don't have homes sometimes. they are in old cars, don't even have a car. a lot of that is what america is. and so for me, you know, i'm not surprised that people are turning to opioids to try to break out of this because they don't feel like they don't have any hope. we are the greatest country on earth, richest country on earth, every citizen should have hope, the life could get better and we just need to get that back.

>> what is the lesson of a capitalism then? >> the lesson in capitalism, i'm a capitalist and i had small business, there has to be a balance to it as well. i was thinking about this when i was driving in today, would it be better for one person to make $3 billion a year or that person to make a billion dollars a year and a bunch offer who people instead of make 30g thousand dollars a year could make $60,000 a year, they could buy more stuff, better life, maybe better health insurance, pay to send kids to college, would that make society everybody for everybody or the guy having to live on $2 billion less, would that hurt him? i think there's-we have seen this before. this whole thing happened before we had income tax and you had wealthy people, robber baron, and a lot of people didn't have

nothing. that balance was unaware, teddy roosevelt, monopolies broke up. , unions are pretty much dead and all of a sudden who are making extraordinary amounts of money and the rest of the people not so much. i don't know -- i don't think it's sustainable. i really don't. i also can't argue to people plausibly at least the united states that there should be rebalance, redistribution. as soon as you say redistribution and you're a socialist and i'm not a socialist. >> in baronville, what's giving people job is a fulfillment center for online, unnamed online company, have you visited one of those? >> yes, i have. >> what are they like? >> first of all the scale is unbelievable. they are football field times 12

and you have never seen so much card board in your life in shelves and robots and people running literally all day. when you think about it, you think about the packages you get at your house or the fact that the postal service only operates on sunday to deliver amazon packages, when you see a mail truck, it's piled high with amazon packages. those packages have to get to you somehow, fulfillment centers is how they do it. you have billions of americans buying packages, you places that hold packages or volume. the scale is breath taking and the speed of which stuff moves, 400 packages processed a second out the door and on its way, i was overwhelmed. i was like i have been to big military bases. these places dwarfed the scale i saw that.

one major growth industry employment wise. unbelievable to me. >> i will give phone numbers and in about 15 we will start taking, 202-748-2000. you can tweet us at book tv and use the #in-depth, please, make sure you get in so we can get your questions. we have facebook page, lots of ways to get involved if you'd like to do that. in the very first book, memory man, central plot is around school shooting, what year did you write that, 2005? >> probably maybe 5 years ago. >> 2015. yeah, i have it on the notes. since then we have seen a number of these. what are you thinking about what's happening with society? why did you use as a device?

were the school shooting in memory man it was amos decker's hometown. you can write the screen plays a number of different ways, you can either sort of big and shallow or go really deep. i wanted memory state to have way, very small stage, taking everything in, all points and he's looking at building this, you know, template of what actually is the truth and on the small stage i was able to go so deep with the novel. i didn't wanting to broad and shallow. it was the school and moved off but the primary focus, he had to figure out what happened here. i think when i was overseas,

when i was in england crime fiction had over taken than general fiction as most popular genre for the first time ever and people asked me why i thought that was, if you can't get what you want in the real world you turn to fiction. in thrillers, crime fiction, you have good people and bad people and then the good people get justice and the truth comes out and ending it as it's supposed to end. you can't get that in real life. >> but this is the home of christy and sherlock holmes. >> no, crime fiction is really big over there and really has been. this year for the first time ever overtook general literature as number one genre.

i think that's one of the reasons why. >> we will get how that started. you have a caller. brian in sin city, iowa. >> caller: good morning, you said condition started because of injury in football, is his perfect recall something that he can recall things before the injury or the perfect recall for things that happened after football injury? >> guest: that's a great question, it's different for different people. with decker it can be before the injury occurred to him. so we all have memories of things that happened to us, you know, from day one moving up but sometimes memories is not good about bringing that back out but it's there somehow, in 2018 we know very little how the brain works. we just don't. it's like tbi, traumatic brain injury unlocked memories that were in his head all along.

if you want to think about it, bandwidth went from normal to gazillion. has been in there but never accessed before. his ram went up significantly if you want to talk about it in computer basis. but going forward he will remember exactly as he sees it or exactly how he remembers. down the road he finds something contradictory to that. he puts template over it and he can remember everything from day one. >> all the amos decker books, in fact, all of the novels of yours that i've read, there's always state and local, local and federal agencies, there is federal asian -- agencies and

bureaucracy, where did you develop agencies? >> i've had personal experience in my office one time, my office is in virginia where two federal agencies almost came to blows in my lobby in my office because one was doing something and had not told the other what they were doing. they had somebody station their office looking around and other agency sent strike team, full body armor, ak15's, it was like what's going on, the other guys came in trench coats, these were in trench coats, why do you need to tell us because we don't tell anybody anything, we are who we are, it really evolved quickly in chaos. i dealt with acronym agencies, one thing that they will tell

you that communication is not what it should be and a lot of people, a lot of paper and a lot of sort of values of these place where is they like to be independent and turf battle too. the crazy way the federal budget works is you get more money if you have more responsibility and more stuff that you do. you never want to give the piece of a pie to anybody else. >> changes that were made after 2001 was supposed to solve all of this stuff, after 9/11, we were supposed to have agencies communicate with each other, bandwidth that worked for physical communications, electronic communications, what happened? >> easier said than done. the irs were supposed to have new computer system for last 40 years as well, the dod was supposed to do lots of stuff and not spend $40,000 on a hammer. these are aircraft carriers, military symbolism, if you think

you will move those things in 3 minutes, a new direction, it's not going to happen. they are enormous and it's long, long slog. >> caller: good morning, mr. baldacci, good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: went through all of the decker series, my question is there are in your books but especially decker's there's deep emotional elements in it. do you plan those or do they come about spontaneously? >> host: martin, what's the scene that you remember from the book that struck you as emotional one? >> caller: the latest one, the last page and i will leave it at

that. [laughter] >> host: okay. >> guest: that's a great question, martin. for me i want to make characters feel like they are real and human and one way i can do that is to sort of relate to readers on emotional level. we all have problems in our lives and we all have losses and grief and things we have to suffer through and i really in this book in particular with amos decker wanted to show that even though he had traumatic brain injury, he wasn't who he used to be, he seems aloof and not really part of the world anymore, that he still had heart and he still had soul and he could still feel things. i know exactly what you're talking about. the relationship with decker and the particular character, that was my way to show that this guy might have changed in a lot of ways but he was still human being and he could still be vulnerable and as far as -- i don't necessarily plot all of these things out. i'm so immersed in it, it just feels right as i'm writing it.

you can call it spontaneous, my subconscious has been dwelling on it so long, it's not really spontaneous, it just came to the surface, so for me i knew i wanted to draw a lot more emotion from amos decker and his relationship in the book with the other character that you're talking about was one critical way to do it. >> one relationship throughout the series we should remember is alex jamieson. how does she evolve? >> she's like his watson in sherlock holmes. kicks him in the butt when he goes too far and does something she thinks it's wrong. steady influence but frustrating for her too. she's good at her job and wants to be better, she understands that he is better than she'll ever be because of his unique abilities but that he has issues

and i think together it's always important to have a duo like this, they have to be complementary. you feel like you know what together they are better than they would be separately for both of them. each of them feeds off the other and i like that about that. alex is critical part of decker. i don't think amos decker could be without her. >> they worked for the fbi and the fbi has been a lot of trouble lately, lots of accusations flying about role in things. as someone who has worked with the agency for a long time, what's the view of public perceptions and arguing of role of fbi? >> all the agents i've dealt with without exception are apolitical and dedicate today what -- dedicated to what they do. they don't have time to worry about an agenda down the road. they are trying to solve cases and catch people before they do

bad things. i'm not an agent but it hits me because i know a lot of agents and the bureau doesn't deserve, the justice department doesn't deserve this. i'm not saying you can't criticize the institution, but you can criticize, you know, individual people who you can show are doing bad things but the to the say that the fbi and the justice department are tainted and corrupt broad scale, i think that's totally not right. >> host: martha. >> caller: hi, i started reading the alex decker books. >> thank you. >> caller: at the age of 70 i'm madly in love with john pollar. i want to know why you don't give him a girlfriend, please, somebody that he can be settled with or something. i just love that man. host we will talk about john

pohler in the program. [laughter] >> guest: bad things tend to happen. they are in line of fire. i will never say never. he can find love down the road. he will be back at another book and i do like knox. i'm keeping that in mind. i love him too. i think he's a great guy. >> host: will there be more amos decker books? >> guest: they'll be more amos decker books. i almost feel liberated that i can go further with him. >> host: next up is joanne in wisconsin, welcome. >> caller: hi, yes, i have been a david baldacci fan for many years. my husband and i finished watching -- we got it from the

library, king and maxwell tv series. it's a little different than the book which i really enjoyed. i read -- i listened to it. when i walk i do the audio books so i'm really glad i do the audio books, the amos decker, the last mile which was fascinating, i just -- i fell in love with whole series and i will read about what happened to him. >> guest: memory man, i was in the mood to do a brand-new series and amos decker will fit the bill for a lot of reasons. the last mile, the second one where you meet all the other cast, that was a powerful book for me. sort of the injustice of death penalty and prison system and all that.

it gave decker and guy on his level. and i still get a lot of emails on both guys, when is melvin going to come back. >> host: jacqueline in washington, d.c. >> caller: hello, david. i'm jacqueline. >> guest: how are you doing? >> caller: i'm great, so proud, just so happy with what you've been doing over the past several years. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i have a question that we have been pondering here in my family regarding amazon, hq2 headquarters, they are trying to figure out where to put that. >> guest: yes. >> caller: major cities are buying for that, i wonder if it would be a patriotic service or national service if mr. bezos would consider just basically providing if you will industry for the state of west virginia or another state which really

needs an industry. >> guest: yeah, i would sort of agree with that too. headquarter, the second headquarters for amazon.com will be a huge shot for any community. i know the criteria. i'm sure they want highly-educated workforce and lots of other amenities and things in the area that would attract people, west virginia has those as well. communities like that should be in the running. i don't know exactly what the exact criteria are. i did read recently that amazon sent out cities in the running list of things they didn't like about the places and apparently want them to fix. i'm not sure how you do that. it's extraordinary when one company has that much power and you have all of the communities just clambering for these jobs and throwing all this money at them, it really is extraordinary.

>> host: jeff bezos is a part time washingtonian as owner of washington post, have you met him? >> guest: i've never met him. when amazon first started out it was a used book business out of his garage in mid-1990's the fact that 20-some odd years he's built enormous company. it's quite an achievement and but it's a lot, a lot going on. >> host: jacqueline as former colleague from law firm, offices here in washington, good jumping off point for what i want to do is spent time telling the story to the audience. all began as a 20-year overnight sensation. >> guest: that's right. >> host: your first successful novel, can you tell our audience how it came about? >> guest: yeah, i have been writing since i was a kid. i grew up in richmond, virginia, one of the kids that never shut up.

i was always telling tales and getting out of trouble. i would go to the library every week with brother and sister and check out more books than allowed. i never really left richmond as a kid and saw the world through books. i was locked in as reader. .. .. and "playboy" and "story" magazine when i was in high school. had a little success doing that but couldn't make a living. i went to law school, practiced law, had a family and wrote screenplays, had an agent in l.a. based on the screenplays, had a couple optioned but not a

lot of success. then i decided to try my hand at long forming a novel. i had -- my law office was near the white house back then. i was relatively new to the d.c. area. i would walk past the white house, i think bush 41 was president then. you would occasionally see the presidential motorcade and see the secret service agents. i would think about you know what, what if i write a book, this fits all the stereotypes, i would make the bad people, the good people and there was a president, a mistress and a coverup. i know it seems ripped from the headlines but back then, it wasn't. i spent three years of my life writing it while i was practicing law as a trial lawyer which is pretty intense work. when i would get out of my cubbyhole at night and write from 10:00 at night until 3:00 in the morning every day, that was my time. that's when i could write what i wanted to write, not what i was being paid to write. i say tongue in cheek some of the best fiction i ever wrote

was when i was a lawyer. talking about my legal briefs. because as a writer and as a lawyer, all i had in my quiver were words. that's it. i would spend my whole ten years writing as a lawyer, thinking about words and stories and how to tell something plausibly so somebody would believe it. for me, making this transition from being a practicing lawyer to writer wasn't all that difficult. also, i would work on projects for years at a time as a lawyer. someone said oh, my god, it will take a year to write a book. i said my whole life's about that. so it was an easy transition but writing, i have been a full-time writer and my mom came back to me after all my success, i said what a great gift you gave to me that day. she said honey, i'm so glad it worked out for you but quite frankly, i wanted to shut you up because you were on my last nerve as a kid. host: you have two siblings, right? they seem like they felt the same way about you.

