Black Echo by Michael
Connelly, Harry Bosch Book #1
Introduction
LAPD Hollywood Homicide detective Harry Bosch takes a case that appears to be a junkie overdose, but he soon finds out the case has links to his past. Bank robbers, street hustlers, and FBI agents complicate his case. He must follow the evidence to discover the reasons behind the murder and unmask the plot that traces back to the Vietnam War or face death from the perpetrators.
Summary
Bosch knows the murder victim, Billy Meadows. He was a fellow Vietnam War veteran that fell on hard times. Meadows and Bosch were tunnel rats in the war, who went into tunnels to find the enemy. Tunnel rats call the feeling they get when they were lost in the dark underground, the black echo. The job breaks many and the successful still suffer. The witness to the crime goes by the tagger’s name of Sharkey. He is a street hustler that Bosch searches for and finds. Bosch is contacted by the FBI because Meadows was suspected of being part of a bank-robbing gang that uses the underground LA storm sewers for their crimes. Bosch is partnered with FBI agent Eleanor Wish, with whom he starts a relationship. The various elements come together, and Bosch is tested both mentally and physically to solve the case.
Recommendation
I read this novel after I watched season three of Bosch on Amazon video. Season three was based on the novels The Black Echo, and A Darkness More Than Night. The season was released in 2017 and the novel was published in 2002. Because of the gap in time, certain things had to be changed on the show. Changes in technology were updated and the Vietnam War was changed to the Afghanistan war. The bank-robbing plot was changed to a stealing money plot. The biggest change was how Eleanor Wish was portrayed.
This is the first Bosch novel and FBI agent Wish is first introduced to Bosch in this novel. In the show, Wish and Bosch are divorced, have a high school-age daughter, and Wish lives in Vegas and is a card shark, no longer an FBI agent. The change with Wish was the thing that surprised me the most when I read the novel after seeing the TV show. I did not expect what happened in the plot and I like that. One thing that stayed the same was the character named Sharkey. What he did and where he ended up were the same on the TV and a novel. It was the perfect choice. I like this novel. I plan to read Angels Flight next because it inspired season four of Bosch (released in 2018), which I have also seen.
Links
Black Echo by Michael Connelly
This is the link to the
Goodreads page of The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
A book that shares some similarities to the Dead Key by DM Pulley. They are both mysteries where the key to solving the case is found in the past. The protagonist in the Black Echo is LAPD Hollywood Homicide detective Harry Bosch. The protagonist in the Dead Key is forensic engineer Iris Latch. The link to the Dead Key by DM Pulley is linked below.
The Cleveland Inkubator was held on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115.
The event was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in North East Ohio. The group sponsors writing workshops, author interviews, and a monthly group meeting mixer.
Registration was on the second floor of the Louis Stokes Wing. Events were held on the second floor in four rooms and in the first-floor auditorium.
There were fifteen talks divided into three sessions with three workshops and two craft talks per session. A poetry reading was held during lunch at the Eastman Reading Garden. The day ended with a keynote reading and an interview with Benjamin Percy.
First Session
In the first session, I attended D. M. Pulley’s workshop on What happens after the end? Reworking and revising your first draft. She is a mystery writer who writes mysteries involving two protagonists in two storylines separated by decades but connected by the mystery. DM Pulley has published three novels The Dead Key, The Buried Book, and The Unclaimed Victim. She is working on her fourth novel now. She handed out a PowerPoint presentation on her topic. DM Pulley went over her experiences in creating the first draft of her first novel, The Dead Key.
This is the link to the Goodreads page of the Dead Key by DM Pulley.
DM Pulley cut over 80,000 words from the first draft of the novel including the beginning chapters where her main character Iris’s workplace was detailed. She suggests writing the first draft for you to discover what you want to write about and then write the second draft for your audience. DM Pulley has an eight-step process to create that second draft.
Step one: celebrate. Completing the first draft of a novel is an accomplishment.
Step two: wait at least two weeks or better yet a month before you start the rewrites because you need distance from your work.
Step three: Identify your audience. She paused for us to do a five-minute exercise to describe your ideal reader.
Step four: Identify the kind of story you are trying to tell. A five-minute exercise followed to describe your story in one sentence, a. k. a. the pitch.
Step five: Review of story structure including the three-act structure, outlining your first draft, tracking plot holes, using storyboards, and doing a plot check.
Step six: Character development including the hero’s journey. A five-minute exercise followed by describing the protagonist’s character arc including the beginning, obstacles, and how the protagonist is different at the ending of the story.
Step seven: Choose a rewrite strategy. You can self-edit and use beta readers and/or writing groups and/or hired editors.
Step eight: Rewrite. Each session at the conference was one and a half hours and she ran out of time here. There were 12 more slides to the presentation, so I think this PowerPoint presentation was designed to be presented in two hours.
This was a good presentation and topical for me since I recently finished the first draft of my first novel. It was useful for me to do the exercises to help me do my rewrite.
Second Session
In the second session, I attended Crafting a Killer Plot: what makes your mystery or novel a bestseller, presented by Amanda Flower.
She is a mystery writer who specializes in Amish cozy mysteries. She thinks that the elements of the plot that are necessary are; start with a bang in your first words and first page, make the reader care for your characters, raise the stakes, put in all the fields, make room for magic by looking for the surprise, create a false high, and then have a dark moment, before the climax and the resolution.
