Patricia Cornwell - Author HARDtalk


Patricia Cornwell - Author

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Welcome to HARDtalk.

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I am Steven Sackur.

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There is a select club of fiction writers whose next book is eagerly

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anticipated by legions of fans around the world.

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And my guest today is in that club and has been for

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more than two decades.

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Patricia Cornwell can lay claim to have invented the whole

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genre of crime scene forensic detective fiction.

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Her investigator, Kay Scarpetta, has featured in two dozen novels

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and inspired a host of imitators.

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The author herself talks of her determination to confront

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and control her fears.

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Do her books tell us what she is frightened of?

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Patricia Cornwell, welcome to HARDtalk.

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Thank you.

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I've heard I do the same thing you do.

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What's that?

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Autopsies.

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Well, this isn't going to be an autopsy, but it is going to be

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a dissection of what you do.

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I want to begin by asking you, when did you first realise you had

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a gift for telling stories with an edge of darkness to them?

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Truth is, I realised it at a young age, because I was always making

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up stories, you know, and the kids loved

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to hear my stories.

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I realised very early on that I could tell stories

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in a very frightening way.

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One day I was holding forth in a vacant lot near my house,

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I was probably nine or ten, in North Carolina where I grew up,

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and I scared these little boys so badly they burst into tears

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and went racing home.

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I felt awful, and I went, "Oh, my goodness, I have the ability

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to make little boys cry."

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I should have acted on that and made them cry a whole lot more,

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but I felt bad about it.

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So I knew that I could scare people at a really young age.

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Very interesting, and you say you felt awful, but I dare say

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you felt a little empowered too.

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Because it gives you a certain power.

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It didn't stop me, in fact, you know, I was writing stories

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constantly, including in school, and they would pin them up

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on the bulletin board, like when I was in the fourth grade,

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a little kid.

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But I will tell you the most common phrase in any of my stories

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was "all of a sudden".

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You know, because everything was spooky and scary

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and it's someone walking under a street light in the shadows,

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and the moon and clouds going by, then I had to put a witch on a broom

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and draw a picture, so it was all spooky.

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My favourite holiday was Hallowe'en.

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I planned for it for months, loved it.

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You are painting this picture of you at nine or ten,

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I know by nine or ten your own life had had a lot of fear and sadness

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and upset in it, because your dad left home when you

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were very small child.

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I know your mum had mental issues, and had a breakdown

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when you were still a child.

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Was there a sense in which you were trying to impose control

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on your life, find a way of controlling things by writing

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stories, where you were the author of everything?

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You know, when I was little, I have to say if I had not,

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did not have artistic and some means to lift myself out of

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what was all round me, and it is not that it would be

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necessarily as bad to someone else as it was to me,

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but I am very sensitive.

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I don't know what it was, but I took things really hard,

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and my father leaving when I was five, and I adored him,

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and on Christmas morning of all things, I was -

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I still remember it as if it was yesterday,

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really, and a lot of other things, and my mother, several times

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when she had deep depression, she was hospitalised,

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and we went into foster care, and that was really bad,

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and I wasn't allowed to leave the house and things like that.

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So I developed this ability to transport myself,

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it is no accident that Star Trek was my favourite show on the rare

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occasion I was allowed to watch it.

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I wanted to beam myself somewhere else, and creativity

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gave me a chance do that.

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I think you are right, I think it has been tainted by fear

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and horror and going into those dark places, because I think I felt

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if I could go into them, maybe I wouldn't be afraid

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of them anymore.

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What is amazing, you have not only gone into them

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but you have stayed in them, to a certain extent.

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I guess, without trying to be a sort of pop psychologist, psychiatrist,

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you may have written to a certain extent to control

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and confront demons, but you have stayed doing it.

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Some people might have thought you conquered the demon,

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you had great success with the books, you could have moved

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on, but you keep writing them.

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It is like when Mary Shelley created Frankenstein, she didn't know that

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monster was going to live with her for eternity, right?

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So we create something that might actually be a means to you dealing

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or coping with your own psyche, and it kind of controls

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your life after that, but in my case I am happy it does.

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It is a good thing, it is better than what I came out of,

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which is a life with no control.

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This is the latest book, Chaos, I think it is the 24th.

