Michael Connelly

So how's the self quarantining working for you? Well, I can't complain because I'm somebody who from most of my life I've worked from home, you know, writing books and solitude and uh, up until I got involved a TV show, that was what my life is like. So this is a bit of a throwback to the way I've been for most of my um creative life. So are you writing?

What is filling your time these days? Well? It's interesting because, uh, I raped very contemporary stories set in Los Angeles and the um you know, the virus thing happens and you don't know the end of it, so it's very hard to be creative about it. And I was in the middle of a Lincoln Lawyer book that was actually set in April of this year, and that doesn't work anymore so because I don't know what's gonna happen. So I lost about a month and a half of creative quandary,

wasn't really doing much at all. And then I kind of said, I'm going to back the book up started in December instead of April, and bring it up into the start of this virus and maybe reflect a little bit on that um. And then I got going again and I got some good momentum, and that's where I'm at now. Now I'm now though, I'm I guess bothered by the question of will people want to read about

this virus after we've all lived through it. I mean, it's not gonna be the main emphasis of my book, but it's gonna be on the news, and the impending plague coming is going to be part of it. You know. I think that's over analyzing because I remember yesterday in the New York Times they had Jury Seinfeld interview and he taped his special before the coronavirus, and they're worried about what people can handle. I think primarily people are reading your books because they're fans of you, and then

they turn other people onto the books. Would you agree with that? Well, that's the hope, you know, that's the domino effect, you think. You hope it has, you know that people read the book and spread the word about it. Um. Yeah, I do think that there's a part of this audience that my audience, that's that's gonna go with me where I go. And that's great to have. But you know, these questions always kind of filter into your thinking anyway. Okay, let's let's when you do right, to what degree are

you thinking about the audience? Um? Not a whole lot. I mean you do in general, you know, like um, in terms of I try to be very as I said, you were reflective of what's going on in the world, and and that includes politics and so forth, and so I you know, I wrote a book, for example, uh, maybe a year ago I think it came out or two years ago called uh, two kinds of Truth. I think it was called It's Weird I'm having my own books. But in that was was you know, a meditation on

what is truth then? And who should be telling the truth no matter what? And this was at a time where in politics people were constantly talking about is the president lying as the president not lying? And and and and it's and truth became a political issue and that wasn't really what I wanted to put into the book, but that's how people read it. And you know, so you do get social media. Um, you get social media

return on what you do. I do as well, and so it was interesting to see people take my meditation on the truth and what it means in the wrong way and take it through a political um uh strainer, if you will, um and react negatively in a lot of cases to my books and positively in other ways. Well, I guess being specific about that, since you wrote about truth and tomp Trump, I would assume the negative feedback

came from supporters of Trump, irrelevant of the misinterpretation. As you move forward, are you anxious about alienating that part of your audience. I would say earlier in my career, I would have I would have had to have been. But now I'm on the tail end of my career and I have a I don't care type of attitude towards that. But I but definitely, early in your career, you know you're trying to sustain a career, and you just sustain it through readership and growing readership. So don't

do anything that might dampen that readership. I mean I write about law and order. These are things that normally skew towards conservatives, and so there's a big population of conservatives I believe that read my books. I mean, it's this is all anecdotal. This is not anything I can say that we've done studies or anything like that. We're not that sophisticated in the publishing business. Um. But I was more aware of it back then that I was in the last decade or so of my career. And

that's why something like this could happen. That I just put something in there that, um, you know, I think the line was even president's lie, president's plural, and that really set some people off, even the president. Sometimes president must have to stand naked, as Bob Dylan said. But I'm interested. I'm just a couple of years older than you. Do you think your attitude changed about this when you turned sixty. You're a few years past sixty. I don't know if I would. Uh, I didn't have like a

big sixties moment. I think I had more one when I was fifty turned fifty about being on the You know, in my mind, I'm thinking about you're walking up a roof and at some point you hit the top of the riff and you're going down and it's and it's supposed to be easier, although it really isn't. Um that happened to me when I was fifty. Um, sixty kind of came and went from me. So I don't think that that had that kind of effect on me. Well, I'm the reverse fifty was a breeze. Sixty I'm still

trying to recover from. But uh, now, the whole landscape of media has changed. As you've alluded to earlier, the book business is rather archaic. But if you the only person with universal mind share is Donald Trump, so what do we know? You have an established audience, you still have to make them aware of the fact that a new book is coming out. But did you have any dream of even further cultural penetration which is now frustrated as a result of so many messages and it's hard

to get any worry out there? Um, I don't think so. I mean, that's that's a pretty deep question. And you know I can always retreat to, hey, I write mysteries, but you know the reality is that's that's the front of the book, and I wouldn't be doing this for so long and it's such a every day applying my trade level of it, if I didn't have at least secret motivations to tell story of a higher meaning or

a higher connection or a higher residence. And you know they again not going back to sixty, but a coincide it kind of I'm like about to turn sixty four, so kind of coincided with when I turned sixty. They're the divisiveness that has entered the politics of our world has spilled out into everything, and therefore it does become um here, you know, writing a story about a guy just trying to solve a murder in Los Angeles becomes political without that being your intention. Um. And so that

you know, I probably haven't even answered your question. I've going off on a tangent here, but said something. You said you had goals. I guess let me make it more to the point. I believe when someone is an artist, and you're an artist, your main goal is to reach as many people as you can with your message. Of course, you want to be remunerated, but you want to reach

as many people. That is inherently difficult for everybody. So was that part of your dream or did you reach an establish your audience a million books per book, and that was satiating. Oh, I see what you're saying. No, And I don't think I'd ever be satiated. And I wish I could get to that level of a million uh readers a book. I don't think I'm there, but um there maybe in a list of libraries are doing a lot of work for me that I'm there. But

um yeah, I mean I think you know. And and it's not like I'm trying to be high salutin or uh you know, didactic of anybody. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to think. I'm trying to write about. For the most part, let's just talk about Harry Bosh. He's the guy who's the through line of my creative life. Um started with him and hopefully will end with him, whenever that is. And I just think he sets an example of fairness. You know, everybody counts or nobody counts.

That's his message, and that would be my message. And that's that's pretty simple, and that's and you'd think it was something that would have universal agreement, but it turns out it doesn't. Um, there's the politicalness in that statement. Everybody counts. M nobody counts, um, you know, and and so that kind of has infected That's probably too strong word, but that's kind of infiltrated into my thinking and into my work and how and how it's responded to. And

you know that's something I, you know, really can't control. Okay, someone like you with a profile, you a lot of opportunities to, let's just say, hang out with the people on the other side of fairness. Are you more of an introvert or do you uh take the opportunities to go to parties, to go to yachts, to hang out with some of these household named people. I'm definitely, I mean it goes to that question about how my faring

with the lockdown. Um, I'm definitely an introvert. Um. It's it's just a weird contradiction because I think most writers are You're comfortable being in your own little world. You know. My little world is my laptop and what I put into it, and then I send it out into the world. And so once a year, usually for about four weeks, I have a book come out, and I'm supposed to

be the opposite of that. I'm supposed to be out there. Uh, you know, touring talking about this being on podcasts that are very cool and so forth, and um, that's not really my lifestyle. Um so I don't, you know, to use your examples parties and and things like that. I don't do a lot of that. I am lucky in that my books have um connected with some people that are well known and culturally important, and um, I've been

invited to meet with them and things like that. And it's it's it's that's been, you know, pretty amazing that that I'm drilling down on the fair in his thing. Obviously we're talking to coronavirus era and David Geffen posted on Instagram that he was self quarantining on his yacht. Now, he's well known for choosing people to come hang on

his yacht. So if somebody chose, somebody invited you, whomever it is, to come stay on their three d FT yacht, would you say wow, great opportunity, or in the back of your brain say well is this fair? Should I be doing this? I see what you mean. Well, I mean it's uh, at first of all, that's never happened to me, but um, well they must have the private jet example where someone is saying, hey, I'm going here, come ride with me, or let's go for the weekend somewhere.

