Writing the McMansion scene was tough on me as well. I didn't want to do that to Jenna. I especially was moved by the tragedy of Douglas making up with her at the last minute.

Eric is modeled in some ways on me. As to whether someone with OCD could deal with that condition after the world has ended, I think that particular condition could even be an asset since it helps block out everything but your routines. Of course, you'd need survival skills and luck as well, but a non-debilitating case of OCD or some other anxiety disorder could come in handy. Granted, the neat freak thing could be a liability with all of that garbage around, but I think you'd just reset your standards and be extra careful not to get close to the extremely disgusting things, like the zombies. It's all about ignoring unpleasant facts to cope. Neat freaks are usually obsessed only with certain kinds of disgusting things and they ignore the other kinds to avoid feeling the stress of cognitive dissonance (inconsistency in their worldview).

Is the book opposed to women or to feminism? Well, there's a strong female character, I think. There's also the celebrity cult leader who doesn't do much in this book, but who I think will have a bigger role in the sequel. As for the female zombies, there's the old lady who knocks Eric off his bike and then there's the young hottie who tempts him sexually. I don't really deal much with sexuality in this book, but maybe that scene objectifies women since that zombie is literally a mindless, sexy body. Oh well, she serves her purpose, which is to make for an awkward scene for Eric and to help sell the fact that he's writing a journal on the occasion of the world's end and so he doesn't expect anyone will read it.

I understand that Scott has had some trouble with the feminists, so I think you might be importing a little of that experience here. Hell, any backlash would be great press for a self-published book, right?

There will be more sexuality in the sequel, through the celebrity cult and another character. And if you've read my blog you know I'm kind of down on sexuality in general, not just on women. So when I do seriously deal with sex in my fiction, I expect I'll give reasons for more than just feminists to take offense or at least to question certain conventions.

Yeah, Scott Bakker is an eliminative materialist and I'm not. In this book, the climax is pretty dark (although the epilogue is meant to be hopeful), but I'm laying the groundwork for a more uplifting story that will unfold over the series. I don't want to give it away, but I'm dealing with the question of what counts as heroism under those horrible conditions (the apocalypse and the metaphysical truth of nature as God's decaying corpse). There will be heroes who transcend the horrible reality, albeit in a tragically heroic way. But as in painting, you've got to lay down the dark first so the light will show.

I'm glad you like Thaddeus. I'm not finished with him yet. In the sequel, there will indeed be another character who has an odd relationship with the zombies, but I can't say more without giving it away.

As for another human organization, if I understand your question right I think what I said above answers it: that celebrity death cult will play a larger role. The sequel will also show another part of the world where most of the people haven't yet died.

Howard Rhodes's reasons are explained a little more in the sequel (at least in the first draft which I'm working on now). I wanted to leave it somewhat to interpretation. You can assume he went mad, but it's more of a religious kind of madness, like Joan of Arc's. He had a genuine religious experience; unfortunately, the truth about God turns out to be a horror from which there's no return, especially for the more egocentric among us. Howard played a sort of practical joke on the human race. He wanted to harmonize us with the music of the spheres, to get us right with God, as the fundamentalists say; again, the irony is that God is undead, so that sort of literalistic godly life turns out to be a nightmare for us (it entails the end of the world by way of mass murder and technoscientific zombification).