Michael Connelly, the prolific author and executive producer, has reached a remarkable milestone with three simultaneous book-to-film adaptations. Connelly shares insights into his creative process, the challenges of adapting his novels for television, and his experiences in Hollywood.
With the upcoming release of his new book, “The Waiting,” on October 15th, and the highly anticipated premieres of “The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 3 on Netflix and “Bosch: Legacy” Season 3 on Prime Video, Connelly continues to captivate audiences across multiple media. He discusses the evolving landscape of the entertainment industry, the impact of the recent writers’ strike, and the importance of staying true to his characters.
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0:00 Introduction
2:07 Books In Film & TV: The Cinematic Parallels
4:01 What Creative Liberties Were Used In Show, Lincoln Lawyers
10:06 Michael Connelly On TV Production Schedules And Writer's Rooms
15:42 Here's How Michael Connelly Organizes His Creative Writing Space/Time
19:17 Nonfiction vs Fiction
23:42 What Can Readers Expect From Michael Connelly's 'The Waiting'
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Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
With the upcoming release of his new book, “The Waiting,” on October 15th, and the highly anticipated premieres of “The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 3 on Netflix and “Bosch: Legacy” Season 3 on Prime Video, Connelly continues to captivate audiences across multiple media. He discusses the evolving landscape of the entertainment industry, the impact of the recent writers’ strike, and the importance of staying true to his characters.
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
0:00 Introduction
2:07 Books In Film & TV: The Cinematic Parallels
4:01 What Creative Liberties Were Used In Show, Lincoln Lawyers
10:06 Michael Connelly On TV Production Schedules And Writer's Rooms
15:42 Here's How Michael Connelly Organizes His Creative Writing Space/Time
19:17 Nonfiction vs Fiction
23:42 What Can Readers Expect From Michael Connelly's 'The Waiting'
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, senior editor at Forbes. Michael Connelly is a prolific
00:09author and an executive producer of three simultaneous book-to-film adaptations of his
00:16stories, The Lincoln Lawyer, Bosch Legacy, and the upcoming series following Detective
00:22Rene Ballard, with his new book, The Waiting, releasing on October 15th, and season three
00:28of The Lincoln Lawyer arriving on Netflix on October 17th. Michael Connelly is captivating
00:34audiences across multimedia and he joins us now. Michael, thanks so much for being here.
00:39Glad to be here.
00:40So you have three book-to-film, book-to-series adaptations. That's remarkable. Can you put
00:47in context how rare that is for an author in the day and age of 2024?
00:54Yeah, I can't put it in context. It's really kind of unbelievable that it's happened and
01:01it's not all on the same platform as actually competing platforms. And what's most remarkable
01:09to me is that the audience for these books seems to travel. They go where the shows are.
01:17In Hollywood, IP, intellectual property, seems to be the ruler of the day. And that's somewhat
01:25new. And I think that's what I've benefited from.
01:29IP is the ruler of the day. So is it that audiences are in love with your IP and in
01:34love with your characters and just they'll go wherever you go?
01:38I'd like to say that's all it is. But it's more like it's about money. And I think Hollywood
01:44is doing less betting on homegrown things. So if something comes from a book or it comes
01:52from a comic, that's where they feel safer to invest in that. So especially on streaming
01:59platforms, there seems to be a lot of shows that the origination is a book.
02:07Bridgerton comes to mind. And your books especially translate well to film or I'm
02:14saying film, but I'm using the all-encompassing term to talk about streaming because you have
02:18many stories. You have a series that follows a character over many years. So that translates
02:23well to episodic storytelling. Were you hesitant to enter this medium? Like,
02:29take us back to that very first deal, the first time you considered an adaptation.
02:33Was that something you wanted or was it an agent or someone else saying, hey, this is a good idea?