guest: totally. i saw them yesterday at a book signing. they said you haven't changed. host: what was it like when you got the phone call from your agent saying this book has been accepted? guest: surreal. i had just joined the firm, was working at a small firm most of my career. they had no idea who i was. to them i was attorney 587. wasn't even a name. my agent called and said would you, if i sell this book, would you quit writing or quit practicing and write full-time? my whole dream was to write full-time. he said well, the book sold. it really sold. at first i thought when i hung up with him i was like great, all this time i took to get an agent and now i find out he's a whack job. i didn't believe him. i didn't believe him. it was too outrageous. things happen like that, but not to me. then i get -- a call came through the office from the president of the office to

congratulate me. i remember going to a luncheon that day after getting this phone call that had changed my life and it was a speaker talking about insurance regulations. i'm sitting around the table with 30 other lawyers listening to this guy drone on. all i wanted to was get up from the table and start doing the electric slide all the way down the conference room table. that's all i wanted to do. then because it was newsworthy, we had to go and tell all our friends and family that night. host: none of them knew you were writing? guest: none of them. other than my wife, my mother and father, none of my in-laws, nobody i practiced law with. we were telling people we have really big news to share. we went there and they either thought we were having another baby or getting divorced. that's what they said. i said well, we are having another baby but i'm the one who's pregnant.

i'm godfather to one of my friend's sons, he called me up later and said what else don't we know about you? host: we will pick up the story after we talk to deb from falls church, virginia. caller: mr. baldacci, how are you doing? i usually see you at the barnes & noble bookstore so it's kind of a treat to talk to you. a couple things. in "the fallen" you exposed me to this whole structure of fulfillment centers and i assumed, and you had mentioned it earlier that you had actually visited one, but in the book, you kind of also bring up the working conditions of the people in these fulfillment centers. i'm just wondering, do you see them as being, at least based on what i thought i heard in the book, are they becoming the sweat shops of the 21st century or do they have that potential?

are these places that are ripe for being unionized? or as you kind of brought up in the book, this is just a temporary boom for employment opportunities for folks when robots may be taking over a large part of those responsibilities? guest: those are all great questions. certainly these fulfillment centers have the potential to be the sweatshops of the 21st century. it's all based on productivity. when you have billions of packages to get out the door, there's no human way you can compete with a robot that never gets tired and never needs a restroom break. to answer your question, they should be ripe for unionization. whether that can happen in 2018 or not, i don't know. i do think workers can be and are being exploited in these places because for $12 an hour you shouldn't have to literally work yourself to death for ten hours a day. but at the same time, you know,

automation is in the long run, far cheaper than paying people to do these jobs. when you talk about lifting boxes up, putting labels on them, sliding them down a thing and then putting them into a truck, robots one day will do all those things. you will have these fulfillment centers and you will have two people that work in them and they are engineers overseeing the stuff that's going on behind computer screens and robots will do all the work. amos decker talked to the guy who was explaining this to him and said if robots are going to do all the work and people aren't going to have the jobs, who's going to buy all the crap on the shelves? the guy's answer was i don't think the business guys have figured that one out yet. i think someone needs to. host: if you are a regular book tv watcher you know we have spent 20 years looking at non-fiction authors and their work. our channel is going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary this september. for this particular year, our anniversary year, on our "in

depth" series, one sunday each month we have been focusing on fiction writers like mr. baldacci. the reason is that their stories also help us understand our society. we will be talking about a lot of issues in our three hours together. if you are new, welcome. we hope you will enjoy our long form programming and if you are a regular book tv viewer, hope you will enjoy this little dip into fiction for 12 times this year. bill is watching us in wasilla, alaska. caller: good morning. david, as you know the history, for centuries, authors' incomes were based on actual books sold. there would be announcements in papers, this hot seller released thousands its first day and so on. is that still happening? it seems like e-books and all that stuff has gotten it to a point where people are not buying books and what is the

effect on incomes of authors? thanks. guest: those are great questions. three to four years ago, i think e-books hit their height. they really peaked sales-wise. for maybe seven or eight years, they were blowing every other category of sales out of the water. hardcover print novels plummeted, mass market sales went through the floor. nobody was buying mass market anymore. and literally for me, i had like six or seven books in a row where each book sold more than a million e-books, each book, which was, those are really high numbers. probably three years ago, it started to plateau and then e-book sales have started to go down again. i think it may be just the fact there's fatigue out there. people have 800 books on their kindle or nook they haven't read yet so they're not buying as many e-books. it may be an issue for some people as well, there was a big fight with some of the online sellers and some of the publishers and at the same time, print books, i can look at my own statements i get from the

publisher, print books have started to go up again. hardcover sales are going up. downloadable audio has exploded. it's the fastest growing category of sales now in the country. i think people can use it on their devices but smartphones, ipads, and they can listen to stuff. for awhile, e-books really had taken over the entire industry. i think things are getting back more into balance. at this point in my career, i work full partner with a publisher so e-books go up, it's just the whole pie out there. what we are trying to do is increase the pie, and if the pie gets bigger, i make more money and the publisher makes more money. but for a lot of writers out there, e-books were a good thing for some who couldn't be published traditionally, by traditional publishers so it was just online, but it could also end up being a bad thing for some writers, too. it's a really complicated area. host: what are your habits both with how you read and how you take notes? you travel so much. guest: yes. when i read, it's almost real

books all the time. my wife is different. she used to be real books only. now she reads both. her nook book is loaded with books and she reads a lot online. i only read online on my phone. when i just want to read something really short. for me, i like to take the book out, smell it, hold it, feel it, turn the pages myself. as far as notes and all that go, wherever i go, my laptop goes with me. i still do a lot of handwritten notes. the first three chapters of the new book i'm working on, i wrote the first three chapters longhand. that's the way i wanted to do it. it sounds weird but if you think about it, it might make sense. i think better in cursive, when i don't have a keyboard between me and what i want to say. host: did you go to catholic school? guest: no. host: i thought maybe it was a habit from childhood. i'm wondering, all of your books have descriptions. you see the character in front of you when you're reading.

do you kind of watch everybody around and take little notes about how people dress and wear their hair to kind of draw on that for later on when you're writing? guest: i'm like harriet the spy. remember harriet the spy? i love to watch people, love to eavesdrop. in high school, college and law school, i just loved watching people. these days i'm like in front of the camera and front of the room talking a lot but i much prefer to be in the back watching everybody. people fascinate me. how they relate to each other, sometimes how they don't relate to each other, the mannerisms, how they hold themselves, what they talk about. so all that for me is material for books. as a writer, i just think that you have to be a really good observer and really good listener. those are two attributes a writer has to have. you can't be the center of attention. you have to eavesdrop and watch everybody else. for me, people ask where do you get your ideas from. i said you know what, i get up every day and walk out the door. i don't have my face buried in a laptop or iphone. i'm actually watching the world

and trying to see the potential of a particular scene. i see two people talking on the corner and one of them turns and walks down the alley and i think what were they talking about and what's going to happen to the person who just walked down the alley. i try to take it and extrapolate that to something that might be interesting. host: you referenced your wife michelle several times in your conversation. how did you meet? >> we met at a vegetarian barbecue. neither one of us is vegetarian. that's just the way it happened. the first thing she ever said to me, she insulted me. i was this hotshot new trial lawyer full of myself, i was describing some of my cases. i felt this tap on my shoulder and there she was. i had no idea who she was. i said i hear you telling people you're a lawyer. i said yeah, thinking she wanted to hear a story. she goes can i give you some advice? i go okay. she goes stop telling people that. she just turned and walked off. that's like i have to date her. and you know, it took me a long time to find out who she was. nobody knew who she was. she just moved to the area.

heard she had been in a motorcycle accident. that was not true. finally, i got her number and called and we had, we went to lunch because lunch is easy. if it's not working out, you're out of there in an hour. we went to the old nathan's in georgetown. we sat at a booth and were there for three hours. i remember before i went, i had a friend, a lawyer i worked with, and before the luncheon i walked in and opened my briefcase and i had like nine ties and like which one do you think, because i wanted to make a good impression. i give it to her for the tie i picked that day. we hit it off and dated for a couple years and just celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary yesterday. host: congratulations to both of you. you have two kids? guest: two kids, yes. host: what did they end up doing with their lives? guest: our daughter is totally in the not for profit world. she just finished a year and a half at thrive d.c., which focuses on helping the homeless. she worked there and before that

she worked at another not for profit. that's all she wanted to do. now i think she's going to take the sner oummer off and may mov south america to do good work down there. she's my nomad. she wants to go and help people. our son works at a green startup company outside of philadelphia, is having a great time there. we get to see them both a lot which is really nice. it's the most important work we have ever done, raising them. host: is it hard for them to have such a famous dad? guest: my daughter never tells anybody. when she was in college, people said my dad, she goes i don't know that part of the family. we went up for graduation, and everybody was calling me skip. i'm like what's happening here? she doesn't like any of that. my son will sometimes tell people but neither one of them, they are very strong independent kids. neither of them has ever walked in my shadow. they have their own lives to lead and are leading it. host: harriet in bloomsburg, pennsylvania. caller: hi.

mr. baldacci, it's a pleasure meeting you. guest: thank you. caller: i'm such a big fan of your books. i immediately preorder as soon as i get my notice from amazon. guest: thank you. caller: but my question is, because i have read most of your books, i'm very familiar with how you write your venues and your descriptions are just absolutely wonderful. it gets me right there. i thought to myself wait a minute, how does he do this? i'm curious as to one, you have probably visited those places and two, is this being done while you're writing a book, or is it that you have pretty much completed the book and fill it in afterwards? guest: great questions. i'll tell you the way i do it.

before i sit down to write a book, i think about the subject areas i need to learn about in order to write a book well and write it in a very authentic way. how am i going to do this, where am i going to go, who will i talk to. i collect a lot of information from visiting places. but at the same time, as i'm writing the book, i have gone and visited other places and talked to other people along the way. so i'm like you know, i did my research, i'm never going to do anymore, i'm going to write the book, it's part and parcel of the writing process. the more i know about certain things, the more interesting plot twists i can come up with, i can craft my story lines better because i know information that maybe is not common knowledge. not stuff you can easily wikipedia or google. that's why i like to visit the places, talk to people. it's just happenstance, i needed to do this so i invented a way to do it and this is how we did it. i just like listening to those people. the research and writing go hand

in hand and it could be that i'm researching and thinking about stuff and talking to people up until the very last page. host: you seem to get into places where other people couldn't. you called up agencies and described some of the places where top secret work is going on. why are they open to you? guest: well, i become a journalist at this part. what i have always done, my sister was a journalist for years. i would go with her when i was in college, on some of her beat when she would interview people. i quickly learned there are a couple things you need to prepare for. one, need to find out as much as you possibly can about that agency or that person and what they do. educate yourself. so that when you are talking to them on the phone or sending a query, they understand immediately he's not just calling out of the blue, he knows a little bit, he's done some work. i respect that. if you gain someone's respect they're more open to you. when i go in and have done background, i can sit there and

talk to them and not ask stupid questions. they can tell whether i have done my homework. if you haven't done your homework with people that work in these agencies, nobody will be supportive. i ask questions, show i respect what they do and i'm not there to waste their time, they get more comfortable and i tend to ask broad-based questions and i just want a dialogue back and forth. i don't want specific answers. i just want to have a chat. i make them feel comfortable, i respect what they do, i don't waste their time. people have specialized knowledge, you know, they love to talk about it. it's something they have earned and worked for hard and they know most people don't know bit so they like to share those stories. back in 1979, i was working out of miami, you know, field office and this is what happened. i wrote those stories because it gave me sort of insight into their personality, why they joined up in the first place and what excites them about their work. i can take all that and bring sort of that all to bear in the novels that i write. host: we are still following the

story of your breakthrough in "absolute power" here. one thing that seems to have changed is your writing style. i look back at the chapters, they were 10 to 12 pages long. now they seem to be three to four pages long. they also seem to always leave you wondering what's going to happen in the next chapter. there is always a hook line at the end which isn't present in "absolute power." how did your writing style evolve? guest: writers continually need to reinvent themselves. for me, part of it was bibbieco more economical with my words. it was part and parcel with the screenplays i would write, where every word counts. you can't have a 300 page screenplay. it's not going to work. so every scene had to have multiple purposes. for me, i don't know when it was, maybe 10 or 12 books ago, i decided you know what, i'm going to streamline because a lot of the story i'm going to tell, the potency of it is being diluted by me not being able to tear enough words out of it.

