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An Interview with Seth Ring · This Dad Reads

• Jason: Welcome back to This Dad Reads. My name is Jason. Today I'm chatting with an author known for series like the Exlian Syndrome, Novatera, and Battle Mage Farmer. He's built a catalog spanning fantasy, lit RPG, and progression fantasy with stories that combine compelling characters, powerful magic, and plenty of adventure. It's Seth Ring. welcome to the show, Seth. Seth: Hey, thanks for having me. Jason: You're very welcome. How how was life treating you these days? Seth: Good. It's been incredibly busy. yeah, it's normally my life is pretty busy, but the last like this summer and then into the fall has just been insane. But that's okay. it's all good stuff. It's just a lot. Jason: I have a feeling I know what you're talking about and we'll definitely get there. But before we Seth: Yeah. Jason: jump into all that, I wanna kinda get to know you more, let you get to know my audience. So I wanna hear about kind of like your upbringing, your childhood, as much as you're willing to share, and like kind of what spo Seth: Sure. Yeah. Jason: stoked your like passion for storytelling. Seth: Sure. so really I I I've loved stories since I was very young. I've always had a very active imagination that was fed because I I grew up overseas. So I grew up in West Africa. I live in the in the US now, but I grew up in Ghana, in West Africa, in a village. my early years were spent in a village with no electricity and no running water. I but I was surrounded by you know a beautiful world. And a world full of of you know just wonder and and sort of an appreciation. my dad's an artist and taught all of us an appreciation for for what's around us and also to see past the sort of surface level of what's around us and to imagine something bigger beyond. And that really stuck with me throughout, you know, my whole life. if if I'm honest, I really liked reading. I didn't like writing. I I have ADD and and writing has always been a challenge for me because if I write by hand, my hand moves way too slow for my brain. and and so I didn't like it when I was a kid and avoided it as much as possible. But I did like reading, to the point where I multiple times throughout my my life, I've traveled quite a bit, I've moved a lot, and every time I would go to a new library, usually within three or four months, I would find that I had run out of books to read in the library because I would just start at one end of the shelf and I'd just scroll through, read every book in order on the shelf until I was finished, and then I'd go to the next shelf and do it again. I taught myself how to speed read. So that I could read more, because again, speed is like the defining thing in my life. It's my favorite thing, which we'll talk about when I get to me writing. but I eventually discovered I'd run out of sort of physical books to read, and in like the general fantasy market. And so I started looking online and I started getting into translated novels and reading. cultivation stories and all that kind of stuff. And I ran across this this story called Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, which was sort of the precursor to Lit RPG. and through that and the ro and the website that it was the translation which was being posted on, which has become Royal Road, I started seeing that other people were like other amateur writers were writing Lit RPG and similar genres, progression fantasy, cultivation, that kind of stuff. And they were And they were posting it for people to see. And I thought, that could be cool. and as I was as I was reading all of this stuff, I started dabbling with these little ideas and like learning how to write a little bit here and there. But then eventually ran into a story that I loved, I really loved it, and then it was ruined. the the author, I don't know if something happened in his life that or her life. you know, obviously it was all anonymous. but if s I don't know what happened in the author's life, but all of a sudden the story, which was this really cool adventure story, took a really dark turn. And the character suffers this betrayal and and is is mad about that, obviously. but then the way they deal with the problem, the character deals with the problem, is they burn the world around them. And I was like. What a stupid thing to do. What a stupid response. And like people are reading this. And I and and like this was my actual thought when I finished the chapters that that were up. I remember thinking, you know, people are reading this and they're going to use this now as a model, like a mental Jason: Mm. Seth: model for how they should be engaging with other people. If every time something bad happened to us. We we resorted to just burning everything to the ground. Of what use would that be? Right? And it made me so mad that I spite wrote 15 chapters of fan fiction on this story just to make the character do the right thing. And it's not even that, like, Jason: To fix it. Seth: yeah, to just fix this this dumb. Thing. And it's not even that I don't like revenge stories. Revenge is a cool, like, I'm I'm about it if you do it well, right? But man, there was something about it that just like totally triggered me. and so Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: I spite wrote this this fanfic, expecting it to go nowhere, expecting to continue reading, and just enjoying enjoying consuming stories. Yeah, yeah. Jason: So quick question if I can interrupt. So how old were you at that point? And then did you actually like post it or did you just write it for yourself? Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Seth: No, I posted it because I was thirty two. Yeah. So I was, you know, this was like eight years ago, right? I'm 40 now, but I was 32. And I've I've always been very interested in in improvement, like improving things and myself. And I wanted to improve as a writer. 'Cause it I thought, you know, if I'm gonna write at all, I better I wanna be good at it. And the gap between what I knew to be a good story and my own writing was so astronomical that it was painful. And Jason: Mm. Sure. Seth: the only way I know to get better is to do something, have somebody look at it and tell me if it's good or not, and then fix whatever the problem is, and then do it again and like and iterate on it, right? And that's just like how you acquire skills and that kind of stuff. And writing is no different. So I had posted it to Royal Road and actually somebody, somebody read it, a bunch of people read it. and somebody was like, This story sucks, but there is a story in here that I would like to read. And that comment genuinely changed my life. Because I was like, Yes, I agree. It's not a great story, even as fanfic goes, it was bad, right? But I would like to find that story too. I think I want to read that story too. And so I I gotta go find it. and that turned into my first book, Novatera Titan. it was actually when I by the time I was