Quickfire Author Q&A: Feedback wanted

Kia ora everyone. As the first part of the year has been flying by, I've been thinking about how I can provide some more value or interest to readers.

Along with letting you know the news and happenings as it relates to (particularly New Zealand) crime and thriller writing, educating both myself and readers about aspects of crime fiction (particularly NZ crime fiction) history, and sharing my own musings on some crime fiction-related topics, I thought perhaps I should try and provide still more.

One of the things that I have been mulling over for a little while is including short interviews with authors on this blog, as something of a regular series. I already do this, somewhat, on an ad hoc basis when I refer you to some of the interview-based features I write for magazines and newspapers, and include some of the authors Q&A not included in those articles in a blog post(e.g. see blog post on Craig Russell last year, here, and blog post on Stuart MacBride, here).

I also have written one-off reports on visits from international thriller writers, when I haven't used that information for a particular feature article (e.g. the Takapuna Library events for Tom Rob Smith, here, and Gregg Hurwitz, here).

But I was thinking of including a more regular, and perhaps more structured, series of author interviews on this blog. I am fortunate enough to have a growing contact list of both New Zealand and international authors, and the means to get in touch with many more via the magazine articles I write. Therefore I thought I might add a 'short interview' section, perhaps with the same questions to each author each time.

I know this isn't a particularly original idea, and has been done in many forms elsewhere, but I still thought the contacts I have (including to New Zealand writers unlikely to be covered much elsewhere), and the access to certain authors, might provide some value for readers. I for one always enjoy reading interviews with authors, whether they are short-form Q&A or longer feature articles.

The question is, if I am to go ahead with this, what would you, dear readers, like to know from such participating authors? If I am to set-up a standard quickfire interview of, say, 8-10 questions - what would you like included?

I've seen versions of this where the questions are largely writing and book-related (e.g. how did you come up with the story in your latest book? what is your writing process? what authors do you like reading? etc) and others where the Q&A has nothing to do with writing at all, merely getting to know the author (even through quite random questions).

What would you prefer to read about? Writing-related things? Questions about their latest work? Personal questions/random questions? A mixture of both?

Before I start this, in the new future, I thought I would give you all a chance to contribute to what will end up being the 'list of questions', so to speak. So if there are particular things you might be interested in learning about authors, or particular questions you would like to put to them (for educational, curiousity, or merely comic reasons), please place a comment with your suggestions below.