i'm trying to write everything out without regard to whether it's interfering with the flow of the story or not. so that's when, and the fact about the cliffhanger at the end of each chapter, i love reading books like that, that's going to draw me to the next chapter. i found out as i'm writing these books, i'm not bad at doing that. i'm pretty good at doing that. it can just be one sentence and it could be totally out of the blue where you're going along a particular scene and you think something else is going to happen and then the last line is, and that didn't happen because, and then you turn to the next page. so many times i hear people saying i'm really mad at you and i go why's that, and she says i can't get any sleep. it's all about re-inventing yourself, keeping yourself fresh and energetic. as a writer, i never want to ask myself this question, how did i do it last time.

i always want to ask how can i do it differently going forward. host: mike is in delaware. hi, mike. caller: how you doing? guest: fine. how are you? caller: good. listen, i wanted to share an anecdote about how i first became acquainted with your writing. i was in the airport, i did a lot of traveling, i worked for the federal government, i was an auditor and investigator, and i was going to be sitting, waiting a long time for my flight. i went over to the book area and i looked through the books and i saw this book "absolute power" by david baldacci and i read the jacket and said hm, this sounds like it might be interesting. so i bought it and i sat down and while i was reading it, i was saying wow, this would make a really terrific movie. i could see the actor -- guest: clint eastwood. yes. caller: as i was reading the

book, finally it dawned on me i have already seen this, the movie. guest: i hope you liked the book better. caller: let's see. well, what i like about your writing is how you hook the reader from the very beginning and like the lady was saying, she can't get any sleep because especially now that you have changed your technique and the chapters go so fast, and that's what i like so much about your writing is that you can't put the book down and as soon as you pick a new book up, you get hooked on it from the very beginning. so i really appreciate what a terrific writer you are. host: thank you. every author likes to hear calls like that. guest: yes. host: that's a great segue into hearing about how you actually had the movie rights happen to

"absolute power." what was the story? guest: there were a number of studios bidding on it simultaneously with the sale of the book. what happens, they have book agents that are in all the publishing houses, people steal the manu script and make copies and send them to hollywood when you hear about a hot book selling. so back then, probably five or six major studios were bidding for the rights. i'm at penn station, this was pre-cell phones. i'm at penn station at a payphone. i got like ten people behind me waiting to use the phone. warner brothers and paramount and castle rock, all these guys are on the line bidding on this book and the price keeps going up. i'm like shouting in the phone certain things. i had no idea what i even said. people behind me are looking at me like this man, we should call the police and have him taken away. by the time i had gotten home on the train, the film rights had sold for a lot of money.

the whole period, the whole weeks and weeks this is happening but i told myself one thing, i said never forget any of this because this is the only time this is going to happen to you for the first time. everything else is secondary to that. i got a call from bill goldman, a screenwriter, because castle rock hired him to write the screenplay before eastwood signed on. he called up and said you know, i got great news for you and really bad news for you. okay. what's the good news? clint eastwood just signed to star, direct and produce "absolute power." studio green lighted it. congratulations, we are making the film. oh, my god, clint eastwood, unbelievable. i said what's the bad news? he said iconic film maker just signed to star in, direct and produce your film, the book is pretty much gone. clint wanted it to be a mother, father, daughter picture, the young hero in the book and their lawyer was gone, he has no identity in the film anymore. even to that point when i was on the train when i heard that

news, they had pay phones on the train back then, credit card. i got on the train, i called everybody i had ever known in my life. hello, you had me in first grade. you're not going to believe what happened to me. host: how old were you? guest: 34. host: this kind of happened so fast after 20 years of, i mean, you really must have been mentally hard to process. guest: it was dream-like. every day it was something new. i was on local d.c. channel 9 years ago and i remember being on there, my whole law firm was watching me because they wanted me to come on and talk about it. at the end, she said the film rights, the book rights, are you doing all that. i said andrea, let me stop you right there. i always wanted to say thchis. i paused and said my lawyers are handling that. i heard later everybody at the office started cheering, every lawyer has wanted to say that. host: how long until you quit

the law firm? guest: i stayed there for almost a year. because we had just joined, my partner and i just joined this firm. he just recently retired, after a distinguished long career. and we had been brought over to start up kind of a corporate department for them. i didn't want to leave them in the lurch. i just didn't, after all that. we had been together for a long time so i stayed on for about a year and then i was going on book tour, i was writing the next book. i went in and told them i think i got to go full-time, i'm not being the best lawyer i can be, i'm not being the best writer. he was very understanding. host: jennifer is in richmond. david baldacci's hometown. caller: hi, how are you? guest: fine. how are you? caller: good. i was calling, i love the amos decker series. i love how you brought melvin mars back into the fix. i was shocked, didn't think you would carry on the character. i was actually calling, what

advice do you have for a 13-year-old who wants to be a lawyer but also wants to be a writer? guest: that's a great question. i was kind of in that same situation. reading a lot is great and playing around with words is great, because that's what both lawyers and writers do. i would say you know, join a book club or writing group, and you'll find that a lot of people with very similar interests, you might want to get involved, there are a lot of organizations around, legal organizations, law firms sponsor these to encourage people to go into law. you can go look at some of those, or summer camps that deal with that as well. the two disciplines share a lot of commonalities. if she goes and does this, she might find there are people there who have the same dreams that your kid does, but i would say open up a blank page journal, start writing stuff down. it doesn't have to be anything other than what comes out of

their head, a line of dialogue, a little plot, little narrative, some observations, and do that every day, a little bit every day. i also would say 13 years old, you haven't seen a whole lot of life, but i would say don't write about what you know about, but write about what you would like to know about. because passion really can drive you to really great story telling. host: we are at the end of our first of three hours with david baldacci. we will take one call from nancy in stafford, virginia, and then we will show you a little bit of the trailer from "absolute power." nancy, you're on. caller: hello. it's so nice to be able to put a face with the book. guest: thank you. caller: i'm 80 years old, and i have neurological problems so i can't hold my head still to read. i listen to audio books, and i started listening to them because i couldn't sleep and my children suggested that i listen

to them because they were listening to them as they drove down the road. so i tried to get other seniors to listen to them, but they can't understand how you can listen to a book. so i just wanted to thank you for all of the books that you've written, i can't recall one specific one. i listened to probably four or five books a week. so i can listen to a voice because i live alone and it's nice to hear another voice, and i can visualize everything down to a styrofoam cup that's setting out of place. the scenes change in a movie and they don't have the same pair of shoes on that they had in the last scene. i can visualize things like

that. so thank you for all of your books. host: what a nice call. thank you. guest: thank you very much. host: i'm presuming from this that you read all your own audio books for your readers? guest: no, i don't. host: they're not hearing your voice? guest: no, they are professional actors that do that. i have long since learned my strengths and weaknesses. reading my own novels is not my strength. it really is a performance. they act out these scenes. there's a lot of drama, lot of inflection. you need professionals to do that. people who read the harry potter books, don't listen to jim dale, who does the audio, he creates like 150 different voices for every book. he's in the guinness book of world records for that. phenomenal. but it's a whole other experience. i sat in my garage listening with the car running, listening to one of my books to see how it will end even though i wrote it. i know how it's going to end. but because the audio is a different performance, a different experience, and it's just a wow. host: we are going to show tu

trailer from "absolute power." this is the book and then the movie that made david baldacci a household name in this country with now over 140 million books in print. we will show you how it all began. after that, we ask our writers to tell us about their own favorite authors. you will see the list of david baldacci's. it will be about three minutes. then we will be back with hour two. >> the body has been [ inaudible ]. the murder weapon has disappeared. the killer's identity has been concealed.

one is a master thief. the other is the most powerful man in the world. clint eastwood. gene hackman. ed harris. laura linney. judy davis. and scott glenn. "absolute power." ♪

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♪ ♪ host: we begin hour two of three hours with david baldacci, "in depth" on c-span 2's book tv. we are learning about his writing life and his own personal life and how they all blend together to produce 140

million books in print and how many countries now? guest: almost 100 countries. host: how many languages? guest: 50. host: are you popular, your last name is italian, are you particularly popular in italy? guest: well, my first book there, i used a synonym. host: you did? guest: yes. my italian publishers said we love the book, you have to change the name. i said my name's italian. they said that's why you have to change it. i said explain that to me. they said italians want to read american thrillers. if you have an italian name, they will think you're italian and won't buy the book. much like american films. i said what sort of name do they want? they want an american name. i said we are all immigrants, we are all from somewhere else. luckily, i looked out in the driveway and back then we saw an explorer. i said why don't you call me david ford. he said it sounds american. david ford, number one bestseller in italy. "absolute power."

it's not going to have my name on it. host: it must be now. guest: it is. my second book, i was david b. ford. my third book, i was david baldacci ford. i have no idea why that happened. now i have been david baldacci ever since. that first book, "absolute power" david ford, great guy. host: do you tour in italy ever? guest: i have. host: what's your interaction with italian readers? guest: of course, they say why did you change your name, are you embarrassed of your heritage? host: so that 70-year-old who called in earlier whose favorite is john puller, who is john puller? guest: john puller is an army c.i.d. agent. he investigates crime involving army personnel around the world. host: what does c.i.d. stand for? guest: criminal investigative division at the army. it's like mps, mps will investigate minor crimes, not felonies. c.i.d. is a higher level, they are above mps. all enlisted, no officers in the c.i.d. so you can't go to west point and be a c.i.d. agent.

they investigate crimes involving the military around the world. kind of like ncis for the navy and marines, c.i.d. is for army. host: we will talk for 10, 12 minutes, then begin your phone calls again. if you have questions about this particular series, we welcome them but you can ask about any of david baldacci's works. we are here to learn about his writing life. join in the conversation. phone numbers will be on the screen. we will also give you our twitter address as well. john puller has a very famous father and he's a decorated military hero, legendary guy, three-star, and his name is -- well, obviously, general puller. i kept thinking about the legendary marine. guest: that's where the name came from. he was in virginia, and as a kid growing up in virginia, you learned about the family. also a decorated combat veteran. that's where the name came from. i sort of emulated his career

with john puller senior. jesse was also a three-star, should have gotten a fourth, didn't because of political differences with eisenhower. he volunteered for combat duty in vietnam in the '70s. of course, they didn't let him go but he was ready to fight. a lot of that, the descriptions of john puller senior came from my remembrances as a kid. host: you have been writing a lot about federal agencies, now these books deal with the military. how do you do the research? because you have military readers and they will spot things that are not true to reality. how did you do all that? guest: my dad and all his uncles were in law enforcement. my dad was navy, i had uncles in air force, navy, coast guard. i have friends in the area who are retired military. a friend was retired colonel, army ranger. i said i want to immerse myself in that world, i'm not googling stuff. we jumped on a plane, flew to

fort ben ining, georgia, where e infantry trains and i spent three days getting my butt kicked. parachute jumping grounds, sniper range, humvee rollover test where they spin you around until you're sick to your stomach, then you're upside down and they give you an order to get out, egress, they call it, and the army functional fitness training, where i have a sergeant behind me and in front of me and you do one hour nonstop of this circuit that they -- that emulates what soldiers do, all pushing and pulling and squatting and you can't stop or the guy behind you will run right on top of you. i also spent time talking to people and listening, everybody from privates to two-stars to commandants and learn about what people do, how they do it and why. i continued to do it as i was writing the novel. i didn't want to write a military novel not knowing anything about the military. i wanted to do some of the things these people did. and also get into their heads

and hearts by talking to them. i spoke about this earlier. listening, you have to be a good listener as a writer. you just have to be. i know all there is to know about me so i don't really like to talk about myself but i love learning about other people. host: what's the most adventuresome, precarious thing you have done in researching a book? guest: probably walk-alongs with d.c. police. you have ride-alongs. they have walk-along where you get out of the car and you are there with an officer and going down alleyways and stuff, trying to, as he said, catch bad guys. we were walking down an alley and just me and this other guy, and i think his street name was peanut. i don't know why they call him peanut. so we pass this fence, this opaque wooden fence, and there was a walking path. something on the other side of the fence hit this fence so hard that one of the boards flew off and hit me in the head. i'm like stunned, i'm staggering

back. then there's this hound of the baskervilles trying to pull off another board so he can get through this opening. i looked at peanut and said what do we do? he's like we run. we just went and ran down this alley with this hound trying to rip out this other board to come after us. as i'm running, i looked at him and said what's that dog? he said that's psycho's dog. i said psycho? he said yeah. who's psycho? double murderer. he went up the river for life and left his dog behind. the dog's as crazy as he is. the book i was working on at the time, because of that episode, i named a character psycho in "true blue" who is one of the characters in the novel just based on what happened. the parachute jumping at fort benning was kind of weird as well. and dicey. but you had to do it because you weren't -- there were 50 paratroopers there. i wasn't going to chicken out from that.

