The winners of my flash fiction contest will be announced tomorrow in my newsletter (click the newsletter link at the top of the page to get signed up for it).
The war began this week. I rolled out the war machine and replaced the deck belt. The illustrations and directions I saw for completing the task required detaching the deck. Naturally, I did not do that. Although I'm sure it would've made the replacement operation easier, it would've taken more than twice as long to remove and replace the deck. The method I chose, after removing the ouroboros-esque item from the simple packaging in which in had arrived by post from the big river site, was accomplished on my knees by feel with limited visual assistance.
I placed the new belt as I removed the old one. The theory being that I would be sure to match the course of the old one by proceeding in that manner. My hypothesis proved correct--mostly. I did run into a little trouble manipulating the two belts in removing the old one from the pulleys and adding the new one. They got tangled. Theoretically, I could've done it without that complication. However, in actual practice, murphy's law manifested itself, or maybe the two belts became animated by jinn or manipulated by unseen gremlins. I think I had to put on and remove the new belt from one of the pulleys at least three times. You would think I was working with forty foot phone cords and a team of drunk ferrets - but it was only me, myself, and I. At any rate, victory was mine without any smearing of corpuscles or shredding of dermal layers--win-win. I bent both belts to my will.
The old belt had been slipping in tall grass (which aptly describes the yard for the first battle of the year) and I discovered that it had not only stretched but was severely cracked. I probably would've broken soon. It's only been in heavy use for 12 years.
The new belt worked fine and the war machine attacked grass and weeds in a frenzy of indiscriminate slaughter. I mowed half of the yard that evening, and then Saturday, instead of only mowing the second half, I had to mow the entire thing. The jungle had rejuvenated after only a few days. The seasonal war is live once again.
On the writing front, a few more chapters of the bug novel have been drafted and posted for my skirmish team's review, and I still have two short stories out without final decisions on publication status. Which reminds me that I also have a story from a year ago at a publisher who seemed to want to publish, but has experienced unspecified delays without providing a new publication date.
I've reviewed and adjusted my presentation on Forging Unforgettable Stories. I've included my opening sentences of the presentation in my newsletter for subscriber comment. I could share some of it here but:
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