Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.
— Michael Connelly
I'm one hundred percent Irish, and I'm very proud that I'm Irish American, though I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.
Keeping your head down and just writing is only part of the equation, so I surround myself with smart people to help sell my books.
L.A. is a long shot city, and those who make that shot - you can tell. You can see very clearly who's made it and who hasn't.
My entire career writing novels was wrapped up around Harry Bosch. This character was too important to me to just hand off.
Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn't have that in me.
In writing on the page, you can be a bit elliptical, but on TV, you can't dance around stuff. You either show it, or you don't.
There are nineteen Harry Bosch books, and someone told me if you add up the descriptions of Harry from all of them, it would come to less than three pages. He's very elliptically described over the two decades during which the novels occur. I did that by intention.
I write my books never thinking of an actor.
My father was a builder. During my high school years, I worked for him. One summer, I was working with a guy who had just come back from Vietnam and had been a tunnel rat. He wouldn't talk about the experience, but it sounded really scary to me.
When I was in college, there were dollar movie nights. I went to see 'The Long Goodbye,' which was based on one of Chandler's books but was contemporary and set in Los Angeles in 1973. I loved the movie, which motivated me to read the book.
I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.
I think it's pretty apparent who my favorites are because I keep coming back to them. At the top of that list would be Harry Bosch, who's now going on 20 years of literary life. I still like him the best because there's still a lot to say about him.
I learned to write crime novels by reading people I hoped to emulate: people like James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, and Sue Grafton.
I like stories about people who have to go into darkness for a good reason and then have to figure out how to deal with the darkness that seeps into their souls.
I mostly read on airplanes and right before sleep.
My history is that I will create a character, and they will have a book to themselves, and then I'll integrate the character into the larger world of all my books.
I write puzzles and mysteries. Nothing too highfalutin.
I connect to the tradition of Irish storytelling. And I think there is something - I can't put my finger on it - something genetic there. Maybe just a need to tell stories.
I wanted to learn about the worlds I wanted to write about in fiction.
When I lived in L.A. full time, I moved often - fourteen different neighbourhoods in sixteen years.
In 1995, I sold the rights to Harry Bosch to Paramount. They had several screenplays written, but a movie never happened. Harry Bosch went on the shelf, and I had to wait 15 years to get him back.
When I was at a newspaper, I knew what an opportunity that was, and I religiously protected my time on the cop beat.
I'd seen Titus Welliver in a few shows and felt he had some inner demons in his portrayals, as does Harry Bosch.
The act of reading a story is sacred, and people build images and all that stuff.
A movie is like a city. There's, like, 150 people working, and it's all because of something that came out of your head.
I got lucky, and the first book, 'The Black Echo,' got published.
I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way.
I was a police reporter, so I got into the worlds that I write about, and I think many of the details in my books come from those days.
I have a large collection of biographies about jazz musicians.
This next to never happens, but if I had time to sit on a beach and read, I wouldn't read a cozy. But I've read cozies. That's how I got interested in crime fiction: because my mother was a soft-boiled reader.
There is a prevailing school of thought that something good must take time, sometimes years to create and hone. I have always felt that the books I have written fastest have been my best - because I caught an unstoppable momentum in the writing.
The TV audience is way bigger than a book audience, and no matter what I do, I'm always thinking if this will help people read my books.
When you're a detective on the midnight shift, you don't have a specialty: you roll on any time they need a detective, whether it's big or small.
My grandparents were all born in the U.S., but their parents came from Ireland.
The three books I've written in Florida about L.A. are my best takes on the physicality of the city, as far as description goes.
Artists are supposed to stay hungry.
Being a journalist always makes you a quick study of wherever you're at. You're out all the time and seeing places that normally you wouldn't get to see. It gives you an unusual level of insight into any place.
What brought me to the table was Raymond Chandler and, to a lesser degree, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett. I was basically inspired to want to write like the classic private-eye writers.
As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.
I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that's part of the wonder of reading.
When I write about places in L.A. - like where the best taco truck is or something - it's not about L.A. To me, it's about Harry Bosch, because he's the guy that does these things and has this experience.
I watched 'Kojak' religiously with my father. It was a great bonding time. He loved shows where the stakes were high. Life and death, justice prevailing, things like that. I think that helped set me on the path to what I do now.
I not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked.
My whole reputation and creative thought as a novelist is really wrapped around Harry Bosch, so he's near and dear.
As far as characters in fiction that I really admire - it's pretty strong to say you would wish that you had created another character - but I'll throw out Will Graham, the protagonist in 'Red Dragon,' a book I've read several times.
I get into this unfortunate thing when I'm touring for my books. I was in Spain, and the media asked me, 'Who's your favorite Spanish mystery writer?' I'm totally flat-footed. I feel that I'm under-read when it comes to foreign writers.
When you're working on a novel, you never think about how much it would cost to shoot one of your scenes. But that's a huge consideration in film and TV.
I admit my reading time is limited because I can write in the situations and places where people usually read. But reading is the fuel - it's inspiring - so I try to keep the tank full. What happens most of the time is I binge read. I will put aside a day or two to do nothing but read.
I want people to think I'm a creative genius.