Rewrite and repeat. Her first draft is 40,000 words where she puts down the basic plot. In the second draft, she adds subplots and red herrings to build the novel to a total of 80,000 words. She suggests authors should write every day, and she is motivated by deadlines.
I thought her writing process was interesting.
This is the link to the Goodreads page of Assaulted Caramel by Amanda Flower.
In the third session, I attended Kevin Keating’s workshop on Chapter One:how to hook readers, agents, and editors. He presented a slide presentation that illustrated his points through still photos from movies that applied to the theme of the topic for each slide. He says that agents and editors have an eight-line rule. If they don’t read a unique voice that commands their attention in the first eight lines then they will move on to the next manuscript because they always have a pile of them to go through. So it is imperative to make sure the first page is excellent.
The presenter stated that there are three important aspects to writing, setting, character, and plot.
First, establish the setting. Don’t be vague, be precise and declare your time and location. The setting is interrelated with plot and character and is just as essential.
Characters must have a goal. The protagonist must be active and not passive. They must overcome obstacles. The obstacles can be external, internal, or psychological.
Many plots follow the hero’s journey which is the path of home, voyage, and return. The protagonist begins in their home, travels to another world, discovers the nature of that other world, and is transformed by their experiences in that other world. The protagonist is scarred in some way and returns to relay their new knowledge to the people of home.
I liked that he referenced movie tie-ins to illustrate his points on writing.
This is a link to the Goodreads page for the Natural Order of Things by Kevin Keating.
The keynote reading was given by Benjamin Percy in the downstairs auditorium. It was the last activity of the conference. He read from his most recent novel, The Dark Net. He read the prologue about Hannah. She has retinitis pigmentosa and receives a science fictional augmented treatment for the disease. The rest of the novel involves the darknet, cyber-crime, and demons. He is an engaging reader who has a deep voice and his reading was dramatic and interesting.
The next part of the presentation was an interview conducted by Brad Ricca. He asked the author about his experiences in college as a literary fiction major, writing comic books, and his process for writing novels. The last part of the presentation was a Q and A with the audience. The keynote reading and an interview was a fitting end for this conference about the writing process.
This is a link to the Goodreads page for The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy.
I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018 and plan to attend next year. My highlights were D. M. Pulley’s eight steps for writing a second draft, Amanda Flower’s short first draft to get the plot down, Kevin Keating’s point about how critical the first eight lines are in selling a novel to agents and editors, and Benjamin Percy’s dramatic reading of the prologue to the novel named The Dark Net.
Links
Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018
I also attended the Marcon Conference from May 11 to May 13, 2018, at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio. It is an SF conference, while Inkubator is a literary conference. My review of Marcon is linked below.
It was raining at halftime at Ohio Stadium on 09-01-18. I didn’t get wet because I sat in B deck.
The final score was Ohio State 77 and Oregon State 31.
Writing Progress from August 2018
I bought and used the editing program Pro Writing Aid to edit the novel. I edited and typed Assassin in New Marl City Chapters 30, 32, and 33 in August of 2018.
The first draft of Assassin in New Marl City was complete at 99981 words in July of 2018. Decided to cut six chapters to use in book #2 and write two new chapters in September to end up with about 88000 words in book #1.
Completed and sent a query for submission to Agent Cyle Young in August. He was not interested.
Edited Chapter One of Assassin in New Marl City and submitted it to Pitch Wars on 08-28-18. Results on October 12th.
Completed and submitted a Query letter and a synopsis to Pitch Wars on 08-28-18.
The stories 4 Humours, Space Station Sunyata, Grognard, Get to the Point, and LARP Film Noir have been submitted to magazines.
Statistics of magazine submissions for 2018 are; 0 different stories submitted a total of 0 times with 0 accepted, 0 pending, and 0 rejections.
Events from August 2018
I attended the Cleveland Inkubator at the Cleveland Public Library on August 4, 2018. It was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. It was a one-day writing conference.
Pitch Wars is a mentoring program contest where contestants submit a finished but unpublished novel to mentors. Each mentor picks one contestant to mentor for the program length. The submission was online on August 28, 2018. I submitted a query letter, a synopsis, a 35-word pitch, and the first chapter of my novel to the contest.
Writing Goals for September 2018
Write two new chapters for Assassin in New Marl City. They will be Chapters 5 and 10.
Type the edits for Assassin in New Marl City Chapters 34, 35, and 36 in September 2018.
Edit Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of Assassin in New Marl City using comments from the Advanced Writing Workshop at Parma, Ohio.
Polish and submit the stories Sleeping Sickness, Space-Dog Confession, White Bracer, Mage Squad, I Shall Not Return, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
I submitted Grognard to my writing group. I will take the feedback gained and revise the story so it can be submitted to magazines again.
Submit 4 Humours, Space Station Sunyata, Grognard, and LARP Film Noir to other short fiction magazines.
Edit Searcher of Riven.
Hire an editor for Searcher of Riven from Fiveer.
Edit Ruins of Yarnud.
Hire an editor for Ruins of Yarnud from Fiveer.
Put the novel, Assassin in New Marl City, into the writing program, Scrivener.
Purchase e-book covers for Searcher of Riven and Ruins of Yarnud from Fiveer.
Purchase an e-book cover for Assassin in New Marl City from Fiveer.
Planned Events for September 2018
None for September
My next scheduled event is the Indy Writer’s Conference in Parma, Ohio on October 13, 2018, which is held by the Cuyahoga County Library.
