From a New Yorker story by Laura Miller headlined “How James Patterson Became the World’s Best-Selling Author”:

“Man, do I have stories to tell,” James Patterson writes in his new autobiography, “James Patterson” (Little, Brown). The best-selling author does serve up stories, lots of them; the book is a grab bag of anecdotes, many of which have the tone and the import of a humorous icebreaker in a Rotary Club speech. There was the time that Patterson and a fellow altar boy—Patterson grew up in a devoutly Catholic family—almost got caught with a stash of unconsecrated Communion hosts that his friend had squirrelled away for post-Mass snacking.