I think you're giving me more social and cultural importance that I deserve because that that hasn't really happened to me either. But um, you know I I I think of, um, you know, different gatherings that I've been invited to, like intellectual or cultural gatherings that I've been invited to, and I actually find that my introverted nature comes out of these things and I don't contribute in a fair way

to to the ideas being exchanged and so forth. So usually those kind of invites a short lived I don't get invited to the next one, you know, that type of thing. Um, but I enjoy being there when I can. Well, the interesting thing is you're very articulate and you have no problem speaking. Many introverts I was just stroying the Times about this the other day, once they can be dragged to the situation, all of a sudden, they light up. Does that happen to you? Or you're anxious and you're

still anxious when you're there a little bit of both. Um, It's funny you start with the idea that you're an introvert you're You're fine being in your room by yourself. But I'm a storyteller, and there's something very egotistical about announcing that you're a storyteller and that you're going to write books, because that means you think your book should be read and they should be translated into movies and in the TV shows and everyone in the world should

know your stories. That is not an introverted um view of the world. Um, And I can I can kind of knock it down to to something that's happened to me in recent years, and that is part you know, it's that roof again. For part of my career, I was going walking up the roof are I was climbing up the roof, trying to get established, trying to get more readers, trying to get more attention. And so you know, I did like forty city book tours and things like that.

And in each of these things, you you stand up and you you explain yourself, and it's a speech, and it would weigh heavy on me coming up of what I would say. I didn't like the idea of doing it by road and saying the exact same thing, right

down to the little side jokes. Every every night. I just don't do that, And so I would be trying to tailor every night a new discussion that centered around the same thing for sure, um And it just was so hard and it was so debilitating that at some point, when I passed the crest of the roof and was on the downside, I said, I'm not doing any more speeches.

I told my publicists and so forth in my publisher I'm not doing any more speeches because it's not just the thirty minutes that you're giving that speech, it's the days leading up to it, thinking about that speech and worrying about it and and and it takes away from what I do, and that is writing my book. So I stopped doing that, and I said, anytime someone wants me to be on the stage, put someone with me, and let's do a Q and A. That's how I

do it, exactly. And and and what happens is that you go on and on and everything, like right now, every answer becomes a speech. But because you were asked the question, there's some kind of of a social acceptance and being asked the question that you can just go on and on and and and you know, keep talking. And I think it's more interesting that way. I think it was.

It was one of those things like, Man, I can't believe for fifteen or twenty years, I had to work on all these speeches all the time, when when the people who are in attendance are the people who are listening. Got much better insight into who I am and what I do and what my characters are about. When I answer questions as opposed to just, you know, trying to pontificate with a speech, well, as I say, I totally resonate. And I felt good about it because I once interviewed

Michael Lewis uh and it was the same thing. He has a question. I can make up my own questions, but you don't have to cogitate and speak at the same time. It's much different when you can just answer the question. You can go down your nooks and cranny, but if you're speaking, you're saying where you're going. Let's go back to this issue with fairness. Okay, two things. One, this is your personality in general to how do you try to send the message such to change the world.

I think it does come out of my personality because it comes out of my you know, growing up and I had a big family, and then there's always fairness issues, like with six kids, and my parents had this. So it's not something I've originated. It's just something that was bred into me by my parents and my brothers and sisters.

And so I've tried to, you know, uh, put it into my books and and I just you know, I'm not trying to change the world, as you say, um Forthfully, I put the message in people in my books who are very to my to my this is my take, and you know I'm not saying it I'm right. I'm

just saying this is what I think. I think the characters I've about face long odds and what they're doing, they face difficulty, and most often they have to they come to a point where they have to make a choice to do the right thing at great expense to themselves and those they love. And that's like the noble moment of of every book. And and that's where the fairness comes from. So I'm not trying to announce to

the world everybody counts, but nobody counts. I'm just writing about a guy who has that at his core, and hopefully that message comes across and um and it wins people over or people take it as a social cue or take it like, hey, I want to be like that. Um, I want to I want to be uh noble too. And you know, that's just a little ripple. It's a pebble in the in the lake. And maybe the rings go out and change some same lives and and in a way, maybe that helps change the world. Um, so

you're talking about now you're on the downward slope. I won't give it a negative connotation, but speak to your motivation to continue to write books. I'm just the luckiest guy I know. I mean, I have this facility to do this in the first place, which you know, there's there's a part of it is learned and part of it is practiced, but a lot of it is just mystical and it just has happened, and um, I can't. You know, I have to treasure that. I have to nurture it. I had to take care of it. And

that means writing every day. That's I mean, that's my answer. I feel like I got to write every day. Okay, So hypothetically, if you wrote and you knew no one would read it, would you still write? I think I would because that's how it started. For me, I wrote, you know, my first book was published when I was thirty five, but I've been writing for myself and at night and learn. I mean part of it as a learning experience, obviously, but but I was having great fulfillment

doing it. And you know, I wrote two books that I didn't think we're good enough, and no one has ever read other than myself. And I love those books because the second one was way better than the first, and so I could see myself getting better. And you know, I think at some point you'd finally get swallowed by like the feelings of fruitlessness and in it. And I didn't have that, luckily. But it was a long time from the point, you know, I said, hey, I want

to write novels. I want to and very specifically, I said to myself and my parents, I want to write crime fiction. That's what speaks to me. And it was like almost twenty years later before I was holding a book that I that, you know, a real book that was that was getting published. Um, And so that was a long time. But I don't look at it as like, Wow, what a long journey, what a difficult up up slope

or whatever you wanna call it. It was. It was a fun time because I didn't know anything about the world of wishing, and I didn't know about the pressures and and other things that would come once I did get published. So I don't know. It's one of those answers where I say, yes, I would still be doing it for myself. But I think most people listening to this would go like, yeah, right, Well, let's go back to the beginning. There are how many kids in your family?