finished finding the story, it was Novatera Titan and Novatera Greymane. And then I split it when I went to publish. but they were originally Jason: Nice. Okay. Seth: one that was just one stor, like one book. so anyway, I I started writing and I wrote this, you know, I wrote Novatera, and I just got obsessed and I started obsessing over this idea of writing the stories that were rattling around in my head and doing it well and I just fell in love with the process of it, right? And then discovered that I really like the business side of writing Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: and the combination of those two things. I just I quit all of my hobbies. I used to be like an As competitive as you can be, Warhammer player. I I played tons of games, video games. I loved hanging out with people. I literally just quit all of that. I was like, don't care anymore. Doesn't Jason: Relationships. Seth: honestly, there was a point where I I I do tend to get a little bit obsessive about things. And there was a point Jason: Sure. Yeah. Seth: where about 2000. Man, it was about it was about No, it was like twenty nineteen. I sort of like took a breath and looked up from my computer and was like, huh. I haven't seen any of my friends in like six months. And I've been like keeping in touch with a couple of them, but like everybody that I hung out with on a weekly basis, I had just not seen. And yeah, right. Jason: Whoops. Seth: But I had written two books. Jason: Hey, small price to pay. Seth: And see, that's right, that's the that was the trade-off for me. It was like I can Jason: Yeah, yeah. Seth: I can do one thing. I can either maintain my relationships outside of my family, and and continue to like go play Warhammer on Thursday nights and go and play, you know, T T RPG and go play board games and do all of the stuff and and read books. Or I can I can either consume or I can create. Right. And for me at that point in my career it was an on and off switch. And I just like flipped it on and then just never turned it off. So it was yeah. Jason: Well, I definitely want to hear about how that has maybe morphed into, you know, into now. Seth: Sure. Jason: But before we get there, I am also curious about kind of that transition, right? When you became l where you dove into that decision to like, I want to write. And I know you mentioned the A D D thing, like my son has ADHD. So I feel like it's very relatable thing for a lot of people. And so I'm really Seth: Yes. Yes. Jason: curious to hear like when did you really discover that like the writing part was something that you wanted to invest Seth: Sure. Jason: in. Seth: Sure. So when I was young, I discovered that I did have a switch in my head that I could turn, and all it did was focus my attention. There there tend to be two major categories of of people when it comes to how attention is spent. And And the first is is someone who will find things that are interesting to them and they will continually and they will continually get deeper and deeper and deeper. And as they get deeper, the what they know about a subject will widen and it'll like widen out like this until it starts to incorporate a couple of things from other places, right? Well, People who have ADD or ADHD tend to skim across the surface, right? And so they have a lot of knowledge. Their knowledge is very wide, but it is very shallow, right? And these are the two obviously there's a spectrum here, right? generalizations like this are never actually accurate, but but there's a spectrum there. And what I discovered as a kid was that I had this switch in my head, and I do promise I'm answering your question. Jason: Ha ha Seth: I had the switch in my head that I could flip, and all of a sudden, my surface level skimming that I would do that would scoop up a little bit of information across the surface could be just directed straight down. Jason: Mm. Seth: And I could hyperfocus and I could become an absolute expert Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: on any one particular given thing. Because I have the ability to filter all of the other information. See, the thing is that somebody who who naturally goes deep into something, as it starts to widen, it becomes impossible to continue going further down. Right? They sort of reach the bottom level of of their their knowledge about it. Right. Jason: Yeah, or the plateau, right? Right, yeah. Seth: They they sort of plateau and then it's like, okay, now I'm learning all of this other stuff that's coming at me from other angles. Well, for me, but and Most people with A D D, as soon as you hyperfocus, what what's actually happening is that you learn to like ADD is really the inability to filter, Jason: Mm. Seth: right? It's the inability to be like, I'm not going to pay attention to the shining thing over there or the squirrel or whatever it is, right? I'm not going to like I can't not pay attention. I can't filter. Well, as soon as you hyperfocus, it turns into absolute filter. There is nothing else that exists outside of it. Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Seth: And so for me, it really was a matter of one day I woke up and I got online and I read that comment. And it was like a switch flipped in my brain, and I went, there's a story, and I'm not going to stop until I find it. But then I found the story and I discovered that it wasn't a short book. Jason: Mm. Seth: The Titan series turned into 10 books and then a continuation series that's currently at nine books, and I'm going to be writing the, you know, the next few here soon. And then honestly, I could probably keep going after that. It's a story without end, because that's how Jason: Mm. Seth: I think about stories. There's always more, there's Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: always some other interesting thing to explore. There's always a new thing. It's just in a straight line, right? Jason: Yeah. Seth: and so as soon as I hyperfocused, it just became my whole life became about finding the story. Jason: Mm, mm. Seth: And so now whenever I am I mean, in the last since since two thousand December of twenty eighteen, I've written forty-eight books. And the reason is because it has just been The singular thing in my mind. When I sit down to write, nothing else exists, everything goes away. I am just there to focus and write. And so I've spent an inordinate amount of time. I mentioned speed is sort of a defining characteristic of my life. I I've spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to write the perfect book as fast as possible. Jason: Mm-hmm. Okay. Even with forty eight under Seth: I haven't gotten there yet. But I'm working on it. Jason: your belt. Seth: I have not gotten there yet. And and the the fastest possible is not the issue. it's the b is perfect, right? How do I write a perfect book as fast as possible? Because Jason: It's the best, right? That's what you said. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seth: I can't I can't go so fast that the quality suffers. And there's this sliding scale where it's like, ooh, I went too fast and now it's Jason: Yep. Yeah. Seth: n you know, it's not as good as I want it to be. And I may be overindexed on speed a little bit, I think. And I I focused most of my attention there and I'm now starting to peel that back. And I'm starting to say, okay, how do I how do I improve the quality so that it matches? Right. And all of these things happen in jumps as well, where you'll get a speed boost, and then you'll be like, ooh, but now I need to make sure that this is good, right? And then and then you'll learn how to write well quickly, right? And ultimately you get to like we're climbing we're climbing the mountain to get there. Not there yet, but we're working on Jason: Sure. Seth: it. Jason: Well, that's so interesting. First of all, I want to say I want to comment on the whole thing that you the whole answer to the question, which thank you you did get to, you got there, is the because I feel like so many times ADD or ADHD is seen as some sort of like limitation, right? It's something that Seth: Mm. Jason: you have to like figure out or fix, or as a parent of a kid who has one, I'm like, I you have to live in a world that has very strict rules, you know, school, it's it's hard, right? But I think Seth: Yes, yes, it is. Jason: you that the way you answer that and the way that you talked about it is And we try to tell our son, like it can be seen as a gift too. Like that is something Seth: Yeah. my goodness. Jason: that if you can harness it into something that is worthwhile. And I think you're a great example of that, right? Like you found the thing that is going to not just enrich yourself, but like change the world around you and like enrich the Seth: Yes. Jason: creative world around you and change other people's lives and perceptions and what they ingest in story. Like I feel like that's just a beautiful thing. Like that's the best way I can think about it. And so I wish that we as a society could figure out like how to like train the everyone who's bringing Seth: Yeah. Jason: up those people to be like figure out your thing and harness it and like have it be you Seth: Right. Jason: can be the best version and and figure out how to be an expert in something, you know? Seth: It really is an astonishing it's an astonishing asset if you can figure out how to make it an asset. It's very hard if you can't. And and it's and I I mean I I also don't have the hyperactivity. And that's that's a that's a piece of it that has made it easier for me. Right? Exactly. Jason: Right. That's part of that scale you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth: But even with hyperactivity, like if you can learn how to harness it, man, you have energy Like you've just got an energizer bunny going in you, and you have the ability to either because again, I I I do want to say that not having a filter isn't actually a bad thing if you can understand how to use it. So there are times in my life where my The switch is flipped to the no filter side because it allows me to absorb information at a rate that is that is impossible for people who have a filter, right? I can walk into a room and immediately get an incredibly accurate vibe check off of everybody, right? Huge information, you know, Jason: A ton of information. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seth: dump, and then my brain can just be like blah blah blah blah and sort through it, right? But Can also then go, all right. I'm gonna sit down in a crowded place with lots of stuff going on, and nothing, and I become impervious to all information except the information that I'm that I'm dealing with. Right. And it's a matter of of understanding how to shift between these states and then also how to skate the line so that you can interact with people in regular society and not drive them insane, right? You have to be able to like also go halfway. Right? It can't ever just be a well, I'm either this or I'm this, right? Because both of those things are useful, but they're only useful as tools if they serve you and they serve the people around you. So yeah. That's right. Jason: Yeah, and that's for everybody, right? Like, no matter how everyone is built, like you gotta figure out how to be the best version of yourself and to utilize your gifts and talents in whatever situation you find yourself in. the other thing Seth: Yeah. Hundred percent. Jason: that I wanted to comment on, which so so funny that you said that, because I just had this realization about myself recently. It's and I was literally like on Reddit it because I'm like, how come I want to do everything fast? You mentioned the speed thing. I don't have Seth: yeah. Jason: ADHD or but I'm like, how come I was I've always as a kid taken tests fast. I've always like tried to read as fast as possible. I worked in a retail environment where speed was like, that's how you did your job. I'm trying to optimize everything, everything. And Seth: OS. Jason: I'm I had this thought of like, what am I? And I think it's all in the service of like time. Like time is so valuable. So like I want to get through this thing that I have to do so I can get to the thing that I want to do. But I once Seth: Yeah. Jason: what I came to realize was I think that mentality was with me all the time. And I would see. like videos of myself or thing. I'm like, what am I I I didn't recognize me from the outside because I was like going so I could see myself trying to go fast. And I think I realized that I was missing out on moments Seth: Mm-hmm. Jason: that don't that deserve attention and that deserve time. And so Seth: Yes. Jason: I'm really trying to think to my and this is just me talking like as a person, like I'm trying to soak in the time that I do have. And there is a time to be efficient. and there's Seth: Mm-hmm. Jason: a time to like really soak in like taking the time to do something. So Seth: Yes. Jason: I don't know if you've relate to that at all, but like you saying the speed thing, I'm like I so Seth: A hundred percent. Jason: relate to that 'cause I'm always telling myself, like, slow down. Like there's slow down. Seth: Yes. I yes, I relate to that a ton because there have been points in my life I I have a really hard or I I I lack a good sense of time in the sense that like if you ask me when a thing in my life happened, nine times out of ten, I will get it wrong. I will not be able to accurately tell you when in my timeline a thing has occurred. and it's very I don't know exactly why, but I just I can't like track Jason: Recall it. Yeah. Seth: yeah, I can't track time in in a in a sense. But Jason: Well let me go edit some of my questions really quick. I'm just kidding. Seth: but one of the reasons for that is because I think I have just tried to hurry through my life in a lot of ways, to my detriment. You know, I've tried to speed run my life and and the fact is that you can't you can't do that. And I often notice it in in the really small detail, which