How John Grisham Sold 400 Million Books

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1:07This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate like the one you see on Google with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, TZC's apply. Gray roots entering the chat. Uninvited. Garnier's got you. Garnier color sensation re-touch covers up to 100% of grays in just 10 minutes.

2:12No ammonia, no mess, and the color lasts up to four weeks. It's as easy to apply as shampoo. Plus, it's vegan and cruelty free. 10 minutes. Sensational color, sensational price. With those savings, your next girl's night is basically free. Find your perfect match at Walmart.com or to store near you. Hello, listeners. Welcome to this very special question and answer edition of the Ressus Entertainment, where I'm Richard Osmond. There's no Marina Hy today because I am joined by one of my favorite writers of all time. John Grisham, he's sold. Well, we discussed during this episode how many books he sold. I will say this, if you are any sort of Grisham fan, you definitely have to listen. If you are starting to write, if you want to write, you have to listen. If you're interested in how people write, you have to listen as well. He's such an interesting guy. We talk about everything from the firm, which is the thing that absolutely made him go supernova all the way through to his new book,

3:15which is the French illusion, which is out on the 29th of September. But it was a real pleasure. I sat down with him in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Festival. He could not have been more gracious and just listening to him talk about how he writes. What happened in his career when it went so huge and just looking back about what writing means to him, the writers that he loves is all your questions. He sent so many in, especially about how someone writes. Loads and loads of advice in here as well. I hope you can hear during it as well. What an absolute privilege it was for me. But thank you for all of your questions. And here is the Ressus Entertainment. Question doesn't answer to Titian. With John Grisham. At John Grisham, how lovely to have you here. We're talking in Edinburgh. One of my genuine heroes is a pleasure to talk to you. 400 million books sold. Does that sound right? Well, last night it was 500 million. I'm not sure it happened in the middle of the night, but that number is arbitrary. Someone, I think, at a double day just sits around and plays with that number.

4:15There's no way to know how many books you've sold. I've sold in 56 languages and 50 books around the world in 35 years. Nobody can get me. No, it could be 200 million. I'm here in 600 million. That's a... Let's go for 700. Let's go for 700. Three quarters of a billion copies of your novels. We've had so many questions from our listeners. I'm going to start you off with Anne Loftis, who asks you this. She says, I'm currently writing my first novel. I'm determined, but I'm struggling. You've written over 14 novels, but my question is this. How on earth did you finish the first one? It took three years. I learned a lesson very early on in the process, because I had no time to write. I had a busy legal career. So, did I do a full-time job? Well, a full-time job and a part-time job. I was a state lawmaker in Mississippi, and that took half my time. I was also pretty busy in the law, if it's trying to make a living in a small town.

5:16The only way I could write was to get up very early in the morning. I got an ad-lib. I learned a lesson every day, same place, same time, same everything, and write at least one page per day, at least one page every day, with no excuses. Until you start doing that, nothing's going to happen. If you do a page a day, at least a page a day, before long, the page is pile up. In a couple of years, you've written a book. It's amazing, isn't it? You don't think you're going to? It's a slow process, and you cannot get in a hurry. You don't want to get in a hurry. You want to enjoy the process? I'm not sure I enjoyed it being up at five in the morning. But over, I was in such a habit of doing that, the first book took three years to write, and then I went straight to the second book. So over a five-year period, I wrote those first two books. The first book was a total flop in the marketplace. It didn't work. That was a time to kill. Time to kill. The second book was the firm. When the firm came out in 1991, it changed everything overnight.

