Something that I didn’t notice about this story until a good amount of the way in was the addition of the character Harry Bosch. As I read, I realized that name sounded familiar to me but I couldn’t quite place it. The character’s first name “Harry” is never said throughout the story, just his surname, as if it’s iconic enough to notice on its own. The excerpt pre-story confirmed my suspicions when I went back to it. Michael Connelly is the author of the Harry Bosch books, a series of mystery novels featuring the tenacious titular character, Bosch. The excerpt also tells us that he came across the painting Nighthawks the same way Bosch does in this short story while writing his first Bosch novel. This stood out to me as being incredibly interesting. 
Knowing this makes the reading process of this story more interesting. Here is the story of a character that already exists but placed into the setting the author had been in himself. Connelly is almost using the character of Bosch in the opening of the story to convey his own tale; how he started his series off years ago. “He smiled and nodded. He had learned something.” It’s very much an introduction to a character and thus, an introduction to the author. They seemed to have discovered art in the exact same way.
”He thought he understood inspiration and how it could travel from one discipline to another, how it could be harnessed for an endeavor seeming completely different” (84). Even the conversation Bosch has with Angela, asking if the novel she’s writing is about herself, hints at this story being reminiscent of Connelly’s early days discovering art in a new medium and using it as his inspiration. Such a clever way to pay homage to something that started your creative process.