Six including me? And where are you in the hierarchy? Um? Second, um, the oldest boy. Okay, so you got a little because normally the oldest gets all the attention. Uh. This goes back to our earlier topic in terms of feedback. But in the world we live in, yes, the world we grew up in, there was more attention towards the mail. So to what degree were you the fair haired boy? Was there attention on you? Um? I think my parents were pretty equal and and um and delving out the

pats on the head and so forth. I mean, I think I was a fair haired boy. Um. But the way it went was my sister was born, and then three boys, and then two girls, and so the three boys were I think we're five total five years apart. All together, we were born in a five year period, and so we've always been close and we always did things together, like you know, with our father, we had a natural golf force on them, for example, and we

would all go golfing and things like that. So I think there was you know, my brothers would be first say yeah, I was a favorite. I think there wasn't one. Okay, now there's been a lot of documentation. Uh, there are a lot of children and Mormon families, and the Mormons tend to win the reality shows the people from Utah because they can get along. So growing up with five siblings, are you the kind of guy who's an iconic lass or you can get along? No, I think I can

definitely get along. I mean, I don't know how rare it is, but we're Uh, the six of us are all still live. I think the six of us was you know, Irish Catholic family. So I think all six of us were born in less than ten years. And uh, you know, we get together all the time. Uh, we have traditional get togethers at Thanksgiving and at least another time during the year and still a very close knit family. Even though we're far flung in six different states. That's

kind of funny. Okay, so you're born where Philadelphia and then you at what age you moved to Florida. I was twelve and we moved to South Florida. Okay, we're in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale. Okay, did you go to the Inankee training gamps? I did? I remember they moved to Fort Lauderdale. That was a big deal. Yeah, I, Um, I actually worked. I mean it's kind of tied up into my life as a writer too. I worked at a hotel on the beach and Fort Lauderdale, and that's

where the Yankees stayed. And um, you know, they would lock off the elevator. They had two floors. But I was somebody who delivered towels to the floors and all that kind of stuff for housekeeping, and I had interactions with several of them and they would give me tickets. Um at that time, there's no pro no MLB in in um Florida like they have now. But um so that was the baseball game in town to go see the Yankees. And so even though I'm from Philadelphia have

uh don't really have a connection to New York. The Yankees. Um where my favorite team for most of my life. They were always my favorite team. And I grew up in the mirrors mantel years and even then when they were shitty. But once Steinbnner came in and they were winning and everybody became a Yankee fan. Maybe that's my personality kind of turned me off a little bit. Yeah, they weren't uh that those days they had like um, Reggie and I remember like Lupinel gave me a lot

of tickets to games and stuff like that. Um, when I was working at that hotel. Okay, so you're growing up and your father is doing what Uh he's always he was always kind of involved in development and Um he went from building houses in Pennsylvania, designing and building houses to like being a realtor for a little while in South Florida to working for a huge development company where he put together shopping centers, helped lease the shopping centers,

helped design shopping centers. Uh. So he was kind of like all over the place in terms of real estate and development. And was that you know, if you go on Wikipedia, because a lot of this stuff is available, said of Gainesville, you studied that. Yeah, I went up

to UM, the University of Florida. UM. I worked summers for my father's companies and so forth, going all the way back to when I was twelve and eleven in Pennsylvania, and uh, I just thought i'd What I liked about him is he would design a lot of his stuff, then he'd take it to an architect to get it, you know, completely blueprinted and all that stuff, and then he built it. And I liked the whole aspect of doing all of that. So I went up there to

kind of following his footsteps. UM. They actually had a major call Building Construction Sciences UM, and that's what I was in for about a year. So I flunked out, literally flunked out. Yeah, yeah, definitely flunked out. I mean, you know, they had a they had a class I took called the Introduction to Concrete. That's a hard course,

as they say now believe believe it or not. There's like seven different kinds and there's seven recipes and you know how much error is in it all the you know, it was really was a science and I wasn't prepared for that. Um. You know, I just knew how to you know, turn to things so that the concrete came out and went into the form UM. So anyway, I did a lot of stuff that kids do, um when they first get away from home. And so I was asked to take a year off. And what did your

parents say about that? They weren't be um but UM, I had two little sisters, um, who were still like in elementary school at that point, and so my punishment was I had to get up every morning and get them to school, so they're gonna make sure I didn't like, you know, stay up all night drinking and smoking or whatever, and then sleep till noon. I had to get up at seven every day to get my sisters to school. And your your mother all day she was working in

the house or working outside the house. She it's hard for me to remember exactly those years. She was a bank teller through most of at least my high school years, so I'm trying to think if she was when I came back for that year off. I did stay at home, well forgetting that year. Who was watching the kids and she's working at the bank, or she just worked when

everybody was in school or what. Um. Back then, banks were largely open when we nine to three, so she had just nine to kind of eight thirty or three thirty type job which kind of co side with school school hours. My older sister, Susan really um was the one who kind of ran things at home till my

parents got home. Um. But um, yeah, my the like my remember I told you my three me and my two brothers were kind of a triumvirate way and there was like city parks and stuff that we would go to together and you know, play sports and stuff like that. So growing up, were you a big reader? Yeah? You know,

it doesn't appear. The appearances are not good. A guy gets kicked out of school, he gets a job as a dishwasher at night at a hotel, and then his taking his sister to school and picking him up afterwards. But I was voraciously reading that whole time, and that's where I kind of formed the idea that, hey, I want to try to do this. So even though on paper it looks like probably one of the down years or the worst years of my life, it was really the best because I found my direct And Okay, how

much of a reader are you now? I still read a lot, but I don't like Back then, I was reading crime fiction. I was looking for hard boiled stuff and and really forming my likes in terms of a crime fiction. And now I still read it because I want to be aware of what's going on out there. But I've been doing this for like thirty years, and you can kind of see between the lines. You can

see the writer back there and what they're doing. It's, um, you know, it's kind of like in the last seven years, I've been involved in producing a TV show, and so now when I watched TV with my family, I'll just say, like, man, that costs a lot of money, that show. You they ruined it for you. Yeah, And I've I'm ruining it from my family because they're telling me just I don't really we don't really need to care, we don't really need to know all that stuff. Just let's watch the show.

But that's that's how I became with crime fiction, and so it's it's become it's not a totally is not an escape for me anymore. Okay, but you write about current events. Are you a voracious reader or reader at

all of periodicals or newspapers? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I have several subscriptions, you know, Internet subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and so forth and uh yeah, I mean part of it is just wanting to know what's going on in the world, but part of it is, yes, I'm looking for something that um can somehow be folded into what I'm doing, you know, just an offbeat story or uh, you know anything. It's it's weird how different things will

inspire me, um and end up in books. How do you decide to become to go back to school to become a journalist? What's the whole process there? Well, that was just basically it. I had to sit down with my I told my parents, I don't want to be It's not gonna be like Michael and my dad's name is Michael to Michael con only and son, uh construction. I'm not going to go back and do that. I want to go back and uh you know, uh pursue writing, writing as a career, being a being a writer. And um,

my father was it was interesting. I didn't know this at the time, but he was a frustrated artist. He wanted to be a painter when he was my that same age that I was going to him and saying I want to be a writer. At that age in his life, he wanted to be a painter, and he had gotten into a prestigious school in Philadelphia to learn how to paint and all that, but he had to make a living and it didn't work out for him, and he got back into painting many years later later

and later in his life. But when I kind of very intimidated, I went to them and said, I don't want to do I don't want to go back to introduction to concrete. I want to learn how to write and um, and yeah, I didn't even know whether I should go back to school to learn how to write, but that's what I said. And um, my father's idea was to go back into and get go into the journalism school. Because I was very specific with them, I want to write crime fiction, crime novels. Uh, not just novels,

crime novels. And so his suggestion was, you know, go be a newspaper reporter and that will hopefully get you into, um, into situations and relationships with people that you want to write about. You know, cops use your press pass to get into police stations and crime scenes and things like that. So I followed that suggestion and it turned out to be pretty genius. Um, and I think I had to go down that road to be in a position to do what I'm doing now. So you graduate from college,

what's your first journalistic job? It wasn't that great, um, because it doesn't really matter what your grades are or anything in journalism or you know, in UM, your pedigree doesn't matter. It's what you can put on a paper, can you write? And so I applied to jobs. I didn't have very many clips. UM. I kind of worked part time at the college newspaper, but they didn't pay anything, and I had I was sending my I was paying my way through college, so I had a real job.

