Conversation with a Kiwi

I had the rare opportunity this past weekend to meet Craig Sisterson. A New Zealand-based features writer, he’s responsible for the fine blog Crime Watch and also created his country’s annual Dame Ngaio Marsh Awards. Sisterson and his friend David Morrow, an accountant from Perth, Australia, were passing through Seattle on their travels across the American West. The three of us got together for lunch at one of my favorite gastropubs, the 74th Street Ale House in the Greenwood neighborhood, and proceeded to carry on a two-hour-long discussion about crime fiction. Actually, Craig and I did most of the yapping, while Dave--an extremely pleasant fellow, but a less voracious reader than the two of us--tried not to nod off into his salmon.

Except during occasional Bouchercons and Left Coast Crime conventions, it isn’t often that I have the chance to talk in person with other crime-fiction bloggers, so this was a most welcome occasion, and one I hope can be repeated sometime in the near future.

The photo above shows Craig on the left; I’m on the right. It’s not my best shot, unnecessarily accentuating the gray that’s crept into my beard over the years. But it will serve forever to remind me of a rainy autumn lunchtime very well spent.