Dateline Chicago, April 11 --

Did my first LIVE TV interview, in the Fox Morning News studio with Tamron Hall and David Navarro. They were great -- it was just like chatting with somebody in their living room. Somebody you've never met before. In a living room with only one wall. And lots of cameras and really bright lights. For a total of three and a half minutes.

I haven't seen the tape yet, but I've been told it went really well.

When David Navarro pushed me for a spoiler, I told him "Jar-Jar Binks has a very, VERY tiny part . . ."

Which got applause from the camera crew and sound guy.

Then we whipped over to the Merchandise Mart to do the Mancow in the Morning show on WKQX FM -- Q101 to you Chicago types -- and those of you who live in Chicago know who the Mancow is already.

It was live. It was fun. It was half an hour of deflecting questions about whether Darth Vader is secretly gay and refers to his weapon as a . . . well, he could say it on the radio, but I'm not gonna put it in print on a G-rated AOL blog, that's for damn sure.

So I just gave him a flat deadpan that all this was covered by the confidentiality clause in my contract . . .

Anyway, he turns out to be a really friendly guy, off the air (on the air, he's the friggin' Tazmanian Devil), and I signed a copy of the book for him, even though he admitted to being primarily a fan of the Other Franchise (those touchy-feely Prime Directive wussies . . .).

And we had a Dead Cities sighting -- Hey, cl, glad you made it . . .

The saddest part of the event was when one guy asked me, "If you had written the rest of the NJO [post-TRAITOR], would Jacen have gotten together with Tenel Ka?" and I had to tell him the truth. Because that's who I am: straight question, straight answer.

I didn't tell him the rest of the things that WOULD have happened if I'd written the rest of the NJO. I didn't want to give the poor bastard nightmares.

And now, we interrupt this blog for an Unsolicited Testimonial:

When I left on tour, I took a couple books with me, one of which was Stephen R. Donaldson's RUNES OF THE EARTH, Book One of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm going to tell you that I've had the honor of meeting Steve Donaldson a few times since I've been in the biz, and I'm proud to claim him as a friend.

That, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the following.

This book ROCKS.

Listen: Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is the main reason I'm a novelist today. I read those books when they came out back in the late Seventies -- just as I was entering college -- and they were literally the epiphany that revealed to me that grown-up fantasy literature could be exactly that.

Grown-up. Literature.

While I was in college the Second Chronicles came out, and I love them too.

He was using a fantastic setting and events that resonated on a mythic scale to examine real-life issues of guilt, power, duty and responsibility, love and loss and gods I don't know what all, and those books rocked my world and all I've ever tried to do is knock people over the way those books knocked me.

And no too long ago he brought out his first new novel about the Land and Covenant's legacy in twenty years, and I've just been too busy (with REVENGE OF THE SITH, by no coincidence at all, and with CAINE BLACK KNIFE) to read it . . .

Until now. I finished it just before I got on the flight back to Chicago.

I confess to being a fan: Mordant's Need and DAUGHTER OF REGALS and REAVE THE JUST and the Gap . . . But nonetheless, the Land is the Land.

I'm here to tell you that the Land is STILL the Land.

Vintage Donaldson. Like great wine.

Loved it.