SciFi Diner Podcast Recording is Today

This afternoon at 4 PM I’ll be jumping on a Google Hangouts session with Scott Hertzog of SciFi Diner to talk about my decades-long association and friendship with DeForest Kelley. I’m looking forward to it…

 

After doing a substantial series of interviews over the course of the last month I’m beginning to feel like a pro.  They’ve become a lot more comfortable/less stressful to contemplate beforehand, that’s for sure!

 

I had quite the “trial by fire” to start with because the first interview was with New Day Northwest on King5 TV in Seattle–as high-profile an interview as I have ever landed. (You can click to see it from my home page.) That one had me super nervous, although you can’t tell. (I deserve an Emmy!) I hadn’t done TV in 35 years or more, so it was frightening to contemplate. But it turned out well, so the experience gave me confidence to reach out to additional media hosts to see if they’d be interested in my story.

 

I contacted about 40 places–newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, Trek and westerns podcasts–and got a great return for my efforts, several more than I expected. A ten percent response would have netted me 4 interviews. I got six! So I enjoyed a 15% YES response rate. Only two got back saying they weren’t interested; most of the others haven’t responded at all yet.

 

I reached out a second time to each place that didn’t get back to me the first time, about three weeks after sending the first email. As a result, I picked up two more interviews. So that’s a 20% response rate (total).

 

I may reach out one more time, but then I’ll move to a different set of prospective hosts, unless the third email gains me at least two more interviews. (As long as I’m gaining ground, I’ll keep reaching out to the first list.)

 

So far, every podcast I’ve done has resulted in invitations to return and engage again soon, so that’s good. I’ve done one westerns-related interview with Voices of the West; they want me back in mid-November. (You can hear the first interview from my home page.)

 

Another fellow (Michael May) wants to interview me about De’s westerns, too; he’s waiting to hear when his co-host will be available to engage…

 

Oh! And Cowboys and Indians magazine is going to carry an article I wrote about De’s career in westerns, too. That will be a special, special thing. In it, I recounted several of the anecdotes that De shared about his cowboy career. I need to post that on my home page, too…if for no other reason, simply to remind myself to pick up a copy in mid-October when it hits the newsstands! I’m getting so many “gigs” that it’s hard to keep track of them all unless I write them on my wall calendar. (Yes, I do things the old-fashioned way. I don’t own a cell phone!)

 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to today’s interview. If it’s as much fun as the other ones have been, I know I’m in for a whee of a time… and I hope SciFi Diner fans will have as much fun as Scott and I do when it airs. I’ll keep you posted as soon as I know the air date, and will post a direct link to the episode when I get it… fear not!

 

I’m feeling so fortunate. It’s great to see how many DeForest Kelley fans there still are these days. MOST of my De correspondents are teenagers and young adults. I think the remastered Star Trek episodes are responsible for the continuing enthusiasm for De. I think parents and grandparents feel better these days about sharing their love of the series via the remastered episodes than they did sharing the now-antique-looking 60’s versions where “computers” were massive, special effects and graphics were cheesy (in retrospect, not back then!) and sets were primitive, to say the least. That’s my theory, anyway.

 

De deserves to be remembered. He was truly salt of the earth, as anyone knows who met or worked with him. I’ll certainly vouch for him every chance I get until I, too, am shoveled off this mortal coil…

 

“He isn’t really dead as long as we remember him.”

 

AMEN.