So I ended up with not a lot of clips compared to other people in my class. So I really ended up with a kind of a second tier job, which was just an hour or two down the road from college and Daytona Beach working for a paper called the Daytona Beach News Journal. And I was I was signed out in the sticks. I wasn't on the beach or I never saw any water. I was like way out in the boonies, UH, covering four cities and anything

that happened from city council meetings to crimes. And I lasted nine months doing that, and I covered one murder and it happened to happen UM. I think the day after Ronald Reagan was shot, so that news took over everything, and my my big murder story. I finally got a murder story, and it was very it was cut to like six inches. Anyway, anyway I got. I was there for nine months, and UM was constantly checking in on my hometown paper and Fort Lauderdale to see if there's

any openings. And something came open. I went down, applied for a job there, and moved there. So my first job only lass than nine months. And then when I got the job at Fort Lauderdale Paper, I stayed there for seven years. And what was your beat there? It changed, but it was primarily crime. What changed about it was UM. Initially I was in their Palm Beach County UM addition, because back then newspapers were fat and happy and they're

spreading everywhere. And the Fort Lauderdale News was also called the Sun Sentinel and the Sun Sentinel. How at outposts UM from Miami up to West Palm Beach, and I was in the West Palm Beach office covering crime the city of West Palm Beach and so forth, and um. Eventually though, I became a police reporter in Fort laud Ordal And did you feel like your dream had come true or were you saying, hey, there's something beyond here.

I felt pretty good about it. I felt I was in this stage where I mean, I'm writing it at night. I'm trying to write fiction and trying to learn how to write fiction. So I was always doing that, but I was also feeling like that is a long shot and if it doesn't come through, this is a very interesting job. So I can be happy with it. Not a lot of money in it, but I can be happy here. And this was before the internet, and so you really had this sense that you were an insider

like you were. I used to call myself the prince of the city. I felt like, at the end of the day, I knew so much about this town that no one knows. They're not going to know it till they read my my story in the paper in the morning. And it was a very heavy thing to have at you know, when you're in your mid twenties. And so I really enjoyed that job, and um, you know, if if it didn't work out, uh that I wrote with the book stuff that I was gonna be okay with it.

But the first two books I wrote that no one's ever read. We're all setting for Lauderdale and so how did you get out of Fort Lauderdale. Um. I eventually was going up the ladder at the paper, and UM they put me on the Sunday magazine to write feet crime related features. And I wrote a story about a plane crash with two other writers. We spent a whole year and they actually cut us loose for a year

to write the definitive. So for that, for that entire year with the newspaper, you only researched and wrote about the plane crash. Yeah it was, you know, it's a Delta crash. It was. It left Fort Lauderdale and crashed in Dallas and people survived, and so this is the wind Shear crash. Yeah, yeah, I believe was. And Uh. The the interesting thing was that most people, mostly a huge crash like that has no survivors. This one had

twenty nine survivors. So we, me and two other reporters spent a year tracking those people somewhere the flight with Fort Laurida, the Dallas, Dallas of l A. So people were from Texas. People from California and people were from South Florida, and we we got to all of them except for one, and you know, so we kind of weave this story about surviving that and and some people were survived without a scratch, some people had devastating burns and so forth, and so it's all these levels of

what surviving is and how to cope with it. And then we go also not this not to my credit to one of the other reporters, credits he got the um the investing in the MTSB investigation they got he got the file before it was public, and so we were able to piece together what happened on that flight and the wind shear and all that, and it was all part of this three part magazine story that broke

new ground around the crash. But also it was just a really good human story about surviving and it got the attention of the Los Angeles Times because several of the people were from l A. And so I got a call from uh, the l A Times to come out to interview, and I ended up going out there, And that's a whole that was a whole different level of journalism. What was the gig at the l A Times? Again,

it was crime. Um. I started in the the northern part of the county, the or the city of the Valley as it's called San Fernando Valley, where there was six l a p D Division. So like, my first job was covering those six divisions and anything that happened there. And then eventually I was covering a lot more. Okay, so you're writing at night, and at what point in this do you get married. I got married when I was about halfway through my gig in four lauder deal.

And then you have a child. When did that child arrive? Oh, that didn't happen until I had already retired from journalism. Okay, so what does your wife say when you're driving around the valley all day long and then come home and say, hey, honey, I gotta go to the bedroom and right, Uh, that was a deal. We had to make a deal. I mean it was a big impact on her life because we moved to Los Angeles and we didn't know anybody.

We just had each other. But I had this long term dream or goal of writing a book and publishing a book. So I made a deal with her that four work nights a week I would work in we had a two bedroom, and I set up the second bedroom as my writing room. Four nights a week and one weekend. I had to dedicate to this. And I told her I'd have a book. I'd sell a book in three years if she could live, if she could make that deal, and she did, and I was wrong

by two years. It took me five years to get Um, once I moved to l A. Took me about five years to get a book published. Okay, So how long does it take you to write your first book, which is a bosh book? Um, it's hard to say. I'll just throw out three years because I overwrote it. But but I I came to l A and the weekend I got there, there was a crime that inspired the book.

So in a way, you could say, you know, my first book came out in two so you could don't could claim it took five years, but it really took about three. Okay? Uh? And did you know you had something when you were done? I felt I did because I had written those two previous books, and any writer is going to be their harshest critic, and and I know that those two books could should not be published. I they were missing something. It was it was something

in the character. The lead characters were not connecting enough with the reader, which at the time was just me. And I'm thinking, like, if if my own creation is not connecting with me, then there's something seriously wrong here. And so I moved on and I had to write those two books to write the third one, which was um, the Bosh Book. And so at the when I when I had that book, I felt, you know, and again I'm at this point, I'm still a voracious reader of

crime fiction. I just felt this should be published. I didn't know if it would be published well, or or be embraced or anything like that. I just knew from my sampling of reading contemporary crime fiction, this book fit in and should be published. So I had did have that confidence. How hard was it to get the deal and what was the reception once it came out? The hard part was getting an agent. Um, you know, and again this is dating ourselves there, you know. It's pre internet.

So like I'm going to a library and looking up agents in books and stuff like that, and I came across one of my favorite writers still to this day. His name James Lee Burke, and um, he writes about New Orleans most of the time, or or Montana sometimes Texas crime fiction. And he's just an amazing writer. And um, I was reading one of his books and lo and behold is dedicated to his agent, you know. And I'm kind of like groping around in the dark, you know

about like what what makes a good agent? How do you find a good agent? And um, you know, so I wrote to this guy's names Philip Spitzer and um, and he said, I'll read I'll read the book. This is all done by letters. It takes forever, like six weeks. You hear it in the answer and um, he said, I'll read your manuscript if you promised me. I'm reading it exclusively because I don't want to be in competition

with a bunch of other agents. And I said, yes, you haven't exclusively, which was a big lie because I had already sent it out to some to some other agents who had asked for the exact same thing. But you know, at that pace it would take five years to get get everybody, you know, um, the manuscript, uh solo. So anyway, he ended up calling me on a Saturday afternoon, um, which is I thought was unusual. Um, and saying he went he liked the book and he wanted to wrap it.

