BOOKENDS

Here is my Bookends interview with Justine Lewkowic, taped last month at Sleuth of Baker Street, Toronto's crime specialty bookstore. I felt right at home among the thousands of mystery titles and Sherlock Holmes memorabilia.

Justine was fun, insightful and probing in her questions, and the occasional curve ball she threw at me, as we discussed my newest book, a literary thriller entitled Lake On The Mountain  (Dundurn Press), which takes place jointly in Toronto and Ontario's Prince Edward County.

While it's not hard for me to talk about the writing process, I don't often get asked about my personal life in relation to where the work comes from. Like many writers, I tend to disappear behind my writing and my characters, so readers often assume they are one and the same. Not so. In this case, I welcomed the opportunity to be candid on topics that other interviewers might shy away from.

Among other things, Justine and I discussed sources of inspiration, anger management therapy, honesty, sex and sexuality, and growing up gay in Sudbury (my hometown.)

Have a look and leave a note to say what you think: http://bookendstv.com/.

Cable Me Fabulous

It was my week to be a star on cable TV, thanks to the exposure generated by my book, Lake On The Mountain. There it was, the first day of spring, and I found myself a guest on daytime Toronto, Rogers' morning talk show. Host Val Cole was gracious and very comfortable to chat with, which was fortunate as this was a live seven-minute segment with no rehearsal! I managed to be both conscious and alert the entire time as we chatted up the book, so good for me.

Later that week, my house was taken over by funny gal Liz Stembridge and crew (of one, but what the heck!) from the show foQus with Deb Pearce. (Those Rogers folks have got to get it together with their upper and lower case issues.) Liz was a one-woman riot in a very small space (my living room.) While discussing the book and the recent interest from SONY Pictures, we also managed to come up with a small but telling cameo for Liz, should I by any chance get to write, direct and cast the film. (Hey, you never know! If you're curious, it involves Liz wearing an old housedress and swinging a couple of cats by the tail. Animal rights people, back down. They'll be rubber cats!)

And finally (or maybe not), I got to spout my stuff at Sleuth of Baker Street, Toronto's renowned mystery specialty bookstore, newly located at 907 Millwood Ave. There, amid the works of every great mystery author, not to mention several of Sherlock Holmes's deerstalker caps, I got to chat with Justine Lewkowicz, the intrepid host of Bookends. Fortunately, this is an edited show, as I blew my very first question: How do you know when to reveal the clues in a mystery? For me, it's a purely intuitive process, so I didn't have an answer. Turns out that was my answer. Things loosened up and got a bit easier after that. I'm a writer, after all, so I like to think about what I'm saying before I say it, but once I start I can just keep rolling along.

Jeffrey Round is a Toronto novelist and filmmaker. His most recent book is the mystery-thriller Lake On The Mountain, from Dundurn Books. Visit: www.jeffreyround.com.