Interview with Patricia Cornwell

CWN: You’ve written 29 Scarpetta books, and Sharp Force is your most recent. Yet the first book that you ever wrote is Ruth Graham’s bio, the wife of famed evangelist Billy Graham. How did their lives intersect with yours?

PC: That is such a strange story. I often say that my life story is like an adult fairy tale. But we had quite a rather nightmarish early start in Florida, where I was born, and my mother, when she was in the throes of this really frankly abusive relationship with my father. They divorced, and she went to a Billy Graham crusade and became “saved.” She definitely put him on a pedestal as if he were almost a god. When she got divorced, Mom decided to move us to Montreat, North Carolina, where the Grahams lived. She figured if Billy Graham lived there, it would be a magical, safe place. Two years later, she tried to give us kids to the Graham family. And they did influence my early life. That’s all in my book, so I won’t belabor all the details, but suffice it to say, if that hadn’t happened and I hadn’t grown up literally right down the road from that family, I never would have been in a position to have written that biography. It was all about something meant to be.

CWN: Patricia, why this memoir now?

PC: It was never my intention to write a memoir. I really, truly never wanted to do this. But some people were trying to make a TV series based on my life. When I read the script, I didn’t recognize the person they were talking about. And I thought, well, you know, these people, the writers’ room or whoever, they don’t know anything about me. So I will write a treatment that’s autobiographical, to give the writers some ideas. The next thing I knew, I was writing the memoir!

And to be honest with you, it’s one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. In the first place, I wrote it faster than anything I’ve ever written. It’s like my finger was in a wall socket. You talk about feeling like you’re channeling something from the other side. I had that feeling the entire time I was doing this. It sounds kooky, but I mean, right down to feeling the presence of some of the people who are no longer with us. I felt like Ruth Graham was sitting in the room with me sometimes, and she’d leave. It was like she would leave me strange things. I’d find a letter that she had written to me that I’m not sure I ever saw before, that was between the pages of a book I hadn’t opened in half a century. It’s, you know, as artists, we are channelers and so much of what you believe at Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. is about this appreciation for what isn’t always visible to us. But reality is something way beyond what we can see.

CWN: Speaking of Cayce, you referenced him in your third Kay Scarpetta book, 1992’s All That Remains. Word is somebody had to remind you of that. Do you remember that?

PC: I don’t remember that I did that. Isn’t that so weird? Well, you know, this is the thing when sometimes I don’t know if I’m writing the story or if the story is writing me. And so Edgar Cayce was planted long ago. Now you mentioned 29 Scarpetta books. What you don’t know is that I just finished the 30th, and it has the A.R.E. in it. It’s going to make you very worried or happy. I haven’t decided which, but your Association for Research and Enlightenment, your spiritual center in Virginia Beach, you’d better be watching the security monitors because, best I can tell, Scarpetta and Marino have been there recently, and I believe Lucy landed her helicopter in your parking lot. If you didn’t hear that, you must have been gone that day.

CWN: Well, I did hear you say in an interview that in the next book, “Scarpetta’s detective (Pete) Marino walks into Edgar Cayce’s ARE.”

PC: It’s going to be fun in the new Scarpetta, which will be out in about a year. But yes, your spiritual center and Edgar Cayce’s work, I have a real good time with it in the book that I just finished, which has your place in it. When Scarpetta and Marino go into the A.R.E. on that fateful night, they’re greeted by a hologram of Mr. Cayce himself! That’s all I will say for now. And of course, there’s a nemesis who is a carpet-bagging kind of, you know, one of these religious people with the massive church and all that, that used to be a country music star, and so I kind of have fun with that. He’s not friendly towards the A.R.E., but you know what? He doesn’t fare too well in the end.

CWN: I can’t imagine why! So, you actually did come to the A.R.E. for the first time in December 2024 and again in May of 2025. What, if anything, were your takeaways?

PC: The biggest thing is it was very different from what I thought it would be. I’d be honest with you, you know, in the early years when I lived in Virginia, when there was, you know, I knew there was some sort of unusual place at Virginia Beach. And obviously, I put it in my early book, that book number three, long ago and far away, but I didn’t really know much about what your place, but I knew that people acted like it was a little unusual.

And so I think I was a little apprehensive. But then when I got there, there’s absolutely nothing kooky about anything that you and all your experts there, the people I’ve heard give lectures and so forth. Frankly, it’s a lot of the same thing I think about all the time, which is who are we? Why are we here? Yes, I have very strong spiritual beliefs, but at the same time, if you look at religions all over the world, so many of them are telling the same creation stories. And so you start wondering and all this about UFOs and what is life and are we all there is? Because I don’t think so. And what about our brain? Is it really just an organ or is it an antenna? And I think it’s an antenna. When I tell a story, I’m looking to have a clear channel to somehow have this be transmitted through me. And sometimes I don’t know where these ideas come from. I really believe that we can conduct a lot more through our telepathy, through our being open to receiving information and signals. And this is not crazy talk. This is really about not underestimating who and what we are.