6:20We'll talk about a time to kill. So when you started writing, where were you in your head there? What was the best case scenario for you? What prompted you to do it? I saw something in a courtroom one day, a trial. It was very dramatic. And I thought, you know, what if you take that story and make a few changes and create this powerful courtroom drama played out through the eyes of a young attorney who's dreaming of the big trial and being caught in his home courtroom? And that's what I was living that life. That's going to say that was you, right? That was me. That was me. So the dream when you're writing is actually, I'm going to be something big in law, and it turned into something to be different. I'm going to win this big case, and it's just going to change my career, and I'm going to be known as a... At the age of 30, my goal in life was to be a great courtroom lawyer. And so I was in trial all the time, always volunteering for court appointed criminal cases and the stuff nobody else wanted to take. I was always in the courtroom. And I was on my way, I think, to getting there takes time.

7:21But I got a detour when I saw this idea, this drama. And one day, just driving down the road, I said to myself, why don't you try to write it? Just start with chapter one and write this drama. And see how far you can go. And it wasn't an immediate, you sold it, but it wasn't... That was not the beginning of the John Grisham we know now, right? They printed a small unknown publisher in New York that went bankrupt the following year. I have to publish my first novel. Didn't sell them. They printed 5,000 hardback copies, and we couldn't give the books away. I bought 1,000. 5,000? How's it going to try to sell on Michael O'Neal in the retail? But the book didn't work. But by the time the time to kill was published in 89, I had finished almost finished with the firm. And the firm was always going to be more accessible, more commercial, more dramatic. And so I was almost finished with that book. And when it came out a year later, it was changed everything.

8:23Funny enough, Christine F says, writing the firm must have changed your life completely. How did that feel at the time? And how do you look back on it now? So a time to kill, you knew you could write a book. So you've done that. You've proved that. I always think that's the most important thing is getting to the end of your first book. So to talk to Anne Loftus there, once you got to the end of the first one, you know then that you can do it. And so you write the firm, then everything goes absolutely nuts almost immediately. One phone call on Sunday morning in January of 1990. I was actually at church and my wife came late to church and she said, go call New York. And I said, why it's Sunday morning. And so I went and called New York and we lived right down the street in our little small town. And my agent said, I need your authority to take the highest offer for the film rights to the firm. And we had not sold the book rights.

9:25Our last conversation a month earlier before Christmas he had said, having sold the book yet, we're going to wait to the new year or something that will happen then. But the firm, the the manuscript had been around New York for a few months and nobody wanted to buy it. Several publishers had said no. I was involved in a big trial. I kind of lost interest. So I was talking to my agent. I said, wait a minute. We haven't sold the book rights to the firm. We didn't know you want to sell the movie rights. What's going on? And he said, I'll explain it later. He said, right now these studios are sitting by the phones for the final round of bidding for the film rights. And the word bidding had a nice ring to the end. I think they just. And I said, okay, just for the hell of it, how much money are we talking about? And he said, I'm asking half a million hope to get $400,000.

10:25I said, you want my authority to go do that? And he said, yes, okay, you have my authority to go do that. Hung up and went back to church and we set through church just, you know, dying. And finally, he raised home with the kids and the phone was ringing. And it was my age. You've been calling. And he said, we just sold the film rights to Paramount Pictures for the firm. And so, and I said, okay, did he tell me how he had negotiated the dollar's heroic negotiations and stuff? And I said, okay, just for the hell of it, how much money am I going to get? He said $600,000, which was more than I'd earned in 10 years of practicing law in grocery seats. And I said, okay, nice job. And that was the phone call that turned the world upside down. When you start writing, there is a dream in various heads that you wake up and you wake up and then, oh my god, this could sell for everything.

11:26This could be a huge movie with Tom Cruise. This could be a best seller for years and years and years. And it actually happened to you. Do you think there's something behind that? Do you think I think you always wanted to write commercial fiction? Do you think you put yourself in that position or do you think there was an element of luck? Huge element of luck. You have to have a stroke of luck somewhere. But you have to be ready when luck hits, okay? You got to kind of make the luck happen. And that's what happened to me. I've always said, I had a very fortunate thing happening to me. I got lucky. But at the same time, I was able to, the next decision I made when the firm came out and it was an instant best seller that became out of March of 91. And I was back in New York taking a victory lab doing interviews and all this to come stuff. A young executive with a book chain made a comment that I had never thought about before.