And this was probably eleven months into my process of trying to find an agent. And so there I had an agent. And if I had ranked my top ten choices of agents I sent to, he would be number one. So I got very lucky there because I loved James Lee Burke's books, and I thought anyone who would dedicate a book to an agent, that agent has got to be honest, and the agent has got to have the long view of what you're doing. And so AS really

ecstatic that um PHILP. Spencer took took me on, and and I knew enough from what I was reading to know that, you know, agents don't make any money unless they sell your books. That are not going to take you on as a favor, whereas for a lark. So I felt confident. He felt he could sell this thing and it wouldn't take too long, and it didn't. It took it took about uh two months, and he sold it to the second editor he sent it to. And how much did you change the book after it was accepted? Um?

Not a whole lot. Um. So it's actually hard for me to remember. Um, I had my editor the editor who bought it left. She did some editing on it and she was very good, and then she left before it was published. And then I got assigned to a to a new guy they had just hired, and then I was with him for like twenty some years and he's still now. He graduated out of editing, is the CEO of the company, so I'm still have a relationship with him. He just doesn't edit my books. But um,

editing is. I've always benefited greatly with my books and editing. So while I don't remember exactly what happened with my first book, I'm sure it was it went through some editing and um, and it was improved. So in any event, your book is published, Okay, how long after that does it start to take off? Well, the one thing was which I didn't understand when I went into this was that, um, they have to find a hole in the schedule to

stick you in because I'm a new writer. And and so it was a bad thing and a good thing. They didn't publish my book for twenty months, and I was like, I had told people, Hey, I sold a book, and then after about ten months people thought I was lying. But anyway, what was good about that was they said, you can avoid the sophomore slump with by writing your second book before this one even comes out, and then you don't have any of the pressures of following something up.

You don't know any of the things you're gonna learn once your book comes out. You can just it's a bubble, take advantage of this bubble and write your second book. So I did that, and so my book came out twenty months later, and um, I already had a second one already done, and which you know, it was. It was interesting they gave me that advice because they didn't have I didn't have a two book deal or anything, you know, So then I then I was in a

position with to negotiate it. And you know, I'm not an overnight John Grisham like success. They put published twelve thousand copies of that book and probably sold half of them, and so it's very incremental. Um, but that was the book business was different back then. They allowed that. I don't even know if they do that anymore. It seems like all the publishers just want to get a big hit right away and they don't allow a writer to

grow and to learn and so forth. And um, what happened about a year later was that first book, One an Edgar, which is like the Oscars of of crime writing for best first novel, and that really established me and bumped up my sales of books that came out afterwards and so forth. So that was the key thing that happened to me. And you know, very fortunate too for that to get that recognition. Okay, let's talk about

your style. If you read the first book, The Black Echo, it's very dense, and now I'm reading Poet, and Poet is a lot less dense. Did you see an evolution of your style? I think so. I mean, you really got to kick out the first book because you don't know what you're doing in terms of publishing, and and it's like, um, you know, it's your heart and soul, so you you baby that thing for so long. And I over written or over wrote that book. I kept

rewriting it. I kept it in the little details I'm picking up on the police beat and all the stuff. So it is very dense. And it's because the whole time I was writing it was like this is my one shot. I got throwing everything but the kitchen sink, and that's what I did, and um, you know, and so uh, you know, through editing, through counsel from editors and so forth, you know, you learn to let a little bit more air in. You learn more about momentum.

Density slows down momentum, And the key to reading and writing is momentum. You gotta have momentum in the day that you're writing. You know, you want you want to put a lot of words on the page, and then you can go back and sculpt them, you can edit them, you can do a lot, you can kick hundreds of words out, doesn't matter. But you want to keep moving because what happens in the writing process is going to happen in the reading process. And so in those first

few books, I kind of learned that. And um, it's interesting you mentioned the poet. So the Poem is my fifth book. But it was the first time I broke away from Harry Bosh and started writing about a world I knew much better than I knew, um, the police world. You know, I was writing about a reporter. I was basically writing about an alter ego. And um that um, I think you know, entered into the writing process and

and made that book. I don't look at in terms of it's less dense, but it just moved quicker, um you know. And there's the style that developed of short sentences, staccato writing, keep keeps the reader's eyes moving, keeps them going through pages, and that became something that was very conscious of at that point in my writing. Let's jump all the way today. So you essentially write a book a year. What's the process? Do you ever do two books at once? Or you start one and you're on

that one until you're done. As far as books go, it's one and done one until done. Um, I've never done that. I mean yes, sometimes, like this year, I'm I'm actually publishing two books, but I wrote them in consecutive one. The one thing that I have been able to do is to break away from writing a book to writing scripts for the TV show based on Bosh. I think it's maybe because it's the same character and the same um mil you. I don't seem to have

a problem with that. So I've been able to spend days like where I love getting up early to write, so I'm usually writing by about five thirty or six in the morning in a day. In my life for the last four or five years has been writing to about writing a book until about ten and then going to a studio and sitting in a writing room or actually writing a script um for a few hours, and then coming back to my book in the afternoon, and and I'm writing about Harry Bosh, who's very different from

They're different. The guy in the book is very different from the guy in the show. The guys in the book is like ten ten, at least ten years older. He's not even a cop anymore. So, so it's the same character but a totally different set up. So it's always been surprising to me that I can jump from one to the other, and I don't think it. I think I do that jump pretty seamlessly. Um, But I can't do that between two book projects. Are you more of a get it down right first? You're more of

a rewriter? Uh, definitely a rewriter. Um. I go through my books two or three times, and the first draft is always to me unreadable. I wouldn't want anyone to see it because I think, I it's always too long. I always cut pages as I go through my rewrites, and I kind of like sharpen it down to what's important and what counts. Get rid of a lot of superflous stuff. And then I also find ways of disguising where I'm going, or trying to disguise where I'm going.

I take out stuff like that's too much of a hint, that type of thing. Yes, you're more of a rewriter. But let me ask you this, Uh, do you have to be motivated? I mean, do you ever sit down and you say, hey, you know it's time to write. But I'm not really in the groove. And is that stuff you right end up being usable? Or when you're hot, is this stuff better? Well? He goes back to your

question about rewriting. Yeah, I rewrite. So I feel like even on a bad day, if I get you know, if I moved the story along, I'm going to have something I can, you know, rewrite and make better later on my next go round. Do you ever one day accomplished or nothing? Yeah, but you know before the virus, those were few and far between. I just have this

weird drive. I mean, I had this teacher at University of Florida named Harry Cruz who was a great novelist, one of my heroes, and I don't remember anything he taught me. I had two classes with him other than he just one time said, if you're gonna be a writer, you got it write every day, even if it's only for fifteen minutes, because if you write for fifteen minutes, the story is gonna keep swirling in your head all through the day. And he was very right about that.