host: the series came out in quick succession, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016. is that typical for you? you've got a set of stories and want to tell them? guest: yes. because i was also enthusiastic about the character. i wanted to keep evolving the character. same with the name of decker. the last four have been decker, '16, '17, '18, in quick succession. when you get energized about a character you want to spend time with them on the page. host: a couple things i want you to talk about with the first zero day and the last, no man's land. in "zero day" we return to the theme of the economically stressed town. guest: yes. host: drake, virginia, a coal mining town. sounds like your family roots. what's the story of drake, virginia you were telling? guest: well, it's, you know, a town that's seen better days. host: coal town, right? guest: a coal town. it's actually west virginia but it's right on the border.

if you were in southwest virginia or west virginia, these coal towns on the spine of the appalachian. i like making up places, then people can't write me and say that store's not on the street corner you said it was. no, i made it up. but it was a place that had a military footprint and there was an object there, this enormous dome that's there that john puller is sent to investigate this murder and he comes across this enormous dome that was sort of left over by the military from 40 years ago and nobody knows what's inside this dome. it's all covered. the forest sort of reclaimed it. for me, i like going to these small towns, like baronville, going to these small towns and eking out its history little by little and finding it has secrets nobody is aware of. it's like unpeeling the layer of the onion until you get to the core. i love that. i love reading books where writers do that. i like concocting stories where i turn the tap on, turn it off,

turn it on, then people sort of over time realize oh, my god, i never saw that coming. host: are there places where world war ii where there are abandoned sites that have dangerous material in them such as you depict? guest: all over the place. all over the place. there's a lot of it that it was easier back then, '50s and '60s, '70s, where maybe we weren't as conscious about the environment or they didn't have money to clean it up so they would dome it over and out of there. or leave in the ground and we're out of here. the epa didn't exist until nixon created it in the '70s. there was no epa before then. that's why you had love canal and all these other places. talk about corporations self-regulating themselves and the environment, i don't think that works, really. yeah, it was just easier and more cost-effective to kind of leave it behind and move on and go some place else. obviously that has repercussions. host: you told me during the break that you did more research work for this series of books

than almost any of the others. why is that? guest: the military is a complicated beast. there are all these rules and regulations and traditions, and you know, just understanding the weaponry they use. i don't like to drill down too much into that because i'm writing a book, not a textbook but a novel, but you have to get into the weeds a little bit, but you have to make it almost shorthand. i would just know how to write this book, if i actually had served in the military, so when puller pulls out a weapon, his m-11, i don't have to describe it in great detail. every military person knows it's a sidearm he's going to pull out because that's what they carry. or a particular scope he's going to use on a sniper gun. or the particular duffel bag he uses for investigations or the cut of his uniform, what he has to wear certain days, cover on, cover off. i had to build that into his mentality such that it wasn't like i took a paragraph to describe it. it's just telling you about his life. it didn't interfere with the story. it's really hard to do that.

i never want to write a flip book, where a writer has done a lot of research and wants to leave it all in. he doesn't want to integrate it into the story so he finds a spot and slaps it in there. so as a reader, you read the story and you hit this stuff, like flip, flip, flip, you get past all this stuff and get back to the story. i never want to write that book. host: we will take some calls. chris is in turners falls, massachusetts. welcome. are you there? caller: yes, i'm here. thank you. guest: hello. caller: mr. baldacci, thank you. my question is kind of like fact versus fiction. [ inaudible ] number of books and i'm thinking that boom, that there's a lot of evil out in the world that informs your writing and you have characters like jessica real and robey and they're out there saving the world from this evil, and i

believe that evil does exist, and i'm also wondering why there's always characters in probably real life that are always trying to tie the hands of whoever is out there trying to save the world. guest: that's a good question. certainly there is evil out there and every country has enemies. some countries have more than other countries. we certainly have more than our fair share. it's a tricky balance. we live in a democracy with a lot of civil liberties and a lot of rights so -- and you want people to be able to do their job to protect the country, but you also have to achieve a balance. you don't want to have someone do something that would interfere with someone else's constitutional rights. for me as a writer, i have to make it plausible. sometimes people take shortcuts. they don't get a warrant when

they're supposed to or maybe take a shot they shouldn't have taken but people make mistakes, too. i like the idea people are working and risking their lives to protect us from evil but at the same time, understanding that no lunch is ever free. the one thing i learned in law school was this. the slippery slope is indeed slippery. once you sort of cut back on enforcement of people's rights, then it's much easier to cut back on the enforcement of all rights. you go into this slippery slope where none of us really want to be. so protect people's rights, at the same time trying to protect everyone from evil is a tricky balance but i love the challenge, taking it in the books that i write, because complicated stories i think make for great fiction. host: you present as a very personable human being and yet you deal with a lot of murders. you have probably devised hundreds of ways for people to die in your books. how do you deal with that psychological dichotomy in your

own person? guest: that's kind of a dark side of me, i guess. when our kids were little, i worked at home, didn't have an office on top of the house at that point, i had this cabinet and my wife made me get it so this thing could be locked, all these books on forensic pathology, crimes and murders and how people do bad things. she goes these kids will never see that. you locked it up. i said absolutely. locked up, don't worry about that. again, i am fascinated by this stuff and i think it's a good way to, when i write about books like that, a good way for readers to be scared from a safe distance. you never want to run into ted bundy or the golden state killer, obviously, but you are fascinated and would like to read about them from a safe distance. i think my books allow you to kind of do that. for me, it's part of what i do. i want my books to be authentic and to feel real and because of that, i have to research all these things. i remember vividly when i was in

bristol, tennessee, right over the virginia border when i was like 10 years old, walking through a shopping mall, my parents went off and did something and there was a used book table in the middle of the mall. i picked up a book, i was 10, it was about autopsies and famous murderers and had all these pictures. i read the whole book while i was in the shopping mall. yes, i was turned off by the violence and horror of what happened to these people, but what i was really intrigued by was you can apply forensic science and help solve these crimes and actually resolve issues and have families have closure. so it's a weird dichotomy. i don't necessarily have a great explanation for it. but again, it comes down to i create knowledge and information all the time about lots of different things. i always felt i knew a lot about a lot of different subjects. i can bring discrete elements together and write about them and create a great story. host: terry in cypress, texas, hello. caller: hello, mr. baldacci. i love all your books.

of course, i love amos decker. but my question is about the channel club. do you think you will write any more? what i liked about them were all the different characters and how they came together to help solve. i have another question. i want to ask you about one summer. how did that book come about, because i laughed, i cried, that was a great book. guest: thank you. as far as the club, i haven't been at a book event the last six years where somebody didn't ask me about when it was going to come back. i was at a book signing in atlanta, big crowd, and walked up to give my remarks and a guy in the middle of the crowd stands up with a huge pole and a stuffed camel tied to the pole. he raised it up in the air and yelled out, what do you think i want more of? i looked at him and looked at the camel and i was like medication? he wanted more camel club. i love the m camel club. if i can think of a great story

to bring them back, it's a great cast, i will. believe me, i have not stopped thinking about them. i would like to bring them back, too, and i will if i can. as far as "one summer," it only happened because my son was having his confirmation in catholic church which is kind of the last big catholic rite before you get married and last rites when you pass away. my wife took me to church early to save pew space because we had friends and family coming in. i was there an hour and a half early, just me and the priest. i knew the priest, talked to him for a couple minutes, then started thinking about things. my dad had just passed away, my mom was not doing well, my son was, my youngest was being confirmed, life was moving on. i think i was thinking about my own mortality. so the hour and a half that i was alone in that church, the entire story for "one summer" formed in my head and i spent the next two months writing it. never knew i was writing it. publisher, agent, nobody knew. when i sent it to them, my publisher was like where did this come from? i said my wife sent me to church

for mass, confirmation, so i remember my editor just laughed. he goes can i ask you something? i said sure, what? he goes can you go to church more often? host: rachel, easley, south carolina, hello. caller: hi. the lady from texas just got in front of me with the camel club. that was what i wanted to ask. i read approximately 90% of all your books and just loved them all. and if i had not been on hold and couldn't reach my books, with divine justice after the camel club, i have got it in my mind, it was page 196, might have been 296 because i'm elderly, but the driver of the van that they were trying to, someone was after him, that one page was the best writing of any writing i have ever read. it was just outstanding. guest: thank you. caller: i love all the books.

i love the stand-alones, "absolute power" and "total control" but what i like is you capture in about the first three pages and i put everything aside to read. i don't know if it's your instructions or ideas or your editors but i love the fact your chapters are shorter than most books, and that you have periods at the end of pages. i just got through reading a book that had to go i think 13 pages before there was a page that had a period at the end. now, that's because i'm elderly and i like to, i feel like i can stop at the end of a sentence. host: thank you. appreciate your phone call. overall with these readers who -- do you find most of them read all of your books or they zoom in on a particular

character and really like them? guest: i just did probably maybe 20% zoom in on particular characters, camel club or amos decker. the rest, based on book signings i have done over the last 20 years, the last five years in particular, where i have people coming in with hand carts and boxes of every single book i have written. i can't remember the last time i did a book event where i didn't have two or three people there with every single book i have written. it's much more to the point the majority of people coming in with every single book, including the fantasies and kids' stuff. host: do you have recall of all of your books? people are mentioning specific people and specific chapters. you have written so many, can you recall all of them? guest: yes. if you give me the name, i can tell you the plots and characters and some of the stuff that's happened. i don't use ghost writers. it's just me. i'm the one who writes all the books. yeah, i'm instantly familiar with all of them. host: total recall. gene in culvert, washington, hi. caller: hi.

i'm just so excited. if it says baldacci, i buy the book. i have two personal questions. you sound like you wrote until 3:00. how do you stay married? you sound like you sleep only four hours and that keeps the health alive and i'm impressed by the books that were your favorites, that's very impressive. how do you choose another author's books, who to read and how often do you get to read in one month throughout the year? god bless you for being there and your work. i will hang up and listen. guest: okay. thank you very much. your first question, i waited until everybody was asleep and we had just had one kid, so my wife was probably really glad that i wasn't around. so i was down in my cubbyhole writing in the middle of the night. but i spent time with them and family was very important for me.

