Me and Lee...

I've been fortunate enough to meet and/or interview many fantastic authors, New Zealand and international, over the past year or two. In person I've met the likes of Linwood Barclay, Gregg Hurwitz, Stuart MacBride, Tom Rob Smith, William Deverell, Mark Zuehlke, Vanda Symon, Dorothy Fowler, Stephanie Johnson, and several others. But I realised at the start of this year that I'd never actually taken any photos with any of them!

I think most of the time this was because I was approaching most of these author meetings either in my 'journalist/writer/commentator' role, and didn't want to come across as too much of a fanboy, or because I simply didn't think to take a camera along!

But I was thinking recently that I take hundreds and thousands of photos of so much of the rest of my life - activities, family and friend gatherings, travel destinations, interesting things I see or people I come across, etc - that why shouldn't I also take photos of this part of my life as well? After all, my interest in books, and the things I do in relation to that, are part of who I am.

So, from now on, I will (usually) try to get photos of myself at any books events, author events, or other book-related things I go along to.

So here's me with Lee Child, at the Takapuna event (the first of his 6 New Zealand events this week) on Sunday. It was a fantastic evening, with Lee and Graham Beattie on stage having an intelligent, insightful, humour-filled discussion about books and life (on stage in front of an audience of around 300 people), before the audience got to ask questions and then meet Lee. The whole thing went for almost two hours, and it was brilliant.

I will be posting a longer 'report' on the event (I took copious notes to share with you all) later in the week. For those of you that haven't seen them, you can read my NZLawyer article based on my earlier interview with Lee Child here, and my Crime Watch 9mm interview with him here.

So what do you think of my author photo policy re-think? Do you like meeting authors and heading along to events and festivals, either as a reader/fan or as a commentator (or both)? Thoughts and comments welcome.