Patricia Cornwell, novelist: Imagination saved me

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1:17Patricia Cornwell:Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, takes a non-partisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio.

1:54Patricia Cornwell:Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. Hello, I'm James Kamarasamy and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like their freedom.

2:19Jamie Coomarasamy:A gender equal world would be a better world for men too. We need to ceasefire. We need healing. We need trust.

2:26Patricia Cornwell:These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end. For this episode, I speak to Patricia Cornwell, one of the world's best-selling crime writers, whose books have sold more than 120 million copies worldwide. She reflects on a childhood marked by trauma, instability and family mental illness. Patricia tells me how those experiences shaped her life and her writing and how the events of her childhood would later influence the stories that made her famous.

3:00Jamie Coomarasamy:A lot of people, because I've written about crime and I have all these tough characters and Scarpetta's such a hero and all the rest of it, a lot of people wouldn't imagine that I myself was a victim of crime at the age of five and even had a grand jury proceeding and everything that I still remember because of being molested by an area security guard. So I had a lot of things start very young with me that caused me to have a different perspective on life, I think, than a lot of people would have. And unfortunately, I've kept, you know, I kept a lot of journals. I wrote an autobiographical work when I was in college, you know, like a 300-page manuscript because of the details in it that I wouldn't necessarily remember today about my early years.

3:50Patricia Cornwell:Welcome to The Interview from the BBC World Service with Patricia Cornwell.

3:55Jamie Coomarasamy:A lot of the stories that I tell, they're painful and they're not necessarily something that you easily share with people. It was therapy for me. This was how I vented, how I dealt with a lot of these traumas. It was, let me think, 1976. I was 19 years old, and I'd just gotten out of that psychiatric hospital where I was being treated for a terrible eating disorder that was only worse after I got out, not better. And my surrogate mother, Ruth Graham, that's Billy Graham's wife, she really tucked me under her wing at that point when I was 19. And she said, I want you to write your story. You have quite a story, and I believe you're talented, and I want you to write it.

4:36Jamie Coomarasamy:And she gave me a journal. and next thing you know I was typing up this manuscript that I worked on all through college but for example that it was also a way for me dealing with I mean I couldn't believe that I had to be hospitalized for two months and was down to 89 pounds and this is somebody who had been a tournament tennis player and I thought what is I you know it was literally I think I was

5:00Patricia Cornwell:trying to kill myself back then well I did well you'd I mean you had such a traumatic as you've said, early life. I mean, you mentioned that case when you were molested. I mean, as you said, you had to, I think, see the red pair of shorts that you were wearing passed around in court. Yeah, the table.

5:19Jamie Coomarasamy:I remember being humiliated by that even then at the age of five. I was embarrassed. And this goes to show you that victims, we really do, when you're victimized, you blame yourself. And it's not right that we do that. But imagine me blaming myself at age five because I thought, well, I should have gotten away from him. I should have run home quicker or I shouldn't have been talking to him because he was the neighborhood patrolman and he'd stop his car. And I was running wild because my mother was depressed and never leaving the bedroom and my dad was gone. And it's a wonder I didn't end up murdered, really, truth be told.

5:54Jamie Coomarasamy:But all of this was paving the road for me to do what I do in life. And I will tell people, and I hope that they will read this memoir and get encouragement from it, where sometimes the things that seem so bad about what's happened to us may end up being your greatest gift, if you can turn it into something that matters, or if it makes you stronger, more resilient.

6:16Patricia Cornwell:Yes. I mean, the traumas, for people that don't know, I mean, your mother, she was institutionalized, wasn't she? A couple of times, she burnt all your brother's clothing think at some point your father left you on the family on Christmas Day I mean a lot to take in for a young girl I mean at that point how were you coping with all that well I escaped in my

6:39Jamie Coomarasamy:imagination that is what I did from the earliest time that I can remember I was writing stories and drawing pictures and escaping into my imagination and I learned early on when the world is too difficult. I would just make up one of my own and I would spend my time there. And that gift or that talent or that ability to do that and stay like Alice going through the looking glass and going to an imagined place, that was a power that I developed out of survival instinct. But it's also made it possible for me to spend so much of time alone writing books. You can't be an author, I don't think, if you're not able to spend a lot of time alone.