that was the only slot i had and she was very understanding, quite frankly. without her support, none of this would have happened for me. so i definitely owe a debt to her. so -- your second question was? host: how do you choose what to read? guest: much like a lot of people i know, i get recommendations from friends and family. people will say oh, my gosh, you have to read this book. a lot of times i get hundreds of these a year, other publishers send me books to blurb. almost tongue in cheek i say i will give it a blurb so long as i don't have to read it. sometimes i will give it to my wife or a friend. my wife will read a little bit of it and say you should read this, this is really cool. when i was -- a friend of mine who used to be my editor, my publisher, she left to go to another publishing company, she sent me a book and she goes i know you get hundreds of these every year, i think this is something you're going to enjoy. it's recommendations from other people or people i have loved reading since i was in high

school or college, and they continue to publish and i continue to read them. host: one thing that's notable, if you go on your facebook or twitter feeds, you constantly promote other writers. why do you do that? guest: because as an industry and as sort of doing the right thing, we always need fresh voices. we need new writers out there telling us really great stories. one way to do that is to support them coming up. when i was a new writer coming up i had other writers who would support me and give me the benefit of their experiences so i love to do that with other writers. i've got a lot of them now who are bestselling writers who came up after me and i would give them the benefit of all the mistakes that i made, you know? host: some are not up and coming like brad meltzer. you supported him. is there kind of a writers' circle of thriller writers where you stay in touch with one another? guest: let me see. there are events, certainly. i'm doing an event with brad, i'm doing an event with him and

sandra brown at book con in new york in june. you know, i know pretty much all the popular writers. i'm sure i know them all, everybody from patterson to grisham, michael connelly. occasionally we will share events together. ... i feel it will hang out together. like the show where they sit around playing cards. you know? we get together from time to time and we talked shop and try to catch up. >> the old algonquin hotel in new york. >> the old algonquin hotel. chris lewis from pennsylvania what's your question? >> mr. baldacci i got into

reading with my father. he forced us to read so we got at the dinner table entry argued and he wanted facts, not just emotions. so that is how i got into reading. but the absolute power movie that i saw based on your book, how close is it to your writing? they take a lot of liberty with it? as far as the movie goes? >> right. the first part of the film is right from the book. the mansion, the burglar, then pretty much everything after that totally changed. because clint eastwood wanted to be the hero of the film. and back then, clint was enough hero for any film. also the fact that in the book his character is killed halfway through and the movie at least back then, i don't know -- i think the one time he died back then, i think was a film called

high plains drifter. he came back as a ghost in killed everybody. that is clint eastwood, he just can't die. so they change of second and third act of the film. to keep viable the fact that he was still be alive. >> twitter comment from hampton brown who writes, dave, most want to be writers were probably taken aback when you first learned of clint eastwood selection. and you had to borrow money from the taxi driver to get to the nbc studio in new york. [laughter] >> hampton brown was a old client of mine. one of the coolest pieces of litigation at a redemption we had a big victory over pepsi-cola. and having to borrow money to get out of a parking garage also because the gates were closed and i had no idea i needed to pay to get out. when you go a million and miles an hour back then which i was, i me before that i never been on a television show before. and now everybody wanted me on

and it was like i was in the same body but in a totally different person. >> back to our hero in the series, the most recent 2016, no man's land. a couple of questions. first of all the relationship with general pooler continues but he has dementia in this. >> yes. >> tell me about the family dynamic in the human story that you're telling. >> the great thing about the military is, there's a lot of opportunity to have action and weapons and things happening in high-stakes. that is all well and good but i need to have some type of emotional component as well. where you can relate to the guy on a human level like everyone else. so having a father was a legendary commander, who you know, he always walk in the shadow of. now to be sort of a shell of what he was. that to me, a big strong confident out that something would knock him down.

and to always know that he could never measure up to the old man but at the same time, seeing his father as he was now, you just, it was hard for him for the reconciliation. for me, the emotional baggage and the book was the relationship between john junior and john senior. and senior could no longer be senior and because of that, john junior really could no longer be john junior. >> our color want him to have relationship. in the blast but you dealing with his father's dementia and his brother and the whole stories about the disappearance of the mother. so there's a lot of family dynamic. not much room for emotional or personal relationships. >> no, it is not. and veronica knox i think is come closest to be the woman that could be with him for a long time but at the same problem with -- everyone said when are they going to get together? some people very graphic about what they wanted. and i said, there was an old sitcom with bruce willis and sybil sheppard. and it was a great t.v.

series. until they fell in love and you know, got together in bed and it all fell apart because the magic went away. that is for me, that is that sexual dynamic, the sexual tension is a great thing. but once it gets resolved and is kind of like -- okay, done. >> you do not do a lot of explicit sex scenes in your book why not? sex sells. >> in this way i like to leave it to the imagination. the scariest thing i've ever seen in a film is the shower scene from psycho. and there was almost no violence, it's all in your imagination. let the mind go. >> next is a call from irene in virginia. you are on with david baldacci. >> hello, mr. baldacci. >> hello! >> i have been a fan of yours for many years. beginning with absolute power onto wish you well and in between. i have read your books in english and also in german!

>> very nice. >> i would like to ask you, i written a book and it is about my experiences as a child in germany in world war ii. and it entails events about my family and where he lived, what we experience. we lived right next to the swiss border so we were very fortunate. however, we felt the effects of the war. and we saw bombs falling and burning planes coming down, etc. and so, i went into quite a bit of detail. and then going on to coming to america, saw the statue of liberty. and which was extremely emotional.>> sure. >> for me to see, etc. what i would like to know, everybody who has read this is

encouraging me to by all means, write a book and publish it. how do i go about this? >> i bet you get that question all the time. had to actually become you? >> there a couple of ways. this is a nonfiction piece. there are agents that handle only nonfiction. and you can find names in the writers digest, writers magazine. you can get names of agents that a lot of based in new york some in washington d.c. and other places. they will take if they specialize in nonfiction or memoirs. which this is what it sounds like. write a query letter, the first chapter and two or three other sample chapters and say this is my life, this is what the experience is. keep it no longer than a paragraph. send them two or three chapters and i guarantee they will read the chapters and they will get back to at some point. then having an agent that can represent you going forward with a mainstream publisher.

with these days if you want to publish yourself you can self publish online, amazon, barnes and nobles and other places to there's a platform for you to self publish. it sounds really interesting you might want to try and get an agent to try and do mainstream publishing first. that would be my advice. >> last question for me, and no man's land 2015 the main character is paul rogers. and he is the subject of military experiments. on the human being to increase soldiers capabilities on the battlefield. are there such things or is this a product of your imagination? >> no, these are all things. endo skeletons are already in effect. those the ones outside of the body that greatly increase the human capacity to lift weights and move fast. those are already deployed. about making them mine, more lethal on the field. they are doing that research as well. there's a whole industry out there and try to do the impossible. give a lot of highly qualified,

intelligent people with billions of dollars. doing all sorts of things. >> on the flip side there is also a lot of work going on to repair soldiers that have been injured on the battlefield and we are learning a lot about bionics with that work. >> absolutely. a lot of the soldiers that were injured, the injuries they had in the iraq and afghanistan wars, these were nonsurvival -- 3040 is a negative treatment on the battlefield that stabilizes the people and they get airlifted out, to different places and then they have amazing work done. and at the same time, talking about soldiers, thank god they are live but they have a lot of challenges now. they might have lost limbs, arms or legs. i was at walter reed hospital doing a book signing and talking to troops down there about seven or eight years ago.

and there are different places at walter reed. if lunch with amputees and traumatic brain injuries. i spoke to one young man that was there with his father, he'd been injured. he was not a tbi candidate but both of his legs were lost because of an ied. i asked him how you doing? what is your name? and all of these thoughts were very slow and i could see he was struggling. and i pulled the dr. aside and i said you know, he is not a tbi -- >> he says this guy has been blown up. they are all tbi 's. we just call them amputees because he lost a limb. but they are all tbi 's and there's a point where yes we can fix these soldiers, but leaves them with a lot of challenges through the next years of their lives.

>> do you spend time visiting veterans? >> i do. i've been to the air force base in germany, i've been to walter reed. i wanted to continue that because in iraq and afghanistan wars were hot and heavy -- they were black boxes and you talk about the 5000+ that have died in the war. and the hundred thousand that were horribly injured. so these are people that put their lives on the line. 18, 19 and 20 year old people. we owe them everything. >> next is joe in montana. thank you for waiting, you are on now with david baldacci. >> i stocked your books so i can read them on airplanes because i'm a terrible flyer. and i get so engrossed in your books and i forget about any fears that i have. it works like a charm! the question wanted to ask you, you come from -- how come you do not have an accent?

my wife near monument avenue, she never lost it even in montana. >> is a really good question. i think i used to have a southern accent growing up. my wife, she was born on a naval base outside chicago. when we go down to richmond my wife will take, she puts on a richmond voice. and a richmond voices, who is your family? and where are they from? because that is just the way -- i think the last three years it's been smooth out because i've lived up in the d.c. area, i have traveled a lot and it just went away. i have to tell you from enrichment, and a. -- for any period of time it will come back. >> judy from texas. you are on. >> hi. mr. baldacci, i feel very enamored with john -- i was wondering, i'm afraid you do not write enough about him.

are you planning on more books in the future? >> john will definitely be back. i have a lot more that i will write about him. i think i've kind of just hit my stride with him but he has a lot of baggage. he was in no man's land and he solved the mystery what happened to his mother. he still has a lot of things ahead of him. i think his character has a lot more room to grow. and i really have not even touch the relationship really with his brother yet. and his brother got out of prison and escaped in his only been one book since then. so there's a lot more. he will be back guarantee. >> will talk about one standalone book. it is the name of a book and also the name of your foundation. wish you well . tell me the story of wish you well and why it is so important to you. speak about it emotionally. >> yes, it is by far the most personal book i've ever written. even the story of "wish you well", it is fictional but every element of the lives our nonfiction based on my mother's

life growing up and southwest virginia. in 2004 they finally pulled running water until just after ramses ridge. my mother lived there in the 30s and 40s. the youngest of 10. had a very hard life. >> we have a couple of pictures we will put on the screen that you include in the book as you are talking about it. >> she had a lot of siblings but a difficult life and it made her incredibly strong person. my mother was a force of nature. when i was thinking about writing a story, i heard all of the stories my mother and my grandmother that lived with us for the last 10 years of her life. she was a teacher and i remember going to school and talking to her and we would talk about the civil war. we will talk about the civil war. and she had a great uncle that had fought in the war. he left her something and the only thing my grandmother,

don't think she had was in 1861 u.s. springfield single shot rifle. it didn't even have a bloodstain on it. i have it on my office at home. my grandmother said the only thing wrong about that was that he fought -- i would pull her chain is a grandma didn't they win? [laughter] it was a long-running battle between us. so that was my way and my own mother in this book, i sat down with multiple interviews, hundreds of pages of notes. in her recollection of events that happened 60 or 70 years before were pristine. i can't even remember what i was doing yesterday. and i asked her about that. she says when you grow up like that you never forget it, you just don't. >> what did she think of the book? >> without was one of the most, you know, moments of my life because i wanted her to love it and she did. we both cried when she finished reading the book. and it was like thank you. because nothing else mattered.

she did not live to see the film. but i think she would have liked the film because it was an accurate portrayal of what life was like. >> i'm going to ask to put the one photograph with the gentleman in the checkered shirt on the screen because that is a special person you like.>> the guy with the checkered shirt and hat is my grandfather. he passed away before i was even born. i never knew him. but his name was columbus so anyone that reads my books it was the on the copyright page was a copyright, whatever the year, by columbus rose ltd. that's where you get the name of my company from. my grandfather. i thought it was the coolest name.everyone in the mountains called him lum. and by the grandfather, baldacci, he was a six feet four inch guy that was born before was born as well. his name was -- no one at richmond could pronounce any of those names of the just called him mike.

>> what generation was he in the united states?>> he was an immigrant.he came from italy. the charter last century. through ellis island. for a lot of italians, new york was far too cold. a lot of them got on the train and they got off at the first stop in the south. that was richmond, virginia. so there's a huge actually italian community in richmond virginia because of that. >> will take more calls and then we will learn about how "wish you well" the book and movie also became a foundation for the baldaccis. >> hello, how are you? >> good thank you. >> i want to tell you how much i enjoy the book and i'm happy to hear that you're doing more about john pooler. and i do encourage you to bring the camel club back when you get there. my concern is, you do not write quick enough. [laughter] because i read all of your

books and have to wait so long for another one to come out. i have not read the fallen. i went to the library to get it i am 92 on the waiting list. but i will wait. it will come. but do enjoy your work and you write so beautifully and i continue, i ask you to continue with this wonderful talent that you have. thank you so much for listening. >> thank you. it was a wonderful comment. i'm glad you enjoyed the book so much. i do try to write as fast as i can although my wife tells me to slow down. >> libraries seem to be on the decline in our society. >> i'm a big proponent of libraries. i have been forever. because they made a huge difference in my life. i think that the use of libraries is going up. the funds that we used to support them are going down. these days libraries or community centers pay people to use the computers to get the line, they had job resumes posted there sometimes.

and they've evolved. the problem is we are not funding them. there are fewer books on the shelves and fewer librarians working. for me, investing in a library is investing in education. it is pretty great money to great use because you are investing in our future. and i know it book really meant to me.it may be the person i am today. well-rounded and tolerant person that you would want to have in society. and we are a nation, all the founding fathers if you look, all educated men with that were tireless write or speak until by what they wrote in documents they drafted they were very intelligent and very well read people that's all we have this great country.so why should we not be well read? because it's what got us here. >> josh jones on twitter. he writes i'm reading the fallen right now. in the memory man is my favorite syrians going there what number -- >> it will be my football number in high school.

