And, he's working to keep it that way. If that means living in a media echo chamber, he's happy to do it. The book is another zippy little serial-killer special that features police detective Alex Cross solving a crime in chapters that are rarely longer than five pages. I think it made me more aware of the audience. Advertisers want to know who's buying the product.
Authors do, too.
I had good instincts, and that's what I used. Patterson said his short chapters, which almost guarantee that his books are page-turners, came about by accident and by design. That's what I could get done in the time I had. Then I figured I would go back and add more, make it more the traditional kind of writing, but when I did that, I found I liked it the way it was. . It's like eating popcorn.