In Other Worlds
Every other week, your host Jess will be sitting down with the authors and audiobooks narrators that bring the litrpg, gamelit, and fantasy genre to life.
In Other Worlds
#2: Blood, Magic, and Conquest
Step into a world where power comes at the ultimate price with Alex Knight, author of "Servant of Rage" and the upcoming goblin comedy "Wriggly Little Hands."
Alex brings us a mesmerizing fantasy world inspired by Mongolian horse nomads, featuring a magic system where killing transfers power from victim to victor.
The author shares fascinating insights about character development, explaining the complex relationships between three brothers who rediscover ancient magic. Alex embraces unpredictable character arcs that challenge reader expectations, promising that the planned trilogy will take these beloved characters through darkness before potential redemption.
Fantasy readers looking for their next epic read should visit authoralexknight.com to explore all of Alex's works.
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Jess: Welcome everyone, to In Other Worlds. I am your host, Jess, and today we have Alex Knight on, who is the author of Servant of Rage, his newest book. Then soon, he's going to have another one coming out called Wriggly Little Hands, which will be later in May, I believe 27th.
Alex: Yep 27th.
Jess: Nice. So, Servant of Rage is the newest one that you currently have out. I hate asking people, you know, tell me about your book, because everyone asks you that. If you had to describe it to a member of your family or a friend, how would you describe it?
Alex: So there's kind of two ways I would go about it. It depends on how knowledgeable they are of tropes, because there's the trope description and then there's the fantasy reader pitch, right. So, considering this audience is probably litrpg readers, I think the best way to say it would be dragon ball z-esque fight scenes, a Highlander magic system where if you kill someone you take all of their power, and a Genghis Khan/Mongolian Empire-inspired world. That's for the litrpg progression fantasy folks, that makes sense to them. If I'm talking to someone who's a bit more fantasy reader, I say three brothers rediscover the magic that once allowed their people to conquer the known world and certainly experience no ill consequences by using this power as much as they can endlessly.
Jess: Not at all. So, it was very Mongolian inspired. What drew you towards that as an inspiration?
Alex: Yeah, well, this book's been a long time coming. I wrote the first draft of it back in about 2014. At the time there was a big push in fantasy to gwrite in fantasy worlds that were non-Eurocentric. So, I wanted to get away from the typical, somewhere in Europe medieval fantasy setting. I was absolutely fascinated with horse nomad culture and nomadic peoples that just didn't live in one place, so I researched way too heavily on my own time, just for fun. When it came time to write the book, I was like well, I know all this stuff. Now I guess we put it into practice.
Jess: Yeah, so I've noticed that a lot of books, movies, and TV shows at this point are very easy to predict. At least for me, I'm usually really good at being like oh, that person is going to do this, so that's what's going on here. This book, however, I got about two thirds of the way through the book and I thought I knew what was going on, and I thought I knew what was going to happen. Every time I got that feeling you were like nope, gotcha. I was surprised every single time I thought I knew what was going to happen.
Alex: I love to hear it. That's the intent either through planning or pure luck. Either way, I'll take it.
Jess: I can't wait for book two because by the time I got to the end, I did not see that coming. That was a shock to me and it was about two o'clock in the morning. I got to a certain point and I couldn't stop reading it and I had no clue what was going on and what was going to happen or what was coming. It was a shock.
Alex: As an author. I love to hear it and I apologize, I guess retroactively, for hitting you with that epilogue at 2am at the end of all that.
Jess: It was good though, it was good.
Alex: That's what I want to hear. Well, thank you, I appreciate your kind words. I'm glad you had fun with it. It's a book that's near and dear to my heart, especially because it's had such a long journey to get to publication. So it’s nice to see it out there finally and folks enjoying it.
Jess: Yeah, so several years ago was, I think the first draft that you wrote and I think I had read online that you've written several versions or several drafts of this story. How do you think it's different from the first draft, to where you finally were like let's do this one.
Alex: So the first ever draft of it had similar themes and a similar arc, but I had a world in which there were multiple city states spread throughout the map. And the Mongolian inspired step nomads were just one city state, and I wrote the entire book and they weren't that involved in it, and then I was just like God. They're the most fascinating people in this whole book, though, and they don't even show up on the page, and I thought long and hard about it. I was like we're going to rewrite it all from their perspective, and that was kind of the first step into it growing into what it eventually became, so that was probably rewrite number two. I think it's had about two more since then, which is not typically something I would do. This was the first book I ever wrote back in 2014. And it's had a very up and down, back and forth journey to publication, with different avenues and whatnot. So I think the last two right rewrites, really, or even updates, were purely just the fact of me approaching a book that I wrote at that point in time eight years ago and being like, oh God, oh no, this is embarrassing. I have to fix all of this.
Jess: So you have had several books come out before this. I think it's the Nova Online series, and then you co-authored a couple of books as well
Alex: Mmhmm, with Luke Chmilenko, our Paragon series.
Jess: Yeah, how does it feel with the first book you ever wrote being released after several other books? Is it like, finally.
Alex: That's the initial one, is whoo, all right, it's out there, finally. Yeah, because Servant of Rage once I had rewritten it, became more step nomad focused. I originally went trad pub with it and did get picked up by, at the time, the number two literary agent in North America with the manuscript, and a couple of months after he picked it up he was driven out of the industry by a scandal. That was very deserved on his part. So me and all his other clients got dropped overnight. So that was rough. So that was the first hurdle that Servant of Rage went through. So that's just part of the like, Okay, we've got it. Definitive edition. It exists, it's out there; people are reading it. Now we just get to finally finish this trilogy after all this time.
Jess: So, it's going to be a trilogy.
Alex: I have three books planned. I know vaguely the end point and almost all of book two is already planned and we sold the audio rights to Podium for three books. So we are locked in for three books.
Jess: Nice, nice. So do you know where it's going to end. Do you have it pretty much all planned out, like you know what steps you wanted to take?
Alex: I think so. I had an outline that's a couple years old and then in this most recent rewrite I really upped everybody's power level a lot. So they do feats that were not previously possible at this time. I need to go back through book two. While the general plot is there, I have to really up the epicness of it because the power creep got to them in book one.
Jess: It was pretty epic in book one.
