David Baldacci, author of 'Walk the Wire' - Prolific bestseller talks about being on the lookout for ideas, publishing two books a year, and picking characters for stories.

David Baldacci has storytelling in his bones. He's published books across all types of genre, thriller, mystery, fantasy, crime, even kids books too. He's written well over 40 novels, and plans his year of writing fairly thoroughly in order to publish 2 new books a year. He has a huge array of characters to choose between, and we learn about how he decides which one he'll write about next.


His new one is 'Walk the Wire', about Amos Decker, 'The Memory Man', who is sent to the North Dakotan badlands, where he covers a religious sect based around a strange, unused military base. We chat about how he got the idea from a process of constantly consuming new media, and being on the lookout for new ideas and information every day.


We also talk about how much he knows about the story before he sits down to write, and what happens when it all goes wrong, his ideas are coming up short, but he has a book he has to deliver. David used to work as a lawyer, and we delve into how much that affected the way he started work as a writer, and how his career has moved on from there.


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