is that if I am not occupied in something I start to panic. And so if I Jason: Mm, mm. Seth: have an evening where it's like, I just finished a book, or I don't want to start a new book, or for some reason I don't want to pick up a book, I don't have anybody to talk to necessarily about or I don't have any subjects that are weighing on me to talk about. I'm not I'm trying not to work because because I'm about right, exactly. yeah, you get it. Jason: Boundaries. Seth: All of a sudden, all of a sudden it's like, no, everything's slowing but I but I Jason: Yeah, like what do I do what do I do with myself? Seth: literally feel like everything just slowing down. Because normally I'm like Jason: Mm, mm-hmm. Seth: on to the next thing, onto the next thing, on to the next thing. You know, I've got a list, I'm I'm plowing ahead. and and I will say that that, you know, having kids has been a big blessing. Because it has forced me to go, wait. wait. I do need to sit down and I do need to read this book, you know, to my child. And then maybe the one after that and the one after that. Yes, Jason: Mm. Seth: I do need to just sit and listen as my kid tells me something about their world, their day, regardless of whether I understand it or not. Jason: Right. And as we know, all the parents out there know that could take forever to do. Seth: Forever. Yes. Yes. my goodness. But I do need to yeah, it has been a big help in understanding that yeah, I cannot speed run this. I do have to slow down and I do have to and even and the fact of the matter is like what would be the use of getting to the end of my life and looking back over it and being like, wow, I got really far and I don't remember anything. Because I was going so fast. Like what a waste. Right? And like you said, time is so precious and valuable. But there's that there's like there are two sides to that coin, right? You yes, we can waste it, but we can also like we can waste it by by not taking it seriously and not working to achieve anything and just sort of letting us, you know, letting it float by. But we can also do the opposite and we can be in such a rush to to achieve something that we don't actually appreciate the moments that, you know, link together to make up make up our life. So yeah, no, I I definitely relate. And I and I think that you know, part of maturing and becoming an adult and like understanding how life actually works is that constant tug of war between these two sides, these two sides of the coin, as we try to find that that space in the middle, right? And sometimes life balances us this way and sometimes it balances us that way. It doesn't remain static. but it is super important, I think, to pay attention to. Jason: And I'm I'm glad you mentioned that 'cause I literally wanted to segue next into kind of like the dad side of it all. I mean, this is kind of not Seth: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Jason: necessarily everything that my show is about, but I come at reading and engaging with hobbies and things that I love. as a dad who's raising kids who are school aged. I don't know how old your kids are, but I want to hear that perspective. Like you mentioned a little bit of it there. But like I guess what excites you about like being able to raise kids, like I'm My goal is always to like raise curious kids who are like I want them to encourage them to read and to love stories as much as I do. So like what has your experience with fatherhood been like? Seth: Yeah, it's been awesome. I was just remarking to my wife the other day how much I just like my kids. And Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: I didn't if I if I'm being like completely honest, I did not expect to like my kids. I expected to have a sense of of obligation and have a sense of duty and but I didn't particularly like kids. I grew up around a lot of kids. I'm one of of ten. and I love my siblings. I think they're all great. but we were raised to be very independent. We were raised Jason: Okay. Seth: to be very singular, right? And and throughout my life, people have like people have not been a permanent thing. And I know that's weird to say because people are a permanent thing, but my experience of them was That I mean, my experience of my whole life was that the only universal, the only thing that doesn't change is the fact that everything changes, right? That's it. Jason: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Seth: And so, yes, you meet somebody today and you're good friends. Well, chances are very shortly you're not going to know them anymore. Like you're not going to spend time with them, you're never gonna see them again, you're gonna move on. Your life, you know, they'll go their way, you go your way, your lives Jason: Mm. Seth: will diverge, and and that's that, right? And so you put time and energy and effort into relationships, but ultimately you are the only person who will still be around. And getting married challenged that. and then having Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: kids challenged that. And what I've come to to realize is that I really enjoy my kids and I like my kids. I love my kids, but I also like my kids. I like being around them. I like hearing their stories. I like engaging with them and watching them grow. And as they have grown, I that sense of enjoyment and fulfillment has deepened and deepened and deepened. And as someone who was very much in the camp of like happy to have kids if my wife wants to have kids, if you know, she thinks it's fulfilling. I don't have any desire to have kids myself. I would be happy to just not have kids. I'd be happy to be the cool uncle. Like, and that's it forever. Jason: Yeah. Seth: Having children of my own completely shattered that because there was a an aspect that I simply could not comprehend before Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: having kids that is now a reality. and I'm sure you know there are all sorts of theories about why that happens. But it seems to be universally true, or pretty universally true, that. That even the most die hard, like never gonna have kids people, as soon as they have kids, are like, ooh, life's different now. Something has shifted. you know, and whether they accept it and embrace it or reject it, ultimately, up to them. in my case, I have tried to embrace it as much as possible. And It has just been a fantastic experience. And as my kids get older, getting to share the stories that I love with them, the hobbies that I love, like that has been real magic. Really, really magic. Jason: How old are your kids right now? Seth: So I have a fourteen year old, a thirteen year old, a six year old who was adopted, and a five year old. Jason: Okay. Okay. So that's a pretty b but you so you've kind of seen some of that gamut, right? So my I have a twelve year old and a nine year old. So they're pretty Seth: Yeah. Okay. Jason: close. But I feel like as my twelve year old's getting older, say just like you said, like he's fine at the age where