12:27And he said, oh, the big guys come out every year. And I thought, yeah, he said, yeah, look, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Michael Criteen, Robert Ludlam. But they come out every year. The big boys come out every year. And I thought, I want to be a big boy. So I race back home and I finished the Pelican brief. And I mean, I was, I'd been working on it slowly. I finished it in a matter of months to get it back in New York to publish the following year. Well, funny. I've got a question from Colmec Jensen on exactly that. He says, you've somehow managed to write a book a year. Sometimes more than one book a year. Firstly, he says, thank you. That's how you get your question without this saying. He says, thank you. But he says, yeah, I've got two questions. How do you write a book a year? And we've sort of touched on this. Why do you write a book a year? So the why is because that's the business. You know, you're building a loyalty. You're building a brand. Yeah, it's why. Why, why do I still do it? I mean, I could have quit years ago. First of all, I still enjoy it. I mean, this is fun.

13:27Okay. Yes. And that'd be home in Virginia doing nothing right now. But this, which is also fun, by the way. It's always fun. I got to get and play of that. It's still enjoyable. And also write stories about lawyers and issues and politics and things like that. And the material is just endless. I still think of it as a lawyer. I don't practice any more thing, God, but I still understand the law. And I'm fascinated by the law. Lawyers, law firms, courts, trials, appeals, judges, crime itself. And the actions of lawyers, big law firms blow up. Lawyers steal money. These great stories that we have all the time. And I'm just taking notes. I'm clipping headlines. And I have tons of files of stories, the potential stories. And when you follow lawyers and judges the way I do, always with an eye for a story, the material is just endless. Okay. And I'm just addicted to them. I would write all of them if I could.

14:28So the how I do it every year is just the material is there. Why is just that's what I've done for 40 years. And I still do it. And I still enjoy it. And the books are still popular. That's the thing. I think the other question of how lots of people were interested in. And you've told this a million times before. But people are endlessly fascinated. How do you actually write? How do you get 90,000 words? Roughly 100,000 for one of your novels. How do you get that done across a year? What does your day look like? What does your year look like in order to do that? Well, it takes a lot of, it takes a discipline, but it's not, you know, it's not marine style, self-discipline. It's a physical discipline. It's I started a book every year in January of the first. And I have for years. I start the book on January of the first. And the goal is to finish budget law of the first. That's six months. A thousand words a day is 5,000 words a week. That's 20,000 a month. That's a hundred thousand. That's the goal every time. I don't want to, I don't want to write a 500 page book.

15:28I don't want to read one. I'm getting lazier. My books are getting thinner. I'm getting lazier. I hope I'm getting more economical with words. But that's, that's, it's not a formula. You do it. This is my goal today is a thousand words. It would know excuses. No days off for the flu, no days off for this, so that if we travel, I'm never right on the road. I write in one place. One spot in your house. In my little office behind the house. The same desk, same chair, same coffee, same no phones, no fax, no internet, no music, no interruptions. Yeah. Very quiet from seven to ten every morning. And it's very productive. And so you put a 10 year done for the day. Usually by eleven, I'll take a break around ten. I'm back and forth to get coffee and check the internet for emails, things like that. Make a phone call or two. Take a break. But it's from seven to ten thirty or eleven. When you're writing on stop for four hours, your brain is pretty well. Oh my god, yeah. I can do that two and a half. Yeah.

16:28Yeah, two and a half. That's it. If you really write good, hard stuff for two and a half, three, four hours, I have to do something physical. I leave and go work out and go for a hike or something. And that's the morning. In the afternoon, I go to the office in town in the city of Charlottesville where I live, to get away from the farm, to get away from all that. And do the administrative stuff for you. The business end of it, checking with New York every day. And you can put that, that's enjoyable. But it's a matter of discipline. And I love stories of writers who wrote their first novels at work or at break or midnight or on the train or whatever they did. They daily routines, they found thirty minutes somewhere. And we can all find thirty minutes somewhere to write, at least to page a day. But you gotta do it every day. Yeah, I always think, you know, if you've got young kids, obviously you've got a demanding job. If you can do two hundred words a day, you'll be amazed how quickly you get up to twenty thousand.