And so I've I've practiced that where I write for at least fifteen minutes, even if I'm I got the flu or whatever, I try to power through. And I just had this conversation with my wife a couple of days ago that during the virus, the beginning of the virus, I was so creatively unmotivated that six weeks went by without me writing. And I think that was, um, the longest I've ever gone without writing in my life. Um, you know, since I was twenty, since I was working

at newspapers. Um, it was like a long time not to be writing. And I was not a pleasant guy to be with and all that. But finally, and I can't explain why, my mojo came back, and I started writing about two weeks ago at a very high clip. I think I was making for the six weeks before, UM, and it was going very quickly. And and I think, well,

I don't go back. I don't you know. I usually start my morning by reading what I wrote the day before and editing it, so I kind of have a build in edit, but I don't have the big picture. Um I won't. I won't see that till I finished this book and start over at the page one. So why do a series on Bosch and then why jump from Bosch to start a couple of news series? UM, I don't know. Just to stay fresh, to stay stay involved.

I do think Bosch is, you know, what I'm about as a writer, but I think it's good to take breaks from him kind of let kind of my mind wonder what's he doing that kind of thing, or I can't or to build up this idea of I can't wait to write about him again. And you know there's other every everything I guess is you know that rights around the um, crime and justice and all that, but

there's different angles on it. So I like this thing like having a defense lawyer's angle, having a journalists angle on it, and uh, I think it keeps it interesting to me in terms of being the writer. I mean, I think there's a bigger fan base for Harry Bosh, but I just don't feel I can write about him every time. Okay, so you're talking about writing screenplays. That's a different art, and it's generally speaking difficult to write dialogue.

You know. You say there was essentially no learning curve for you. Yeah, the the learning curve for me was not dialogue. It was when I write a book. When I write a Harry Bosh book, for example, you're in his head. You know what he's thinking, you know what he's feeling, you know what hurts him, you know what aggravates him. All that is inside his head, and you and you you you, that's a third of it, you know third. One third is interior, one third is um

action what he does, and one third is dialogue. And so when you go to script, you lose a huge component. You lose a third of what what you have when you're writing a book. And you know, there's people who come out of school and just write scripts and that's their lives, so they don't even know what they're missing.

But I, you know, I came to the show after almost twenty years twenty five years almost of writing novels, and so to me, it was a huge change to have to write a story without saying what someone is thinking. And that's where I um, it's you know, I think the scripts I wrote in the first couple of seasons needed needed, uh to be rewritten, and they were UM. And I think I've kind of overcome that um impediment uh that I felt in scriptwriting in the more recent years.

But that was the tough part, not the dialogue, because dialogue has been important to me ever since I was a reporter, you know, and you had to um, you had little space to write. You know. Crime fiction was the whinted stepchild in newspapers, not crime fiction, crime reporting, and and so you were never given enough space to tell what you thought was a great story or an interesting story. So you learn to use dialogue to advance the information delivery. Um, you had get an ear for dialogue.

Dialogue that advances the story. It doesn't just uh say what was already said. And so dialogue, you know. So I carried that into my books, and I carry that into my scripts. I just don't feel like dialogue is being a barrier to me. It's more like losing that interior thought that that's been tough to deal with. So tell us about the development of of Bosh the TV show. Yeah, well Blash had been down the tortuous road in Hollywood. Um,

you know, initially what looked like great success. Um. By the time the second book was published, Hollywood came calling and they made a big deal to buy the first three books. UM. I got involved. They said you could write one of the screenplays, and so everything looked like it was going somewhere. Um. It was bought by Paramount, assigned to the producers who made the Tom Clancy movies

with Harrison Ford, and we were tailoring scripts to Harrison Ford. UM, and uh, you know, they'll all look good, and then it didn't look good. He passed on them, and the stuff got on the shelf the way Holly Hollywood. Um deals are. Um, things stay on shelves for a long time. You need a lot of money to to leverage them out. And so the books kind of were basically gathering dust for almost two decades, and then I finally got the rights to them back. And it was really at a

time when TV was really fantastic. There was a lot of serialized television going on, UM, a lot of good character studies. And so I just told my reps, my agent and so forth that I'm not interested in. And and also at this point I had several Harry Bosh books written. I said, you can't cover this guy in a two hour movie. Let's try to get a TV deal somewhere. And so that was the initial um start

of it. And then also at the same time, Amazon was deciding to get into UM streaming television and so forth, and um, you know, we kind of went from there, and uh, it was weird. This goes back to the Yankees. I I had a friend I lived part of the year in Tampa, Florida, where now the Yankees do spring ball. So I had a friend who was a former publisher come down from New York to go to a spring training game with me. And he had left publishing to go to work at Amazon because they were also trying

to get into publishing. So anyway, I was driving him to the airport and he said to me, you know, they're gonna start making TV shows UM to stream on Amazon. Would that be something you'd be interested in. I said, yeah, sure, because I've thought of the nexus of book sales and TV and so forth. And so that was my entree into Amazon. So it was very much unlike a normal process in Hollywood where you pitch your show and they

develop and all that stuff. Amazon just basically I probably punched up a couple of numbers to see how what my book sales were and said let's do it. So that's where it came from. How long after that conversation, it's bring training until they say yes, no. I mean what happened was what what this was all new to Amazon as it was to me, and uh so they were very accommodating. And they also this is like when I go in to have a meeting, there'll be two

people there. Now when I go into a meeting, they have a long board room, uh you know, and there's like fifteen or sixteen people. So Amazon was learning as they were going and that gave us great freedom. And as far as you know, I'm not really involved in the money, but as far as I know, we told them what we would need to make the show the way the way I wanted to make it, the way my partners wanted to make it, and they gave us

that money. Um, one of the key things to me, and I actually got this in a contract with my partner. So before I went to Amazon, I should say when I told my agent, let's look at TV. He hooked me up with a production company. Amazon is not the

production company, Amazon is the delivery system. So I made a deal with a producer of television and I got him to sign an agreement and put it in a contract, which is almost unheard of in Hollywood, that every scene of Vosh would be filmed in Los Angeles, even interiors, because I felt we had to have to act really reflect with in the books where and where in the books Los Angeles as a character. We had to do that on the TV show. So so my partner, my

producing partner, readily agreed. He was very familiar with the books. He came He actually sought me out. I didn't seek him out. He readily agreed, and then he had to live with that, and he had to sell that to Amazon because that did add a big expense to it. But Amazon um agreed to it and also saw the light that that if you're going to try to adapt these books, then adapt the books. Don't go to Canada

to do that. And so it worked out well. And I think that in the show, the the city is a character that there's a tone to the visuals of the show, uh that I love and that I think are accurate to the books. And so it's been a very happy, um, you know agreement. Tell us about the casting, the I mean, everything comes down to who's Harry Bosh? And you know the I remember, so we have a showrunner. The head creative person on the show is called the showrunner,

and his name is Eric Overmeyer. And I happen to have previously known him, not that well, but I had dinner with him a couple of times because of some mutual friends in New York City. And um, he said, our biggest Um, there's two things that are our biggest challenges. One finding the right Harry Bosh and two your books are very interior. You're you're writing inside Harry Bosch's head,

and we can't do that in the script. And so not only do we have to find a way of of of showing his feelings of how what he says, what he does, and so forth, but we also have to break the storytelling out to other characters. Um. In the Bosh books, you're usually only with Bosh in every scene,

and you can't do that in a TV show. But anyway, going back to the casting, that was that was obviously a key thing, and Amazon had a schedule for when we would shoot the pilot, and we basically had about seven weeks to find our Harry Bosh and I went into the first meeting, and we had really good casting agents. They were at that time casting Madman UM. They were, you know, they had cast that show and we're continuing to cast it UM year after years. So they were

very good UM casting people. And they had a list of like four pages of names of different actors and so forth in UM. You know, I'm Mr. Bookwriter. I don't really know a lot about Hollywood, but I had seen Titus Welver playing as a guest star on a TV show just recently, just recent to this meeting, where he played a ex soldier with PTSD, and he was clearly able to convey that this guy had inner demons.