like we're watching the Marvel movies together, like he's reading older grade books. And so you're you have that whole age spectrum, right? And so I and Seth: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jason: I've always been the person too, like little kids, I'm good with them. not cool like hanging out with them for long periods of time and as my kids have gotten older I'm like this is like funner like this is a lot more Seth: Yes. Very much. Yes. Jason: we could talk a whole episode about like, okay, well, what books are you recommending? Which books are you guys reading right now? But I want to Seth: For sure. Yeah. Jason: get into some of the meat specifically about especially Battle Mage Farmer, I kind of want to take a step back though, because I don't know if lot of people realize. And the more that I've been getting into kind of this lit RPG world, like Athon Books has been like such a great way way for people like me who kind of have this like obviously read Dungeon Crawler Carl and pe you know, that's a huge inroad for a lot of people. Give us a little bit of maybe a history about maybe your own experience and then what kind of the impetus for this book was. Seth: Sure. So when you talk about litRPG, it's a little bit hard because it's not a it's not a thing. It's a lot of things, right? And and this is true for pretty much any subculture. When Jason: Right. Seth: you have a subculture that starts to break into mainstream the way litrpg is, eventually there will be a codified history of litRPG. But right now we're early enough in it that all we have is a bunch of experiences. And we have different people coming in at different times with different kinds of experiences of the community. I have been in the LitRPG community essentially from the beginning. again, there was in in like 2013 through 2015, there were a bunch of Korean and Chinese. And Japanese novels that were being translated into English and they were being stuck on websites. And what would happen is somebody would would steal a, they would pirate a translation, and then they would start translating it into English as a fan project. And then people would pay them via donation and they would keep translating. And as long as they kept getting paid, they would keep translating, right? Legendary Moonlight Sculptor was one of these stories. It went on this website called Royal Road L because Royal Road Legends is the game that they play, that the main character plays in Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. And so I would go on this website and I would do that. And then people started writing in the in the forums, right? Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: And posting their own stories. And eventually the forums became the main site. And all of a sudden it was just a site for amateurs to to post. But LidRPG didn't really take off. Excuse me. Lid RPG didn't really take off until Magic Dome Books, which was a a Russian publisher, started bringing some of the Russian Lid RPG and translating it into English. And that's when you had people like Al Ron Kong r writing The Land, which is again, it's English first lit RPG, but it was based on These Russian and translated Chinese and Korean and Japanese novels. And LitRPG really just started like that. A bunch of us were reading it and went, there's not enough of it. How do we get it faster? Well, I guess we write it. And so we started writing it ourselves. And in the early days, you know, you had you had people like Al Ron Kong, people like Blaze Corvin, who wrote Delver's LLC, you had people like Michael Chatfield write Ten Realms. And over time the the the library of litRPG started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And we as a community went from being just online to starting to meet up and starting to engage with one another. And a really interesting thing happened. And I think the community would not have developed the way it did without this. We had the online component. But then a bunch of us started meeting in person and going, man, you guys are really cool. This is actually really fun, right? And so we started, we started engaging the community and going, all right, we're moving into these publishing spaces. Most of us at that time were we're all were all indie. not most of us, all of us were indies. Jason: Ha ha Seth: And we were indies who had Cut our teeth in the pretty vicious, competitive, hyper competitive world of Royal Road and these other websites where you are competing with a ton of people for visibility, right? And then we started going to this convention called 20 books to 50k. And it was Teaching some of the skills that indie authors needed in order to succeed. And we started getting together on Facebook groups and we started talking about how to do the business piece of this, right? We started going, wait, there's an interesting thing that's happening where the distribution models have been blown wide open. The traditional publishers don't have a stranglehold on what kind of fiction people are getting. People are making tons of money on this. And then we started just showing up to these conventions. And because we were already an online community that was just moving into like physical community, and because we liked each other and like we had similar interests and we got along, and none of us were particularly precious about like success, we were all just Jason: Mm-hmm. Seth: really interested, because we were fans at heart. We were just interested in seeing this thing get bigger. And We moved in block. And it did this weird thing in in the publishing spaces we were in, where other authors would go, I've been writing for years. I have no real community. I don't really like the other people that I'm writing in the sh the whose genre I'm writing in. I want to hang out with those guys. And then they'd come and read a litRPG book and they'd go, wait, this is actually really interesting. There's some really interesting storytelling Jason: It's really good. Yeah. Seth: mechanics here. And litRPG, I think it was Matt Dinneman who first said it. It might have been Eric Obland. it probably happened in a conversation between the two of them. But the basic idea is that is that litRPG isn't actually a genre, it's a writing convention. It's a way of communicating information to a reader in shorthand. That allows allows the story to move faster by giving exposition in a way that is condensed into a couple of sentences. So in a classic fantasy, you have, you know, if I if I want to get a cool sword skill, I've got to have a couple of chapters of practicing the sword skill, right? Learning the sword skill. In a litRPG, I say, congratulations, you got a cool score sword skill. Easy. Boom. Jason: You learn the skill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seth: Off to the races, now I can show you using it, right? So I get to compress all of that exposition, but that's just a convention because I can do that in any genre lot like I can attach litRPG to any