02:39Well, I have a healthy writer's ego. So I always thought that my stuff would lend itself
02:44to a visual form of storytelling. And I had a couple experiences where films were made on my
02:52books, but I had literally nothing to do with that. It was more like you get patted on the
02:58head and said, run along and do what you do. Go write a book. We'll take care of this. And
03:05with the advent of streaming 10, 12 years ago, I think that changed. And so I had a checkered
03:13history, I would say, with Hollywood for about 20 years. And then streaming happened. And
03:21Amazon came to me and said, more or less came to me and said, let's do this TV show on one
03:27condition that you come with it and you be involved. And that was like shocking to me,
03:33to tell you the truth, that that's not been my Hollywood experience. And so then we made Bosch
03:40and it went well. And then the same thing happened with Netflix. When they came calling for Lincoln
03:47Lawyer, they said, we want you there. We want you in the room. Basically, you're talking about the
03:52writing room where it all comes from. It's not like I can be on the set. I don't know anything
03:56about camera angles and things like that. But I can I can be helpful in the room.
04:01In adapting your book into a screenplay, effectively, what's been the most interesting
04:08or surprising process of taking a book and turning it into a script?
04:13Well, a couple of things. One is the it's kind of bred in you as a novel writer that
04:19Hollywood is full of hacks. And if you throw your book over the fence in Hollywood, good luck with
04:25it. But I've just been shocked and shocked again at the quality of people involved in adapting
04:32these books. The writers, they just they're just I trust them completely. And I didn't take a long
04:38time to get to that point. I realized that they were not trying to go in a different direction.
04:45They were really the character was sacred to them. And that translated into the process
04:53coming from it from on another angle, coming from to this world from being a book writer,
04:59where you have immense freedom, where you can go in characters heads and say what they're thinking
05:04and what their point of view is. You can't do that in scripts. And so that was a I have written some
05:09of the scripts on these shows. But I have to say I'm rewritten quite a bit because that's a very
05:14difficult transition for me to make. You're rewritten quite a bit. That's for folks who
05:19write themselves and are rewritten. That's almost encouraging to hear that someone as experienced
05:23as you even in a different environment is getting rewritten. Yeah, I mean, because I would in my
05:29early scripts, I'd say Bosch thinks this and you know, that would get scratched out. We don't.
05:33How do you film what someone's thinking? You can't. So to me, it's a big it's almost half of
05:39what I do, or at least a third of what I have in when I'm writing a book. How I connect to readers
05:46is through how Harry Bosch thinks or how Renee Bowerd thinks. And that goes out the window. And
05:51it's all based on what they say and what they do, actions and words. And that is a it's a it's an
05:58art in itself. And I'm, I got a front seat. I'm in the front row watching that happen with some
06:05really talented writers. It's interesting that you say that because as someone who reads a lot
06:10and has conversations with friends about Oh, I don't want to watch this series because I loved
06:14the book so much. I heard another author say, Well, yeah, the reason you don't like the film
06:19adaptations is because you can't use your imagination as much as you do when you're
06:24reading when you're watching something on film, precisely for the Bosch thinks this,
06:28the inner monologue and the details that your own brain fills in. The screen is telling it to you.
06:35What has been the feedback from your audiences with these adaptations?
06:38Well, I have to say I was very aware of that. And I felt a little bit like I betrayed my audience
06:44because take Bosch, for example, I've written millions of words about him, but probably all
06:51the descriptions physical descriptions of him and all the books probably adds up to less than 10
06:56pages. I've always written the way I like to read, which is I like to build a characters,
07:02everything in my head. And that's the what's sacred and wonderful about reading. And so I've
07:08done that for like 20 some years. And then suddenly I'm saying, this is what he looks like,
07:12here's the TV show, and this is what he looks like. So I've had a lot of what you just said,
07:17I've had people come up to me at book signings and so forth and say, I can't watch the show.
07:22Because I have Harry in my heart and in my head. And no matter how good Titus Welver is,
07:28and I think he's fantastic. You know, they're not going to be able to jump that,
07:33that chasm and watch the show.
07:36Now talking about Titus Welver, and the other actors and actresses involved in the series,
07:42how involved have you been in picking these people? Because I heard a story, at least with
07:46Titus, where you kind of had him in your head, you waited in a meeting to bring up his name.
07:51But in general, are you saying like, this is my dream cast and go forth and get these people?
07:57Or are you sitting in auditions? Take us through the process.
08:00Well, one of the things I have to understand is that I'm a good book writer. Like I said,
08:06I have a healthy writer's ego. And that's what I can do. I mean, what do I know about
08:12the nuances between great acting and okay acting? I you know, I'm not an actor,
08:18I haven't had that experience. And so I kind of learned early on that
08:23I should not get too deep into auditions and so forth. But you know, there's always one character,
08:31it's the main character that comes right out of my books. And I want to have a say in that.