And that's what I wanted, um in Bosh, That's what Eric Overmeyer wanted, That's what Henrik Baston, our producing partner wanted, and so I. But his name wasn't on these four pages, and so I was very kind of intimidated to even bring him up because I'm the I'm the guy in the room hasn't had no experience really with TA Television

that much. So anyway, I brought him up and they said we'd love him and he'd be great for the part, except he's making a movie in Hong Kong and during our six seven weeks where we can casts, he's not going to be in l A. So that kind of went out the window. And then we proceeded down over the next days and weeks UH with the list that they had, and we kept talking to different people and we would um people would come in and try out and so forth, and nobody really connected with the group

as being Harry Bosh. And then we were actually at the point where we were gonna have to call Amazon on him. It was like Thursday or Friday, and we had the we're gonna call Amazon on Monday and say we have to push um shooting the pilot because we don't want to do it with someone we're not convinced

as Harry Bosh. And then that same day we got word that Titus was flying home for the weekend to see his kids, and so we kind of cajoled this idea that he would come and see see us for like an hour just so we could talk to him, and and instead he worked up this the audition scene for Bosch on the plane ride back and came in all jet lagged and auditioned and even in his jet lagged capacity, we all knew this. We just had this instinct, the instinctual thing that this is the guy, this is

this is Harry Bosh. So he basically got the job right there. Now, you say the Bosch on TV is different from the Bosch in the book. So are you writing for the character Titus has established? How do you do that? Yeah, you definitely feed off of what you've got so far on the TV show, And um, we are you know, all the writers know Titus very well.

Titus is a contributor, collaborator, comes to the writing room, talks about things that he'd like to see Bosch do and things like that, and so it's it's all under the umbrella of the book for sure. Um, and you know, there's other aspects of adapting it. Many of the books we've adapted are from the nineties and we're you know, twenty l a. It's it's a different city twenty years later, twenty five years later, So we have to make changes anyway. And so you know, Bosch Bosch has become tight as

tightest has become Bosh. I mean, I think he has a sense of that character as as strong as mine. UM and I think, uh and I trust him with that character. So when he says I want to do this or I want to say that, um, I I really listened to him because I think he comes from a place of of character knowledge that UM I have to certainly respect. So you're on amas on and when you launch five years ago, uh, amazons that people think of streaming is still relatively new when it's on Netflix.

What is the reception? What is the experience after the series is up on your end? Oh? Yeah, yeah, So we know we have a good show. Um, I'm very proud of it. It's very reflective of the books, and it's very reflective of the accuracy, um of of that job. I mean, we have to um. Actually in the first season we had three active LAPD homicide detectives being our consultants. So so we're very confident in the show. And Amazon is kind of like in its nascent stages of coming

out with UM with streaming product. I think they had one two other shows that were comedies to come out before UM Bosh. So we have the show that we think is good, and it becomes a matter of how do we get how do we draw people to it? And so you know, Amazon did a lot, you know, billboard all over to place all kinds of social media times Square. Um, it seemed like it was everywhere, and

I think that got us off to a good start. Um. You know, I have obviously have my social media, and I think the core audience was was the the readers of the books, but television demands a much bigger audience than that, so we had to expand it well beyond the book readers who who loved the series. Well from my viewpoint, just as ah and I was not a Bosh reader at the time. Um, I didn't get into it until season three. At what point did you feel the show was really picking up with the public. I

think around then. I mean I think definitely the first season. Um, we were getting to know everybody on the show. I mean we basically have um, you know, the cast is the cast, but our crew we've probably because we suit in l A and everyone wants to work on l A show, so they want to travel. We've had probably like nine return rate of our crew and so all that kind of comes together in making a show. It's all very important, and um, you know, it's a learning experience.

You get better the more you do something. And I think we refine. We made some changes in the writing room, We made some changes in um, the look of the show and so forth, the cameras and so forth. And I think, um, we really came into our own, um late in the second season into three. And uh, you know, it's not that we made any bad seasons or anything, but I just think we got better. I think it's a rare show that season. The season it gets better.

I completely agree, and I certainly tell people that. Speaking of which, uh, supposedly next year's your last season? What's up with that? Um? Exosedly? Yeah, I think everything it changes, you know, because of the virus. I think, um, the every every, every provider of content, cable network, streaming is gonna face content issues because of the shutdown, um of everything in life and but but in in in the

entertainment industry as well. So I'll never say never. Maybe it will be our last, maybe not, but as of now, it's scheduled to be our last, And um, you know, I'm not on the level of making those decisions. Or

why they make those decisions. I mean, I think Bosch is going to live on their platform for for many years to come, maybe decades to come, and I think at some point they they make decisions based on you know, this show costs this x amount of money a year to make, and we already have that audience in our back pocket, so why don't we try to connect them to something new and different? You know, I think those are kind of the creative situations that go into it.

I do know that we that these discussions were happening all the time that we were making the sixth season, and uh, you know, to Amazon's credit, the creative people at the top of that, you know, we sat down with them and they said, you know, we want to we want you to write to an ending next year so that we have a show that has that is complete, you know that it starts from the beginning and has an ending, and that we want you to know the

whole season you'll be writing towards an ending. And that was from a creative standpoint, that was really good to have. And we're doing that now. You know, the sixth season just came out, but we're well into writing the seventh season. And writing two towards an ending. The one thing that's kind of odd is that the books are not ending. I'm still writing about Harry Bosh. I'm writing a book right now that he's in and so forth. So whereas I have not written a book on on the book track,

I have not written to an ending. We're gonna be doing that with the TV show. And to what degree has the TV show impacted the sales of your books? Um, it's it's anecdotal. I know it's impacted it. Um you know, I know, you know, Amazon is the biggest seller of books in the world, so or you know, one screen away you can go from uh watching the bos show to reading the Bosh books, and so I know it's had an impact, but it's not something I can measure.

I know, you know, I sold more books than but my profile has always been growing since each book has sold more than the one before, And that's what's going on now. And I have to attribute a big chunk of that to the show, But you know I can't. There's no science about it that says exactly what the impact has been. Let's just say hypothetically, you know, shooting begins soon. You're right, to an ending, there's no obvious renewal. Uh.

