A pillow in the mail and a live radio interview

I finished the first draft of “Leap Second” this morning and revised the first eight pages. Right now it’s sitting almost exactly at 5000 words. Now begins the editing process. Fun, fun!

There was a strange box on the front veranda last night when I got home from work. Big, about the size of a garment box from a department store. Covered with…sheep! It was addressed to me via Cemetery Dance, but the return address provided no clues. Turned out to be a press kit for the upcoming Nightmares & Dreamscapes series that debuts on TNT in mid-July. The first thing I found when I opened the box was a pillow, presumably representing nightmares and/or dreams. The kit also contained a lot of interviews, trivia, press releases and glossy photos, plus seven of the eight episodes as screener DVDs. I put the series schedule, some of the trivia and interviews up at a thread on my message board and I plan to bring the screeners to NECON, where we might get a chance to run one or two of the one-hour episodes. I watched Umney’s Last Case last night and William H. Macy is so much fun to watch, playing both a stereotyped 1930s hardboiled detective and his creator.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to CBC radio (Moncton) on the Internet when I heard a discussion about dust jacket design. I had a little anecdote to share (about how Michael Slade and Jeffrey Deaver ended up with almost identical dust jackets because the same stock photograph had been used), so I e-mailed them. I had a return e-mail from the host, Paul Castle, saying they’d love to interview me because they like stories about “New Brunswickers who are far afield doing interesting things,” so today at 3:10 pm central/4:10 eastern/5:10 pm Atlantic time, I’ll be doing a live radio interview, that you can listen to on the internet (CBC radio, click on the Moncton link). The interview should also be archived on the CBC N.B. web site starting Monday.