Alex: Yeah, they were doing stuff in book one that wasn't supposed to happen until book two, but I was like I can't sit on it any longer.
Jess: Yeah, so I have a habit when I'm reading a book that has a lot of combat in it, I'm not usually a very big combat fan,
Alex: right, right.
Jess: So usually I will get to a certain point in combat where I'm like, okay, this is enough, I'm just going to kind of skip to the end of the fighting. But I didn't have that issue with this one, it was just, it was good. Even the combat was very engaging.
Alex: Thank you. I'm really glad to hear that. I've written a lot of fight scenes, maybe not all of them published, but I've written a lot of them with books that I started out early in my career. So I put a lot of effort into getting them right and I'm a firm believer that a fight scene, the actual fighting's not that important. I mean, it's got to be cool and dramatic and meaningful, but the outcome has to be about the characters. The fight should progress the character on their journey in some way. It's not just about beating a boss, it's about what happens because you beat the boss or didn't beat the boss. And then also, the first draft of this book was actually grimdark. It was very much like Joe Abercrombie-esque. So, the fighting had a lot more weight and consequence to it and a wound that was picked up in, you know, chapter three might be carried to the end of the book. So there's no real errant blows in there. If an attack lands, it does damage and that damage is accounted for all the way to the end.
Jess: Do you have spreadsheets and stuff that you use?
Alex: No, I didn't do that. But I did write down what sort of wounds they had and the rate at which they would heal. So I guess a spreadsheet, essentially. It was just a little word doc though.
Jess: Nice.
Alex A little lower tech.
Jess: Yeah, I can imagine that it would be a lot to keep track of. Eventually if you just kept it all up in your head, it'd be tough.
Alex: And hopefully we'll give them a little bit of time to heal for book two, so I can be nice to the characters, but also be nice to myself and not have to remember every knick and bruise.
Jess: yeah, I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but I'm very curious to see how the relationship between the brothers progresses through the books. That was, yeah. I wasn't expecting it.
Alex: I've seen a couple reviewers dock me a few points because of the direction it went and that's totally within their right, no hard feelings, but I'm like just bear with me on it, just come on, we're going on a journey here. We got two more books coming. It's gotta have some ups and downs on the way.
Jess: Yeah, it can't be all happy. It's never all happy. Otherwise there's no incentive to keep reading.
Alex: Like I said, the book has grimdark roots. I've pulled it up to be a bit more hopeful, a bit closer to a grittier epic fantasy than that, but those roots are still in there. So there's legit consequences throughout, both mental and physical.
Jess: Yeah, did you have anything in mind when you first came up with this story? Was there anything that was an inspiration for the story, where you were watching something or reading something and you said you know what, this would make a really good story?
Alex: I mean really it's the historical conquest of Gangas Khan and just how all of the circumstances; the correct method of warfare, the correct type of leader that believed in a meritocracy; all of that coming together allowed just this weird, unprecedented tide of Mongol empire to sweep across and create the largest land empire in history, briefly. But for a time I just thought that was super cool. So I wanted a world in which those factors were there. But let's amp it up a little, make it even crazier. It's a perfect moment of time, to quote, I guess, my own writing, if that's not too egotistical, that singular moment where lightning tastes dry grass and ignites a wildfire, like just that, one second of everything lined up, perfect.
Jess: Yeah, I like when they get to Ba Seng, the main city, and because they're such a nomadic people, they describe the walls as being as tall as the sky. In my head I'm really picturing, you know, maybe 20 or 30 foot walls which to us now it would be, oh, that's just a really big wall.
Alex: Yeah, well, I had fun with that. When they get to their first Zhong village or town, maybe Chobei, they get there and they're overwhelmed by how many people they are, and the character that's seen this before is like this is a town man. You haven't even seen a city yet.
Jess: Yeah, yeah, like this is just a little town. The difference between the two is just very stark. It's a huge difference.
Alex: There was a lot of history and study that went into it. I actually asked a question in r/historians (reddit) because I wanted some real world answer on this. It remains unanswered to this day, so perhaps it just wasn't fascinating enough for them to comment on or no one had the sources for it. But I'm going to say it was too good of a question. I wanted to know how much light pollution a city of this time period would put into the sky at night, because obviously you don't have electric lights and whatnot.
Jess: Yeah, it'd be candles and flame street lamps. It wouldn't be massive lights.
Alex: Exactly
Jess: I can't imagine a lot.
Alex: Yeah, I had to edit out the paragraph about it because I just couldn't get an answer on how much it would produce. So if anybody out there listening knows about historical civilizations and I don't know, relative light pollution in the roughly 1100s I think, @ me on social. Someone out there's got the answer.
Jess: Yeah, I like that you tried to keep it that accurate though.
Alex: You know that one was a little bit of an accident. I had described light pollution and then editing, I was like oh crap, wait would they? Would that be visible? It's a cool scene, but I don't know if it would actually be visible on the horizon.
Jess: I think it probably would for a city that size. I mean they talk about it stretching past the horizon. They couldn't see the end of it, that it was so large. I imagine that they probably would see at least some of the light, maybe a faint glow
Alex: Right. That's what I'm hoping. I'm gonna think that in my head, because it's a lot cooler that way, and it's based on the historical population of Beijing at the time, which I believe had a different name, but my history is failing me. It was a very large population center at the time, so there's a lot of people in that city, especially considering the historical time period.
Jess: Yeah, I think that there would at least be a little bit.
Alex: But hey, like I said, if anybody's got the answer out there, let me know. I'll take your theories.
Jess: Yeah, I would be curious to see too. So you started off as a ghostwriter for romance. Did you always want to do your own books. How did you get into ghostwriting and how did ghostwriting for romance transfer over to litrpg or progression fantasy.