17:28I always think twenty thousandth of a point where you think, I have to finish this book now. There's no way this is getting shut away. And so you just keep at it. But that's the thing, isn't it? It's just day by day. And soon or later, I mean, you think it's this time, it's going to be impossible this time. I'm never going to finish. Eventually, you do finish, right? Yeah, it's like a lot of things in life. If you look at the monumental challenge of doing anything, it looks overwhelming. But you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't start that way. You start, you take a small baby step, two hundred words a day, one page, whatever. Do that for several days, a week, several weeks, and before you know it. And you don't want to get the hurry. Yeah. You don't want to write in a hurry. You want to write slowly and thoughtfully and reflectably. And that's, but again, if you write a book every two years, that's pretty fast. Yeah. For publishing, for popular writers. How are you rewriting? I think the thing that stops a lot of people from writing is they go back again and again and again to their first sentence

18:28or their first paragraph or their first chapter and constantly try and polish it instead of moving forwards. I do it every day. When I start each morning, I read what I wrote the day before and do a fair amount of editing. It also gets you back into the flow of the story. You know, you know where you are and, and yeah, the first 30 minutes I'm redoing the day before. Then I'm not going to touch it again until the end. That's the key, right? Yeah, I keep going. Keep going. But because you always have time to fix it later. You know, it's important to get the first draft down, but make sure it's a pretty good draft. Yeah. And then once you finish the book, once I finish the book, I go back through it and make a million changes. And then my wife reads it and she's got some opinions. I usually listen to her. Then it goes to my agent who was my editor for years. He's been my agent for 30 years. And he goes through with a very page by page line by line edit that drives me crazy every year.

19:29And so I brought about listen to him. I still listen to people. Yeah. And if something is not working, my wife says, I really hate this character. Yeah. I'll listen to that. Or if she says this part, this part is really boring you. I can't take that. Okay. If she says, it just drags. I can't. I'm writing suspense. I have an American editor. She's so good. It's just very occasionally in brackets who just write board. But I'm like, I know God. Go to good editors. Never gives you solutions, but they just say, and she's always right. Oh, yeah, because of course, I don't need to be back with this character at the moment. Actually, I've done a bit too much of that. Repetitious. Repetitious. You already said this three times. Well, when you write stuff, when you're writing it every day, you don't realize that you're repeating things. You just can't remember all the stuff you've written six months ago. Also, you're constantly telling yourself the story. Yeah. That's the thing. And you forget that you've already said it. But the key is being edited to agree to be edited and working with your editor because a lot of big writers, I won't name any names,

20:30but they've finished the manuscript. They ship it off to New York and I say, don't touch it. Don't I'm done. I'm writing something else. And you can tell it. They need an editing. And we all do. Yeah, that's exactly. But as you say, the very first time you do that, I said my first book took three years. And when the notes come back, every time from the second book onwards, I immediately know what to lose. You just go, oh, I won't, that's going to go. So I just, I'm literally not going to write that sentence because I know it's not going to be there. John, we are going to go to a couple of others. I hope you don't mind, but loads more questions from our listeners right after this. This episode is bought to you by Lloyd. Now show business loves a club. I love all these sort of unofficial groupings of people. There's two Brapp packs that I'm big fan of. There are two Brapp packs. Yeah, there's two Brapp packs because there's the movie Brapp pack, all of the Judd Nelson, you know, Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen and all those guys. Right on in the breakfast club.

