Michael Connelly's mysterious computer addiction
By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

Bankrate: What convinced you to make the break?

Michael Connelly: I had a figure of what we would need to survive for a year, and I always wanted to be able to have three years' worth of money coming in. The first time that happened was with "The Poet," my fifth book. The deal I got on "The Poet," plus selling it to Hollywood, I knew I could last three to four years, even if everything went south, before I would have to go knock on the door at newspapers looking for a job.

Bankrate: Writers are often blown away by their first movie deal. Were you?

Michael Connelly: No. In the early to mid-'90s, the money that Hollywood was paying for screenplays back then was astronomical, like millions. I think the deal I got on "The Poet" was $250,000. Now that is a boggling amount of money for something where you sit in a room and it comes out of your head. It was far more than I got paid for the actual book by the publisher. When that kind of money rolled in, I knew I had hit the level where I would be able to do this for some time.

Bankrate: In recent years, you've become the American mystery writer who automatically climbs the bestseller lists, the envy of his peers. Do you recall a moment when you ascended to that leadership position?

Michael Connelly: I felt with "Bloodwork" that things were all coming together on every level: financially, sales of the book, critical attention. That was the book where all the stars aligned. My books had been optioned to faceless Hollywood studios, but with "Bloodwork," you get this phone call from Clint Eastwood and you're meeting with this icon of Hollywood.

Bankrate: How did that meeting go?

Michael Connelly: We had a morning-long meeting at his office, which is a ranch house on the Warner Brothers lot. My sense is that he's a really nice guy. There were things that he knew he would change about the book and to be fair he wanted to tell me. Some of the stuff I agreed with, some of it I didn't. At least three years went by and I got a copy of the script from him in the mail. At that point, I just thought it was a courtesy, but the next day I got a call and hear Clint Eastwood's voice on the phone saying, "Well, did you read it?"

Bankrate: Do you handle your own money and investing?

Michael Connelly: A little bit of both. I have a financial management company that I feed money to. I have done some stuff on a whim. I've really invested a lot in real estate at times over the years. It all goes back to buying and selling Volkswagens in high school. I've bought a fair amount of property, both in California and Florida, and turned them over when I thought the time was right. That has served me pretty well.

Bankrate: Has being a family man changed the way you handle money?

Michael Connelly: To some extent. I was never frivolous before, but it makes you think more long term. I don't want what I've been lucky enough to accumulate to just be for me; I want it to carry over. I don't want my daughter to go wanting at any time in her life, so we've created a few things for her that carry past college. I invest in a lot of insurance products that accumulate in value, like annuities.

Bankrate: Do you have a guilty little spending secret?

Michael Connelly: I feel guilty all the time about what I spend money on, but on the work side, I go through computers very quickly because I am just fascinated by technology. If I see a computer that has something new that mine can't accomplish, I just get it without any real thought. I have these really big shelves that I built in my garage for my old computers because I also don't want to get rid of them. I upgrade computers at least once a year. I think it helps spur me on to start a new book with a new computer. On a personal level, I still turn cars over a lot. I don't fix them up for profit anymore, I just trade them in now, but I would say in the last two years I've had seven different cars. In fact, last year I had a Volkswagen for a while. I was in a nostalgic phase.