Periodically I like to update my e-books, checking for any small errors, adding a line of dialogue or two, etc. And every once in a while I fall into a paragraph that reminds me how much fun writing can be. Like this one, describing a sand storm in North Africa that afflicts my gallant bunch of Marines: "Now the desert takes them in. A storm from the south brings a shoulder of sand half a mile high and as far across as the eye can see, advancing out of the wasteland like a yellow wall of surf. Locals call this phenomenon the simum—the poison wind. The fine dust sets the Christians’ teeth on edge. There is sand in everything, grit in all they eat. Palm trees rustle and shake in the tempest and the world is without form, as if all echoes of the Almighty’s ordering strictures uttered at and in creation of Creation itself have finally trailed off into corridors of nothingness beyond light and human hope and the motes and atoms and elemental stuff of existence, unbound at last, have devolved immediately into mere random movement now and for the rest of eternity hot and howling and corrosive to the touch. The Americans wrap cloth around their faces for fear of losing their sight to the wind-driven particles, and they move through the streets laterally, with one hand raised as if to ward off this prolonged and awful judgment of the sky."