21:30Yeah. And then there's also the Brapp pack of those kind of turn of the 90s novelists, Bretti Sinellis, Jay Macanani, Donna Tart. And that's the thing creatively. It's actually very, very useful to hang out with other people who are incredibly talented. Yeah. Because you drive each other on to do things because a lot of the British novelists in the 80s, Martin Ames, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, they all used to sort of go and have lunch and have dinner. And you could just tell you know, they would talk about stuff and they would make each other's work much better. And that's the benefit of being in a group, being in a club. It becomes more than the sum of its parts. Clubs really do have benefits like club loids and elevated everyday bank account with exclusive benefits, plus a lifestyle perk like cinematics. And you get no fees on debit card spending and withdrawals abroad. And exclusive mortgage rate discount to interest on your balance. To join a club worth being in, search club loids. You must be a UK resident, age 18 or over to apply. This account has a £5 monthly fee, refunded each month you pay in £2,000 or more.

22:30Oh my gosh, it is back. It is back everyone. Celebrity traders is back this week and honestly, for me and Marina, this is like our World Cup. Yeah, for those that don't know, the first episode from the castle is coming out on Thursday. And it's going to be broadcast every Thursday and Friday right up until the fine-off. Now we're going to be taking this incredibly seriously this year as every year. Every Friday at 10pm, you'll have a full debrief on the week screaming and plotting on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll just be talking about what you've seen, no spoilers for the rest of the series. And don't send us any either. See you there. Welcome back everybody. I am with John Grisham as you know and our next question comes from the

23:34Elaine Greensboro. Elaine says, what is the most brutal industry you've seen? Law, publishing or movie making? Wow, there's so diverse question, though, isn't it? Great question. Movie making is a craze while everyone is counting. No, I'm not. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. Great question. Movie making is a craze while everyone is counting. The movies are insane. Movies are just insane because I've been around the fringes for 35 years, especially nowadays when you can't... I've not had a featured film made in 20 years. And you've had a lot of hits. I had the 30 years ago. I had the first wave of the big legal thrillers, the first five or six movies, it looked easy. I'd write the book, they'd do the adaptation, and two years later the movie comes out. That's impossible now. And this is what really is hard to believe.

24:34Those are big movies, big box office, grosses, domestic and foreign, big cast, great director, city park, Alan Picoula, Joel Schumacher, great directors, and everybody made money. We all made money out of those movies, and that model doesn't work today. Because I don't know why, I can't explain why, but Hollywood makes so few smart adult dramas. They just don't, they want to make Spider-Man tin or whatever. And it's all going to TV, right? Huge factors, TV and streaming, which has been good for all of us. But it's a different world, and Hollywood is William Gohm and the screenwriter said the first thing you learn about Hollywood is that nobody knows what's going on. And that's true in so many ways. And when you see a movie, it's a miracle you got made. I mean, I think, because publishing, honestly, because I've worked in television for a very long time, and a little bit of movies, movies to me is completely insane. Television is a bit insane. Publishing, I sort of think is quite, as you say, you write, and editor does a little bit of editing,

25:39and then the publisher puts it out. Nothing else happens. Whereas in movies, if there's like 500 people, you think, I don't know who you are, but you're suddenly telling me what this story should be. I'll give you notes. Everybody gives you notes. They give you notes, so they take out a picture script. Publishing is still an honorable business. I mean, most people in publishing still mean what they say. They honor their word. If you offer a contract, you read the contract, you'll order your reads, you sign a contract. They're going to deliver. Most writers deliver when they're supposed to deliver, although we're notorious for being late, or drunk or whatever, that's the imagination of the profession. Or a little bit of both. A little bit of both. But yeah, it's still a very honorable profession. I have literary attorneys in New York, I've worked with for years, and when they deal with the Hollywood lawyers, they shake their heads. It's a different, it's a jungle. It's like a different species. It's a different species. It's a different type of person out there inside.

