In meeting assorted vampyres [I've been trying to work out precisely how to spell this word for years, meaning that I've been trying to ascertain whether wampyr predates wampir or not; until further notice, a vampire is a mythical undead creature, while a vampyre is a regrettable moron pretending to be the mythical creature] over the years, one thing I've wondered, apart from how in hell they can tend to gain weight in 'death', is why they're never turned to dust by emulations of sunlight, like fluorescent lights and sunlight bouncing back off the full moon. I wonder that because I, while neither a vampyre nor a vampire, have this migranic condition in which sunlight tends to trigger headaches, and walking into something like WalMart at three in the morning can do the same thing, presumably for the same reasons.

Until this month, the full moon had never caused the same problem. But that's changed now. I went out for a walk the other night, and, best I can figure, the cause of the headache I got had everything to do with the moon being full, and the skies being clear. So that's fun.

On the subject of the undead: I finally made the call on the book, I think. I'm gonna go ahead and revert the title from Pandemic back to Paroxysm. Four reasons.

First, a few months ago, someone released a book called Pandemic which is getting enough global attention to warrant backing out of the working title. Which is fine because....

Second, I'd been pondering slicing the book into four subsections. Book One: Endemic; Book Two: Epidemic; Book Three: Pandemic; Book Four: Paroxysm. And it seems better, to me, to have the final [and longest] subsection reflect the book's overall title.

Third, the plotline really is more of a paroxysm than a pandemic. So the title's somewhat more appropriate.

And, fourth, it's just a cool word.

Reasons against using it have pretty much been that I wasn't trusting people in general to be able to spell Paroxysm, let alone define it. But that's okay. The book isn't actually written for stupid people. Even if most media in the genre of zombies is.

So, I think that's about settled now.

Also, reformatting the book to include the subsection headers, I actually cut back the pagecount by about four pages. Meaning that I actually upped it by eight, but then reworked the positions of new chapters. Typically, I prefer to have chapters beginning on odd pages [it could be argued that any page I'd write would be odd], but that's an aesthetic thing. A matter of form. The function, in this case, is cramming everything I can into the available pagecount of 580. So, sitting on what's now Page 421, and knowing that the epilogue lurking in a different file is another two pages, I've got just over 150 pages left into which to squeeze the rest of the story. And, if possible, a better explanation of exactly this sort of thing in the Author's Notes, since I still kinda wanna fit that in somehow.

Since I'm chopping this whole thing into four subsections, and since I've caught a few typos and things since uploading the teaser, I'm also uploading the first subsection to http://gremlin.net/paroxysm.pdf; that having a couple of slight changes to the hundred pages or so online all this time, plus a couple more chapters than anyone had seen before now, it might be worth looking at even for those who had read was was, to date, available. Just...stop EMailing me about the big words. I know there are big words. See above: this ain't a book for stupid people. Hopefully.