Of Talking, Taping, and Twittering

Over at the e-zine Shots, a new interview has been posted with crime novelist Michael Connelly, along with the rules of a contest for readers who’d like to win one of three free copies of The Scarecrow, his recently released novel featuring newspaperman Jack McEvoy. (Sorry, but this competition is only open to UK readers.)

Connelly was among the international guests of honor attending May’s CrimeFest conference in Bristol, England. During that event, several of us who contribute to Shots (editor Mike Stotter, writer Ayo Onatade, and I) were invited to join Connelly for a midday repast. Over beer and sandwiches (a lunchtime combination I have grown to enjoy), we caught up with the American author’s most recent writing adventures, including the publication of The Scarecrow--a book whose plot I’ve previously described this way:

Following the hunt for The Poet, Connelly’s alter-ego, McEvoy, got fame with a book deal and a plum job at the L.A. Times, but life has not been easy on him. Following a divorce and the recent downsizing at his newspaper, he finds himself training a young reporter and in the process stumbles upon a crime that will lead him to battle a serial killer called the Scarecrow. In The Poet, the Internet was in its infancy, but now it is well advanced and the Scarecrow is using its dark side to terrible effect. With bodies turning up wrapped in plastic sheets in the trunks of cars, Jack has his work cut out, especially as the Scarecrow knows a lot about Jack. The interesting analogy is that the Internet is key to the novel’s plot, as not only is it being used by a serial killer, but it is also responsible for the death of news-print media.

While Stotter passed Connelly one book after another from his hold-all, and asked him to sign each one, I switched on my tape recorder to ask the author a few questions about the demise of print journalism, why he couldn’t join The Wire’s writing team, his prolific novel-writing history, and Twitter. Here’s part of our discussion:

Shots: Your Web site, www.michaelconnelly.com, has many special features with additional and bonus material for your work. How important is your Web presence?

MC: Well, it’s [Web master] Jane Davis that I need to thank, as she lets me do what I do, which is write. She does the creative stuff on the Web site and she’s good at that. She does suggest things that I write specifically for the Web site; recently I did a three-part movie [Conflict of Interest] and I had to write the script for the movie, which I handed to Jane and the filmmakers, who then took over, so it was not too intrusive on my time.

Shots: So what additional material from The Scarecrow have you online?

MC: We’re always looking for something new; we’ve done extra chapters, we[’ve] done ‘cut’ chapters, I’ve done short stories. This time we decided to do something visual. In The Scarecrow we have [FBI agent] Rachel Walling returning, but she doesn’t appear till much later on in the book, which is unusual for a main character. When I was writing it, I just couldn’t think of a way of bringing her in any earlier. Jane asked me, what has Rachel been doing prior to arriving after 140 or so pages? So I wrote a short story, which I turned into a script, and that’s the three-part movie--it has nothing to do with the Scarecrow, but deals with what she was doing before Jack called her for help. It sort of cuts across the narrative, though there are no spoilers to the book; in fact the film ends with her getting Jack’s call for help.

Shots: [Your original protagonist, Harry] Bosch has to be getting on a bit, so are we going to get any prequels when he was much younger or back to his wartime tunnel-rat adventures?

MC: That’s back with the short-story collection, but I’m actually working on a new Harry Bosch novel now [Nine Dragons], which should be out in October and has a big seed planted about Bosch’s younger days. I guess a young Harry Bosch tale will be about four years or so away, when he’s too old to carry a badge.

Shots: Has Jane Davis asked you to go on Twitter yet?

MC: Jane doesn’t like Twitter, but my U.S. publisher, Shannon Byrne, twitters on several accounts. I’ve been watching the Harlan Coben Twitter thing, and I’m not sure it’s for me.

Shots: Harlan (like us all) has a love/hate relationship with Twitter--but it does seem to be very popular and a good way of getting information out fast.

MC: He does seem to like to tell people he’s going to the Rangers’ games. I’m not sure I need to know that. No one needs to know that about me either, and Twitter killed the newspapers, so I’m not for it.

You can read the full Shots interview here.