26:40I've always stayed away from it. I've never gone out there. I've never gotten caught up in all the glamour. That was back then. Now we can't get a film made. And I'm fine with that too. I'm happy to stay away from it. I've read so many bad screenplays trying to adapt my stuff. I'm stopped doing that. All I can do is, all I can control is the book. I can't. The French illusion comes out in three weeks. The book from page one, it is a movie. It is non-stop action. It's smart. It's a great plot, great ending, all the kind of stuff. It's made for a movie. I can't do a single thing today to get that movie made. If I gave away the film rights for free, if I wrote a screenplay for free, if I did everything for free, if I said, okay, I'm going to be involved. I can't do any of that. It's not going to work. It's not going to hit the film get made. It's like going into a country where you don't, it's not just you don't understand the language, you don't understand the script. Everything is work. So the French illusion, which is your new book, I would say to anyone who is on their first book or something.

27:41Just look at the very, very first chapter of this. Understand what it is that you do, which is it is impossible not to read on, which is what you've always been amazing at in your career. And then the next chapter, you pass something on top of that. And then you pass something and it starts very domestic. You're like, okay, I know everyone. I'm in with everyone. And then suddenly the camera pulls out and out and out. And the world gets bigger and bigger and bigger. We go back to movies very quickly. We have a question from Tim Hatton. It's a really simple one. Do you have a favorite adaptation of one of your books? You talked about that golden era where you had hit off the hit of great movies. But do you have looking back a favorite? Francis Ford Copeland did the rainmaker. And it was, he loves riders. And he wanted me on the set every day. He had a brand new espresso machine. And he would make a, he's big, thick, rich espresso. Between takes. So you're sitting there, you want me to drink espresso with Mel de la. And we were just wired, you know, both bouncing out.

28:41But it was watching the movie made was being made. It was so boring. It's nothing. It's boring. It's watching a film. But that was, he told me, he said, I'm going to stick to this. I'm going to stick to the story. And I said, please do. That's all you can ask for. Be very faithful to the source material. And that adaptation was very good. Matt Damon, Claire Dany, Danny DeVito, John Voort, really great, great cast. The firm movie was a mess. It was fun to watch, but the ending was really got lost. Time to kill was okay. They were all enjoyable. The chamber was not very good. Gene Hacken was the old guy with death row. And nobody went to see that movie. They brought it to me by the time, by the time we saw the movie, I had read the script. And when I read the script, I said, this thing is in really bad shape. Don't, don't, don't film this. But it's funny that they wouldn't show you that to you. They wouldn't listen. They were, I said too much and they got mad. And I said, this is not the story. They filmed it any way it didn't work.

29:41Nobody went to see it. I was kind of glad nobody went to see it. But the other movies were big hits. But long, long-winded answer to your question, the favorite adaptation is the Rainmaker. Jamie Crix says, my favorite writer is John Gusham. Who is your favorite writer? Oh, God. That's a tough one, right? Oh, a tough one. I'm going to go around the houses on this a little bit. Favorite writers, I'm going to say. Oh, boy. I love John Lekorey. He, when I read Little Drama Girl, the book came out in 1980. I read the book about 1990. I was trying to write then. And I thought to myself, this is a brilliant book. It's timely. It's still this timelessness to Palestinian conflict. And we look at what we are now. But it's such a great, smart plot. There's so many layers to it. The writing is always brilliant. How do you deal with it? I love John Lekorey. How do you deal with reading somebody who is so brilliant when you are thinking of writing?

30:42That's quite a tricky one, right? It's very tricky. And as a general rule, I don't read fiction when I'm writing. Because we always want to read good books. And invariably, I'll catch myself doing something if I'm writing that I wouldn't normally do. I don't know why. I just, you catch yourself doing it. You're being influenced. And you don't really realize it's a... Suddenly, there's like a small town lawyer in Mississippi talking like George Smiley. I think I have it this time. I can't do that. But what I realized this last month, I was reading, I read a bunch of classics again. I was reading Catch 22, which is... It was funny, you're 50 years ago, that is now. But it's so overwritten. And I called myself writing longer sentences. Did you ever meet LeCairn and to do that? No, it's one big regret. I had several opportunities. We had a standing offer in New York. We had the same attorney. This wonderful literary lawyer that a lot of writers used, he passed away five years ago.