Alex: I mean, really it was a steppingstone. I graduated college and I had an office job and I stayed there for about a year, year and a half. Then I was like I gotta pursue my writing more. So I just quit and did freelance business writing. So I just wrote ad copy, product description copy, et cetera, for various companies. That put me in a place to get contact with people who needed writing frequently, which just kind of naturally led to, Hey, I got a friend that wants a novella written for this small publisher, but it's romance, and I was like, whatever I'll take it, it's fiction. And just did that enough that it led to ghostwriting full romance novels, as well as a couple of health books, weirdly. Which I'm not certain were actually based in medical fact. I questioned them on it and they're like no, no, no, it's all good. And I'm like, are you sure? I mean, I'm not a scientist. They're like look, this is it, just write it. I don't know if this ever got published. I almost kind of hope not, because I checked them as best I could. I was like I don't know, man, this sounds kind of fishy. But yeah, lots of weird ghostwriting things. Honestly, it worked out though because it transitioned to being an author because that was the whole goal. I wanted to do my own writing, and I just got really lucky. My wife had an externship in London with the Economist, so we were over in London for four months living there and there was a book club that I went to that was super cool. Shout out to the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club in London. Love you.
Jess: Super relaxed. Nice.
Alex: I don't know if they're still going. I have to keep up. It's been a while. I mean, this was 2017 and it's a bit hard to attend meetings from Texas these days. I went there and after one of the meetings, we were all having drinks at a pub and there was this guy that was there that I didn't know, who was asking a lot of questions once he found out I was a ghostwriter. I was like huh, okay, this guy's really interested, maybe like a potential client or something. And it turned out to be Michael R Miller, who at the time was founding Portal Books along with Brooke and Taryn, and they were looking for a ghostwriter for their first book. At that point they thought they were going to use ghostwriters. So he kind of talked to me, we did a writing tryout and then they decided at the last minute they actually want to do real authors, with real faces on it. So they asked, would you be the face of this book we want you to write. So we kind of worked together to create our first book, which was Warden, the first book in the Nova Online trilogy, which was my first ever litrpg. I kind of just kicked it off and I’ve been writing with them and Self Pub ever since.
Jess: Nice, so I don't know a ton about ghostwriting. You're basically writing under someone else's name and it gets published under someone else's name?
Alex: Exactly yeah.
Jess: What is the benefit of being a ghostwriter?
Alex: At the time. For me, it was purely just I was getting paid to write fiction all day, which was close to what I wanted to do. I thought that might be enough. That was close enough to my dream of being an author that I could live with it but, after about a year, year and a half of that, I was ready to move on. I think I did it for probably two, two and a half years total. But after about a year and a half I was like it's actually worse than not writing, because I'm writing fiction all day, but it's not my fiction, it's other people's ideas. That ended up being more torturous than just not writing at all, so it was really good motivation to be like no, I have to write my own stuff here. I really need this creatively and also just staying sane.
Jess: Yeah, I imagine that it doesn't allow you the opportunity to write in your own voice.
Alex: Exactly, yeah, you have to mimic the client's voice.
Jess: That has to be really tough.
Alex: There's good money in it if it's something that you can do. But if you want to be an author, I think it's good as a stepping stone If you want to be an author for yourself. Essentially. But if you're fine sitting in the shadows and just writing other people's stuff, then hey, there's always a need for them out there.
Jess: So did you know anything about Litprg before you started writing it?
Alex: I didn't. I had never heard of it until Portal brought it up to me. Luckily, I had been an mmo gamer all of my life and was like the exact demographic for litrpg. So I was like, well, I've never heard of this, but it sounds incredible. Please tell me more. And then I deep dived and read a bunch of it.
Jess: It's just the best of both worlds.
Alex: Yeah, I feel like maybe when they were kind of interviewing me to be a ghostwriter, I feel like there might've been a question there about. Like, do you play video games, are you into MMOs? And I was probably like, yeah, it's kind of cool. I wonder why they're asking that.
Jess: So what MMO is your favorite?
Alex: I love Lord of the Rings Online.
Jess: I never played that one.
Alex: It’s been out since 2007, so it’s really old these days. It's great. It's super old, it's super clunky, it doesn't have modern resolutions, it's a little bit laggy. It's literally, like World of Warcraft when it first came out. It's on that scale of laggy and whatnot. But it's a beautiful world and the storytelling is incredible. It’s the most faithful recreation of Tolkien's world, down to every detail. It's super cool. But I've played so many mmos. I mean World of Warcraft, obviously. I've played through New World twice. God, Starcraft's not really an mmo, but there's a lot of Starcraft elements in Nova Online, you'll notice, because I wanted to reference that.
Jess: I was a big Everquest two player when that came out. I think it was 2004, 2005 when EQ2 came out and I spent so much time on it. I joined a raiding guild.
Alex: Oh, let's go. That sounds incredible.
Jess: Each time a new expansion came out I just took a day or two off of work and just wouldn't sleep.
Alex: Yeah, that's it. See, those are the memories, though right. Like that's the good stuff.
Jess: Yeah, I made real life friends with people in my guild. It was a lot of fun. I still talk to some of them to this day.
Alex: Right,at the risk of getting too nostalgic. I want those days back.
Jess: Yeah, I like sleep too much now though.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Jess: And I work too much. At the time I was working at a comic book store, and it was part-time and I really didn't have to do much. So if I was really tired because I hadn't slept for three days, it was okay.
Alex: Sounds lovely, though
Jess: I thought about picking it back up. At one point they completely changed the graphics for the characters, but they let you choose between using the old graphics or the new graphics. And then they made so many changes to the servers over the years, which they do for every game. Every mmo changes things, they'll change a bunch of stuff. And then several years ago, they released two servers that were like the og servers so you could go back and play the original game. They were set up like how the game was when it originally came out.
Alex: Right right.
Jess: And at that point I was like, oh, do I want to? Do I want to go back and play. I was like, no, I can't, I can't do it. I barely have enough time now to play my PlayStation or my Xbox.
Alex: It's painful, though. It's a painful reality. Yeah, adulthood gets in the way, right
Jess: Yeah, yeah, those were some fun, fun times.
Alex: I just remembered to shout out Star Wars Galaxies. Back in the day I spent so many hours into that game. Yep.
Jess: Yeah, I played that one too.
Alex: Can we have those back? Can we just like spin them all up again with updated graphics and call it good, because yep.
Jess: You know, at some point, if I can find a way to replace my full-time work income, maybe I'll start streaming and that'll be my excuse to get back into those.
Alex: There you go. Maybe you'll be like me. Not the biggest fan of social media, but live streaming just works for some reason.
Jess: Yeah, yeah, maybe.