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Yes.

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Of your Kay Scarpetta series.

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That is right.

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Would it be right to see all of them as a form of therapy?

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You could say that.

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Hopefully they don't read like therapy and they don't read

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like some neurotic drivel, which my early ones did,

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trust me, the ones that didn't get published.

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I work through a lot of things in this, and I have Scarpetta

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do the same.

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Her biggest underlying motivation is that she became an expert

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at death at a young age because she watched her father dying.

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I became an expert at loss, and the loss caused me

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to fear death.

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If you are little and you feel abandoned and alone and you are not

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sure who is taking care of you, you worry you won't survive,

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and I am lucky I did.

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You know, I really, really am.

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So I return to my own crime scene through a very poetic way of dealing

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with the life of Kay Scarpetta and the cases she works.

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She deals with the loss of her father by always

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being this expert in death, but no matter how much she picks it

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apart and puts it back together again,

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he will never be alive again and neither will any

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of her patients.

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How do you do that as human being?

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That is what is fun about these books, and interesting for me.

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How does she go on, and how do any of us, and so it is not

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just about a thriller, it is about much bigger

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subjects than that.

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Well, in a sense, and I said it at the beginning,

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you were the inventor of a genre which introduced us to the skills

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of the forensic investigator, interpreting crime scenes,

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using science, using research, and it seems to me there is linked

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there also with your beginnings and your professional life

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as a journalist, which was you going out finding stories and researching

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them, and also your obsession almost with the fine detail.

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It seems you really really want to dig.

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I am a bit of a weirdo that way.

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It is true, when I started out at the Charlotte Observer,

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within no time when they put me into the police beat,

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it happened within six months of my being hired as general

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assignment, and that was after I did the TV magazine and sent it

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to hell in a hand basket.

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I was the worst TV updater they have ever had in

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the history of newspaper.

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When I got into the police beat, I used wear a necklace that had

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a pendant with nothing on it.

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I felt like when I went off to college in life,

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I didn't know anything about anything, I had never

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written a term paper.

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Shakespeare meant going to see the movie when I was in high school,

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didn't know crap about life, and so when I got into journalism,

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everything was a brand-new experience to me.

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So I would take a story that had been written 20 times,

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and I would say look at it as if no-one had ever told it

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before, and next thing you know you are winning awards,

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because you are telling something that is right in front of everyone,

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but they don't see it when they walk past,

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and it is a great story.

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So that has just been my method, it is what I still do.

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Millions of people love these books, and, you know, there are, I guess,

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other writers too in the same sort of genre who write great detective

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fiction which sells by the million.

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There are other people who frankly aren't interested in crime fiction

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because of its predictability.

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I mean, the bottom line is, you know, when you write,

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read a crime thriller that there is going to be resolution.

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I mean, you know you have written two dozen, so we suspect you are not

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going to kill off Kay Scarpetta, she is going to come out on top.

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She may fire me some day, I worry about it all the time.

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Do you see that point, that you know, for anybody

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who doesn't want to enter a story sort of knowing what the outcome is,

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there is a problem with a lot of crime fiction.

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Well, you know, I think especially if you are talking about

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the more traditional, where it is conventional

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and there are certain tricks to the trade,

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I remember the first mystery convention, one of the only ones

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I went to in the early days, and they were talking about red

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herrings and buried clues, and I went what?

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This is coming out of the context of watching autopsies and crime

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scenes, a red herring is probably some weird food.

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I didn't know what they were talking about.

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And from the beginning, I have always gone away

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from the conventions of the genre, and you don't know necessarily.

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In Chaos, you probably have a pretty good idea

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who might behind a lot of this, but you don't know what is going

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on because it is more like real life.

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Have you ever written a story where there is no resolution,

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where the perpetrator walks away from the scene, scot-free?

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Yes, but he has got caught later.

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That is the point.

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I have had my fourth book, the person didn't get caught.

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You don't do that.

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But I went why not?

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It happens in real life.

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We will get him later.

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He didn't get caught for a long time.

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A really long time.

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One person we thought was caught isn't, so that is the way it works.

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That is life.

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You mean when you say he got caught eventually in a different book?

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A different book.

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She finally got - Scarpetta did him in,

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but it took a while.