genre that I'm writing and it works. As long as I can as long as I can make the connections properly, again, it's off to the races, and we get to show the fun story as opposed to dumping all of this exposition in. As a result, People seem to just like it becomes an obsession. People start reading LitRPG, and we've noticed this from the very beginning. Like we've observed this from the very beginning. People start reading LitRPG and they stop reading everything else. And writers, it's like a, it's like a an you know, an earworm with writers too, where they'll like, they'll start to hear about it. They'll be like, this is interesting. They'll read one and they'll all of a sudden that's how they're writing, right? It just like takes people's brains over. And and so we had this with this like this dual thing happening where people were were discovering the genre, writers specifically were discovering the genre because they were looking at the lid RPG group, who's always just like, come on in, like, come hang out. Right. The more the merrier. Jason: The more the merrier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth: We're we're not like we will never satisfy our readers. cannot write, no matter how fast I write, I can never write enough to actually satisfy my readers. So I need as many other people in here writing good books as possible because then our readers are gonna stay. Right. Jason: Yeah. And one ones that you'll probably end up loving too and reading yourself. Yeah. Seth: Exactly. No, exactly. Like I I think that's the thing that has given LitRPG its staying power is there have been no There have been no divides in the early years in terms of in terms of like class of writer or like in sci-fi this strange thing happens. You get into sci-fi as a writer and and there are like the really famous one people who write and they don't talk to the people who are underneath them, the mid-listers, and the mid-listers don't really talk to the new people. And like that doesn't happen. Jason: Yeah, and nobody's talking to the indies, you know. Yeah, yeah. Seth: Yeah, right, exactly. Lit RPG has a completely different vibe, a different community, right? You can go to a convention and Matt Dinnerman will be very happy to talk to you, despite the fact that he sells more books and makes more money than the rest of us combined. Right? Like that doesn't happen in a in most other genres. And I would say that Lid RPG has really lucked out because as we were coming up through the like through this online space and and sort of bonding over our nerdy you know nerdy way of writing, we created a fandom. And the fandom is just around litRPG. It's not around a specific title. It's not around a specific genre. It's just around a way of doing something, a way of telling a story. And that that fandom is what has, I think, allowed us To continue growing to this point. And I think what's going to allow us to explode, right? And so where, again, to circle back to your original question here, where Battle Mage Farmer sits in that is I had been writing the Titan series and I wasn't done with it, but I wanted to try something a little bit different because I looked at the community around me and I looked at the people who were reading LitRPG. And I looked at my fans who were like, I read 300 books a year, and the only reason I'm reading some non-lit RPG is because there just isn't enough lit RPG, right? And I looked at the the sort of voracious reader base and I and I thought, you know, I think this is gonna go. I think it's gonna go big. And I think it's gonna break into the general market. So the question then is: for me, how do I make sure that my writing is Is excellent and also fits both the LITRPG core community, what they want, and is avail open and available and interesting to a general market fantasy reader. And Battle Mage Farmer was was sort of my answer. little bit of slice of life, a little bit of a Western feeling to it, but it is really just. A fantas classic fantasy with sort of lid RPG elements sprinkled on top, you know? Jason: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because as I read Morlit RPG, I'm like, these are either yeah, this is a fantasy story or a science fiction story with that kind of style on top. And I I really think that especially people who are like cozy game players, like there's a cozy Seth: yeah. Jason: element here too, like farming like animal farm of it all. Like, so that's like a Seth: Yeah. Jason: genius, like genius. Cause we already know those people love stuff like that, right? So Seth: Thank you. Mm-hmm. Jason: yeah, it's got it's awesome. And The thing that is hard for me though on my journey now is again, our my friends at Athon, and these are beautiful editions that they're producing. And I want to hear all about that journey for you too. Is I'm getting these books from them and I'm reading them and I'm loving them, but then I'm quickly realizing, Seth, this is part of a series that has been going for years. That I I'm Seth: Yes. Jason: I'm reading one, the first book of multiple series. So I'm reading Jake's Magical Market. I'm reading Seth: Yes. love it. Jason: Battlefattleship Backyard. Backyard Starship. I'm reading this and I'm like, this is so fun. I wonder if there's a sec there's a million books of all of them. So like Athon is introducing me to starts of series that I do not have time. I mean, I want to I every time I finish one, I want to go to the next one. But I can't. I don't have time yet. And I but I want Seth: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Jason: to. So it's it's a genius marketing move. Seth: Yeah. So Battle Mage Farmer is one of nine. it is a complete series. It is finished. I will say, Jason: Good to know. Okay, good to know. Seth: Jake's Magical Market is there are three books in the series, so that's a little bit easier to to get you get your time right. Jason: Okay, yeah. They're thicker though. They're Seth: They are. They are. They're they're lovely. I I really J.R. Matthews is is my favorite. Jason: Loved it so much. It was such a fun book. Anyway, yeah, I'll get there. I'm following Athon's hardcover release. So that that helps me temper my, you know. Seth: Yeah, really good. There you go. There you go. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, it's a litter pg, our background is web serialization. And those books are not books. One book might have two thousand chapters in it. Cause you just write and write and write and you write in arc. You don't write in book, right? And so one of the biggest difficulties for the transition from pure indie into the traditional market has been the fact that traditional stories are organized in a very different way than than than we write. LitRPG and progression fantasy are are written with an epic scope, even if what's happening in the story is not epic. Right? It's just I mean It's insane that you can have a cozy story that lasts 750 chapters. But you can, right? Fields of Gold is a great example of this. this story about a young woman who gets transported back into a sort of medieval Asian-inspired world, and it's just it's slice of life for 750 chapters, and you're like at Chapter six hundred going, Why am I still reading this? But I can't stop Jason: Right. And I love it. I want to keep going forever. And I love Seth: Yeah. Right. Jason: that you're feeding into that notion that because you're right, like fandoms, and that's the reason why things like and obviously money, but there's also reasons why things like Star Wars and there's reasons why these things they corporate reasons they want them to keep going. But on the fan side, when you love something, you don't want it to end and you want to keep Seth: That's right. Jason: engaging with those worlds. And so I think the lit RPG thing is genius. Because even while one story might end after nine books, which okay, fine, I'll do it Seth: Right. Jason: eventually, but there's always something else, right? And I feel like there's Seth: That's right. Jason: so much as a reader, there's so much like, okay, I don't know what to read next. Who do I trust with what to read? And I feel like lit RPG and for what I have dabbled in so far, there's it's so easy to jump in. And like almost any Seth: Yes. Jason: story, you're probably gonna love it. Seth: It it's true. we I especially in the early years, we were blessed with just some absolutely fantastic writers. Some truly tremendous writers. And anytime something gets popular, you have people who are jumping in for other reasons than they love the thing, right? But with Litter RPG, I do think that we have been able to maintain a high degree of of fan. Like, yeah, a high degree of authors who are part of the fandom. And and I think that that's a huge blessing because it means that the general quality is fairly high. Obviously. Anybody who is you know, there there has been an unfortunate surge in sort of AI written lit RPG, but that's happening in every genre. it's a little bit harder to to to like parse out in litrpg unless you are just reading sort of the old school, the people who have big catalogs. because Because the sty like stylistically, litRPG tends to be fairly fast paced and sort of short, choppy, lots of information. and that's very easy for somebody to sit down and prompt engineer a a chapter, two chapters, however many a hundred chapters, whatever. one of the one of the things that's interesting to me on that side, and this is I kind of a tangent, so I I won't get too into it, but is Jason: That's good. Seth: that most of the people I've seen who have been doing that quit writing. there's not a lot of longevity in people who are writing using AI. And it's because they don't actually like it. They're becoming editors and they don't actually like like I write because I have a story to tell and I really want to tell it. And if I were to get AI to write it for me, I wouldn't be telling the story anymore. It becomes you become so disconnected that there's no actual like ownership. So anyway, so that is the one good thing is that sort of a silver lining to the cloud. But I because so many of us write really fast. Especially if you're y using someone like Athon, who is putting out sort of the the classics, right, in hardback now, if you're following along with them and finding these writers, you know, going and reading Travis Bagwell's Awaken Online or again, you know, Michael Chatfield's Ten Realms, and you're starting to look through their back catalog, you're like, my goodness, these guys have so many books and it's enough reading material for pretty much anybody forever. and yeah, you can you can find some really fantastic stuff that's been out for a while. Like Battle Mage Farmer has been complete for years. But now that it's coming into hardback, we're doing this whole retail push. we're starting to enter the general market. So it's the second of my books that's been in that you can go to Barnes and Noble and order or buy. And again, I have I have 48 books, I have a bunch of different seven series, something like that. And only two of them are actually available in in retail. X Land Syndrome and now Battle Mage Farmer. Jason: Well tell I want to know about that. So you've been there from the start. And I think that's why you've been saying that you've been really busy lately. Cause I know Athens been doing a ton of like signs you guys are like out there. You're at bookstores, you're doing signings. I was just at Travis Seth: yeah. We're trying. Jason: and I was at Travis and Andrew's spot just recently, just hung out with them. Seth: Yeah. Love it. Jason: and that but that's so fun, right? Like I wanna know like what has that transition been like and being able to Seth: Mm-hmm. Jason: like know that you have a whole new like market opening up to you in this way. Seth: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's really cool. so when when Athon came to us and said, Hey, we're gonna be making this retail push, Aython Vault is the company that's that's pushing it. and they were like, We're gonna do this retail push, we're gonna put these hardbacks together. one of the things I have to say is is that Aethon has never skimped on quality. Anything that they put out, they put out at the highest level of quality that they possibly can. And so, you know, when you look at the the books, they are just beautiful. the the quality is is super high. And they were like, we got these great books, we're gonna be sending them out to retail. Well, we all of us authors went, Okay, cool. we're from the indie world. And in the indie world, we know that everything starts slow, but the more elbow grease that you apply at the beginning. The better it goes in the long run. And so we're out here. We're putting in the work. because because it's not a given, right? It's not we know better than anybody that you can't just put a book out there and expect people to buy it, right? That is not how the system works, that's not how distribution works. And so we're going, all right, cool. We have this, these online audiences that are great, that that. You know, we'll put out books, they'll buy the books. We have a great relationship with our online readership. What we don't have is physical presence in the world, right? Because the only time anybody ever sees us is the occasional convention, right? You come to LitRPG Con, you go to DragonCon, you go to one of the conventions, cool, you might see a litRPG author. We don't have that, that sort of physical presence. And there's this entire market, just like you said, of people. Who are reading general fantasy have now run into Dungeon Crawler or Sci-Fi, run into Dungeon Crawler Carl, run into He Who Fights with Monsters, and they're going, Okay, but what's next? Like, all right, I read these books, they were great. Where do I go? What do I do? I like this thing. How do I get more? There's more. and so a big part of this this push is just us taking the opportunity to say, All right, we're gonna put in the upfront investment. To