Alex: I was putting a push there on TikTok with a bunch of video content and stuff and I was so miserable filming videos every day and trying to make them genuine and I literally got to a low point. I was just like, you know what we're going to try live streaming. It was like wow, I don't hate this. This is actually fun. People are here and interacting and I can make content out of it. Amazing, it was the turning point, for sure.
Jess: And so you live stream. Is it Monday through Friday?
Alex: Yep.
Jess: Seven to nine.
Alex: Yeah, every weekday, seven to nine am central time. We're on TikTok live and YouTube live. Monday to Thursdays are writing streams. Basically, I do five-minute writing sprints where I write my next book on stream and then I encourage the audience to work on something else during that time. So we have folks in chat working on their own stories, doing visual art, whatnot. Then, in between the sprints we do publishing, writing, author life q&a. Just helping new writers or talking industry shop talk. And then Fridays we take off and have a little fun and we just make fantasy maps on incarnate.com. So I just go talk with chat and we create a shared world together and make a fantasy map for it.
Jess: That's fun. I was actually going to ask about the fantasy map streams that you do, because I wondered if they're of your world or if you're just creating a new fantasy world.
Alex: You know, I've only done two of them so far. It was really just a wild idea because I I love fantasy maps. I've always wasted way too much time making them and chat just asked me about maps or something, I don't know. I got talking about it and they were really receptive to just talking about fantasy maps and I'm like y'all like we can make one if you want. So we did it two weeks ago and it was such a blast and I said okay we're doing this every friday. This is the thing.
Jess: That sounds like a lot of fun,
Alex: It is. It's kind of wild. People have been saying I have Bob Ross vibes, which feels far too flattering.
Jess: That’s a good vibe to have though.
Alex: Look I'll take it. I don't believe it but I'll take it. That's what we're going for. It's been a fun adventure for sure. It's a lot, being on as an introvert. It's a lot to be on for two hours every weekday morning before the sun's up. But hey, it's fun and it's a lot better than grinding on social media doing I don't know trendy content or whatever. For the rest of time.
Jess: Yes, as a fellow introvert, typically, after I do an interview, I'm just like okay, I need to curl up in my blanket in my office and just play a video game for an hour or so.
Alex: That's where I'm headed after this. Pokemon Yellow is calling my name.
Jess: Yeah, I have days where I just don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to do anything. So having to try to come up with social media content, because you know they say you're supposed to post something every day, I'm just like this is literally the worst.
Alex: A piece of advice that I've got about that that I think helps a lot is don't create content, just document what you're doing. Maybe you can do behind the scenes stuff of you making a podcast. Kind of document your journey, because you're at a rare moment here kicking off a new podcast. It's exciting.
Jess: I know, I know and I've thought about it, because I was a kind of a co-host on chatn stats.
Alex: Love those guys.
Jess: It was so much fun. It was great. But then I kind of wanted to branch out and do it on my own. I love the boys. We're still going to collaborate and do stuff together. I'm still kind of a guest host on theirs. So, if one of them can't make it, there are times where I'll jump in and help co-host and I'm gonna have them do some stuff with me on this one
Alex: Nice
Jess: But I just kind of wanted to go in a little bit of a different direction and theirs is very much just litrpg focused. I also want to do things like cozy fantasy and kind of branch out a little bit. So it's been fun.
Alex: I see that SL Rowland box back there, speaking of cozy fantasy.
Jess: Yeah, I've got my SL Rowland stuff, my Dungeon Crawler Carl stuff. I've got my Golen Master boxes and then some of my video game stuff. This is not actually on screen. This right here is a print that I had Matt Dinniman sign. Before he was an author, he did art for places like Ikea and Target. I happened to find one on the Target's website. I bought it and I took it to him and he signed this for me.
Alex: What was his reaction to that?
Jess: He thought it was funny. He was like I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
Alex: Right. I mean blast from the past there. Good research digging that up.
Jess: You know what, when you're doing podcasts you’ve got to do research
Alex: So I want to ask you a little bit too, because this is your second episode, I believe. So, first of all, hey, congrats, that's awesome.
Jess: Thank you. Thank you for being on my second episode. Thank you for being one of my first.
Alex: Well, thank you, I'm happy to be here. I guess you kind of got into it there, but I had come into this, what inspired In Other Worlds? Like, what's driving the creation of this hot off the presses podcast.
Jess: Litrpg is at this turning point right now. It is a very niche genre. Books that not a lot of people know about. But the authors and the readers are all just such diehard fans of the genre. Even the authors, will read other litrpg books. And everyone is so nice and it's such a tight-knit community. With authors really starting to get picked up and it going more mainstream, I was like this is the perfect time to get involved.
Alex: Yeah sure, as it starts to grow in popularity.
Jess: I've been very lucky in that I've been able to meet so many of the authors in the genre. It was just kind of by crazy happenstance that I met Matt first. It was DragonCon a couple years ago. I was introduced to his writing by a friend of mine that I went to grade school with. He was coming down to DragonCon, and I asked why he was coming to DragonCon from Missouri? He said he was coming to see Matt Dinniman and I said I don't know who that is, and this was two or three years ago, I think. He goes oh my God, you have to listen to Dungeon Crawler Carl. I'm said okay, well, I'm not an audiobook person, so I'll pick up the physical books and I'll read those. He goes no, don't read them, you have to listen to them. And I said I don't like audiobooks. And he said, no, just trust me, you have to listen to Jeff Hays. I was said all right, fine, fine, fine, I'll pick up the first one. I'll listen to the first one. So I did and was immediately hooked, and this was three months before DragonCon. At the time book seven wasn't out yet. I don't think book six was out yet either.So this was the first five books in the three months before dragon con. I listened to all five books, picked up The Grinding, which is also by him, which is a horror book.
Alex: Right right.
Jess: These other books are intense.
Alex: Matt's a multi-talented man.
Jess: They're very graphic. He signed one and it just said sorry on it.
Alex: I love that.