number 68. i was not nearly as big as decker but number 68 is my number. >> hello charlie. >> yes, hi. hello mr. baldacci. i just started reading your books and i get mine from the library also. >> great! >> i have a question. i just finished baggage -- >> yes. >> the psychoanalyst that treats her and as a consequence the father had torn down the rosebushes outside the house. >> yes. >> with that traumatic adultery scene happened or whatever. what i wanted to know, did i read in one of your works something in reference to another character that had mental -- data back, was that

something that i read with one of the child books with jack reacher?>> yeah, you know, the rosebush you are talking about, michelle maxwell, it was memory reconstruction of what happened between her parents when she was a little girl and really is the reason why she is ocd and loves garbage everywhere. people that read the novel understand what that means. i remember from all my books that rosebush incident only happens in simple genius. so if you have recollection in your mind it might have been from another book or another series. that was the only time i've use that in a novel. >> secret service also had some difficult challenges over the past five or six years with scandal within the organization, top officials had to leave. what's going on with them? >> in a secret service is an interesting agency in that they had to endure large amounts of

tedium and keep their focus complete to deal with a few seconds of crisis. and that is hard and difficult to do long term. but at the same time it is their job. i have looked at a lot of things that have happened over the years particularly when obama was president and bullets being fired in the white house and people finding out about it later. agents going off and doing things when they are traveling overseas with prostitutes and things like that should never have happened. a breakdown in command. and i think what happened, they needed to have a total housecleaning. in deficit, training and they found there was a tremendous problem. i do know people got complacent about it. so we can go off and have some fun and but, it is crazy and i think a lot of agents there we did not do any of that, these are just the bad apples we hear about. they were totally ashamed about what had gone on and they want to the agency to get back

because before that time they were the gold standard. no one had better things -- no one had bad things to say about the secret service. they are human, they can turn it around again. >> susan in illinois. hi susan. >> hi. hello to both of you. >> hello. >> i white snow when i read your book i become one with your book and i need to have nitro on my bedside when i sit in bed reading it. >> all my goodness, that is not good! >> no, that is not true. i get so involved that i feel it within my chest. how can you, when you write a book, do you yourself become part of it? >> is a great question. and the answer to that is unequivocally, yes. i do. when you read the book and you have the excitement and the

need to grab some nitro for your chest pains, i think i get excited and i get nervous and the suspense is building. even though i know that i am writing and creating it there's an emotional connection when you're writing a novel. i really jump into that myself. >> how about jan in kansas. what is on your mind? hello jan! >> hello, can you hear me? >> yes. >> have a question about plotting.do you outline? do you know the twists and turns are the exact ending or that kind of thing? >> i've never known the ending of a book of ever sat down to write. related grow organically. i use it little outlines. but i know someone that can outline everything. it's almost like as a really read the last page 1st to find out everyone is okay. and if you learn that then it's good but not nearly as exciting

as it could have been. so for me, not knowing the ending to a novel i'm working on is a good thing for me. >> the "wish you well" foundation. when did you started and what do you do with it? of course we started the foundation in 2000. we fund literacy organizations initiatives and programs across the country. we have a board of directors. we meet four times a year. get 5 to 6000 grant applications a year from organizations across the u.s. including public school systems. and so we approve many of those as we can to keep in the mission statement which is to eradicate illiteracy. we will continue to do so. we put enormous amounts of money into this and continue to do so. we accept donations from other people and we get a lot of donations as well. but i know what literacy and reading has meant to me. it's not just about enjoying the book on a beach. if you cannot read at a sufficient level you cannot be

an effective member of a democracy. you just can't be. we live in an information age where if you saw the last election where lots of stuff is thrown at you every day, and if your reading skills in a high enough your cognitive skills are not high enough to know what's real or not effectively people tell you what to think. we need to have readers again. both socially and economically. today if you're a mechanic, you need to have strong reading and cognitive skills because you're working with diagnostics and computers. we also have a book collection called feeding body and mind. years ago we teamed up with feeding america. so we get gently used books and repay to have it sent to the food bank where the books were collected. probably last seven or eight years were collected nearly 2 million bucks. people seeking food assistance

often have literacy challenges and have poor job prospects. getting books into a home is a good thing. >> average year how much is track of how much monies do they collect? >> hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> is a hard to give away money? >> no. >> entry get more applications and you can help. >> yes we do. i asked somebody in the field and they said, it makes perfect sense. i said explain it to me. if the government starts finding a bunch of adult measure c then there acknowledging that the k-12 program doesn't work. in the country. they will never do that. most of the donations for adult literacy come from private foundations. and barbara bush -- >> did you work together? >> yes, we did. she wasgay -- a great proponent. they did a lot of great things. >> give a big donation to your alma mater, over $1 million.

what was that for? >> that was to endow a couple of things. the coolest thing i thought was to allow financial assistance for people studying political science. but there is another fund we set up as well for exponential learning. we made the donation before the 2016 election. they got to travel to talk to the people and it was a great thing. part of this will allow students to travel the world engaging in exponential learning experiences personally might travel to south america to learn something about the political system there. they might work on political campaigns. so i thought you know, you do not spend all four years or five years of your life sitting in a college not interacting with the real world. but you can get students from the get go, they really want to learn about it and study and get into it what can be better than that?

>> by the way, virginia commonwealth university is vcu. catherine in fort walton beach, florida. go ahead. >> hi mr. baldacci. an honor that i found you today. i am blind and when i am going blind in the other. i have an eye dr. and he signed me up for congressional tapes. and i listen to you on tape! >> that is great. it is better to read the book but obviously it is different sense but that is okay because this is the same story and i love to listen to books on audio and it is a whole differentexperience. something i cannot deliver just with the written word on the page but it is another dramatic way to experience a great story. >> girl -- gail in washington. >> hello mr. baldacci. >> hi. >> i am a self published author

on amazon. i know that i missing a lot of things by not having a publisher. my question is this. have you ever had a character in a role in one of your books that you're very very attached to be a publisher and editor wants you to change the character, change you know how he fit into the role. and you did not want to. [laughter] >> that's a really good question. i've never encountered a peer certainly editors have given comments about plot development or how characters were described or the character art of a particular person in the novel. i've never had them till we don't want the character the broker is not right for the story. editorial relationships are very important to me. i have a great editor that's been editing my last 20 bucks. we really have a great rapport. >> who is that?

>> rich hoffman. he is no longer with a publisher he's now an agent. but mitch and i got along so well that they still employ him to edit my books even though he's no longer with them. maybe one of the only times that ever happened but mitch is a great guy. i did not want to start over at this point in my career. i want to the comfort of having him as part of the team.at this point in my career, it is very unlikely a publisher will tell me don't do something. they want me to write the books and they know that after 20 odd novels i know what i'm doing. but that is not to say that you should listen to editors. you do not always have to agree with them and at the end of the day you're sort of the you know, the king or queen of the story. and you can do what you want to do. it is always very respectful to listen to other peoples opinions. at the end of the day i think all they're trying to do is make the story good as it can possibly be. >> will hear from barbara in st. petersburg, florida. >> hello mr. baldacci. >> hi. >> hi. contrary to the other callers, i've never read any of your books. i've always been kind of a nonfiction reader.

however, listening to you now, these couple of hours, i cannot wait to read your books. but it is like, which one would i start with? >> well, you know, the first-term readers i would tell them a really cool fun story that has a great villain and a great heroin is called the winter. the third novel i wrote.and in that they forget what to fix united states national lottery. who can pick the winners. it's i could tell because all you have to do is play, no one will ever find out so the bad act obviously, it is a crime to do that. but i can make you rich. a lot of people, when they do they find that there always consequences for decisions like that. most of the people have read the winner, just living story and if that is the first book of mine that you will be i think you will read it and enjoy.

>> and we have this question. when i read your book is like simultaneously watching a movie with the taste, characters, soft spots were polar and decker. question, can one participate in an auction to have a character named after us? >> answers that is absolutely. and i've done that probably over the course of 23 years. maybe 100 times. what happens is charities will come to me, the cancer society, united way and kemi optional for character name in the novel? and i cannot say as to everybody but i said yes a lot to different organizations. and because i was a former lawyer, i do the agreement. it says i can make anything no matter how vile, disgusting and despicable with no legal recourse against me. if you don't sign the document, you don't get in the book. but i have a lot of fun with characters. now the book i worked on has five auctioned names in the book.

i try to make them interesting and memorable so that people, i remember one of the book i'm working on now, he paid on must $20,000 for it. the money went to buy books for every middle school and high school student in nassau county, florida. and i went to speak to some of the schools in february when i was there. it was great. the husband came over and said, he bought the name for his wife and he pulled me aside and said can you do me a favor? i say what's that. and he said, can you make her evil? and i said i don't know. that his wife comes over and says it's great but just don't make me evil, okay? and i said okay, i have to thread this needle. >> will take another short break at the top of the hour. we have one more hour to go in a three hour conversation with best-selling author, david baldacci. we hope you stay on for it. if you are in queue on the phone stay there will continue taking your calls. we will be right back.

>> and we're back. this is our -- hour number three with david baldacci. we talk to authors about how they write, why they write and more about their bodywork.

we are leased to have david baldacci with us for three hours. let me ask you about this. we keep getting calls about the camel club. why do people like it so much? >> it is certainly unique. certainly a thriller and is a group of older guys, who calls himself i was -- oliver stone. he was working for the u.s. government until things went wrong and they went after him and had to disappear. and there is an ensemble of older guys. one works of congress one is a computer whiz, once a giant guy who is ex-military and fell into bad ways. and the conspiracy theorists, stumbleupon real conspiracies and they have to work together to solve them. it is, i think it was because it was a unique premise and set up. but i've taken time to go into

every characters background to make them very real. and the reason i thought of this again, i was walking past, and d.c. wanted to learn the cities and i was walking past the white house. back then, the vehicular traffic, they closer pennsylvania avenue and lafayette park was there and had protesters. there was one lady who has been there i think recently passed away, she is protesting. she had a tent and all that. so that stuck in my mind for 10 years and i said i'm going to have oliver stone be a protester with a tent there every day and he can have a secret back story. that is my start to read the camel club. >> in the first book dedicated to the secret service. that you were just talking about. and in it, the character, john and oliver have relationships

of people on the white house. >> yes he does. in the camel club series we have hells corner. and i asked them why they call it that? and he says that's our turf. if anything happens there will be hell to pay. that's why we call it hells corner. so you know these people and whether they are a threat or not and there is a relationship that builds. there is skepticism. secret service has a job to do. one of the characters, this agent very familiar with the camel club, they actually help in some of the cases. >> these novels are set mostly in dc. and that is your stomping ground. he said earlier that you like to create fictional places because people will not see you got the movie theater on the wrong corner. okay so there are a lot of readers in the area and they

know you put a restaurant in the wrong part of town so how do you do that? do you walk the streets to make sure that you have everything right? >> i absolutely do. i tried to choreograph that. i went to lafayette park and it was way back. i had of those phone cameras? i went around lafayette park and i was speaking to the flip phone and take a video. i have to make sure everything is he is everything where it should be so i can write about it later. it has to be flawless. i'm walking around this place and back then there was a guy who is just kind of like a warrior. he had linen cloth with a spear and dreadlocks. he used to be there all the time i don't know if he is still there. very nice guy, a beautiful caribbean accent. highly educated diver walking around and so i'm walking around and saying to myself, you know, i think he would be a good place for the bomb to go off. and as i said that, this guy walking past me stops and looks

at me and he heard me. and he said, you're crazy! this is a guy in a loincloth tell me i'm crazy. so i go to these places. i don't want to make the mistake of, you're in georgetown and you know, five minutes later, you pull into bethesda. in your car. which everyone knows here would be impossible. that would take you three hours and rush hour. i try to hit the mark in a readers out there. >> in the first camel club book, a very important part of it is the national information center. the nic. i presume it exists and does it do what you say? which is basically, data-driven, a mission to find and sometimes kill. >> yes.every country has something like that. again, i talked earlier all countries, we need to protect ourselves against enemies. the united states is very data-driven in the have a whole assortment of assets that can be deployed. take people out it's like on

the cheap. you can send out a single assassin and take out their head, cut off the head of a snake and send out 2000 people. some of the stuff we try to topple your dictators. that is policy, foreign policy. we always look for ways, you will see the term regime change. what does that mean? you talk about north korea and iran. you know everything is on the table they say. including regime change.well, how do you change the regime? well, you take the guy out there that's why. you just take them out. >> you also educate us in the scene about how much data is compiled on every one of us by the government. remember you are writing about educate stuff about the patriot

act. your health records, your phone calls, all being collated. >> yes. we have 17 agencies in the united states. including dia, which is like the cia except bigger. with a bigger global footprint. and they are doing something all the time. and -- i've been thinking about that. they collect almost as much information as facebook does. can you believe that? about all of us. but we are an information driven society and right now you talk about experts in the field, the next war will not be on the battlefield. it is cyber. cyber warfare. that's where it's at. you know with the russians what they did in the 2016 election probably cost 10 or $11 million. and did a few trillion dollars worth of damage. a pretty good return on investment. >> does it provide new plots for you? >> absolutely! i just have to be careful because technology and techniques are changed so fast. keep in mind i'm one guy sitting in my office writing stuff.i am, you know,