go and do these events. None of us are getting paid for them. That's the thing. Is like when you go and you see Andrew and you see Travis, they are on their own dime touring to try and connect with fans, to try and bring this thing that we all love. Again, it's a fandom, man. You know, they're trying to bring this thing that we all love to other people. Right? My new favorite saying is litRPG is. It's not a genre, it's a lifestyle. Cause again, once you start, it like becomes an obsession. And we all want to share that obsession with other people. So we are on our own dime touring. I was just in Canada. I was in Virginia. I was in New York. This I think between now and the end of the year, I have like two free weekends. and one of them is right after Thanksgiving. And other than that, it's like Friday, I'm at it somewhere, Saturday, I'm somewhere. And a lot of them aren't even like signing events. I just get a spot to put up a table to get my books and to tell people who walk by about how awesome litRPG is. And really like that's what it takes to sort of step into a new market. And so that's what we're doing, right? We are none of us None of us imagine that this is just going to that people will just like flock to the genre, or really none of us imagine that people will flock to our books, right? And so all of this is about putting in the that work to actually engage with our with our readers and actually engage with new readers. And a big a big thing, you know, that I've been enjoying about this process, because it's not it's not all work. A big part that I've been enjoying is the opportunity to actually meet fans in real life, people who I've been talking to online for years, who will drive hours and hours and hours to come and see me when I show up somewhere. And I get a couple of minutes to like talk to them about how we both love this thing and the stories that we've both gotten to experience. And that's just it, there's something really magical and really encouraging about that. Jason: Yeah. Hard agree. And I've been doing this whole talking about books online for almost six years now. And I've experienced that mainly in kind of like the Star Wars publishing world. And as I've got to meet authors, Seth: Mm-hmm. Jason: every time I've met authors and talked to them, I'm like, that you're just my we're just friends because we love this thing. And it's something about readers and authors. It's like I don't care about the actors and the directors. Like I want to talk to the people who wrote it, to the authors. And I feel like Seth: Yes. Jason: now Me be it's like opened my eye. Like lit RPG is just an extension of that. And so I'm like going to Dragon Steel and going to Comica. I can only see it getting bigger. And same thing. I drove two hours both ways to go hang out with Travis and Andrew the other day just because I want to go see my friend. Like I feel like they're my friends now. And I love that you said it's about community. Right. Yeah. And Seth: Yeah. Right. And they're awesome. my goodness. I love those guys so much. Jason: I mean, every it it's everyone just feels like a friend. And then when I went to my first convention, it was like, these are my people. So it just feels like an extension of like These are my people and book and readers and writers are just we're just built different, I feel. And we're built for that like type of connection that I feel like is so hard to on the daily probably have in most of our everyday lives because again, busy Seth: Yes. Jason: parents, busy dads, we're online. And reading is such like a personal experience, right? But I feel like Seth: That's right. Jason: so many people crave that community and that connection. and the book world is I mean, I feel like it's just been exploding over the past couple of years Seth: It it has. Jason: and physical books and physical bookstores and I just it's an amazing extension and just an awesome way for different types of people to get into reading and that's my passion is like how do I get more guys and dads and busy dudes to like pick up a book, you know, get off your game system. Seth: Yeah, I mean lit RPG is it. Jason: Yeah, totally, totally. So I'm so glad you said that. And having said that, where can people who are listening to this episode, who are dipping their toes into this world, who wanna maybe get it to know you, where can they see you coming up next for the remainder of the year? I know you mentioned a couple of them. Seth: Yeah, so I have entirely too many events to list. Jason: Ha ha ha. Seth: really honestly. But if you go to Sethring.com slash events, I'd have them all listed there. Some of them are ticketed. You will need a ticket. I'm doing a bunch of events with with Travis Deverell, who writes He who Fights with Monsters later in the year, and I'm doing a bunch of solo events. We have a really cool event on on December second, right before Dragon Steel that's gonna be awesome. like really awesome. And you get a ticket now because they are all going to be sold out. Jason: I wanna go so bad. I wanna go so bad. Seth: the the but the website is really the best place. I'm on social media all over the place. but Seth Ring.com is gonna get you where sort of where you need to go for Jason: Awesome. Well, Seth, I had such a great time chatting with you. You already mentioned the website. If you're interested in anything about him, please check out the notes in this episode. I will link it everywhere. any final thoughts? Like, thank you so much for joining. Thank you so much for hanging out. I we went this went so fast. I know. my gosh, we're almost done. So I mean, I want to hear like, what are you working on? Like, what's next for you? Like, what's coming out for fans of yours? Seth: what a blast. This has been really fun. Yeah, I know. I I yeah, I looked at the time, I was like, man, it's already been an hour. That's crazy. Sure. Really, just more writing. I so obviously I'm I'm touring right now for for Battle Mage Farmer. because book one has come out in hardcover, book two should be following shortly. The current series that I'm writing is called Body Refinement in a Beast Tamer's World. and it's a super fun, lighthearted story about a guy who wakes up in a mage's body, can't do magic. but it doesn't matter because he's absurdly handsome and he has a six-pack. and that's that's sort of the story. so that's that's Jason: Sold. Seth: ongoing. but a bunch of my other series are ongoing. I think I have a an Iron Tyrant book, which is sort of my take on Epic Fantasy coming out in November. and Yeah, just continuing to write, Jason: Nice. Seth: continuing to enjoy the community. Jason: Love it. Well, I hope this isn't the last time we get to chat. I would love to have you back someday. Seth: For sure. Jason: and I'll definitely be seeing you at some point out in the world at a convention at something. So Seth: Yeah, if you're gonna be at Dragon Steel, I'll be there. Jason: Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much again, Seth.