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The other temptation a lot of readers have is to try to figure

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out how much of Kay Scarpetta, who so many people feel

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they know so well, is actually Patricia Cornwell.

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Well, there are many things about us that are similar,

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in term of our DNA you might say.

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I think like she does, I solve cases the way she does,

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I have the same sensibilities.

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I would like to think I am the type of humanitarian,

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have the same values she does.

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Beyond that there are huge differences.

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I am not Italian, I am not a fallen Catholic, I am more

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of a fallen everything else.

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I am not that smart, I am not educated the way she was,

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I couldn't really do an autopsy.

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I wouldn't try, it would be wrong.

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I don't really collect evidence at crime scenes,

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but I know how to describe it, so there many differences.

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And the other thing is, she is probably a lot...

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She has a much thicker skin, and she is much more disciplined

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than I would be.

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I am volatile.

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I am an artist, I get moods - she can handle it.

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She is much more disciplined.

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I would be a terrible Kay Scarpetta.

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She wouldn't make a very good Patricia Cornwell.

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That is the truth.

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She's seen a lot of the results of graphic violence.

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And much of it directed at young women.

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Not all of it, but much of it.

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Some of it is fetishised, a lot of it is sexual.

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How close to the edge of taste, I suppose,

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but also questions about voyeurism and titillation even...

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How close to the edge of those issues do you feel you get?

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It's funny you would say that.

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I am much more mindful of that edge than a lot of people would know.

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You want to get up close to it, but you don't want to cross it.

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The problem is knowing what that means, where is the edge

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and what does crossing it mean?

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And for my case, it's where it becomes violent in a way that's

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no longer safe.

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In other words, if you're showing what the killer is doing as opposed

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to showing what Scarpetta imagines, how she cleans up after the fact

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and solves things, the first part of that is a lot more dangerous

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than the latter part.

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You're safe when you're with her.

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So when I went to the third person point of view and started,

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in some books, getting into the mind of the killer, I did that for a few

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books and in my opinion I started getting over that line and I didn't

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like the way it felt.

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That's one of the reasons I stopped doing it.

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I should say, I thought you stopped doing that,

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writing in the third person rather than the I form, reading the book

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as though you were Kay, I thought you stopped doing that

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because the audience didn't seem to like it very much?

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They didn't like it.

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They didn't like it at all, but then I didn't like it either.

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And now I understand why they didn't like it, because...

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Maybe you shouldn't care that they didn't like it.

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As an artist, you surely have to write from within rather

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than write simply what you think your audience wants?

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I don't write what I think they want but I do care

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what they don't want especially.

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If something is disturbing and upsetting to my fans,

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like when I killed off Benton Wesley, it's like the little

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boys crying in the parking lot, I made the little boys cry

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in the parking lot, dammit, you know?

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And my fans were heartbroken, outraged, upset and...

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And when you talk about your fans, I'm just thinking to myself,

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you sound a bit like...

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Readers, whatever you want to call them.

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Whatever, but you sound a bit like a sort of franchise and I just

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think, when we think about the biggest selling

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thriller writers...

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I'm turning around squaring off at you now!

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Notice my body language has changed anyway.

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Well, that's good, but think about James Patterson

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and some of the others.

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They sell by the gazillion, but it's a bit industrial, you know?

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They have teams of writers, Patterson, overseas,

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and he presents them with sort of plot ideas and then they go

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and write it in the style of Patterson and it all becomes

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a little industrialised.

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Are you getting close to that?

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Never.

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Scarpetta is not going to let me share that writing with anybody.

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I wish I could sometimes, but she only talks to me.

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And she doesn't always talk to me.

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If I thought I could hire a team of people and produce three or four

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of these every year that the readers would love, I would do it.

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I would make more money, probably, than I do now.

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But I can't do that.

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These come from some place inside of me.

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I give them everything I've got while I'm doing it.

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I do care what the readers think.

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They spend their good money on these books and I wouldn't be

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here today if it wasn't them.

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Does it take it out of you?

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Yes, yes.

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Because we've talked about the dark places and there is darkness

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in the books.

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You say this is personal and your writing from your

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heart and yourself.

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And yet what is miraculous about what you do is pretty much

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every year there is a new one.

