Hot dog, here it is at last! The latest and greatest audio production from ZMT books is not a Frontier Flora story, nor is it a re-release of a short story, it is a full-length audiobook. And not just any audiobook, but Paper & Feathers, the quietly contemplative tale of a fussy librarian who’s moved very thoroughly out of his comfort zone by a series of chance encounters, and has to struggle to keep up the balance of his life, work, and expectations.
As to be expected, it is fully narrated and produced by the author, along with some special guest accompaniments during certain key chapters. But rest assured, it is 100% human-made, with absolutely no AI-generated content of any kind.
It’s also live and ready for download or streaming! You can get it at the main story page on zmthomas.com, or at the storefront, whichever works best for you. In keeping with the spirit of independent publishing, it is not available on Audible, Spotify, or any other third-party services. There’s just too much compromise involved to justify that.
But wait, you might say. I enjoy being able to stream my audiobooks with an app or something, and not have to download anything. I want to just click play, then sit back and relax. Well don’t fret, because we have a pretty darn good solution in place!
When you buy your copy of the audiobook (or a signed paperback), you will get access to a special section of the website where you can use this nifty streaming gadget. All 20 sections are uploaded and ready, backed by the best DigitalOcean servers that an independently published author can manage. It’s fast, too, we tested it on Wi-Fi and 4G mobile data and it loaded in less than a second each time.
Completing this project is a big one for me, since audio has always been an important part of what I want to offer to my readers and listeners. The first time I ever read the book out loud to anyone, other than my family, was at the LegendHaven conference way back in 2023! I don’t think the book had actually even come out yet, but it was still fun to share it with the few people who were willing to stick around in the afternoon and listen to me.
It also marks an important shift in how we’re going to be handling audio for stories that already exist in print. If you’ve listened to any of the Frontier Flora stories, and read along to find out how to spell the names of the beasts, you’ve seen that I read exactly what’s on the screen, word for word, including mechanical components like dialogue tags. For Paper & Feathers, I decided to change things up a bit.
The amazing audio epic 1232 was adapted from a novel that the narrator and producer wrote, and she reads it directly as it was written. This allows for character asides and internal dialogue that wouldn’t be possible in a traditional “radio drama” where the only things you hear are what characters are speaking aloud. That is the model in the audio productions of the Merry Beggars, with no narrator, just dialogue.
P&F follows a hybrid model of sorts. Before recording I went through the original text and edited it a bit, removing dialogue tags (Ahlden said, Reya said) and a few of the indicative clauses that I had added to make it clear who was actually speaking in a given line. Since each character has such a distinctive voice, I thought it would slow things down and clutter the flow if the narrator was always indicating who had just said something. After all, when Ahlden is talking with Curator Bosna over a compass conference, there’s no mistaking which line belongs to which character! The rest of the narrator’s descriptions of the characters’ thoughts and feelings all remain.
I still can’t believe today is actually here. If you listen to the audiobook, let me know what you think! You can leave a comment here or send me an email. Even better, tell someone you know who enjoys low-stakes stories with a slow pace and uniquely detailed fantasy worlds. That’s how everything works best around here. Enjoy the rest of your day!