31:43And when David would come to town, to New York, he would have dinner with this lawyer. And I said, I said I would love to have dinner and meet him in the lawyer. So I'm going to make that happen. He said that would be my dream is to have you two guys at dinner. But it's never happened. We never got... We never made it happen. I came over here a couple of times and should have reached out more. I have some regrets over the years where I didn't reach out enough to people who are no longer with us. And I just... I'm trying to learn from that. But I'm not naturally that outgoing. Not that garrulous. It takes some work to strike up a new acquaintance of people and especially writers who are reclusively to begin with. And I've got some regrets over the years. Any rites has ever given you good advice, writing advice, life advice. In 1991, the firm had just come out and I got this letter one day,

32:43postmarked from Bangor, Maine. And I opened it up and it was from Stephen King. And he clipped the New York Times best-settle list. And I was like number six on the list or something like that. And he just said, John, congratulations. I love the firm. Congratulations. Welcome to the big leagues. And I thought that's pretty cool. That's fun. So then we met in New York. He called one. They got a phone call out of blue one day from Stephen King's. Hey John, Stephen King up here in Maine. He said the national book awards were coming up. And people like us were not, no, we're not invited. Okay. Yeah. It's very highbrow. And he said, I've got, he said, I paid 10,000 bucks for a table. And my goal is to get a bunch of commercial writers to go with me and stink up the joint. And I said, how could I say no to that? And so I went and I met him with Tabitha's wife. And Donald Westlake and who else was our table?

33:44And we had a great time that everybody was polite, you know. So that's how we actually met. He came to Oxford, Mississippi, when we lived back then for the book festival, and we were right around, he wanted to go right around and pick up truck to find some real red necks. And I said, well, I can show you a lot of red necks. I've got to pick up truck. And we had two days together and just great advice about everything. You know, especially movies. I was in the, you know, we were doing movies back there that they were being adapted. And he said, look, man, he's had every kind of experience in the world from, he won the Oscar with Kathy Bates and Misery to actually having to sue somebody to stop a film from being released. He said, every kind of experience in the world, 40 something books or stories adapted to film. 40, I've had, you know, six or seven. And he said, here's, he said, if you deal with Hollywood, there's very simple advice. Get all your money up front, kiss it goodbye, and expect it to be something different.

34:45If you don't like that, don't deal with Hollywood. And I've been that way ever since. They're just going to be something different. If I don't like it, don't take the money. The real thing, I always think with books and all of that stuff, people are always interested in movie adaptations. And I absolutely understand that the key, I think, is the same key as at the beginning, right? Which is, you get up and you sit down and you write. And that's still the key today. Oh, every day, every day. But the final question from Sam, then I'll give her or him the final word. And he or she says, you've lived the dream of every aspiring novelist. Is it as good as it is cracked up to be? Well, yes, beyond what I could have dreamed. My wife and I still walk around the farm and say to ourselves, say to each other. We could never have, we didn't dream all this. We didn't, our dreams are so small back then. 30 years ago, 40 years ago, we got married. 45 years ago now. The whole thing has been like a dream.

35:48And because of that, we've managed to stay grounded and enjoy life and thankful for family friends and the career. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, but everything I could possibly thought of back then. Yeah. I was going to say we had so many questions for you. You're, but people love you. So many people talking about they've, I'm a lawyer because I read these books and but just so much stuff, so much love for you. And for me as well. So I honestly, all the way from the firm right up to the French illusion. Thank you for everything you've done. And the company you've kept me in and the stories you've told me. It's, it's such a huge, I know you didn't get to meet John LeCarrie, but at least I got to meet John Christian. So thank you, John. That pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

37:05Thank you. Thank you.

38:05Thank you.