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I think you've been writing these books for pretty much 25 years

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and sure enough there are Scarpettas.

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So you churn them out.

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I try to.

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I try to do one a year.

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Occasionally I might do something else instead,

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like when I did Jack the Ripper, which the new one of those

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is coming out...

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So things like that, but...

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The books themselves, what they take out of me

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is, it's exhausting.

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It takes of all my focus and it hangs over my head the whole time

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I'm doing it.

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It's really hard.

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If the research that has taken the most out of me.

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When I first started doing all this, you really don't know what it's

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going to do to you until it's already happened, and then

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it's too late.

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There's no getting out of it and no going back.

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And I changed my life in a way that I may well have given

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myself a disease.

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I won't get over this!

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What do you mean, a disease?

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Because I have, like, post-traumatic stress type stuff.

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I have images and things that are like malware,

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I can't get them out of my head.

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I've seen things I don't show my readers.

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I've heard things I don't ever tell my readers.

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And when those scenes visit me, when I least expect,

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like when I'm lying in bed just trying to relax a bit and then

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I just get up and I have to just leave the room.

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Because they are too hard.

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And if I didn't write about it, that's at least something I can do

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with this really morbid a rather horrible database that I have

0:16:180:16:21

in my head.

0:16:210:16:22

To be honest with you, it's been hard.

0:16:220:16:25

No, I haven't heard you talk quite like that before.

0:16:250:16:28

It actually brings me back to where we started,

0:16:280:16:30

with stuff that is in you that goes all the way back to childhood.

0:16:300:16:34

Yeah.

0:16:340:16:37

Including come and I have to ask you about this because I just wonder

0:16:370:16:41

if it's still there in you, really close to the surface...

0:16:410:16:44

You were abused as a child.

0:16:440:16:48

I think that the two things I remember most is that I won't get

0:16:480:16:52

over and I probably worry about it all the time,

0:16:520:17:03

have the feeling of being existential, having no power,

0:17:030:17:06

that nobody cares, you're invisible, you're nothing, you're not

0:17:060:17:08

going to amount to anything.

0:17:080:17:09

There's a part of me that will always feel like somehow it's

0:17:090:17:13

going to turn out that way again.

0:17:130:17:14

I will live running with that chasing me, that I will be

0:17:140:17:18

that helpless child.

0:17:180:17:19

Once again.

0:17:190:17:20

And that's what keeps me going.

0:17:200:17:21

And you don't get over these things.

0:17:210:17:23

Sometimes, I have so immersed myself in the traumas and the tragedies

0:17:230:17:26

of other people because I sort of desperately need to try to heal

0:17:260:17:30

other people because I know what it feels like to have nobody who can do

0:17:300:17:34

that for you.

0:17:340:17:35

And then when somebody finally does, and I was given that gift

0:17:350:17:39

with people like Ruth Graham, who make me feel like,

0:17:390:17:41

wow, if that lady paid attention to me when I'm just this is nobody

0:17:410:17:45

in this little town, maybe there's something special.

0:17:450:17:47

It's really about healing yourself, isn't it?

0:17:470:17:49

It's about healing myself and one of the ways we heal ourselves

0:17:490:17:52

is to heal others.

0:17:520:17:54

In fact I don't know of any other weight to heal yourself then to do

0:17:540:17:58

that for other people.

0:17:580:17:59

What I hear in your voice is actually an insecurity in a way

0:17:590:18:02

that is release of rising for a woman who is one

0:18:020:18:05

of the bestselling authors in the world, you know,

0:18:050:18:08

who travels with an entourage, who has come up what all of us

0:18:080:18:11

from the outside would regard as a fantastic life

0:18:110:18:14

and so much that's good.

0:18:140:18:15

And yet you still feel insecure?

0:18:150:18:19

Oh, I'll never change.

0:18:190:18:20

I'm still that scared little girl.

0:18:200:18:22

I'm still that scared little girl afraid to open the closet door

0:18:220:18:25

or look under the bed, and by god I'm going to because I can't stand

0:18:250:18:29

being afraid of anything.

0:18:290:18:30

And that's what people don't understand.

0:18:300:18:32

They think I'm some superhero like Lucy in these books.

0:18:320:18:34

I'm not.

