ZMT Dispatch for July 2025

We have officially transitioned beyond the halfway point of the year! This is the ZMT Dispatch for July, your monthly recap of everything that’s been going on for this crazy self-publishing journey of ours. This post is only visible on the web if you’re logged in, but don’t worry, it’s free.

Since I’ve been pretty regularly sending out at least three posts every week, some may wonder why I set this particular newsletter apart from the others. Well, because I’ve been doing this for a while now, this is the 58th such update (I haven’t been doing it for 4 years, I used to send out bi-weekly newsletters before changing to monthly, then going nuts and doing daily posts with West Wind!), and because the focus is a little different.

West Wind is a bit unfocused, just whatever happens to be coming up at the moment that I think is interesting enough to share. The ZMT Dispatch is more focused on my writing and publishing efforts rather than whatever I happen to be thinking of that day. And, I talk a little more about personal stuff here too. There are many of you who receive this email that I know in real life, so it’s a little bit of family newsletter too.

Some of you long-time readers may also wonder why I keep calling it the ZMT Dispatch and not the ZMT Books Dispatch, which was it’s name for a long while. That’s part of the shift in focus that will be happening over the next few months. When I first started to write long ago, the goal was to make stories into books and publish them. That’s happened, and fairly well if I do say so, but the kinds of stories that I want to tell sometimes don’t quite fit with the established format of “a book.”

I first encountered some resistance when going through critiques for Paper & Feathers. People told me the story was too slow, they didn’t understand what was going on, I should change it around to make it a better “book.” Well, to me, the story is primary, and I’m not going to change the way I tell a story to suit some people’s tastes.

Then the Avalon Lost audiobook happened. I had always wanted to record audiobook versions of my stories, and doing someone else’s gave me the opportunity to get the equipment and the mindset I needed to really make it happen. Going forward, the audio versions of each story will be the primary product that I put out in the world, with books as accessories to the audio rather than the other way around.

Is that risky? Probably. But it’s what I feel called to do. And by sticking with us, you’ll see it happen up front.

Outside- Gardening, nature, life

After nearly three years, it’s time for our family to pack up and move on from the little slice of wilderness we’ve called our own. The property is about 5.5 acres, but we only use a tiny slice of it for our house and garden. The rest is open pasture, with a bit of woods in there too. There’s not a whole lot of room to explore the trees, and you wouldn’t want to either since it would be almost guaranteed that you’d get a tick.

On a bottle of insect spray I picked up, it says: “In heavily infested areas, protection from ticks will be improved by either wearing the cuffs inside footwear or taping pant cuffs around legs.” Well, we do that and still end up with little passengers. This is definitely that kind of an area, because of all the moisture and long grass. Of course there’s a lot more we could do, like keeping the grass mown short always, which would require lots of gas and maintenance of a mower, and/or spraying nasty pesticides that would harm the rest of the insect life around here, and then affect the bird and lizard life, and ultimately ruin it all.

The downside of living in a secluded wildlife refuge is that it’s pretty far out of town, making it take a long while to get anywhere, especially to the grocery stores we need to shop at since we’re The Allergy Family™. It also makes it difficult to get the kids to their new schools.

We’ve been homeschooling for many years (or school at home in the case of my son), and things are different enough now that they need to go be with other kids and have a different educational experience. I share this with a bit of trepidation, since homeschooling is considered to be the superior option in the circles we move in, and I market books to homeschooling families. How can I know what they want if I’m not one myself?

Well, I’m not really a farmer, either, something that apparently a lot of people thought from my branding and a few interviews. At the most I was an extreme gardener, so I was a homeschooling parent too. It’s just like a prestige class. Trying to be homesteaders, homeschoolers, self-published creators, members of a church community, cook all of our own food and hold down a full-time job all at the same time is just too much. Things need to change, but fortunately, they can.

Inside- Writing, reading, other stuff

Should I keep writing? Why not?

You probably got an email or post from your favorite self-published authors in the last few months talking about how they had to raise their prices of their print books because Amazon decided to raise their printing costs. I read that and chuckled, because I don’t use Amazon for anything, and besides I had quite a few books stored up still.

Then BookVault announced that they were raising their prices too! Whoops. Fortunately, I had until July 10th until the hike actually happened, but then I still had a lot of books and didn’t need new ones.

Then I sold all of my Octave of Stars paperbacks. Wow! So I will be ordering more from the printer, and after next week, any print-on-demand copies you order will be at a slightly higher rate. I try very hard to make my books affordable, with slim profit margins, because I want to get my stories into the hands of readers, and paper books are the best way to accomplish that.

Four new Florabeasts paraded into view this month, with the Magnolion, Cottornix, Hippopotato, and Skunion all joining the ranks. Generation 1 is halfway complete, hooray!

What I’ve been listening to

Wow, this is an easy one! For the month of June, I featured some of my favorite accordion music to celebrate that silly, stretchy instrument. Not all of it was from video games, and not all of it was polka. And, at least one of you told me that you liked it, so that makes it all worth while. Click the banner for the full month’s recap of all the tunes, and let me know what you thought of this crazy experiment with this easy survey.

Whew! Thanks for sticking with me on this one, as usual. If you get a long weekend, make the most of it, and if not, well, you’ll probably get one later. Get outside and remember, all is well.