Jess: It's graphic. So I joined his Discord because I wanted more information about what panels he was going to be on at DragonCon. At that point I also was a volunteer for DragonCon. His assistant Emily and I were talking about DragonCon on the Discord server and I mentioned that I was a volunteer for DragonCon. She was said, you know, if you're a volunteer, he has an event on Sunday that we could probably use some help with. And I said, okay, well, let me make sure that I don't have anything scheduled for Sunday for a volunteer shift. If not, then yeah, I'd be more than happy to help. And so I ended up working at the litrpg under the sea event at the aquarium. I was working Matt's table where he was selling all of his books, and so I was lucky enough to meet him then. And we all went out to dinner one night before the convention as a thank you. Later, I was hanging out at the Westin, cause that's where I always stay for Dragon Con. I stay at the Westin, my friend and I, and so I was sitting at the bar waiting for her and this is such a long story. I was sitting at the bar waiting for her and then someone came over and sat down next to me and introduced themselves. He was talking about this book that he was writing. And I was like, oh, that's really cool. It's, gonna be your first book, congratulations. That's awesome, I'm really impressed, I'm a huge reader. And he asked if I was an author too? And I emphatically said no. OThen he told me the Westin bar is where all the authors hang out. I was back there later that night again waiting for my friend, and he was there, and he just started introducing me to everyone. And everyone was so nice. Brian Norton was one of the first guys that I met, Matt, some other authors, and then it all just kind of snowballed from there. And then I met Richie and Joel and I joined their Discord server and I was very active on it. So Richie said hey, do you want to maybe be a co host with us? And I said yeah, sure, that'd be great. I can come on and co host when one of you guys can can't be there. From there I just continue to meet more people and more people and, yeah, I just felt like this was the perfect time to roll out my own podcast out I love it.
Alex: I love it. Hey, I agree with you. I think there's some super interesting things happening with Dungeon Crawler Carl going mainstream and being very successful, very well received. And then we have Progression Fantasy inching ever closer to just fantasy with a hard magic system, which I think is going to lead to a wider adoption, and seeing it more in bookshelves. Causing more traditional audiences getting exposed to it, just like DCC is going out there. And then we have a whole spinoff like light novels turning into the cozy fantasy thing, like speaking of SL Rowland. You know, that whole genre is taking off. So, I feel like it's a really good time. There's a lot, a lot of irons in the fire that look like litrpg is about to really roll out to the mainstream. Fingers crossed.
Jess: Like Travis Baldry is cozy fantasy and very popular, right. But that whole long story was kind of for me to say, part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast was because there are so many smaller authors that have one or two books out they independently publish and I just think the books are so good that I want to get them out there. I want to introduce them to people, and I want people to hear more about these smaller authors that aren't trad published and aren't huge like Matt Dinniman and Shirtaloon and Pirateaba. There's just so many.
Alex: Yeah there's a lot of good stuff.
Jess: So if I can introduce people to all these great, smaller independent authors, I will use a podcast to do that.
Alex: Well, I love it and I know I speak on behalf of all of us smaller authors when we say we appreciate that. It's an uphill battle and we're doing our best.
Jess: I'm happy to help.
Alex: You mentioned not liking audiobooks, I’m kind of there with you. Personally Don't at me, but just not my medium. Love podcasts, but audiobooks I don't know, doesn't work. Proofing my own audiobooks, which thankfully I haven't had to do, but sitting and listening to my own writing being read aloud is like the most excruciating experiences for me. Not because the narrators have done a bad job. You know, we have Travis Baldry on the Paragon series. I have Tim Gerard Reynolds on Servant of Rage. I still don't know how we pulled that, but mad shout to Portal books for getting the narrator behind Red Rising to do Servant of Rage. Which is just insane to me.
Jess: I haven’t listened to anything he's done
Alex: He's one of those prolific audio narrators. More in the fantasy, sci-fi realm than anything that'd be progression fantasy. And then, you mentioned Wriggly Little Hands earlier. That'll be coming out May 27th, but we got Jeff Hays on that one.
Jess: Fantastic.
Alex: Yeah, he's not the primary, but SoundBooth was really excited about Wriggly Little Hands. I guess I can give the pitch real, quick for everybody that's not familiar.
Jess: I was gonna ask you to anyway.
Alex: It's a comedy fantasy. I think it's kind of like cozy fantasy, but it's all about goblins, right. So it's a bit more of a chaotic cozy fantasy and the basic pitch is a bumbling family of goblins go on a quest to save the Dark Lord and accidentally do good at every turn. It's like a road trip comedy, goofy fantasy and SoundBooth Theater has picked up the audio for it. They were so excited about it that they brought in. Dorrie Sacks is our primary narrator, she does the main character and the prose. But then they have Jeff Hays, Justin Thomas James, Christopher Ragland, Andrea Parsneau and two others that I'm blanking on under the pressure, to do side characters. Long story, I don't care for audiobooks, but I just got the proof of that one and I am blown away by the job they've done. It's the only audiobook of mine that I've ever enjoyed listening to and holy cow.
Jess: That's a solid cast
Alex: Shout out to them they, my god, they did a great job with it.
Jess: I originally was never an audiobook fan. So many audiobook narrators that do trad published normal books, you can always tell it's just very monotone. I, for whatever reason, can't get behind the voices. I've never really been a big fan. And then Jeff Hays was my first narrator in litrpg. It just snowballed from there and now I will listen to a good number of audiobooks, but I'm still really picky about the narrators that I'll listen to. I won't listen to everyone.
Alex: Yeah, it's important. It's important who the narrator is.
Jess: Yeah, it's a good few. The list keeps growing.
Alex: Sure, I think we're very lucky in this. I don't even know what to call it at this point, but the wider family of litRPG and books and genres that have expanded from that. I think we're very lucky to have really quality narrators. I don't know how that came about, but it's definitely from my experience with other genres. The audiobooks are like you're saying, it's more of just one person reading the book and I don't know. They're just inventive and creative in this realm and the audiobooks are really benefiting from it.
Jess: It's like a full production. It is. I would say it's more a full production. I would say it's more akin to audiobook acting
Alex: Yes, oh absolutely. I mean, coming back to Wriggly Little Hands with SoundBooth Theater, I didn't expect this. They put sound effects on various characters through the entire time. So, whenever the Dark Lord speaks, it's like a bubbly lava, like magmatic sound, it just sounds like he's talking with his mouth as a furnace. It's incredible how they did that and they committed to it for the entire book and I'm like holy cow y'all. It's great.
