Dispatch No. 39

tap, tap ...is this thing on?

May 28, 2026

The Fastforward Machine

Little did I know back in 2024 when Sean McDonnell and I were chatting about The Twilight Zone did I think things would roll so quickly into starting a new business.

That business, Tiny Worlds Publishing, has blossomed from the baby-step first edition of The Midnight Vault in 2025 and is growing into something wonderful.

Building something from scratch is, of course, never easy. Especially when you’re doing it on borrowed time and a shoestring budget. But I’m really pleased with the work we’re doing — cutting our teeth all-the-while.

Our first foray in this new endeavor was Sean’s Cherry Kills. I honestly couldn’t think of a better BANG! to start things off. It’s a hell of a story about loss and imaginary friends with a backbeat that’ll keep you reminiscing of the 90’s until Lalapalooza returns (or is it the Warp tour? One can never be sure). In any case, you’ll want to get your hands on a copy.

I’ve mentioned it before, but hanging out with the likes of Hanna Delaney, Sean Thomas McDonnell, Lyndsey Resnick and Ben Wakeman makes my day. They’re truly good humans and fantastic authors. Our asynchronous chats on Discord are always lively: Lyndsey’s home reno-gone amuck, Hanna’s continuous dive into social media. Maybe my favorite are Sean’s semi-regular post of “So… I think I’m gonna write a whole book about _____”

And, thankfully in all this, I have another partner in this endeavor, the incomparable Shane Bzdok. His creative support and talent are a breath of fresh air in a sea of book mediocrity.

The Midnight Vault II

We’re a scant few days from releasing the hardcover version of The Midnight Vault II into the world. I can tell you quite confidently the details Shane Bzdok has put into this edition are bellissimo.

Both The Midnight Vault I & II go on sale June 1st. They’ll be everywhere but if you want to support the authors directly, you’ll nab them from the Tiny Worlds store next week.

Each will be $29.99 and we ship all over the globe.

Oceanus • Second Edition

Some months back I pitched an idea to Hanna Delaney: why not revisit your first book?

Surprisingly, she was game for it.

We spent a couple of months pouring over the material, batting ideas and copy changes back and forth. sigh — that’s not at all what happened. We tore into the book like [place British idiom here] and asked the tough questions and scrutinized details.

Regularly, notifications on my phone would look like this:

As Hanna has mentioned, her voice and the style of the novel remain intact. Where I think her strength of the last few years writing came to bear, though, is in bolstering the characters and shaping them more fully. It’s not an easy thing to look back at your own writing and want to dive in again. I applaud every little finesse she added to the story.

Oceanus • Second Edition launches on June 19th. It’ll be everywhere but also available at Tiny Worlds.

I thought you’d like a sneak peek at the trailer for Oceanus.

Harmony House

Ben Wakeman let the cat out of the bag — but, really, why keep a good thing a secret?

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Ben over the last few months while catching up on his work — The Memory Of My Shadow, Harmony House and his newest creation Daedalia. He’s exactly as you’d imagine: thoughtful, easy with a smile and maybe one of the smartest people I’ve met. Even if I hadn’t listened to his incredible audio productions of those stories, the prose just sounds like him.

Harmony House will be out in July.

Gimmebook

When I sleep, which truthfully is not much, I’m dreaming. Sometimes of stories yet-to-be-written. But, more recently, about the heavy lifting an author does putting thoughts down, polishing them and, eventually (for most self-published authors) becoming your own marketing, publicity and sales person.

And I thought, if there’s some reasonable way I could lighten that load, shouldn’t I try?

So, in between other things, I built gimmebook.com.

The premise is simple: give authors a storefront for free where they can sell ebooks and audiobooks directly to readers.

Authors on gimmebook can set their own prices, cultivate their audience, gift books, automatically create ebooks from Substack posts and see stats about where readers are coming from.

But something lately was bugging me. When I set Gimmebook’s fee at 30%, I had a number in my head that was better than what most people get from Amazon. What I didn’t have yet was any of you telling me how it actually felt.

So I launched and I’ve had an amazing group of Beta authors to test it and provide feedback. The messages have been kind and clear: 30% gives authors sticker shock.

I heard it and I agree. So starting today, gimmebook’s platform fee is 20%.

Big picture - for twenty-ish years giant networks have monetized the attention they capture and the data they harvest. Amazon is the purest version of that for books. Authors toss their hard work into a sea of million of titles, and whatever relationship you manage to build with a reader belongs to them, not you. It’s like renting access to your own damn audience.

I think the next chapter looks different, and more human. Whether you’re starting with five readers or five thousand, the ones you earn should be yours: people you can reach again, for the next book and the one after that. That’s how a writer builds something that lasts and it’s a pillar of gimmebook. Your readers, your data, your direct line to the people who buy your work. I don’t get between you and them.

I’ll always be honest about what the 20% is and isn’t. It covers hosting, support, refund handling and the constant work of building the best storefront I can for authors. There’s no big team here, it’s one person building this, because I genuinely believe authors should own their work and audiences, and I wanted a place built around that idea instead of against it. The 20% is what keeps that going. (And it’s about to look better, too…I’m bringing on a designer soon)

Twenty percent is the work I do, so you can keep doing the work only you can do. That feels like a number I can stand behind when an author asks me to justify it.

Give gimmebook a try. Tell me what you like, or hate. I’m all ears.