Bestselling author Michael Connelly has written for every medium, from series novels to television. And he's about to see one of his novels turned into a major motion picture starring Clint Eastwood.

But this award-winning writer doesn't just crank out the next bestseller. In this special interview, Connelly talks candidly about his story ideas, how he writes and even the mistakes he feels he's made along the way.

City of Bones features everyone's favorite detective, Harry Bosch. George P. Pelecanos once said in a discussion of recurring characters, "Knowing what I know now, I would not give too much away about a leading character's past early in the series."

Is there any fact about Harry Bosch that you wish you had not revealed? Do you keep a chart or a list of all the things that you have revealed about Harry? Do fans ever point something out to you that you've missed or mistaken?

I keep no character charts or anything like that. I wish I had thought about that at the beginning but at the beginning it would have been presumptuous to assume that Harry Bosch would be around for seven or eight more books. So now I have to rely on my memory and good editing.

I will from time to time reread one of the old books to refresh my memory about something in particular. I recently reread Trunk Music because part of it deals with something I am writing about Harry Bosch now.

The one regret I have is that in the second book, The Black Ice, I revealed who Harry's long lost father was. I covered it in a matter of two pages. I look back at that now and think it was a big mistake because I could have waited and turned those two pages into a whole and interesting book.

You often discuss the issue of foster care in your books, Harry Bosch was a foster child and it is an interesting part of the plot of City of Bones as well. Why are you interested in the foster system?

I am not really sure why I am interested. I have no personal connection to it. But I guess like most people I believe that how children are treated and raised implicitly impacts how they will behave as adults.

So I first of all appreciate how lucky I was to grow up in a full family atmosphere. I also feel some sort of empathy for the people who didn't have that but survived and perservered and made lives for themselves.

Harry Bosch is a good man trying to do a good job. But he has problems and quirks and I think a lot of them could be traced back to his upbringing.

You also often mention Raymond Chandler as one of your influences. If one of your fans wanted to start reading Chandler, which book should they start with and why?

I guess I would recommend my favorite which is The Little Sister. It wasn't his most popular book or the one he is best remembered for but having lived in Los Angeles I found it to be the one that most captured the place.

Chandler was known for his descriptions of L.A. and some of the best ones are in The Little Sister. There is a whole chapter that has the protagonist, Marlow, on a drive around the city.

It has nothing to do with plot. In fact, you could skip the whole chapter and miss nothing. But it is full of wonderful description and mood. It has nothing to do with the plot but is probably the best part of the book for me.