Jess: Yeah.
Alex: It's just so above what I would expect from an audiobook.
Jess: Well, now I'm going to want to listen to the audio book when it comes out.
Alex: I have a couple of samples. SoundBooth has okayed me to give out exclusive samples as long as I run it by them. So hey, maybe we can hook you up with a 60 to 90 second exclusive clip if you'd like it.
Jess: I mean, I'm definitely going to be picking it up. If it's got SoundBooth on it, there's a good chance that I'll end up getting it.
Alex: I really love working with them. They're great.
Jess: They're really good. So back to Servant of Rage. What was your favorite scene in that book to write?
Alex: I don't want to call it out too specifically, but I will say it avoiding spoilers.
Jess: Okay.
Alex: Specifically the scene that happens in Chobei when we meet the blood rage for the first time properly and see the results of that taking over Subei. That particular scene is very brutal. It was very hard to write but I think it came together really well and I think it's kind of a crap moment for the reader of like, things are worse than we thought they were by a lot.
Jess: Yeah. And the reaction of the brothers after that and how they felt was surprising.
Alex: It took a lot of work to get that right. I think I went through that multiple times, to get their reactions correct .
Jess: Yeah, it was also kind of endearing
Alex: I'm glad to hear that.
Jess: Kashi is my favorite one.
Alex: He's so heartwarming and so wholesome. He always has the sickest burns.
Jess: He's very wholesome. He's very hopeful, and he just wants everyone to be great. He just wants everything to be good
Alex: He has big little brother energy, I think.
Jess: Yeah.
Alex: It's been fun, particularly through the live stream, talking to readers as they read the book. They give me their updates each day in chat. That's been a crazy experience and I've got a little ranking going on of favorite characters from people who've read. So I'll start with who's your favorite character from the book, if you had to pick one.
Jess: Definitely Kashi.
Alex: Okay.
Jess: Probably followed by Mahtma. Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, I can see that. I think she's my favorite of them all. From the sample I've taken, Kashi's definitely up there for folks. A lot of Mahtma love. A very small contingent of very passionate Bataar fans. Strangely I've not had really anybody say Subei, the main character, is their favorite one. Which I think makes sense because look, he's got plenty going on. I think he allows the other characters to contrast and kind of show off in a way. But I was surprised by that. We spend the most time in his head and everybody's like nah, it's Mahtma, it's Kashi, it's Pator.
Jess: I feel like for a lot of books, tv shows, and movies it's usually the side characters that end up getting a lot of the love, because their roles in the story are so small that they have to be a lot more impactful.
Alex: It is, right.
Jess: And so the moments that they are in the story end up being a lot more impactful right, a lot more strong.
Alex: And they get to just have more fun when they're there, like the main character's got to wrestle with their internal conflict and all the character arc and whatnot, and Kashi's just like I'm here to have a good time and hope everybody makes it out alive.
Jess: Yeah, he's a good one. So, when people are on the stream and they're talking about how far they are in the book, has anyone had any very surprising to you takes or favorite parts?
Alex: I have. I'm not going to name any characters here because it'd be too spoilery, but I've had a couple people that have gone really hard behind a character that I wouldn't say was unexpected, but knowing what's coming for that character and you'll probably know who I'm talking about, I've had people get really, really in and they're all aboard the hype train for spoiler redacted and I go oh yeah, they're great, I'm glad you're having fun with them. In my head I'm like that's gonna hurt. That's gonna hurt later.
Jess: It did hurt, it did. I got to that part and I was like oh man, why?
Alex: And what part are we talking about readers? You'll never know until you read the book.
Jess: You'll have to read it and find out.
Alex: And then, hopefully, every chapter you'll be wondering if this is the time that that comes, and then you're like wait, was that it? That had to be it, right.
Jess: There's a handful of times where that could be it. It could be.
Alex: It's fun, I love seeing people's reactions. Honestly, it's the best part of writing. It is. Just getting to see people's reactions and their predictions of where it's going to go as they read is just so much fun.
Jess: It's really hard to predict.
Alex: I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that because I'm not a subtle person and I'm not good at complexity and stuff, so, somehow we got there.
Jess: Yeah, it threw me a lot. I had no clue what was going on and I was wrong every time. Has there been anyone who just absolutely hated a character that you thought everyone was going to like?
Alex: I don't know about hated. I know that I have one reviewer who loved the book but really didn't like that not all of the characters have positive change arcs and so they were really struggling. They liked the book, but they were struggling with the fact that the character they were rooting for the most didn't change for the better over the course of the book and I'm like well, come on, you know we got two more books coming, so, like, bear with me here. I get that because it's not the best feeling, but the story's not done yet. We got a little bit more to go.
Jess: Yeah, and if it's the character that I'm thinking of, I don't think that that character is unredeemable.
Alex: I'm glad to hear that.
Jess: It's possible that they may end up being one of the main antagonists. I mean, the way that the book is left kind of makes you feel like they're going to be.
Alex: At this point one of my dear friends who read the book early was so mad at me for that character arc and was like this character is beyond redemption. They will never. I would never cheer for them again and I was like challenge accepted, that's what's going to happen. Now it's my personal goal to bring you around by the end of book three. I think a good way to explain it is the characters all have different battles to go through. It's not just there's three brothers. There's three different ways of approaching this and I think they're all going to have different battles, going forward and not all of them are exactly straightforward. Some of them are going to go through the darkest things you could go through character development wise, in order to, we hope, rise above towards the end. We'll see. No promises. I can say I'll be working on book two this year, though, so I'm expecting, I think this is speculative pretty far out, but I think mid 2026, we should probably have book two out there, so shouldn't be a long wait.
Jess: Are you going to be at any conventions this year?
Alex: Yeah, debatable. On DragonCon, I really am behind the curve on it. I've never been to DragonCon. I need to get out there. But I will be a panelist at LitrpgCon in July up in Denver, so definitely there for that one. That's the only one I'll be at as an author. I will be at San Diego Comic-Con this year, but just as an attendee. So I guess if you're there you could find me there. But LitrpgCon is really the big one that I'll be at. I don't know if the podcast will be out in time, but if you're in the greater Houston area, on May 9th we're doing a Beyond the Covers book fair for adults. We're basically trying to recreate the Scholastic Book Fair vibes, but just with local artists and authors. So check that out Beyond the Covers book fair, May 9th in downtown Houston. If you're in the area, I will be there selling books in person. So that, and LitrpgCon in July.