CWN: That’s certainly what Edgar Cayce believed. You know, I think part of the thing that fascinates me as a former prosecutor is that you will delve into the most detailed, grounded, hardest 3D evidence there is and yet I watch it bump into your interest in psychic phenomena and high strangeness. Care to comment?

PC: Well, listen, it’s not strangeness. If you open your mind to what’s around you, there is evidence of things being beyond what we’re looking at. There’s evidence if you’re open to it. It happened when I was doing the memoir, you know, when I find the calling card on the floor or a journal or a file folder would open to something I wasn’t looking for, but I should have been looking for it. And I felt the presence of people who were gone. And I’ve also had weird things in life with tremendous electrical disturbances.

Let’s just start with this. We are consciousness. Our bodies are what we walk around in, but they are not us. We are inextricably connected to them. We can’t live without them in this world. But that is not who we are. And I know that better than anybody, having seen thousands of dead bodies in the morgue and at crime scenes. You know that the person who died is not there. It’s a light bulb that’s burned out. It has the shape and form of that person, but they are not there. Where did they go? So that’s what I’m interested in, that is, who are we? What is our consciousness? What is it part of? And how can we channel it better to become even more highly evolved than we are, so that we leave this planet much better than when we got here? If you don’t do that, you have failed at your mission. You should leave this world a better person than you started. And that’s really what we’re meant to do.

CWN: What’s next for Scarpetta? I understand Nicole Kidman is playing her now on a new Prime Video series.

PC: Scarpetta has run away from Hollywood for over three decades now. Every time there was almost a deal, almost a movie made, almost, almost, and it always failed. I mean, the first option for there being a movie based on Scarpetta goes all the way back to 1989. And as you’ll see in my memoir, it’s not for a lack of trying. About everybody under the sun tried to make this happen.

And for some reason, it just always failed. And then finally, because of Jamie Lee Curtis, really, when she decided, you know what? She said, let’s make a series based on Scarpetta. This was about five years ago. And I said, well, she’s not doing anything in Hollywood these days, but you know, good luck, because she’s not very cooperative. I mean, I don’t know why, but I guess she, you know, she just has a mind of her own. I know that sounds crazy, but I think it’s true.

So Jamie really was the gatekeeper here. She made it possible for this to finally happen because she believes in it. And because of her enormous talent and reputation, they were able to attract other really enormous talent to the project. And so now we have three Oscar winners starring in it. Jamie as Dorothy and then Nicole Kidman as Scarpetta and Bobby Cannavale playing Marino and on and on. I mean, every single actor in it, including the ones that play the younger version of the characters, like Rosie McEwen, who plays the young Scarpetta. And she’s absolutely phenomenal, because she looks like a younger version of Nicole Kidman. So it’s powerful. I think people are gonna enjoy it, but what I tell people, particularly those who have read my books all these years. Just remember, this is a translation into another art form. It is not gonna be identical to my books and nor should it be. if you enjoy my books, you should have a lot of fun with the series. And I am just beyond grateful and thrilled that this has finally happened.

CWN: Well, it’s encouraging for us here at Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. as well because we have waited eons, decades for a six-part cable series or a movie to come out on Edgar Cayce. Maybe your story encourages us to know it’s all about timing and that it’s going to happen for Mr. Cayce and his legacy.

PC: That is so important because people do need to know him. You know, I’ve been thumbing through one of his books and reading some things about him now and then when I’m taking a break from what I’m doing, and he’s really, really quite a remarkable person. I’m struck by his humility. I mean, you can tell he was a vessel. He was something that something far more powerful was working through him. That was the biggest thing about him in my mind is that he was willing to be used, as the Bible says, to be used as an instrument of peace.

CWN: Very true. We’re so looking forward to seeing you back in Virginia Beach.

PC: Well, I think that my coming to Virginia Beach on May 3rd is like a big reunion because all of this started in Virginia, where Scarpetta was born. The series was born in Virginia. And so this is a really huge celebration because it is my life story. And it also is the life story of how this happened in the place where it all occurred. So I’m hoping there’ll be lots of people that will come and say hello, some I haven’t probably seen in a long time.

And I think it’s absolutely magical to do it at your place. Scarpetta would approve because, believe it or not, for as grounded in science as she is, that lady also knows that there are forces of good and evil that are way beyond what we can imagine and see, because she sees the handiwork of it all the time.

Well, in case you didn’t know, in my book that I just finished that has your place in it, when Scarpetta and Marino go in there on this fateful night, they’re greeted by a hologram of Mr. Cayce himself. So, you know, for all I know, you’ve already got it. You just don’t know it yet.

CWN: Patricia, thanks so much. We look forward to seeing you here at Edgar Cayce’s ARE on May 3rd.