0:18:340:18:36

I learned all the things to do them but I'm really at heart just

0:18:360:18:39

a little girl with a crayon writing poetry and making her own little

0:18:390:18:43

books and selling them together and drawing pictures.

0:18:430:18:45

And yet I've thrown myself into a house of horrors,

0:18:450:18:48

to write something that I felt would matter and would change things

0:18:480:18:51

and would empower people and take a character to do what I wish

0:18:510:18:55

I could do.

0:18:550:18:56

I wish I could kick butt the way she does.

0:18:560:18:58

I'm glad you talk about Lucy because I did want to talk

0:18:580:19:01

about her, but one particular aspect of her in particular,

0:19:010:19:04

which is, you introduce this character, she is the niece

0:19:040:19:07

of Scarpetta and she is a crucial character, and she's gay.

0:19:070:19:10

Yeah.

0:19:100:19:11

And you are gay and I don't know whether you actually wanted to come

0:19:110:19:15

out, but you did come out and it was quite a completed story

0:19:150:19:19

because you had a love affair and it got into the media

0:19:190:19:22

and it was all quite messy.

0:19:220:19:24

Oh, I tended to make mistakes in really big ways,

0:19:240:19:26

let's just put it that way!

0:19:260:19:28

But you have talked about Ruth Graham, who was a great

0:19:280:19:31

mental to you and she was obviously the wife of Billy Graham,

0:19:310:19:34

the pastor, the Evangelist, an internationally known figure

0:19:340:19:36

who was a Christian conservative.

0:19:370:19:38

In some ways, you've been quite conservative in your life and yet

0:19:380:19:41

you have made a point now of speaking out on gay marriage

0:19:410:19:44

and other issues concerning the gay community.

0:19:440:19:46

Have you left behind your conservatism?

0:19:460:19:52

I was never conservative.

0:19:520:19:53

I mean come as a kid I was conservative but only

0:19:530:19:56

because I grew up...

0:19:560:19:58

The first seven years in Miami and then North Carolina,

0:19:580:20:01

a place I wouldn't go right now, hello, by the way...

0:20:010:20:04

But anyway, in this little town where Billy Graham lives up

0:20:040:20:07

on the top of the mountain, everything was Evangelist

0:20:070:20:10

will Christian stuff, nobody had liquor in the town

0:20:100:20:12

that they admitted to, nobody was gay, that they admitted to...

0:20:120:20:15

So when you first realised you were gay...

0:20:150:20:17

That was really bad.

0:20:170:20:25

Were you battling with yourself?

0:20:250:20:26

Oh!

0:20:260:20:26

Listen, I'd never even heard of that when I was growing up.

0:20:260:20:29

There were spinsters and roommates.

0:20:290:20:31

I'd never heard of gay people.

0:20:310:20:32

That you were drunk or a sinner or a paedophile, a child molester...

0:20:320:20:36

But the gay stuff was not something that was common in the fabric

0:20:360:20:39

of my little sheltered world.

0:20:400:20:41

And never would I have thought that that would be what I would grow

0:20:410:20:45

up to be.

0:20:450:20:47

I mean, I didn't make the choice.

0:20:470:20:49

Why would I want to do that and get criticised and pigs on?

0:20:490:20:53

And you know something people don't know?

0:20:530:20:55

And I'll tell you and I've never said this in public before...

0:20:550:20:58

The truth of the matter is, when I got outed,

0:20:580:21:01

which was when Vanity Fair did this really horrible story

0:21:010:21:03

and there were things everywhere because some people just decided

0:21:030:21:06

to do that because they were, it was just really to be cruel...

0:21:060:21:10

When I knew this was all coming out and this was like in the mid-90s

0:21:100:21:14

and I was devastated and frightened and I had never had my privacy

0:21:140:21:17

exposed like this and I knew what this was going to mean

0:21:170:21:20

to people, I picked up the phone, I called Ruth Graham and I said,

0:21:200:21:24

Ruth, can I come and see you?

0:21:240:21:26

Because there's something I have to tell you and I'm going to do

0:21:260:21:30

it in person.

0:21:300:21:31

She said "Sure, honey, come on up".

