Michael Connelly: You know, it’s like uncharted territory, and so I’ve been going to the writing room.
Julia Bridget Hayes: And that is where the adventure began!
Connelly: Yeah. You can hope for stuff.
Hayes: It’s Christ, and He is in our midst.
Connelly: He was a stranger that I met sitting next to me at a baseball game. He was a federal court defense attorney and covered the Middle District of Florida, which runs from Jacksonville, slashing across the state, through Orlando, Tampa and down to Fort Myers.
•••
Hayes: Yes, I do think we can benefit from simplicity, as very often we can get lost in the details.
Connelly: That’s why we moved on to TV.
Hayes: I work in egg tempera, in the ancient Greek tetrachromy, that is, using only four pigments: black, white, terra ercolano (red) and ochre.
Connelly: Of course, I’m going to gravitate towards a deeper character story.
Hayes: The very question “What does the icon mean?” is a Western question.
•••
Connelly: But also outside of the book, I just think, if you’re going to sustain this series, you need some pretty significant pivots every now and then.
Hayes: I don’t think there are any difficulties, other than perhaps an initial language barrier for someone who doesn’t know Greek.
Connelly: But I don’t know. I don’t plan that far ahead.
Hayes: I put the idea aside and forgot about it.
Connelly: Here’s an anecdote for you.