40 Days In Paradise

I was listening to the Saturday Questions and Answers by Dr. J. Vernon McGee at TTB.org on September 12, 2015 and the idea came to me for a book - 40 Days In Paradise- a biography of the criminal killed at the side of Jesus.  Paradise was spoken of here as a completely understandable garden, also known as the bosom of Abraham that ends into the unknown heaven which comes after.  The idea was, not as I think of it, that the thief went to heaven with Jesus, but that there was a place people went before Jesus went to open up heaven, 40 days after his death.  I suppose the book would be 40 days of anticipation, in between the earthly life and the heavenly one and I wonder what this guy would know of eternity from that place?