9mm - Crime Watch's new quickfire author interview series

After a little bit of thought, following my post last month, I am now officially launching Crime Watch's new series of quickfire-style author interviews.

The series is called 9mm, which doubles as a nod to the crime fiction theme of the interviews, while also referring to the structure; each quickfire interview will consist of the same nine quesions (9 MurderMystery questions) put to an ongoing series of New Zealand and international crime, thriller, and mystery authors.

The first official 9mm interview (to be posted in the next day or so) will feature international thriller writing superstar Lee Child, who I interviewed by phone for an hour yesterday. From now on, whenever I interview an author, whether it's for a feature article for a newspaper or magazine here in New Zealand or overseas, or specifically for Crime Watch, I will incorporate these nine questions into the interview, and bring those answers to you here, on this blog.

I am hoping to be able to include a wide range of crime writers here. I am very fortunate 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. So I'd like to utilise this to provide all of you with some quickfire interviews that I hope you will find interesting and insightful. As I said in February, it's about growing this blog into not only a resource for news and information, and my own thoughts on crime fiction, but also how I can hopefully provide even more value or interest to visitors, whether regular or occasional.

So without further ado, here is the official list of the 9mm questions that will be put to each author (thanks for the comments and suggestions). I have decided to go with a balance between writing-focused, personal, and random.

The Crime Watch 9mm Author Interview:

1. Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?
2. What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?
3. Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything;) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?
4. Outside of writing, and touring and promotional commitments, what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?
5. What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?
6. If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?
7. Of your books, which is your favourite, and why?
8. What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?
9. What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival ?

So those are the questions that various authors, Kiwi and international, will be answering right here on Crime Watch in the coming weeks and months. The first 9mm interview, featuring Lee Child, who is of course touring the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA in the coming months in support of his latest book, 61 HOURS, will be posted here very soon.

I would love any comments or feedback on the format and questions of 9mm, or what you think of the title, etc. And please let me know if there are any particular authors you'd love to hear answer these questions. Thoughts and comments welcome.