"The fear. It was always there. Fear of rejection, fear of unrequited hope and love, fear of feelings still below the surface line in me. It was all mixed up in the blender and poured smooth as a milkshake into my cup until it was filled to the very edge. So full that if I were to move even one step it would spill over the sides. Therefore I couldn't move. I stayed paralyzed. I stayed home and lived out of a box."

Not only was that moving passage deep in the 2003 novel Lost Light by Michael Connelly, but it was also deep in the Harry Bosch series, the ninth novel. By this point, I had already built up a long-term relationship with the detective. I knew all about his code of "Everybody counts or nobody counts," and his fiery relationship with leadership and Internal Affairs in the LAPD. His relationship with Eleanor Wish was likely doomed from the start, but I followed it from the beginning in The Black Echo. Despite the end of that relationship, he carried a very real and palpable yearning that belied his toughness. Or, maybe that internal softness was only able to survive because the outer toughness allowed it to do so.

Those words thought by Harry spoke to his deep feelings for Eleanor and the life he hoped to live, but was afraid to reach out for. He was so afraid of making things worse, of spilling everything or anything, that he did nothing instead. When I read the novel, perhaps I was in a similar life position but wasn't conscious enough to recognize it. Maybe I needed my life mirrored back at me indirectly so I could see it and feel those things without fully grasping my own situation. For my own reasons, I was paralyzed by a fear of failure and the risk of success, so instead, I continued to be less than who I could be. But with this novel, and this character, and this passage specifically, a seed was planted.

The novel has other elements that hooked me as a writer, as an artist. It was the first of the Bosch novels to be written in first person, all the previous having been in third person. This change produced a drastic enough result in me that a whole new world of expression opened up, also music. The accompanying jazz soundtrack was a first for me. With the CD that came with the hardcover edition, a reader could listen along and hear what Harry was listening to as the songs were referenced in the story. It let me know that a writer's art can leave the page and transcend a single dimension.

So, between Michael Connolly and John Straley, you're stuck with me as a writer.

I Blame Michael Connelly

I Blame John Straley