Jess: Nice. Yeah, I remember the book fairs from school. Those were the best.
Alex: Right?
Jess: There were some that were in the school library, but then there were always some that were in the big van.
Alex: Right, the rolling bookmobile
Jess: Yeah! The bookmobile. Yes. Those were my favorite days.
Alex: Right, those are good days. I heard about this event in Houston and I was like, yeah, let's make this a thing.
Jess: I was on Facebook earlier today and saw a post in a book group that I'm in and two ladies have started a business in another city here and it's a mobile bookstore.
Alex: Nice.
Jess: It's in a big van and I want it to come to this city. I want to go to that.
Alex: That's like a food truck, but for books. Yeah, I love it.
Jess: That's the best.
Alex: That could be the book caravan man. I want that to roll up. Just go to all the events and festivals and stuff that sounds good to me.
Jess: I don't know if you still play MMOs because adult life, but do you also play regular non-MMO video games?
Alex: Yeah, I don't play as much as I used to these days, just work. But no, I love some Rocket League. I was very good at Rocket League with a friend. I think we were top 0.1% in the world at one point, which sounds incredible, but is still like a couple thousand player ranking from even being semi-pro. We were good for a while. But the meta is that game at the competitive level is dominated by 16 year olds. So at the time I was 28 and it was like, oh, you're old and washed up man, biologically your reflexes just aren't there anymore.
Jess: That hurts.
Alex: Exactly. That was four years ago and I'm just like, god what am I now, like just one foot in the grave?
Jess: That would make you what, like 30 now?
Alex: yeah, 32 now.
Jess: You're still young.
Alex: I try not to think about it.
Jess: I’ve got 10 years on you.
Alex: I couldn't tell at all. I was gonna peg you at like 31, so whatever you're doing, keep it up.
Jess: 41 this year. This is 2025 so yeah, 41 this year
Alex: It gets hard to keep track after a time right, and then you're kind of just like I don't want to keep track actually.
Jess: I don't even want to count anymore.
Alex: Just pick a date and stick with it. Like that's whatever, I'm still 30, I'll go with that.
Jess: I'll be 30 forever2
Alex: Yeah, right.
Jess: That's what I'll tell everyone.
Alex: But no, I guess Rocket League, we play some of that. I just got all of the Pokémon games on my phone through archival means and definitely nothing else. I am having the greatest time of my life being able to play through my classic history, with Pokémon, I've started on yellow and I'm going through the games that I played as a kid, one by one, and to have it on my phone and just be able to be like, I got five minutes, boom, pull it up and do a couple things. That has consumed my entire weekend and I'm in love with it.
Jess: Yeah. I like that. They have an emulator on the switch so I can play, what was that game? It's got Ness in it and there's an alien. Earthbound. I can play Earthbound. That was such a fun game. I used to love playing that on the Super Nintendo.
Alex: That's super cool.
Jess: I recently got a little handheld, it looks like a tiny little game boy and it's called a miyoo mini.
Alex: I heard about this, yeah.
Jess: I love that thing.
Alex: I love that, that’s so cool, so do you just load roms onto it. Is that how it works?
Jess: Yeah.
Alex: Nice.
Jess: Yeah, it's fantastic,
Alex: Easiest thing in the world.
Jess: Yeah, and it's clear, like those clear Game Boy colors.
Alex: Mm-hmm, nice. Why did we stop doing that? It's still cool,
Jess: I don't know. No they were great.
Alex: My phone's always in a case anyway, so give me the option to take the case off and like, look at the circuitry and stuff.
Jess: Yeah, that would be really cool. I would buy a clear phone.
Alex: Clear phone, there we go. You heard it here first, folks, that's our company name.
Jess: I'm going to trademark that.
Alex: Yeah, by the time this episode's out y'all, the trademark's already been filed for. So don't even try to swoop in.
Jess: Don't even worry about it. Done.
Alex: No, that's super cool, though. I was thinking about getting one of those for playing all these classic Pokémon games, because it looks awesome.
Jess: They're really neat and you can put more than just gameboy games on it. It's original PlayStation and Nintendo and Super Nintendo and the Game Boy, and GameCube. It's all of the, I guess, what would now be vintage consoles.
Alex: I mean, that was the dream back then, though right? The number of days that I spent being like God, I wish my PlayStation could come with me.
Jess: Yeah.
Alex: We're there, folks.
Jess: The future is now.
Alex: We're there, folks. The future is now.
Jess: I mean, now we've got like the I don't know what those handhelds are called, but you can put the controller on it and play your PlayStation games or your Xbox games.
Alex: Right, it streams it to like a handheld controller type.
Jess: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, I looked into it a while ago for potentially a ps5 solution or something. That's pretty sick
Jess: Yeah, they're pretty cool. I just like my consoles.
Alex: I feel you. Like I said, I'm currently on this Game Boy color nostalgia trip, so we'll work our way up through the generations.
Jess: I go into a lot of estate sales and garage sales so I'm always keeping an eye out for retro consoles and stuff. I've got my uh, I have my Atari, I have my PS2, my PS3, my 360 and then my two new gen PlayStation and Xbox.
Alex: You got a good lineup there.
Jess: Yeah, not all of them are hooked up because I don't have that many HDMI ports on my TV. But you know, I've got them all in my case and I never have time to game.
Alex: That is the great tragedy.
Jess: I have them and I never get to play them. I did recently beat Dragon Age Veilguard, though.
Alex: Nice.
Jess: It was so good. I don't know if you're a Dragon Age fan.
Alex: I've never played Dragon Age, but Balder's Gate three was my first experience into that sort of game and I'm like, oh boy, I've been missing out.
Jess: All of the Dragon Age series was fantastic. This one just cut straight to my heart.
Alex: I love it, I love those. That storytelling, right, it's like another way to consume a novel, basically, except you get the influence of choices.
Jess: I will admit, I cried during Dragon Age veilguard and then I got very angry. I was like I don't know if I could ever play another Dragon Age game again.
