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Kevin Nance

Photo by AUDREY HALL for The Washington Post
Mark Sullivan, 54, has co-written three novels in James Patterson’s globe-trotting “Private” series about the intrepid agents of a high-tech investigative firm.

James Patterson co-writer understands the boss’s rules

Last updated Sunday, January 27, 2013 - 9:33am

When you co-write a thriller novel with James Patterson, certain rules apply.

Rule No. 1 for collaborating with the world’s best-selling author: Chapters must be short, with detailed descriptions, flashbacks or other digressions strictly forbidden.

Rule No. 2: The villains, who tend to drive the plots, must be at least as interesting and believable as the heroes, if not significantly more so.

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Author Ken Follett on the set of “World Without End,” a miniseries based on his 2007 novel of the same name. It premieres on the Reelz network next month.

Century Trilogy an epic of Follett proportions

Kevin Nance Special to the Washington Post

Last updated Saturday, September 8, 2012 - 11:31pm

Well before blockbuster movies, there were blockbuster novels: big, juicy, page-turning epics, with dozens of characters, exotic settings and multiple plots playing out over several years, often against the backdrop of some extended historical conflict. Tolstoy largely invented the form in 1869 with “War and Peace,” and by the middle of the 20th century, its latter-day stalwarts — including James Jones, Herman Wouk and the tireless fiction factory known as James Michener — bestrode the bestseller lists like the titans they were.

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Discovering and accepting Lincoln’s flaws

Kevin Nance Special to the Washington Post

Last updated Saturday, July 14, 2012 - 11:04pm

As a little boy growing up in Washington, Stephen L. Carter spent many happy hours in a room upstairs, poring over his father’s trove of books about Abraham Lincoln.

Of special interest was Carl Sandburg’s massive biography of his fellow Illinoisan, full of stories about the 16th president, his folksy ways and, later, his conduct of the Civil War. Stephen couldn’t read the books at first — he was too young and they were too heavy and too long — but he looked at the pictures.

In time he began to read seriously about Lincoln, who won the war and ended the enslavement of people who looked (as Stephen, an African-American, couldn’t fail to notice) like him. Lincoln was his hero.

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