fighting against millions of highly intelligent people who work 24/7 trying to come up with ways to do things. you know, kill somebody, eavesdrop on someone, get more information. they've all of this technology behind them. so it is a pretty unequal battle. so i tried to hold my own at times but it is a tough fight sometimes. >> let's go back to a call. can in miami. >> hello, mr. baldacci. >> hello. >> my question is, given this world of trump and you have a liberal and a conservative point of view on focusing on his personality, versus his policy. what is your basic take in terms of you know, government corruption, you know they'll have controls and agenda. why are they are picking on trump instead of just an overage of government? and by individual responsibility, why do we

tolerate if we are aware and are willing to give more of our own freedoms away. what is your take? i don't way to get yourself into labels or anything. >> right. >> but in terms of the liberal conservative, you know, spectrum, can you just give me a feel? i read most of your books. i just want to get a feel on where you go down like with this dispute between the president and the justice department and maybe some of that plays into some of your you know, your books. but your own personal viewpoint i would be very much interested in.thank you. >> absolutely. absolute power, it is corrupt and that is where the title of the book comes from. i found that in my life. some people are not suited to hold power. and not talking about any particular person. but people come and go, institutions that we create are

built to stand the test of time. and what we have today, and my personal philosophy is that no one is above the rule of law in this country. just the way it was built. the founding fathers wanted that way and that is the way we are as a nation. the institutions that we have weatherby the fbi, justice department or the supreme court or congress or executive branch. they were built to stand the test of time so not one person no matter what they do should be able to bring the institutions down. but again, one being above the rule of law. richard nixon, if he had been impeached they would've had tapes actually do something wrong. bill clinton lied under oath. he was impeached by house of representatives not convicted by the senate but he was impeached. you know, the current president, donald trump, for me -- investigations need to go forward. if something is wrong, or done

wrong consequences have to follow p because no person is above the law.that's what makes us different from other places that's what makes us different from iran, china, north korea, all the places we hold ourselves for above because we are the united states of america. and it is based on the rule of law. for me you know everyone has to be judged by the same criteria. you want the people tobe on a level playing field and i think the institutions we have should be allowed to do their job . but if they are doing something wrong they should be held accountable as well. >> related to that, charlotte williams on facebook asks, based on the fact that your stories revolve around american government, corruption, conspiracy etc., had to explain such popularity in other nations? >> that is a great question because a couple of years ago i got a new publishing contract that i was going to be published in arabic. and i think actually in iran. and i thought i like the fact that it was happening. that books of my could be published in a country that sees us as very autocratic and

as a bureaucracy. i think that the people are intrigued because other countries have power structures as well where people in high places do bad things. but i think there intrigued by the high stakes. and everybody knows america. you go to any country overseas and i've been to many. over there there will know more about our politics than american citizens do. because america is sort of you know it revolves around what we do and the remaining superpower. and i totally get that but people are intrigued by everything about america. fiction like mine are very popular, movies deal with subject matters are very popular, american music is very popular. if you travel the countries they are all there. it is great to be in a country with the citizen writing about the country i feel like it is very popular no matter where you go. >> do ultimately see yourself as a patriot? because even when you have rogue characters, the good guys

always win. >> for me i was like have that closure because i want people to understand that if you do bad things there will be some type of punishment. and it is not always the case in real life. as a lawyer i can say that justice depends on how much you can spend on your lawyer. if you have a good lawyer, then you are in good shape. i also say, tell me a million on death row. millionaires have committed murder before, none of them are on death row. for the vast majority of people on death row are impoverished. for me, the consequences of good triumphing over evil is very important. you know i think it validates the stories i write about and gives an ending that i think is a good message. >> one other point while we talk about presidents and the country. your presidents pop up in money -- in many of your books. -- >> it's not something i felt

comfortable doing. i've met four presidents personally. >> you consider any of them friends? >> absolutely.i have known bush 41 for a long time. and clinton as well. and george w, barack obama. they all told me they read my books and they enjoy them and i enjoyed meeting all of them! but as far as identifying because they put yourself in a box intricate labeled and you get things in the mail you won't want to read. >> lee in rockville maryland. >> yes, good afternoon mr. baldacci. thank you for appearing on c-span. you're very interesting. you were the inspiration for my becoming a novelist, mr. baldacci. do you remember marion barry used to be the mayor of the capitol of the free world? >> yes, i do. >> will come right out of college when i graduated, i worked for the district of columbia government when i was

21, 22 years old. i worked there for 10 years. i worked in a nut house, the mayor of the capitol of the free world was you know, a cocaine user, he had many vices.and he -- that i read your book. i saw the movie, absolute power. i am a big fan of clint eastwood. then i read your book. and i thought, i can do this! i worked in a nut house, i worked for the mayor of the capitol of the free world. and so i sat down and in the 90s and i typed up a manuscript i call the capitol city.by lee her and lo and behold with the new york publisher to publish it. they published it a year and and a half ago. >> that's fantastic! >> and you, mr. baldacci, where my inspiration. because i almost always read nonfiction. i'm a big fan of robert caro

and other nonfiction writers. and jeffrey, he's written a lot of good nonfiction. i'd never read a novel nonsense undergraduate when a professor told me to read a novel. and you were my inspiration. the absolute power was a terrific movie and a terrific book. so i sat down and everyone in the 90s got computers and it was really very easy to write, i wrote capitol city and lo and behold we got in new york publisher! >> thank you. that is a great story to tell. >> congratulations. >> you spend a lot of time doing the interviews with us but also calling to radio shows and doing book events, signings. you don't need to do that anymore because you sell so many books. why do you do it? >> it is a symbiotic world and

relationship with the book world. there are multiple components, publishers, writers, readers, libraries, bookstores. and we all need to support each other. so you're right, i do not need to tour anymore but i like to go out for a couple of reasons. i like to meet the readers and i talked about the books and to see that love that they have for the written word. secondly, the bookstores i go to our lifeblood. it's the difference between them existing or not existing. for me to go there and bring hundreds of people to buy their books and to see their story and by the things and become patrons throughout the year, that makes them sustainable. and in turn we support each other. it's almost like a really fragile ecosystem. you take out one piece of it you know, everything comes falling down. i feel like it is my duty and obligation because i know how hard they have worked to help build my career. this is what i do to help them. >> writings also such a solitary profession. does getting on public recharge your batteries?>> is a way for me to be the ham i was

wanted to be. that i can get up and make people laugh. and my wife says you have to keep doing that where you will not be as much fun to be around. >> jill is in rhode island. >> good afternoon. thank you for having david baldacci on today. >> thank you. >> i met david at a thriller archiver roundtable at brown university a number of years ago. >> yes. >> talking to him was really interesting. he gave stories i told him i read absolute power on a flight home and flight attendants were asking what i was really because i couldn't put it down and he also told a cute story where he and his wife were out to dinner and a woman coming across and ask him who he was. and it turned out it was -- the right genre but the wrong author. which i think he would enjoy sharing but i also wanted to

mention that he talked about his literacy and being able to fund it. and i wanted to tell him that he probably knows this but, most libraries, when you donate to them, i know in the providence public library i do, they actually, you can take your money and you can actually have it designated to go to the literacy program which i do. and i wanted to thank him for his work in doing that for people who are not able to read and also to be able to get more people out there and more books to people that cannot do this. and i just wanted to thank him for that. and for the countless hours of being able to read his fantastic works. >> thank you very much. and we funded libraries and literacy programs, it's what they do as part of the curriculum. we feel like we really are good

partners for them and thank you for the work you do. i do remember the brown university roundtable. it was a really cool, a lot of really nice authors i got to meet there. i think we had a great discussion. >> next we have a fellow from montana. >> thank you for taking my call. i am and inspired writer. i'm getting a late start. my question to you from a creative standpoint, with the genesis of your stories, and novels, do find it easier to come up with an interesting character first? and work a story around the character? or do find it easier for you to come up with a plot and then work the characters into the plot? >> is a quick question for the answer, i have done it both ways. i will give you an example. the winner that i talked about earlier, a guy that fixes the national lottery it's the plot

premise and i came up with that first. and then i said i need a villain i need a heroin and some characters. so i did plot first and then characters. for the majority of my novels, certainly the series, the characters are come first. then i built plots for them to inhabit going forward in the novels. characters are the only way for you to be able to relate to people. the readers on an emotional basis and on a human basis. the best book i've ever read, i cannot really remember the plot detail on a film but i remember the characters well. that is the impression that leaves you behind. it's a really great story of -- but if you're mediocre characters people won't remember it. you need to make it memorable. people can relate to them, people care about what happens to them. if you have that they will finish the book. >> what --

she might be watching. >> she might be watching. she knows a story. we have a place in florida. and we ordered a car it was ready but i wasn't there. so she went down there. he was a fan in mind so he said david this and david that. so she signed all of the documents and did same thing. and he says so, what do you do? and she methodically finished signing the documents and said, what do i do? she said, everything else. and it is so true! because without her, nothing gets done. and you know i give her stuff to be on early on, and she is a voracious reader. she reads more than i do. and she is a good critic. i do not ask her what's right

with the book i instantly know. i need her to tell me what is wrong. and she is good at pinpointing stuff. this is not working, i like this character. this won't work. and that's what i need her to do and she is my first and my best critic. and it's a partnership, it really is. >> in terms of being a life partner, are you easier to live around when you're writing or when you are just finished a book? >> if i am writing, and very pleasant to be around. when i'm between stories and i get grumpy and crotchety, i live to tell stories. it is not a job or hobby. it is a lifestyle. i cannot separate me from the writer. so if i am not immersed in a story and i'm in between stories and i have not thought about what i want to work on next, i am moody and mopey and i walk around.michelle knows to leave me alone and she knows that as soon as i have a story, i will be you know, cheerful. >> it seems like you are never, not writing. >> when i am talking, why mopey for about like a day. [laughter]

>> how many books you have in the works at any one time? do you work on one in finish or do you have a couple going?>> i've never in two thrillers at the same time. i would lose my focus. right now i am working on a book for the fall and the last installment of a series. i've been writing simultaneously each year for the -- each day for the last year. ... i love reading your books and when i travel, you're always on the audio. thank you so much. >> i appreciated very much. i try not to be predictable in a regulated different series and try and get out of my comfort

zone. my first novel i have no idea what i'm doing, but it gives me an edge. once a writer figures out they know what they're doing, they want to do something else. >> host: on facebook, you want to ask where a post sent us questions. i became a big fan of make a chain. when are you releasing book for? these are young adult books. is it difficult for you to write so much adult fiction? >> yeah, it's a challenge. the finisher took me five years to write. i just could not -- >> i like fantasy, reading. again, continue to keep reinventing yourself as a writer.

i've never written fantasy. can i do that? that's a complete total exercise of imagination because you're creating everything out of nothing. for four and a half years thinking about it and not getting anywhere and everything had in six months i had written 150,000 books and i sounded out under a pseudonym. i didn't put it out under my name. scholastic bought it in because the way the book is written, i went out to see them and i got there and i like what are you doing here. you just bought my novel, the finisher. they have clifford the big red dog. but it was a way to challenge myself again. the fantasy is so cool. the next book will be out in the spring of next year.