08:35And yeah, I was the first one to pitch Titus Welver. I mean, we had a meeting and there's
08:40like five pages of actors names and his name wasn't on it. And he was in my mind because I
08:45had seen him portray an ex vet who had PTSD and he didn't have to say, hey, I got PTSD.
08:54You could see he was carrying it behind his eyes. And that's what we needed.
08:58Because I've been briefed that we're not going inside Harry Bosch's head. So we got to find
09:03someone who can project what he's carrying inside. And, and so I had seen Titus in a guest
09:10role on a TV show where he had was this guy with PTSD. Then we come to this big meeting with two
09:19casting people and his name wasn't on the list. So I was very timid about what about Titus Welver
09:26and then I brace for like, we can't work with that guy. He's awful or something like that.
09:30And they said, oh, we love him, but he's making a movie in Hong Kong. And we had a very prescribed,
09:35I think it was a six week period where we had to find Bosch or delay the project because everything
09:40was set. You know, we had stages rented. We had all these things ready to go. So we had to find
09:45the guy in six weeks and we didn't find him. And then on the very last week, they said he was
09:50coming back from Hong Kong to see his kids who he had not seen in a few months because of his
09:56filming. And we said, well, that's really important. Family is important, but is there
10:01any way we can get him for a couple of hours to come and talk to us? And he did. And he got the
10:05job in the room. That's incredible. As you talk about building sets in the production schedules,
10:11I'm curious because we are one year on the other side of a writers and actors strike that
10:16tremendously disrupted production schedules and Hollywood output. How, what was your experience
10:23with the writer's strike and how did that strike affect the progress on these three series that
10:28we're talking about? The strikes were very disruptive. I was on the strike line quite
10:35often. I really agreed with what the Writers Guild was trying to accomplish because I,
10:41especially in this world of streaming, it's just, you know, most shows are only 10 episodes instead
10:46of 22. So it's very hard for writers to make a good living because they're, they'll spend like
10:52seven months making a 10 episode show. So there's less pay there. And then they got to try to find
10:57something else. And then there's also lots of delays between approvals of continuing seasons
11:03and so forth. So it's been become streaming is really kind of upset the apple cart. And I agreed
11:12with the efforts that were going to be made to make it a little bit more financially attractive
11:20to be a writer in Hollywood. So having said all that, it has, the ripple effects of that have been
11:26immense. And there's very little production going again. I'm happy that since the writers struck,
11:34that we've done a Lincoln Lawyer season, we've done a Bosch Legacy seasons, and now we're seven
11:38episodes in the filming of Ballard. And so at least my shows are going forward. But I know
11:46from talking to crew members and so forth, there's very little work out there. As the,
11:52I don't know whether it's because of money loss during the strike, but the studio seemed to be
11:56constricting and going forward with fewer projects. I was talking to a producer and director and she
12:03said something similar. And I think another part of the problem is productions are getting shipped
12:07overseas or places where it's a little bit cheaper to film. But where do you do the bulk of the
12:12filming for your series? So far, everything of my shows have been in LA. And it's, I mean,
12:20you know, in these, in these books, LA is a character, you know, just as big a character
12:25as Harry Bosch. And so I took advantage of, like when Amazon came to me about 12 years ago and
12:33said, we're making our own shows and we want to make Bosch. Well, at that point, they hadn't made
12:38any. So it was a bit of a gamble going with them, but I happened to enjoy some lifelong insomniac.
12:46And I was, I was an early adapter of streaming stuff, stream it through the night. So when they
12:52said, we're going to make a streaming show, I said, I'm all in. But they also were new at it.
