Michael Connelly
In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.Collection: Cool
I wanted to learn about the worlds I wanted to write about in fiction.
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.
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.
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'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.
My grandparents were all born in the U.S., but their parents came from Ireland.
I write puzzles and mysteries. Nothing too highfalutin.
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.
I'm just going to write the best books I can.
I chose deliberately for Harry Bosch to age chronologically with the books.
With age comes a greater understanding and a greater worldview.
I've always thought of L.A. as the modern version of 'The Garden of Earthly Delights.'
It wasn't a decision to become a writer. I wanted to become a writer of crime fiction. I was very specific.
As a writer, you look for inspiration wherever you can get it.
When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books. I was not interested in reading 'The Glass Key' or 'The Maltese Falcon' - stuff that was 40 or 50 years old.
I was fired as an actor on 'Bosch.'
In 'Blood Work,' they made choices I wouldn't have made, but I'm not a filmmaker. I took the money, and they told the story.
I could not have been happier with 'The Lincoln Lawyer.' They got the essence, and the casting, starting with McConaughey, was just perfect.
Ross McDonald had a greater influence on me than any other writer. His style of writing, the repeated theme of the past coming out to grab somebody, that's very attractive to me as a reader and, now, as a writer.
A good day to me is writing from 6 A.M. 'til noon with a break to take my daughter to school. After lunch, if I still feel the momentum, I'll hit it again.
The fulfillment I get from a good day of writing is addictive and will always bring me back the next day.
I'd be lying if I said the success means nothing to me. It does. I enjoy it and live a pretty great life.
The criminal defense attorney is misunderstood if not despised by most of society. It doesn't matter if we believe in our adversarial system and the ideal that everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. Ideals give away to reality - defense lawyers working loopholes and angles to get their clients off.
You know that song, 'New York, New York?' If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere? That's kind of like L.A.
Every time I visit Brisbane, I think, 'This is my childhood.'
As soon as I got to L.A., there was this big crime where these guys tunnelled underneath a bank on a three-day weekend and went right up to the vault and emptied everything out.
When I went home at 20 to tell my parents, 'I don't want to be an engineer, I want to try and write books,' I was braced for, 'That's not gonna happen.' But I didn't get that response, and maybe it was because of my dad's experience of having an artistic dream and having to put it aside.
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 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 want people to think I'm a creative genius.
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.
I mostly read on airplanes and right before sleep.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I have a large collection of biographies about jazz musicians.
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.
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 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'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.
My whole reputation and creative thought as a novelist is really wrapped around Harry Bosch, so he's near and dear.
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.
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 not only read Raymond Chandler but read all the crime fiction classics. I was hooked.
I got lucky, and the first book, 'The Black Echo,' got published.
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.