A few years ago, thriller writer Jeffery Deaver (whose next Lincoln Rhyme novel, THE COLD MOON, will be out this June) appeared on the CBS Early Show to promote his latest book and confessed to a longtime love of soap operas -- namely, AS THE WORLD TURNS. That confession got him a guest stint on the show as a murder victim and last week, he returned to the ATWT set in Brooklyn. But this time, he got to play himself.

The show celebrates its 50th Anniversary of broadcasting on April 2, and that same week, Pocket Books will publish OAKDALE CONFIDENTIAL, an anonymously penned crime novel, both in the fictional town of Oakdale and in the real world. To that end, ATWT is throwing an on-air launch party featuring Deaver and several publishing industry types that will air on April 10.

Deaver (right, with business manager Madelyn Worcholik on the left) explains his involvement: "When OAKDALE CONFIDENTIAL was about to be published, the publishing director at Pocket asked me to take a look at it. She sent the book over, and there's a picture of Maddie (Alexandra Chando), Katie (Terri Colombino) and Carly (Maura West) on the cover. I didn't look at the book at first. I just instantly put the cover up on my wall. Then I read the book and it was great fun. It had the crime elements to it, and the characters that we know and love. See, I don't have a real job, I'm a writer. But you can't write straight though for 12 hours a day. ATWT comes on at 2 o'clock on the East Coast, and that's a good time to take a break. One of the things I like best about ATWT is the crime element. There are murders, we have the police, Margo and Jack are cops, and I really like the way the personal relationships are integrated into the crime dramas."

So how did this cameo compare to the last one?

"[Last time] I got a phone call, asking, 'How would you like to be on the show? You can be a dead body.' And I thought, 'This is cool.' But I should have known, being a person who constructs stories for a living, that you simply have no emotional impact if there is just a body by itself. You need to set up that person as a human being before you can kill him, otherwise people don't care about him. So when I got the four inches worth of scripts that I had to learn, I was feeling very nervous about it, and I thought, 'Oh-oh, maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew.' I am not a natural actor. So, this time around, being just an extra is great!"