Bankrate: Did it take a deep loss to help you develop your best-selling approach to fiction?

Patterson: I don't know. I think that's certainly a piece of it. Having Jack is a piece of it. I remember giving a talk at a middle school and there was a pretty smart English teacher there, and he said he felt that the most important gift that a novelist can have is compassion. And I think a lot of them don't; certainly a lot of people who are writing today don't. But I think I do. I even have some compassion for the monsters I create.

The other thing that drives what I do is just emotion; I feel things. And if I don't feel it, I'm lost. I write a lot of different kinds of things, but they are all kinds of stories that I feel. I like thrillers. I've written a couple of love stories, and the YA (Young Adult) series, which I feel. And I've written a horror novel that will come out next summer, which is another genre I find interesting. But it's all emotional stuff. I feel, and that's what guides me.

Bankrate: Do you manage your own finances? Do you have an interest in that?

Patterson: Not a lot, no. I have an adviser who I've had for a long, long time and he's just an honest, good person. I never try to get greedy in that area; it's relatively conservative stuff. When you come from the background I come from, both economically and the psychology of my family, I find it difficult to spend money. I don't have a lot of needs. I'm not a clotheshorse. I have evolved to the point where we do have a very nice house in Florida and a very nice house in New York State, and I can rationalize those. But mostly I'm not a big spender. We're homebodies. I love my wife and my little boy and we hang out here a lot. Jack is 8 and he's a really nice guy. He's just a delight.

Bankrate: What's the hardest genre for you to write?

Patterson: The hardest by far for me are the love stories, because I insist on the same kind of pacing that I do for the other books, and that's hard with a love story. I mean, those things, I can't tell you how difficult they've been to write. I'm writing one more, and I vow never to write another one, because it's just 11 drafts, 12 drafts. It's very, very hard for me.

Bankrate: Conversely, you seem to love writing your new YA series, "Maximum Ride."

Patterson: I believe that one of the best ways to get kids or anybody reading is to give them books that they like. There are about four or five schools now where the whole school is reading "Maximum Ride" and that really is very cool for me. You get thousands of e-mails. My style definitely fits kids; they're funny, they're not what people would expect. There are no serial killers or stuff like that. Kids are not ready for stuff like that. The "Max Ride" stuff is really fun and easy for me because I'm nutty. You can let your mind go on it. I think the YA stuff is the best stuff I do; not just the most valuable but the best. I think it's the closest thing to literature.