12:58And they made an agreement that, that in my contract, I said, I'd only do this if you film
13:04every shot in LA. And because LA is a character, we're going to make LA a character in the show,
13:10just like in the books. And they agreed to that. And I think they later rued the day they agreed
13:16to that because they could have shipped a lot of the filming interiors and so forth to Canada,
13:22where it's cheaper and you get tax credits and things like that. But then the other shows just
13:29happened to follow suit. I did not have that contractual thing in Lincoln Lawyer or in Ballard,
13:35but we're filming all scenes in LA. One of the few shows that's, or companies that is making
13:43stuff in LA. That's really interesting. And I think if I was reading background on you correctly,
13:48there's a writer who had a short chapter in one of his books that described LA that was one of
13:53your earliest inspirations. Am I getting that right? I'm trying to remember that one. There's
13:58been a lot written about me. It sounds like a true story, but can you give me another hint about
14:02it? It was chapter 13. That's what's sticking in my head. Chapter 13. I thought you meant
14:08dealing with Hollywood. Yeah. I mean, no, I think going back just the writing. I think.
14:13And it's funny. I'm a book writer, but I became a writer because of a movie. I saw
14:19the 1973 version of The Long Goodbye that Robert Altman directed with Elliot Gould as
14:25the classic detective, Philip Marlowe. And I saw that movie when I was in college and I
14:34started reading the books and I stopped going to classes and changed direction and said,
14:39I want to be a writer. At the time I was in an engineering major. But so yeah, those books
14:47changed my trajectory of my life. But in one of Chandler's books, The Little Sister, chapter 13,
14:55it's just a very short chapter where he drives around L.A., has nothing to do with plot.
15:01He's frustrated by the plot. He's frustrated by the case he's on. He's a private eye.
15:06And to get some air, he drives around L.A. and describes L.A. And I think that book was
15:11published in 1939. And the description holds up, you know, things have changed, obviously, but
15:17the feeling of L.A. and the light of L.A. and everything about it just rings true. So that
15:23is an inspiration. I read that chapter over and over in the course of writing a book.
15:29Really? So every time you write a book, you return to that?
15:32Yeah, that's like raising the flag. OK, it's time to start again. Let's go through a couple
15:37of routines I do. And one of them is reading that chapter from The Little Sister.
15:42That's interesting. What are the other routines? I know you have an FAQ on your website where you
15:46talk about the structure of a day. But what is something that people wouldn't expect that you do?
15:51Well, I have a kind of weird stuff. But anyway, I drink a lot of iced tea when I'm writing.
15:58And so I have a kind of like what you'd find in a restaurant, a really big brewer that brews
16:03two gallons at a time. And I, you know, I get the iced tea going. I think a lot of writers are
16:11superstitious and I am. So my first book I wrote, I didn't really have an office at home, didn't
16:16have room for one. So I wrote it on a couch next to this kind of antiques lamp. And I still have
16:23that lamp. And I always want that lamp because that is the first book I wrote. I wrote under
16:29that light from that lamp. And so I recreate that as well. So those are the things that are the same.
16:35I'm wondering, has anything changed about your writing process, especially since you started
16:39adapting your stories for film? Do you think more in terms of a script or a series flow
16:46as you're sketching out the plot line for one of your novels? I try not to. I don't, you know,
16:51I don't want to think like this is going to look good on television. But you can. I mean, I have
16:56now like 10 years experience producing television. And so I can't help but not think about that. But
17:04you know, for the most part, you keep your head down. You know, you need visual things, forensics,
17:10parts of the city and things like that. But that's all window dressing on a character story. So
17:15that's really, I'm always concentrating on the character story. And I think if I get that right,
17:20other things like television, so forth will follow. Your new book, The Waiting is officially
17:26your 40th book. Is that correct? 39th novel, 40th book overall, I did put out a nonfiction
17:33collection of my journalism once. 39th book, 39th novel, how do you maintain that level of production?
17:43I hate to use the WB word, the writer's block word, but that's a remarkable run.
17:50Well, I think I benefited and this was not part of the plan. It's just the way it is.
17:56You know, when you're at a newspaper, you don't have writer's block. You can't ever say,
18:00you know, boss, I don't have it today. You got to write. You write every day. And when you're
18:04on a crime beat like I was, and again, remember, I was a journalist in the 80s and early 90s. So
18:10the newspaper business was fat and happy and returning 20%. You know, it's not like it is now,
18:17a crumbling industry. And, you know, so I, it was really thick newspapers, a lot of space for
18:23stories. And I wrote crime in South Florida, and then in Los Angeles, places where you didn't go
18:29wanting if you were a crime beat reporter. And so I was writing multiple stories a day. And that
18:35kind of gave me a work ethic that I carried over into my novels. And, you know, so I write every
18:41day. I usually start early. And, you know, now with the Hollywood stuff, luckily, Hollywood
18:48doesn't get going every day till like 10 or 11. So, you know, like most of the writing rooms
18:53start at 11, they go to like 11 to 4. And then that's when everyone's in the room. And then you
18:59do your own writing of scripts afterwards or before whatever you want to do. But that's been,
19:04I've been able to maintain starting early, usually 630 or seven and writing to 10 or 11.
