So I went to an ‘author event’ at Newcastle City Library the other day. It was the first time I had been to the library since it had been considerably redeveloped, and I must say — particularly in contrast to the Hancock — how impressed I was with the whole thing.

Admittedly, the key element to any library has to be the books, and I didn’t actually look at them, but in terms of the the bits I did see — the building, the very nice cafe, and the lecture area — there was a lot to be impressed with.

The author event featured Lee Child, the man behind the Jack Reacher novels, and David Levien, with his hero Frank Behr. I had not previously encountered David Levien, but after hearing some of his stories — and listening to people talking enthusiastically about his two books (he’s more known as a screenwriter) he’s on my list of people that I want to check out as soon as I’ve worked through my TBR pile.

The event had quite a simple structure: Lee and David would start talking about something, and then they would invite questions from the audience. This tended to prompt the conversation to wander about the place somewhat, but it did also give the feel of a conversation: this was a two-way thing, rather than the authors simply lecturing on their books.

Given David’s background in screenwriting, he talked a little about his early film Rounders and it was interesting to hear this contrasted to Lee Child’s experiences with film: the Jack Reacher novels have been optioned more than once but until recently little progress seemed to be occurring with them, although Lee did indicate that a screenplay was being written (and no, he wasn’t doing it, but he was happy with the person who was).

This lead to some speculation about who would be cast to play Reacher, and the problems with finding an actor sufficiently tall to play him convincingly (the character is 6 foot 5), but you obviously need someone who can act, as opposed to someone who is simply huge, so certain size compromises might need to be made. He also related an anecdote where he’d been talking to the Australian media a few years earlier and was asked whether Hugh Jackman could play Reacher, and upon saying that yes, he thought that he could, this came out as “Hugh Jackman the perfect choice for Jack Reacher, says author”, which obviously Lee’s film agent wasn’t too happy about as it sounded like he was trying to muscle in on prospective casting…

Garry (the chap with whom I attended the event) asked Lee whether he had any plans to write a stand-alone book, not featuring Jack Reacher, but Lee pointed out that as he was only really willing to put the time in to write one book per year, this would see a two year gap between Reacher novels, and he didn’t really feel that this was what the fans wanted: he felt that Reacher was what they were after. I couldn’t help but feel that he was doing himself a slight disservice here: I think a lot of people enjoy reading Lee Child’s stuff, and they would also enjoy other books written by him in a similar style, regardless of the cast of characters.

This led to a little discussion on whether people set out to write a series of books featuring one character, or whether they just started and waited to see where that lead them. David talked about initially having a two book deal, and then signing up to a second two book deal, so he was pretty convinced that there would end up being at least four featuring his Behr, whereas Lee Child has now Reached his teens.

There was then a discussion about which authors the two authors liked reading — one member of the audience recommended Val McDermid, which I can second, although I’d also add Stephen Booth for what I can only say is something of a cross between detective fiction and a love poem to the Peak District.

What was also interesting was that Lee Child in particular, unlike many authors I have seen before, was also prepared to say (or at very least imply) who he didn’t like. But I’m not going to relate them here…

Someone then asked how the authors felt about the practice where some authors work ‘with’ someone else, where there is an implication (or at very least a suspicion) that the person named as the ‘with’ is the one who has done most of the work. I personally will admit to a certain scepticism here: I generally avoid this sort of thing — for example, the novel Sail, which at first glance looks to be written by James Patterson, has “& Howard Roughan” on the cover in a font which almost completely blends into the background.

The consensus seemed to be that the authors didn’t like the idea of handing over control to anyone else: that he wanted to write the whole thing himself, although Lee did point out that there was no way there in that room could prove at that moment that he personally was the author of the Jack Reacher series (he might have been simply a tall, smart-looking guy they used to help sell the books, or something…)

There were a few more bits than that, but that’s pretty much the gist of what I remember, and then as me and Garry were sat near the back, we disappeared out and were near the front of the queue for the book signings. Garry is very much a book collector; he likes his hardbacks, and he likes to have them signed if he can, so he’d brought books for both Lee Child and David Levien to sign, whereas I am more a collector of the stories (less interested in the physical book object than the text it contains) and so I tend to get paperbacks and hadn’t brought any along to sign, so I just stood next to Garry while he was having his stuff signed.

I had spoken to David and Lee at the start of the event to ask if it was okay to take a couple of photos, as I was planning to blog about the event, and David asked about the blog while Garry was talking to Lee, so I ended up giving him a business card with my site on it. Which felt rather odd: after all, surely he was the writer, not me… but at least I wasn’t cheeky enough to ask him if he’d like me to sign it!

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, Lee Child appears to be on twitter as @LeeChildReacher, although of course whether or not it’s actually him may be open to debate. Or if you’re interested in finding out about similar events in Newcastle, it might be worth following @ToonLibraries.