ZMT Dispatch for August 2025

Hello again everyone! I am in fact still here, despite any indication to the contrary. The past few weeks have been full of ups and downs, good things and not so good things. This is just how life works, really, but when your daily schedule is much the same, having everything change at once can be a little jarring. This is the ZMT Dispatch for August, 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.

When we last met, our family had just moved into a new house, and my son and I were readying ourselves for a trip to Kansas for a summer camp with the school he attended this year. I had all these grand plans about posting at least once during the week, but that was pretty idealistic. Between kitchen duty feeding 150 people for a week, and running the first-ever ZMT Books booth, I had very little time to even check my email, much less compose a post. No worries, I thought; I’ll just pick it back up when I return.

We traveled home from Kansas on Saturday and were going to do the whole trip in one day, arriving in the evening and then resting for the remainder of the weekend. That was the plan, but not what ended up happening.

Our car broke down in Illinois, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. Check engine light, no acceleration, bad news. Fortunately, I was able to get it off of the highway and onto a relatively safe road, complete with an older couple who lived in the farmhouse nearby and offered me water. I didn’t need it, though, since help was already on the way.

One of the other families at the camp had stopped for the day on their way back to Virginia, and were only three miles away from our unscheduled camping spot. They were able to not only get us to a hotel for the night, but also take my son and I AND our car back to Indiana with a tow dolly that I managed to secure on a Sunday morning. The absolute kicker was that they had “accidentally” booked their hotel in that town, having intended to stay somewhere farther east. But as we have observed before, there are no accidents.

So we were safe at home at long last, but with no car. Not one that could be driven, anyway. We’d known that the engine on this car had some issues when we bought it, so we had opted to get a service warranty that would cover catastrophic engine failure. And, as we found out this week, that’s exactly what happened. The car’s engine will be completely replaced and ready sometime next week, with minimal expense to us. What a deal! I wonder if that means the mileage will be reset? Isn’t the mileage of a car the measure of the wear on the engine? I guess I’ll find out soon.

Outside- Gardening, nature, life

Rural Kansas is a good place to train for jungle operations, as it is quite similar. Last year when we went to this same site, it was hot and dry with no wind and no rain all week long. This year it was the opposite, with rain nearly every day and extreme humidity. I was soaked with sweat nearly all day long, and when I went into the walk-in cooler to get something, my legs would feel cold because of all the moisture. Not only that, but we were given cabins as far away from the dining hall as possible, which meant a nice long hike at the beginning and end of each day. Gotta get that exercise before going back to the desk job!

Inside- Writing, reading, other stuff

Last week, I got to experience my very first in-person book sales event! I don’t have a picture of my well-stocked and dressed table with banners and such. It was in the corner of the dining hall at a Boy Scout camp in Kansas with little kids playing chess on the other side of the table, and it was so humid I had to keep the books in a sealed box so they didn’t get soggy.

But despite all of that, I sold out every book I took with me! (And even a few I didn’t have yet) Admittedly, it was a bit easier than it would have been at another type of event, since the customer base not only knew who I was personally, but were the very exact target audience that I’m trying to market to. Homeschool/school at home families, who are wary of the current market for children’s literature and want to know that what they’re giving their kids to read is clean, safe, and worthwhile.

This success has spurred me to try and appear at more in-person events, so if you’re in the Kentuckiana area, stay tuned for where and when I’ll be!

This also means that I have no more hard copies on hand, so if you were hoping to get a signed copy of any of my books, you will have to wait a while. The upside is that if you order through the ZMT Bookstore, your information gets forwarded to the printer automatically and your book will get to you that much faster. PLUS, if you are outside of the US, you can get a book printed from one of the other facilities and sent to you much more efficiently.

Yes, technically it is Friday, but the Frontier has been pretty quiet as of late. July went by with no new Florabeast entries added to the codex. But don’t worry, there is much more fun just around the next bend in the trail.

Whew! Cramming two weeks worth of updates into a single email is a lot of work. But, that’s what I used to do all the time before the West Wind started blowing. So it’s not that different, really. No matter how you count it, I’m grateful to be home and dry and blessed with readers who get to the end of each email. Enjoy the sun setting over the endless rows of corn, and remember, all is well.