I mentioned, somewhere, up here or down on the board, that the novel had been getting kinda slow, and that I really needed to get out of the US for a while and visit a nice, fucked country. So Chapter Thirty takes us back to Sydney, Australia, already lost to the zombies.

Since elements of that rely on a huge number of pages leading up to it, I won't bother with most of the details. This, though...lemee explain something real quick.

Once upon a time, I used to write horror stuff. Then I kinda quit for a while. I'm still not totally sure why. Possibly because I went to college and my English 118 professor wasn't much into using my stuff as examples, because she was into keeping some of her students around. The needs of the many, or some such commie bullshit; I dunno.

So. I wandered away from the genre for a while. I got close to returning to it in 1995, with SB95, which was a sort of expanded rewrite of a story I'd written in 1987. But, dark and evil though that was, it was almost more of a SciFi thing. Probably because, by then, I was used to it.

So, ultimately, I haven't actually written scary, creepy, evil shit since Reagan was in office. Draw from that what you like.

In any case: I'm fucking back.

For the most part, when I write something, I sit there frowning at it wondering what in hell I was thinking. That everyone thinks I'm nuts for thinking I could have done better is immaterial. I know I could have done better. And that sort of knowledge is half the reason that this book has taken nearly two years to write half of.

That said, I somehow managed to write something I didn't frown at. That I'm not currently in a mental ward is owed to the fact that no one saw me grin.

I wrote this. Then I read it. And it creeped me out. And that doesn't happen. Have fun.