7:22Patricia Cornwell:And they were particular stories. I think you said by the age of nine, I was telling scary stories that made the neighborhood children cry and run home.

7:29Jamie Coomarasamy:I know. I remember the first time that happened and I felt mortified, like I'd done something very wrong. But then the kids would come back and they wanted more. And then I said, OK, you want to go running home crying again? Come right on up here. I'll do it.

7:44Patricia Cornwell:and I'm fascinated by some of the you talk quite a lot about premonitions and dreams that you've had I think you're aged what 11 or so that you had a premonition you were driving past a bookstore and you saw just dozens of your own books in the window that was weird I was really weird um and

8:04Jamie Coomarasamy:and I almost didn't want to tell that story because it sounds so kooky but I still remember to this day, and I was probably 11 or 12, as you said, and I was with my mom and we were walking through, there was a shopping center in Asheville. And sometimes we would walk through it just a window shop. I mean, mom couldn't really afford to buy much of anything, but we would enjoy browsing. And on this particular day, we were walking past and there was a bookstore and I looked at it and suddenly the window was filled by books that were by me. I don't know. I mean, And I wasn't even thinking of being a writer at that stage.

8:40Jamie Coomarasamy:I wanted to be a tennis player. And so I thought, what in the world is that? And I didn't even tell my mother because I thought she would think I was weird. But that and then, of course, roll ahead many, many, many years later, I would be back in Asheville doing book signings. And yes, indeed, bookstores were filled with my books.

9:00Patricia Cornwell:Well, you also had a dream that Agatha Christie came to you and said, you will take my place.

9:05Jamie Coomarasamy:Yeah, well, we know that that didn't happen, that I took her place, but I did have the dream. I think Agatha felt horribly sorry for me and was trying to make me, you know, not feel so down on myself. But that that is true. What happened? This was probably 1984. I had finished the Ruth Graham biography. I was I was starting in the morgue, the medical examiner's office, doing research, trying to write my first murder mystery. And I just couldn't figure I couldn't seem to figure out how to tell the story. and I was really in despair. I thought, I'm not going to be able to do this. At night, I was asleep and I bet some people can relate to this.

9:41Jamie Coomarasamy:I was having a dream and I couldn't open my eyes, but yet I was conscious while I was dreaming and I was lying in bed and I was waiting in this long line in this dream and I thought, what am I doing in this line? I don't wait in line. I hate lines. And then I realized the line was approaching a table and Agatha Christie was doing a book signing and I thought, well, this is weird because I knew in my dream she wasn't alive anymore. So I finally got up to the table and I said, it's quite an honor. And she was signing a book and she said, you will take my place. And I said, excuse me? And she looked up at me and she said, you will take my place.

10:19Jamie Coomarasamy:And poof, she was gone and the dream was gone. And I woke up and I thought, okay, now that is really odd. And the thing that's even stranger about it is I had a lot of Agatha Christie overlaps. I mean, when postmortem came out and I went to Paris to get the book award, they presented for it over there. When I walked in the publisher's lobby, all the showcases were filled with postmortem and Agatha Christie. And then when I won the gold dagger in the UK, one of the judges was Agatha Christie's daughter. And the presenter, the person who presented the award was the grandson. So I don't know what that means.

10:56Jamie Coomarasamy:And I have hesitated to tell the story over the years in other interviews because it sounds very presumptuous. And I'm very quick to say we all know that nobody's going to take Agatha Christie's place. Not me, not anyone, not even J.K. Rowling with as many books as she's sold. I mean, Agatha is in a category all by herself. But maybe that was the universe trying to tell me not to give up.

11:20Patricia Cornwell:It's interesting you raise that point about previously just not talking about it. How did you go about choosing which parts of your very eventful life to include and which to leave out?

11:34Jamie Coomarasamy:Well, there's some things I would leave out because it's just not appropriate to tell. It's not fair to the person. You know, everybody, you have things with people in life, but it doesn't necessarily represent the whole of who they are. And you have to pick and choose what you decide to make public if you're doing something like this. But the other thing is there are things that in my research and in my years of working at the medical examiner's office, to be honest with you, there are horrors that I've seen that I don't share with anybody. I will never write about them. I won't talk about them because I don't need to have somebody traumatized the way I was when I had to witness certain things about violence, particularly when you see recordings and things of people who are alive when terrible things are being done to them.

