Coffee with Lee Child

This is a guest post from a fortunate fan who met with writer Lee Child. Thanks for sharing your impressions.

I had the good fortune to be offered the opportunity to meet Lee Child during his recent flying visit to Christchurch. As a huge fan of his works there was no way I was going to miss that! Fortunately I was already on leave that day so I fronted up at our agreed meeting place (prior to Lee starting his hectic book signing engagements) and over coffee I had the opportunity to quiz him on anything I liked.

Aware that most people probably quiz him endlessly about Jack Reacher, I left the likeable rogue to hover around the edges of our discussions. Being interested in writing, I quizzed Lee on how he structures his books (he doesn’t, except for a start and a finish), we discussed plans for a future book (mine), and talked about almost everything but his books. When quizzed on what authors Lee likes he said he enjoys reading books to inform himself, I never did get an actual author name out of him, but we did discuss Stieg Larsson (so he’d obviously read the Millenium trilogy).

Lee feels that readers can’t really expect 50 (or however many) books about the same character, so when Jack Reacher did eventually become the topic of discussion (his agent wanted to know if I’d thought of any questions that no-one else has ever asked), amongst other things we discussed potential endings for Jack Reacher; I’ll be extremely happy if one of my suggestions is how he concludes the series.

Lee struck me as a down-to-earth kind of guy who showed a genuine interest in people. Knowing that he had an exceptionally busy schedule in Christchurch I really appreciated him making the time to have a drink and chat with me. Thanks to Random House, Borders, and of course Lee Child for giving me this opportunity!