19:11And so I've not had a blip in terms of publishing books while all this TV stuff has been happening.
19:17That's remarkable. But the let's talk more about the journalism, because you started as a crime
19:23reporter. And I'm wondering, was writing fiction always the goal? Or was it somewhere along the
19:29crime beat that you realized you wanted to make a switch from nonfiction to fiction?
19:35No, the fiction was always the first goal. You know, after I changed from being an engineer
19:41major, I talked to my parents, and they had the idea of don't switch to English lit.
19:48And then you end up being a teacher or whatever. If you're very specific about wanting to write
19:53mystery stories and crime stories, you should go back into journalism and, you know, get a press
20:00pass and get into police stations and talk to real life detectives. And it would hopefully be like
20:05research and hopefully put you in a position to take your shot at writing a crime novel.
20:12So I always had that, you know, and so I was always putting, you know, metaphorically putting
20:17stuff in my back pocket that I knew, this doesn't really belong in a newspaper story, but someday
20:24I'll put it into a novel.
20:26That was smart advice from your parents.
20:29Yeah, my dad had been a frustrated artist. He had wanted to be a painter. And, you know, we got into
20:36the Philadelphia Institute of Art and was, and you know, there's paint, I grew up with his paintings
20:41on the walls of our house and stuff. But he had to put it aside because he was raising a family.
20:46And so he had that kind of frustrated, artistic aspect of him. So I got to tell you, when I came
20:54home from, I drove home from school after having this moment where like, I don't want to be an
20:58engineer. I want to be a writer. And I didn't think I would get a good audience from my parents on that.
21:05And instead it was like, yeah, what you want to do now is a long shot. But how can you get into the
21:12best position to take that long shot? And that's when my father said, I think you should go into
21:18journalism school.
21:19Are there things that even now today in 2024 that you draw on from your time as a journalist in the
21:2680s?
21:27Absolutely. Every day. I mean, it's so weird. Everything has changed. You know, I was one of
21:33the last stories I wrote about was the first use of DNA in a criminal case in California.
21:39You know, and so now that's ubiquitous in all stories and all real stories and all fiction.
21:46And, you know, so it's changed a lot. But what hasn't changed is the mission-oriented detectives
21:52that I knew. People that sacrificed a lot to do what they do. And that, what I call a noble bargain,
22:01I don't think that's changed. And I write about people who have made that bargain, that are
22:06willing to do this kind of work, even though it could cost them in many different ways.
22:12And so I saw that a lot when I was on the job. I gravitated towards those people as sources and so
22:19forth. And so, yeah, I still, if I didn't have those 14 years or those 12 of the 14 years I was
22:27a journalist, I was on the crime beat. If I didn't have those 12 years, we wouldn't be talking because
22:32it influences, all these years later, it influences my books all the time.
22:36That's incredible, especially because the nature of crime has evolved, right? There's much more
22:41digital crime. How have you grappled with the changing nature of society and the changing
22:46nature of crime in your work? To me, it's not a grapple. It's like an opportunity, you know,
22:53and things change fast. And so if you can, my books are very contemporary. They're set in the
22:59years that they're published. And, you know, and I have connections. I'm not a long time,
23:05I haven't been a journalist more than 25 years, I think, if I do the math, but I still have
23:10connections. And I have a cadre of people that help me with my books. And they're learning this
23:17stuff. Most of them are still working in investigative work. And so they're learning
23:25this stuff, and they pass it on to me. So to me, it's not something like, oh, I got to learn how to
23:29do this. To me, it's all a great challenge and opportunity to put it in a book and be on the
23:36front wave of that in terms of fiction, but also explaining things to readers. Now, your latest
23:43book, The Waiting, comes out October 15. What can readers expect from this book from Rene Ballard?
