Many months ago I modified my story The Spare Midge to make its ending less grim. I even explained my thinking in a post. A while later I read the modified version and decided it did betray the original and, moreover, fell flat. So I have restored the original ending.

In general I decided to accept the grimness of my earlier works. To that end, I also removed a couple of distracting things from The Spare Midge collection, which is now tighter and more tonally consistent.

Indeed I even put my grimmest story, The Amputated Man, into my other collection The Chicken Bone. I have always found this story rather cruel; yet it seems to me to be effective, too. It definitely darkens the collection. It also seems to fit.

I am done fussing with my earlier works.

P.S. The Endless Batteries was removed from The Spare Midge and restored to its original form as a chapterbook. I have not published this on Amazon or the like. I probably won't. But for the sake of my oeuvre, it is now as it should be.