In her first piece for our parent site, Nicole Haddad chats with bestseller crime novelist Michael Connelly about his foray into non-fiction with CRIME BEAT, a collection of his earlier journalism with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the LA Times. His criteria for what went into the book? "I was looking for stories that had what I was calling an echo - a connection that would go from that story to something I've written in my fiction, and whether it's the plot in some of these stories, some have obvious plot connections," said Connelly. "But, there are also some more subtle things, like a character theme. But, I was looking for stories that connected to the [novels] because I thought the audience, largely, would be people who are familiar with my fiction work."

The fact/fiction divide, interestingly enough, had one unexpected side effect - especially when it came to researching the books. "One story that's kind of funny is that an LAPD detective, who helps me quite a bit now, never returned my calls when I was a reporter," Connelly related. "This sort of underlines the difference between journalism and writing fiction. When I was calling on him as the reporter, he perceived me as a possible threat because I might question how he was handling the case, or I might report facts he wanted to keep out of public knowledge. But, when I call on him now as a novelist, he's happy to help me because I write fiction, and there is no threat to him."