23:50What can you say without giving too many spoilers? Well, it's the second book I've written where
23:56she's running a cold case squad. And Rene Ballard is a single source inspiration. She's based on a
24:04real woman who ran LAPD's cold case squad till she retired in April. And so I have this person
24:12kind of like sitting on my shoulders, I'm writing these books, I'm constantly asking her, what would
24:17you do here? What would you say? What's the next moves? And so I think that has a built-in
24:23veneer of accuracy to the books, if you will. And so we're going to see more of that, and we're
24:29going to see her dealing with the politics and bureaucracy of being a commander of a unit
24:38within the LAPD. So you have that aspect that I'm always fascinated with. But also,
24:44you know, it says on the cover of the book, a Ballard and Bosch novel. And the question is,
24:49which Bosch? Because Harry Bosch is in it, but his daughter really comes forward in a big way in this
24:56book, which I have not done before. And so to me, that was the through line that really kept me
25:04involved in and excited about this book is that this is like a bit of a passing of a baton to
25:10Maddie Bosch. That sounds really compelling. I look forward to reading it. And then your other
25:16release, so to speak, this week, season three, Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix, what can you say about
25:23that? Well, it's a great season. We've raised the bar every time I think with, you know,
25:31so the third season is the best season, in my opinion. And that might be colored a little bit,
25:37it's based on my book called The Gods of Guilt, which happens to be my favorite Lincoln Lawyer
25:42book. And what we did with it, I mean, you know, it can never just be the book, you got to bring in
25:49other characters, give them expanded lives. Because my books are usually carried through
25:55a main character. And in TV, you just can't do that you kill poor Manuel would die if he had to
26:02be in every scene, you know, so you, you expand and you give other characters that are ancillary
26:08in the books, but you give them fuller lives. And they've done that so well in this show. And
26:14it really comes together in the third season. Really, really, it was a really fun one to be
26:21involved in. I know you get asked for advice all the time. So I'm going to frame this in a slightly
26:27different way. Before we started rolling here, you mentioned that you've had the same publisher,
26:33your whole career, and you've only had two editors in 32 years. What's your advice to
26:38aspiring writers or working writers about finding editors and publishers that will
26:47be faithful in telling their stories and helping put their stories forward to the world?
26:52It's a tough question for me, because because just like everything in the world has changed a lot,
26:57you know, when I found my first agent, and he got my first deal, there wasn't even the internet,
27:04there was no email, I was sending letters, and doing phone calls. So it's a little bit different.
27:10In some ways, there's more opportunity. I mean, there's no self publishing and things like that,
27:16you know, digitally, and so forth that there is out there now, you know. But the one thing
27:22that I think is universal and doesn't change over time is that it's all about the story.
27:27You know, it's keep your head down and write a story that's going to have a connection to you.
27:34Never lick your finger and hold it up into the wind and say, you know, what is
27:39John Grisham doing? You can't do that. I think the apparatus of publishing, in some ways,
27:47is a meritocracy. And they're all looking for a good idea, well executed. And it comes down
27:56to character, they're looking for an interesting character they haven't read before. And you can
28:01only accomplish that if you keep your head down and focus on something that's coming from inside
28:07you. I mean, it can be inspired by a true crime. A lot of my books are inspired by stories,
28:12true stories I've heard from detectives and so forth. But it's really, you know, it's really
28:18about you in that space, wherever you're working with the antique light over your shoulder or
28:23whatever, you know, keep your head down and write. And then the next aspect of getting
28:30representation and so forth, that's an arduous process, but every writer goes through it.
28:35And finally, if we were to speak a year from now, what do you want to be able to tell me about your
28:40career, your books, or your series? Will there be more? Will there be new characters?
28:46Yeah, next year, I'm gonna pop out with a new character. After the waiting, my next book will
28:54will be a new character. So hopefully, we'll be talking about how that character was received well,
29:01you know, and as a unique character in my work. So that's been the exciting thing that's
29:09happening now. I'm writing about a brand new character. And then by next year, we'll see how
29:15how he is done. It's a male character. Well, we'll have to have you back to hear how that's
29:20going. But in the meantime, Michael Connelly, thank you so much for being here and what is a
29:24very busy week for you. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.
29:31Transcribed by https://otter.ai