To what degree are you going to be depressed? I don't think I'll be depressed at all, because, um, I've always been a bookwriter first, UM, and and being in that room by myself and writing and pleasing myself for feeling satisfaction of something I've done has never been something that's gone away. This the TV show has been great. I've I've kind of gone from being the introvert of being in the uh, part of a crew of like two people. Um, and that's been a really fun part

of my life for the last seven years. And so I'll definitely miss that. I don't know if I'll go into depression. Um. And then you know, you know, you can always live for the day that Amazon says, well, let's do a movie, let's chick in on Harry Bosh. So I don't I don't really think it will be the end of Harry Bosh in terms of video. Since you have other characters, written books about other people, are you developing now that you know theoretically there's an end

to Bosh? Are you developing shows based on these other characters? And well, yeah, I have a whole slew of characters out there, and I hope to UM, you know, take another shot at UM Hollywood in that way. So yeah, they're in different various stages of development. I almost had a Lincoln Lawyer show on CBS, but the virus kind of killed that, UM and so we'll start over on that and see what happens. Okay, So what do you do with your money? What I do with my money? UM,

I give a lot of it away. My wife and I have a foundation that we UM support a lot of causes. I'm really UM. One of my main focuses is journalism and UM supporting journalism schools, supporting investigative news sites on the Internet. I think because of the downsizing of the newspaper business, a lot of good stuff is going out into the Internet and it's hard to be profitable or or to even pay the bills, and so there's a lot of nonprofit UM news sites with with

particular focuses. My next book is actually called fair Warning, and it's and it has Jack McAvoy, the reporter from The Poet, working for a new site called fair Warning,

which is consumer oriented investigative reporting. UM. And I mean I've been involved in supporting that I'm on the board and so forth, and so that it filtered into my creative process, where you know, I've written about this reporter on and off for I don't know, twenty five years, and so it was kind of obvious to me that while I check in on Jack McAvoy now and have them working at one of these news sites, and so it's a kind of a blending of of of reality,

um with fiction. And what about your personal viewpoint on the future of journalism, Well, I'm concerned about it, and I've voiced that concern I think through Jack, especially in this book. But but you know, the last book I wrote about him, The Scarecrow, was right in the middle

the newspaper crunch, and um, I reflected on that. Um, you know, in my day, and I'm not one of these guys that goes it was always better when nic really you know, the old days, in my days, But I am from a time in journalism where the newspaper was a tent pole in a community for discussions about everything, culture, politics, crime, everything, and and that central point of debate and discussion is pretty much gone in almost every city except for a few.

And and that to me, you know, so I think that society's loss and like I said, alive it has filtered out onto the Internet. But it's almost like, go see your question of how do you find how do people find Bosh in his early years? It's hard to find this stuff, the incredible stuff, the stuff that is not um politically biased and so forth, out on the Internet. And that's where we are right now, having that issue of of trust and media that I think is um,

you know, a very uh telling issue. Okay, let's just say hypothetically, I can snap my fingers. You own the l A Times. What would you do differently? Oh man, I think I Well, I mean they still I'll probably get help for this because they've they've out of pride and so forth. They've maintained many of their postings around the world and they've cut them back immensely, but they

still maintain them. And I just think the way to survive now as a newspaper, unless you're The New York Times in Washington Post, is to really double down on local reporting and local investigative reporting, and you know, maybe not worried so much about having an office in Beijing, but instead have um a reporter who just watches the money in the county budget, you know, things like that, and I think that would would connect the paper to

it's populous better. And it can also, um you know, serve that function that is I think is being lost in terms of being, um a watchdog. And to be a watchdog, you gotta start with your own community before you start worrying about the world. And I think that's where I think the future of newspapers surviving for the most part is in that local attention to the local scene. And you know what what you said, You write so much about l A and you live about live in

l A. What's your viewpoint on Los Angeles. I'm still very enthusiastic about l A, and I think by Harry Bosh would be too. To me. It goes back to back when I told you about when I was a young reporter and I felt like I was a prince of the city because I knew things that were going

on that people didn't know. Yet I feel that way about l A. I still feel like it's on the front line of change and and trends and culture and and there's there's a pride in that that I take in as as a writer of this place, as a resident of this place, as just someone who loves this place. And so I still so I think l A is going to be okay no matter, no matter what happens,

you know, post post Corona. Well, I guess, thinking back, the reason I got into Bosh is I knew someone who worked at Amazon and they said to watch Goliath. And I wrote about Goliah saying how had the l A look? And someone wrote to me said, well, if you're into the l A look, you gotta watch Bosh. Now you really get the richness and the color, the visibility. You know, you do this better than any series. To

what degree is that conscious? And to what degree did you try to nail it and get a specific just you know, with the DP, etcetera. Well, it started with the books, and then it was really surrounding the books with people in this industry, the television industry, who wanted

to get it right, you know. So you know, I pretty much consciously when I had choices of going to people and eventually it becomes so big that I have no no saying a lot of different things, but I went to people that knew the books and loved the books. So our line producer, which is a usually important nuts and bolts producer. Um was a guy who read the books and the guy who produced the movie Heat back

in the nineties, which influenced me as a writer. So, you know, you start start with this, you start with people who love l A and they want to make something that is realistic, but at the same time it's also kind of a love letter to l A. And then you keep adding to that circle of people of the same kind of sentiment and a view of this place. Um. And you know, it's a rare thing, I think. Um, I don't know if it works every time on every shows. I don't I don't have those experiences to to know.

But but we just have a bunch of people who wanted who went to to l A to be a character in this show. You know, you mentioned about the look of the show. You know, our director of photography, Patrick Katie, he works on that so much. You know, he's always out there shooting, trying to get the tone right, trying to get the tone that we're looking for, that he's looking for. And we just have a lot of individuals that give their all to the show and it's

it's amazing to be a part of that. What about the house facing l A as opposed to the valley. It's funny I mentioned the guy who was the line producer of Heat. That house was in Heat and um and he you know, I don't know if anyone has Roll Indexes anymore, but he's kept every contact he's ever made in Hollywood. And so we end up running that house because we had a connection to that house through

this uh producer we have. Um. I think that to get back to your question though, I think that's a good way of looking at the difference between writing a book and making a television show. The visual needs of the television show. Harry Bosh and the books has a pretty decent view of part of the city and the freeway and things that are you know, part parcel of

the city. But when it came to the TV show, we wanted the bright lights and and you know, then that sets up a whole question of whether he could even afford a place like that, and you know, which we I think have taken care of a few times in the storytelling. But um, yeah, I think in the TV show we have more of guardian of the city feel to Bosh, and we wanted a place where he would look out on the city that he protects and serves. He's a big jazz fan and he plays Vinyl in

the book. He's playing CDs, So hey, are you a big jazz fan? And b was her conscious choice to have him play vine, Yeah, that was part of the playing in the Vinyl was, you know, part of the visual setup. Um, I personally have gone to Vinyl myself. I but I'm I'm a newspaper reporter. So I decided way back when I was first writing Bosch, I wanted him to listen to jazz. It was not because of my knowledge or or love of jazz. It was more like a creative decision, a character decision. Jazz fit this

guy who was a loner detective. So being a reporter though, I know how to ask questions and I know how to find good stuff, and so the jazza Harry listens to comes out of my reporting a little bit. It comes out of my father's is my father's music. But um, it was mostly me finding people that would support the character of Harry Bosh as a loner out there in the world who has to fight to make his way, just as the musicians that he listens to had to

do Um, So there's a correlation there. Some people who read the books get it, some who some don't, but but they get the aspect of what the music means to him. Well, you know, as I say, the show and carry himself certainly in body l A. Especially in an era where everyone's attacking California. It certainly makes Los Angeles look like a unique police and good In any event, Michael, thanks so much for doing this. Hey, thank you for having me. I'm sorry for the technical interruptions, but if

we ever do it again, I'll get it right. Okay, that's part of the coronavirus era. Until next time, it's Bob left Sex eight