Author Michael Connelly started out penning hard-hitting newspaper articles, compiled in his new book, Crime Beat. He shares with Nicole Haddad how he jumped from journalist to novelist without missing a beat:

mb: How did you navigate the emotions called up by the cases you cover-for example, in the Kanan murder? How did you keep the feelings elicited by the crimes from coloring your reporting of those incidents? Did writing crime fiction help provide an outlet for that?

Connelly: Well, the more you [covered crime], the thicker the shield was around you. Like cops, the crime beat reporter can seek outlets that help maintain mental health or numb the difficult feelings. In my case, I had my fiction. I would come home from a day of telling it like it is to spend a couple hours in an alternate universe, where I got to make it up and tie up all the loose ends. It was very therapeutic. But, as I said, I still could become cynical.

You asked specifically about the Kanan case. Well, I can't remember any particularly difficult feeling overtaking me from that case. To me, it was a big story and I was all about advancing it ahead of the competition. I remember when I got ahold of a search warrant that named a suspect, I was elated because I knew the competition didn't have it. I didn't really slow down to think about who that suspect was and how sordid the story was turning out to be.

Read on here. And if you'd like to check out an excerpt from Crime Beat, go here.