Cindi Clarke was co-hosting a panel on Creative Nonfiction with Myra Shoaf.

Pyle wanted to introduce himself to Clarke. He was co-hosting a panel on self-publishing with her later that afternoon.

It looked like Myra Shoaf didn't make it. Clarke was by herself.

"You're not going to put it all off on me, too, are you?" she said.

"Probably," Pyle said. "You know more about it than I do."

She might not have known more about self-publishing but she certainly knew more about what the audience wanted to know. How to publish your own book and sell it through bookstores and on the worldwide web.

She had written a book called My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs, about a dog, and abusive relationships, and recovery, and self-esteem. It was available at Amazon.com.

She wrote it under a pseudonym, Cierra Rantoul.

How do you write about abusive relationships when the abuser is alive, and ready to sue?

You use a pseudonym.

After introducing himself, Pyle left. He wanted to buy a Michael Connelly paperback, Lost Light, and look through it.

He had read it, but hearing Connelly talk about it, at lunch, made him want to re-read it, in light of what Connelly had to say about it.

Also, he wanted to gather his thoughts for his presentation, which was scheduled next.

To prepare himself.

In Lost Light, Harry Bosch has left the police force. He is on his own.

He was always fighting the bureaucracy when he was on the force, sort of an outsider, inside. But now he was an outsider outside. He was on his own. No badge, no gun, no institutional backing, no official standing. No license to kill.

Also, he wrote Lost Light in the first person. The first nine Harry Bosch books had been written in the third person.

That was a risk.

Also, it was the first Harry Bosch book after 9-11 (published 2003), the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security people doing things in secret, everything in secret, the secrets secret, you have the clearance but not the need to know, and if I told you, then I'd have to kill you, and no one will know, because it's a secret, national security is involved, it's secret.

Harry Bosch versus, not just Mahogany Row, the front office, the suits upstairs, but the government. Dem.

Who is dem?

Nobody knows.

If you know, you can't tell.

If you tell, it will be bought up and destroyed. It will never see the light of day. Besides, you're a nut-case. A conspiracy theorist. Who would conspire against you?

Don't flatter yourself.

You're a flea with a hard-on, hollering, "Raise the bridge."