0:21:310:21:33

So I got on my plane or my helicopter, I don't know

0:21:330:21:36

what it was, but I flew to the mountains in North Carolina,

0:21:360:21:39

I went up to her house, I sat down and I said,

0:21:390:21:42

"You need to know that I'm gay and the reason I'm telling

0:21:420:21:46

you is that you're going to hear about it anyway".

0:21:460:21:48

So here's what she did.

0:21:480:21:50

She said, "Oh, honey, I've no news since you were that big.

0:21:500:21:53

I know that's not true about you.

0:21:530:21:55

" And the fact of the matter is, she was always kind and loving

0:21:550:21:59

when Stacey and I, Stacey met her before Ruth died,

0:21:590:22:01

and she was always welcoming.

0:22:010:22:03

Stacey is your partner.

0:22:030:22:04

Yes.

0:22:040:22:05

But Ruth, she did not judge me, she never brought it up,

0:22:050:22:08

but even when Vanity Fair ask her about it, she's at the same

0:22:080:22:12

thing, "I've known her since that..."

0:22:120:22:13

She wouldn't go into it, she wouldn't accept it,

0:22:130:22:16

in a way?

0:22:160:22:17

Just denial.

0:22:170:22:17

Yes.

0:22:170:22:18

Did that hurt you?

0:22:180:22:19

It hurt me terribly.

0:22:190:22:20

It still hurts me.

0:22:200:22:22

Because as much as I sing her praises and love her and I know

0:22:220:22:25

that she was kind and she would never have like kicked us out

0:22:250:22:29

of the house or done anything like that, I don't think

0:22:290:22:32

she would have voted in our favour, based on that she just couldn't

0:22:320:22:35

deal with it.

0:22:350:22:36

It was too...

0:22:360:22:37

It was too much against everything that she'd ever been taught

0:22:370:22:41

and what she was surrounded by, what she lived with.

0:22:410:22:43

It didn't compute to her.

0:22:430:22:45

Because that story is quite a few years old now,

0:22:450:22:47

we're talking the 1990s.

0:22:470:22:48

Yes.

0:22:480:22:49

But the last time I saw her was 2006 and I was up in the mountains,

0:22:490:22:54

Stacey was there, we were in the bedroom talking and she couldn't

0:22:540:22:57

have been kinder.

0:22:570:22:58

But it's not something we could ever discuss.

0:22:580:23:00

You have vanquished a lot of demons.

0:23:000:23:02

But I'm getting the impression there are still some inside you?

0:23:020:23:05

Oh, how can you not have demons in this life?

0:23:050:23:08

There's so much to deal with, so much to overcome.

0:23:080:23:10

And then just when you overcome some things, you start getting older

0:23:100:23:14

and have to deal with everything else.

0:23:140:23:15

You know, so life is a struggle and it's what we make of it.

0:23:150:23:19

And as much as I'm so grateful to have the success that I have,

0:23:190:23:23

I also want to feel like have made the world a better place and that

0:23:230:23:27

I leave it a better place and that I'm honest while I'm here,

0:23:270:23:31

even if it's hard, which is one of the reasons I want to do your

0:23:310:23:35

show, because I like somebody who asks me the hard questions.

0:23:350:23:38

We should all be giving hard answers too.

0:23:380:23:40

This question of fear that sort of runs through the interview

0:23:400:23:43

from the get go, from the beginning of your life,

0:23:430:23:46

are you still fearful today?

0:23:460:23:47

Of course.

0:23:470:23:48

I'm fearful of failure, I'm fearful of death, you know?

0:23:480:23:51

And loss and violence.

0:23:510:23:52

I know way too much about everything bad that can happen to everybody.

0:23:520:23:56

I know the liabilities of all things because I've seen so much.

0:23:560:23:59

But the thing is, I get to produce something beautiful out of it.

0:23:590:24:02

The art is fun and if I entertain people then I've taken something

0:24:020:24:06

and actually created something really good out of something that

0:24:060:24:09

maybe didn't start out so hot.

0:24:090:24:10

Patricia Cornwell, that is a great place to end.

0:24:100:24:13

Thank you so much for being on HARDTalk.

0:24:130:24:15

Thank you very much.

0:24:150:24:16

It was great to talk to you.

0:24:160:24:18

Thank you.

0:24:180:24:19

Hello.

0:24:410:24:42

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