>> we have 25 minutes left to go. thanks for being with us for three years. the earpiece of yours is probably not again. while we take our next call will have you fixed it. cockroach thank you so much, mr. baldacci for what you just told us about giving books away with feeding the hungry. i think that's a marvelous thing to do. my grandson is 22. he wrote his first novel when he was 18. it is a political thriller. i'm wondering how you go about finding publishers and how did you first find your publisher? >> that's a great question. i started new having an issue and be a good thing to have and they can represent you in the publisher gets your book out. so whenever i heard about a really hot up i would look at the acknowledgment section.

right after their spouse the person they would think is their agent. so i have a list of agents in now way and i set up a query letter and samples of the book for them. i was hoping what some would call me back and say this is interesting. when we talk about it. i was fortunate enough that all of them called me back, wrote back and wanted to be my age and after reading peers i went up to new york and pick the h. and i have to this day and is one of my best friends. u.k. names made from sources and they tell you whether they represent fiction or nonfiction and first-time novelists because a lot of them don't. you can get that information online. they have addresses. send a query letter. this sort of showcase your writing. >> host: we talked about the

apex of e-books over the course of your writing career. what are some other significant ways the business is changing what you think about the book festivals popping up all over the country these days? >> the book industry for a few hundred years didn't change at all. one thing i'm seeing when i first started writing never 16 major publishers. today there's about six. but that has been balanced out by self-publishing. went to the xerox machine and made copies. these days even on amazon, barnes & noble, social media platforms, publish it yourself, and it's a very professional product. so that is really change. there's more self published authors make a living as writings than -- writers and

whatever be the case. that's not bad people can pursue on a lucrative manner. one thing people's attention spans are very short these days and when i first started out there were no cell phones. there were no icons. people didn't have an xbox and all that. these days except to compete with all that. that's not something we have to worry about. now there is talk about how we can make looks more interactive, put videos and books. i'm not sure that's kimiko. i just think the written word is very powerful. i'm hoping we don't try to fit the square book into a round peg. i think that would be a problem. the industry has to change and i think change is good and getting new people involved, not just writers, and book festivals are

awesome. if they look i'm going to tell you to subscribe. lots of communities would love to have a festival like this and they don't. all of a sudden you down at the book festival. all other industries, 874 word shows. we have a couple. we've a pulitzer national book award. it's listed on page descending. but i think is an industry we need to be better about self-promoting ourselves because all the other industries do a much better job than we do. >> bob, how are you? oyster bay, new york. >> caller: thank you. thank you for taking my question. mr. baldacci, when you develop a new character, and does this in

that there will be a series and if so, how do you make sure that they are not too narrowly defined so they can broaden out in a future book? >> that's a great question. the first series i started that i didn't know was king of maxwell. i just thought it is going to be stand-alone. a partner up in this book and at the end of the book i realized i haven't even tapped into that and talked about the personal relationship, how they came to be. they just teamed up involved this mystery so i wrote another book and another and another. later on i knew the club was going to be a series from the get-go. i know and creating the others i needed to build into them potential back stories that i

could explore and exploit and future books. that allows some secrecy and things you didn't know about their lives selected over exploit that another novels. they continued to export going forward. it really was a very focused and intentional shut up and -- set up in the first series but knowing i'm not going to be done when this first because i'm going to keep going. >> host: kenyan maxwell for agents. you talk about all so federal agencies. how about the presidents come and the been friends with him and did a guide to writing about making your president authentic? >> i find the right house many times when bush 41 and then bush 43 were in office. i've met bill clinton several

times that different event. what he does, with the routine is and how they come in and how they go out. transducers hurl the public part. >> it is absolutely. but i've had conversations about and they've done when the president and things the public wouldn't necessarily know about them things they have to think about the rest of us don't have to think about. thank you for telling me all the super secrets. just hanging out with them talking to them embassy in how their life is. really were things i've used in books and were able to use those facts to make it even better. post got 20 minutes left in three hours. interesting hours with david baldacci. if you have a question from you can probably still get through if you're lucky or send us a tweet and we'll mix it in.

donna, chambersburg, pennsylvania. >> hello. hello, mr. baldacci. i just wanted to say thank you so much for your interesting books. it was signed by year and she's dead i think you'd enjoy this because you enjoy reading. i read it and i was amazed that above intrigued. >> thank you very much. with all my books i try to hit the ground running. i do want to waste time in the beginning. i want to immerse you into the story, has something interesting happened on the first few pages. i like books where the writer is control and not the reader. her reader in control of the book is not going to be a good read for you. but if you're on your tip toes,

you don't know it's going to happen next time you thought you had it figured out to me what carefully categorized this person's good, this person's bad. if i can knock you out of those categories you have no idea what's going to come next. that's a great story. >> host: in my survey of reaganites say you're generally not sympathetic to rich people. [laughter] >> guest: i will be sympathetic to rich people if they treat other people with respect. and i'm not saying that i haven't met wealthy people who don't do that. i've met a lot of wonderful people. they just don't tend to end up in my book. for a number of reasons. i go back to the quote about absolute power. a lot of money can corrupt people obviously to and feeling like they are above everyone else and above the rule of law.

i grew up in a very blue-collar background in virginia and wealth was not something we were ever close to. my life hasn't changed in that regard and i look at everybody has a person. but i have seen it in my life is very corrupting influence. >> host: how did you prevent your kids to grow up a pretty privileged lifestyle from having that second generation problem? >> we made sure that our kids are never going to live in a bubble. you've got a sentence of this this private school. we're not doing that. samantha schools with lots of kids across the socioeconomic platform. we went to school events. we lived in neighborhoods where everybody came from lots of different places. as i was taught and we taught our kids come everyone deserves respect and compassion and

that's the way you need to connect your lives. you need to be a good person. none of the stuff you have is actually yours. it doesn't belong for you. you didn't work for it, you didn't earn it. in your life we never gave the kids anything. they didn't get cars in their 16. they still haven't gotten cars. they work for their own. they support themselves. they know that mom and dad are there if you need it, but they have their own independent lives we raise them without focus in mind that this is our life. you get to be part of it when you're little and then you grow up and have your life and you build what you can and have a happy life and we will be there to support them off you, but mom and dad are writing checks. >> year on the air. >> thank you for taking my call. can you hear me? >> guest: yes i can, thank you. >> caller: are you friendly

with jonathan karim do read his books? >> guest: i do. i love the pseudonym. i think his last name is something cornwell. he's actually an intelligence officer during the cold war and i actually have my wife bought me many years ago. i won't even categorize him. he's a great storyteller in wright's amazing books that would see right in the heart of situation. talk about being immersed in the world, particularly the cold war . >> host: cindy, florida. hi, cindy. >> my favorite book is the forgotten. how did you get that scene and why did you write that book? >> guest: the forgotten in the

panhandle of florida as they call it the redneck riviera. we had just got a place down there and i saw the area and the whole idea came to me and something bad happened and he had to investigate that. but it was another way for me to show he had other family members in the management he was very young. she helped raise him because his dad was in the army didn't have a whole lot of time for the sign. this is the military guy. tall, strong guy who could do the impossible. but here he was. who really was second mom to him because something really bad

happened. >> host: hello, ynez. what is your question for david baldacci? >> caller: yes -- [inaudible] get your books on cd. the first two were adjusted -- [inaudible] / [inaudible] >> guest: yes, perfect recall as it's called. there's two ways to get it. you can either be born with it, mary lou hamner was born at that and scripts are easy for her to remember. or you can get it through tbi, genetic brain injury. they can repair itself when it's been damaged. you can research it around the

damaged areas here do not have been sometimes weird tank top and a new canal parts of the brain you haven't been utilizing. but it can also cause sensory pathways to cross. the three get other conditions where he associates a particular sensation with a collar. we will see numbers in color. so the number seven is a burst of orange and i know that the number seven. whenever he's around a dead body he sees an electric blue color. and it all comes from the tbi that he endured when he was playing football. i love the brain and figuring out how this thing functions in trying to push the envelope on it is great stuff for storytelling. >> host: 10 minutes left to go. you made reference to your next book and is also a new character

. >> 35 years old, fbi special agent. she works in the hinterlands of the last and she prefers it that way. i wrote the first three chapters in longhand because i wanted to do it that way. it felt right. the very first line is a nursery rhyme. any meaning by nemo. which i call it a choosing rhyme because whatever you start the word with, the show slated the word for works out. it was a disastrous effect because someone is counting on her and her twin sister when they were six years old and her sister vanished. so she's grown up without her twin. this is the first time i've ever

had a series that i knew was going to be a series for the lead protagonist. the name popped in my head in the story idea and her background popped in my head and i've been working with that. i'm 70,000 words into it and i'm super excited. >> host: how do you get the authenticity and a woman character's voice? >> guest: strong independent which are the ones i write about. i don't write about damsel in distress because i've never met one of my entire life. i just haven't. my mother was a force of nature. her sister was a strong independent woman. my wife is a force of nature and we raced a strong independent daughter. my whole life has been surrounded by women. my grandmother was a very influential part of my upbringing. i find it, you know, sort of natural to the extent a male writer can write the female

perspective because i've seen in my whole life have a react, talk and how they deal with other people. i tell people i have such a healthy respect for the other gender because i've now it decades ago that men are the weaker it was nice well admitted up front. other than physical strength, that's pretty much it. so i like writing from the female point of view. she's the lead protagonist and what sort of god who she was and where she was coming from. i like the fact i can write from this does. i think it's because again i'm a great listener and a great observer. i love watching people. i've loved a lot of -- watched a lot of women over the years. >> caller: hey, this is wayne smith from portage, michigan. i just wanted to say, you know, with david wrestled in high

school on our team and just wanted to tell you we have a lot of folks are not team that accomplished a lot of things, but i will tell you were proud and talk a lot about your accomplishments and where you were. i wanted to call and send their regards. >> guest: thank you so much, man. it's great to hear from you. >> host: where is that from? >> guest: high school. i just talked to my old wrestling coach a couple days ago. i always sign books for him and we get together and i've seen some of the old wrestling team over the years and wayne was on that team. that's a blast from the past year that thought in. >> host: you wrestled them he played football, what other sports? >> guest: those are the two i did in high school. i wrestled some in college. i played a lot of tennis and i play with my son now, but i'm just too old to keep up with

him. he's 22 and can hit the ball a million miles an hour. i think he tolerates data at this point. he doesn't hit as hard as he can so you can keep me in the game. >> caller: washington d.c. person next heard christine, you're on the air. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> guest: hello. >> caller: hi, and is going to ask you it doesn't sound like you get up a lot with your plots. i've been grumpy for the last four or five months because i've been writing what i thought should be a memoir and i get to personal places and i got to want where i can put it on paper and i'm having a really hard time. i've not brought in about four. i do better when they make it less personal if i do not write it as a memoir. >> guest: writers need to be flexible. if you really want to write a memoir, you can do that and you might be able to work through. i get writer's block.

writer's block is a misnomer. it's part of the writing process for you're still thinking about what she wanted to. how do you get through that? you work on it every day or do something also much or self-conscious -- subconscious work on it for a little while. but if you can't get past this because you don't want to delve down how personal it is for, then maybe move on and the novel and you can write fiction and get through the personal account that might've been a little term attic for you and then move on and continue the story. >> host: joanne is up next, bridgeport, connecticut. just a couple minutes left with david baldacci. >> caller: hello, thank you. want to know -- let you know that i love your books. i love the recurring characters. i was just wondering when you come up with a premise for a plot for one of your series,

does it ever happen that you feel it's better suited to a different one of your series? >> that's a great question and has happen to me. i thought okay this is going to be john poehler where he will be and i realize as i delve deeper into the pot i can tweet it and make it into a story. it's about as deadly happen to me. the fact i have so many series going i can be a little unchangeable i'm not. if i tweet the story of little better my going to totally different direction and is a serious character to do it. >> host: will roby is the only one we haven't talked about. who is he? >> guest: probably america's most lethal assassin. we first met him in the edison. he's the sort of guy that used to regime change guide. he cuts the head of the snake off. he goes around the world and kills on behalf of the country. how can i create a series on a guy whose job it is to murder

people. that was my challenge is a writer. i had to make a relatable in some way. i did creep in doing that. do you show him doing what does that professionalism, tenacity, overcoming odds along the way. and then showing the human side again. he pulled the trigger it affects you. you've to carry the baggage with you all the time that affects who you are and what kind of life you can leave. he can be aloof and alone or in a can't relate to other people. big surprise. most people don't run pulling the trigger and killing people, but he has to do that. he's a fascinating character and i got to touch the surface of the sky. >> host: off-color as virginia from gosport, pennsylvania. >> caller: hello, i love your camel club series. i couldn't wait for the next book to come out. why did you kill him off?

i mean, couldn't she stop for a while and brought them back later? >> guest: if you're talking about oliver stone, stone cold at the end of the book when it goes off the cliff he thinks it's done for him. he came back and he listened to more books. the pine justice and house corner. at the end, other than milton, everybody else was alive. john carr is alive and kicking. if i can think of a really cool plot to put them in, i will bring them back. >> host: you're 57 years old come you got a lot of writing ahead of you which you've already got a huge body of work. what would you like your legacy to be as an american writer? >> guest: i would sort of be the guide, you know -- it would be hard to put me in a box, hard

to label me. people think of me as a mystery writer thriller writer. i've written personal histories, dramatic family stories as well. so i would like to be the kind of guy when you open the book you never know what you're going to get. if you look at the word formula and the word dictionary, you'll never see a picture of me there. >> host: thank you for spending three hours with the book to the audience. >> guest: thank you, i enjoyed it. >> coming up next on tvs "after