12:21Jamie Coomarasamy:And so but but for the most part, I mean, I've shared a lot of things in this memoir that I have never talked about to the media, like the Agatha dream, because it it sounds strange. But at the same time, it really did happen. I did have that dream. I also had the weird dream of Princess Diana when I was doing the primetime television special on her death. And she was in the corner of a cafe, wasn't she? Yes. She was sitting there at a table all by herself, and it was in the UK. This is in my dream. And I walked in to get a coffee or something, and I saw her sitting over there, and she seemed unbelievably distressed.

13:01And finally, she got up to leave, and then weirdly, there was an elevator in the middle

13:06Jamie Coomarasamy:of the room. And I said, are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? Would you like me to go with you? And she said, you can't go where I'm going. And then she was gone. Now, I don't know what that meant, but that was right when I was doing this special. And so, you know, I don't know the meaning of all these things, but I'm going to share them with people because I'm not the only one who's had experiences like this.

13:31Patricia Cornwell:You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service with me, James Kamarasamy.

14:02Patricia Cornwell:The CFO LinkedIn has a word for that. Bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash broadcast. That's linkedin.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

15:03Patricia Cornwell:26 for these limited time offers. Start planning today at applevacations.com or contact your travel advisor.

15:17Patricia Cornwell:As Patricia Cornwell's memoir makes clear, her life has had a rather dramatic, you might say, novelistic arc. And that helps to explain why I had to do the interview remotely rather than face to face as we'd originally planned. She has a history of threats and stalkers thanks to her public profile and her close collaboration with law enforcement agencies as part of her research. And that has made her acutely aware of her own safety. She has long employed a team of security guards. And so, when the UK authorities raised the country's terror threat level to severe, just days before she was due to fly to London, her team advised her against travelling.

15:57Patricia Cornwell:For me, it was a last-minute plot twist. For her, it was probably par for the course. OK, let's return now to my conversation with Patricia Cornwell. You mentioned Postmortem, your first novel. It took you some time to get that published, didn't it? I mean, people looking at your career now and the amazing success and the number of books you've sold, I think might be quite surprised to know it took you quite some time to get that published. And you detail that in a lot of detail in the memoir.

16:26Jamie Coomarasamy:Well, that's right, because when I left journalism and then I did the biography of Ruth Graham, my neighbor and surrogate mother. Then I decided to try to write crime novels, which took me to the medical examiner's office where I really thought I would be in and out of there for like one month doing research. And then I'd write a murder mystery that people wanted to read. Well, that didn't happen. I wrote one and nobody wanted it. I wrote two, another one, nobody wanted it. I wrote a third, nobody wanted it. And by now I'd been in the medical examiner's office four years and I was a full-time employee.

17:02Jamie Coomarasamy:There was nothing else for me to do. I became their computer programmer. And then I wrote post-mortem and about almost every major house in New York rejected that as well until finally Scribner took it on by a wing and a prayer for the big first printing of 6 ,000 copies. And I got paid$6 ,000 for it. And then the first book review that came out about it was horrible. And then it got banned from Richmond by a Richmond bookstore because of being too graphic. So I thought, well, this is starting off with a bang. You know, your career is not looking too good. You might end up working the morgue the rest of your life the way things are going.

17:39Jamie Coomarasamy:And then it, you know, like I said, it got published. And but the big thing that was a game changer was really thanks to the to Great Britain, because when I was presented the Best First Crime Novel Award by the Crime Writers Association, and it was presented by Princess Margaret, that was a huge game changer for me.

17:59Patricia Cornwell:It's quite amusing, the section when you write about that and making small talk with her and realising perhaps you've said a bit too much. It must have been quite a moment for you.

18:09Jamie Coomarasamy:Oh, my goodness. If there was a stage hook, it would have come out. I had no, I'd never, listen, I had to learn how to curtsy. I didn't know anything about meeting royalty. I was, you know and so I I had to learn to curtsy but the people who taught me to curtsy in this shop where I bought my little fancy outfit that I couldn't zip up by myself once I got there um they they didn't they didn't bother to mention that you don't chat with royalty you don't you don't lay on the southern charm and say well now how are you today and how are things in your family and are you still riding horses that's what I asked her and that's when I got told you know escorted away.