Hello, and welcome back to Franklin Covey's weekly podcast on leadership with Scott Miller,

where I get the privilege of serving as your host each week interviewing business leaders,

thought leaders best-selling authors, people from all walks of life that have something to

contribute around the topic of leadership. And today, I'm delighted to be featuring an author

that many of you know as a household name, his books have crossed all genres. He's really

perfected, I think, in many ways, the process of collaboration, of working with people from

different points of view and background. It's a great leadership skill that all of us can

actually learn from. You know me also as the host of or the author of these books, Master Mentors,

where each year I'm privileged through HarperCollins to write a book that waterskies across

30 of the transformational insights that our guests have shared. Today's guest is James Patterson.

He has written literally hundreds of books that have sold upwards of a half billion copies,

including his newest release called Countdown, where the tagline is she has five days to save

the world. It's a thriller. James Patterson, welcome to on leadership. Hi, yeah, poor Amy,

she's got a tough gig there saving the world. That's a that's a that's a that's a tough one.

My notion on Amy right now is that a newspaper Amy Amy I was reading rereading the book and I can't

believe what the poor woman goes through and but my new newspaper is Amy Cornwell is a new James

spawn. So you know not as in Idris Al but Jamie Amy Cornwell in the book. Well, we look forward to

reading it Countdown is releasing soon and James it's an honor to talk with you today looking

forward to delving into Countdown. James, I know that people are interested whether it's

interesting to you is probably interesting to many to understand the prolific nature of your

authoring and co-authoring. Do you have any idea how many books have been consumed in terms

of purchase? How many books you've co-authored? It's probably interesting. We got we got we got

...