Alex: Oh boy wow for me, that's all right. Shout out to the creators, the devs.
Jess: You don't do that to my favorite character.
Alex: They're cackling maniacally somewhere in the distance.
Jess: They probably are. They're like, that's what we wanted.
Alex: Now you're emotionally invested. I get a lot of folks asking me for writing advice on stream because it tends to attract a lot of new writers, and one of the things I always say is it's okay if your character's loved or hated. Just don't make them boring. You need people to feel a certain kind of way about your characters in order to want to keep reading.
Jess: Yeah. So you've got Wrigley Little Hands coming out and then you are going to be working on book two in the Servant of Rage series. Do you have anything else that you are planning on starting or currently working on?
Alex: Yeah, I'm pretty booked up really. I'm actively doing the fifth and final book in the Paragon series right now. So that's my current write, and book four is already done. It's just an audio recording, so that series should be wrapped up pretty soon here. Then it will be either a Wrigley Little Hands sequel or Servant of Rage. Both of those are getting written. It's just a matter of what order it's going to be one first and the other one. Beyond that, I'll finish out the Servant of Rage trilogy, or Blood Rage trilogy we call it, and then I got a couple books kicking around in the background that don't have end dates or publication. Anything that I'm just writing for my own amusement. So we'll see. We'll see how those shape out going down the road here. But the immediate next steps are finish Paragon 5, and then Wriggly Little Hands 2 or the sequel to Servant of Rage.
Jess: The cover for Wriggly Little Hands is great. It's fantastic.
Alex: Thank you. I'm so happy with the cover artist. Shout out to Ivan Shavrin. Dude rocked it.
Jess: It's a fun looking cover
Alex: It's a very, very goofy book and he captured the energy perfectly. I like to describe it as a D&D campaign, if everybody made intelligence their dump stat. Like there might be one thought shared between all seven of the main characters in there.
Jess: I'm currently in a D&D campaign where I'm playing a fighter, and I've never played a fighter before. I typically end up playing some kind of a caster, but we didn't have a fighter, so I was like, all right, well, I'll do it. And so, I did make intelligence my dump stat, and I think it is incredibly low. Single digits.
Alex: Boy.
Jess: It's so hard to play a character that is just dumb. It's so hard because I want to jump in and I want to help solve puzzles and I want to be like guys, maybe we should do this, or look at that over there and I just can't. I can't do it, I have to just play dumb.
Alex: I would self-describe myself as a specialist in playing dumb characters just for the fun of it. My favorite trick for doing that is when everybody's working on solving the puzzle or whatnot, I sit there and think about what's the stupidest thing my character could notice right now that doesn't solve the puzzle, but suggest it as if it does it. It derails people, but in a good way almost, of just they to be like no, no, that's really kind of you, but no, you're not helping. Just chill for a minute. I don't know, maybe that's why I wrote Wrigley Little Hands, because I just have way too much fun. One of my past characters was a barbarian who, again, intelligence is a dump stat, and his name was Strongrock Logbear, but he continuously got it confused. So, depending on the day, I almost like rolled a die on my own end. It was just like, today he thinks he's Logrock Strongbear or Bearrock Logstrong. All four names were interchangeable and he just continuously had a different name every day, based on kind of which one he remembered first.
Jess: That's fucking hilarious.
Alex: It's very fun. I love doing this.
Jess: That is so funny.
Alex: I think his greatest feat, too, was one the DM erroneously gave us in describing a scene. There was an old alchemist shop that had expired potions on a shelf and Strongrock just swiped the whole shelf into a backpack, just pushed all the potions into a backpack. I think a couple sessions later I forced a Dragon to swallow it and made the dm go through and calculate the outcomes of 13 expired potions all triggering at once inside the dragon. One of those was definitely a love potion as well. So we had a good time. The DM was like I am so angry at you, five minute break, I need to calculate all of these effects. I will be back you, you son of a bitch.
Jess: Sometimes those are the best stories though. Like the best stuff can happen when you completely derail your DM.
Alex: Yeah.
Jess: It's so much fun.
Alex: I fully planned that Strongrock was going to drink the potions at some point and then I saw that dragon and they were all like clanking around in a backpack and I'm like, no, no, we're going to make the dragon eat these.
Jess: That is hilarious.
Alex: I'm sure the DM bent the rules a little bit to let it happen, but boy, it was good. It was worth it in the end.
Jess: Yeah, that is hilarious. So where can people find your books? And I'm going to have a link in the video description or in the episode description and in the blog post. I'm going to have a link to where people can pick up your books. But if they don't want to check that, where can people find your books?
Alex: Yeah, so for the text link, I think I sent you the Amazon one, but the easy one to say aloud is if you want to find all my books, just go to authoralexknight.com and that's K-N-I-G-H-T. Authoralexknight.com, It's got all the books there, it's got links for all their formats and there's some extra goodies on the website too. I got behind the scenes art, playlists for each book, stuff like that. So if you dig deep enough, there's some Easter eggs and more than a few bad jokes hidden throughout the website.
Jess: I love a good bad joke.
Alex: Always, that's my goal. Feel good books with bad jokes.
Jess: Yeah, I'm going to have to go look up the playlist for Servant of Rage.
Alex: Oh, you'll have to, I'm proud of that one.
Jess: And is there anything that you just kind of want your readers to know?
Alex: I mean, hey, just thank you for reading. Seriously, I appreciate it. Couldn't do this job without y'all. And thank you for buying books. Thanks for reading them. If you enjoy them, please just leave a little review on Amazon. Doesn't have to be long, a couple sentences. Those reviews are huge for smaller authors like me, beyond that, just like I said, thanks for being a reader and keep an eye out for Wriggly little hands. Coming May 27th. If you're into dnd campaigns run by idiots, that's the book for you.
Jess: Who isn't? And pick up Servant of Rage.
Alex: Yes, and Servant of Rage is already out.
Jess: Servant of Rage is fantastic.
Alex: If you're into that grittier epic fantasy, you like Dragon Ball Z-esque fight scenes and Horse Nomad, hey, get after it.
Jess: Well, thank you, Alex for coming on to the show. Thank you everyone for listening in and, until next episode, keep leveling up.