Rickshaw Riot w/ Ben Wolf & Luke Messa

Welcome And Guest Introductions

Welcome everyone to Another Worlds. I am sitting down today with Ben Wolf and Luke Mesa, the authors of Rickshaw Riot, which is going to be out on July 14th. There it is, right there. Uh how are you guys doing?

Great. How are you?

I am fantastic. Luke, are you doing all right?

I'm splendid. Thank you for asking.

We don't get to talk to you as much as we all get to talk to Ben.

It's true. It's for the best. He's a better public face for the brand. No, I'm just more willing.

Rickshaw Riot Premise And Stakes

So give us kind of a quick rundown on Rickshaw Riot.

Rickshaw Riot is the story of a guy who creates a video game world. His goal is to make millions upon millions or even billions of dollars. Doing it, it combines all the most popular video games in history, and as soon as it launches, everything goes horribly wrong. He gets stuck inside with 1.3 billion other gamers, and he can't get out. No one can. The irony of this entire situation is that he hates video games. He was only trying to make money off of gamers, and now he's stuck with them, the people who he despises the most in the video game.

That is very true. He is very unhappy about it.

How The Co-Write Partnership Started

Well, you guys co-wrote this book. How did the two of you decide to team up?

Well, that was that was a fun experience for both of us, I think. Do you want to have something you want to say about it?

Again, sure. Yeah. It I mean it originally started because I remember we were we were driving back from a con, uh, and you had pitched this idea, like I've got this idea of a lit RPG tumbling around in my mind. And as I know you, it's it's you've got this perfect blend of I have a story deep inside that needs to be told, and it's also perfect because then I can write to market too. So those hybridize well. And he pitched the idea to me, and I'm like, that sounds fun. Like that sounds like something I'd be interested in reading, or it could it could be very unique. And uh I kind of threw the idea, I was like, I wouldn't mind trying my hand at a lit RPG. Maybe we could write in the same world, and I don't think it was that same ride, it had more solidified afterward. It was another time that you'd kidnap me away from somewhere else.

Yeah, I'd do that to I have to extract him from his his very rural experience to get him out to interact with other humans.

That's awful, but it's what I need, thank you. And no, but he but then he just looks at me and he says, How would you feel about co-writing this? And our histories, we've done a lot of work together at this point, too, between you're the editor for my series, and then we did a few other projects together, and we began our negotiations from there.

Yeah, and and began the project in earnest from there, too. We've we've been friends for going on seven years now. Was it 2019? 2019. So uh this is this is sort of the culmination of that friendship, is this goofy experience that we're trying to share with the rest of the world, and uh we're we're thrilled

Building Eric Shaw And His Redemption Arc

about it.

Which one of you is more like Rick?

Eric is such a a piece of work. Fun story about that. When when Luke initially started, he does the first draft, and then I I come after him and then rewrite change. I sort of yes and like you would do in an improv performance, and I just build on the great foundation that he gave me. We wrote the outline together, refined it, and then and then when he got started, he started casting Eric as this really obnoxious, enormous jerk. And I was like, I don't know how I feel about this, but but because I had sworn that I'm gonna yes and this, I just amped it up even more. So Eric is Eric is like the manifestation of the most awful parts of Luke and me combined, yeah, but also like some of the very good parts of Luke and me. We're both avid gamers, and Eric, if you read the story, you you'll understand that he does have some experience with video games, and that's part of the reason why he doesn't really like them anymore. More on that in future books. But yeah, I would say that we've taken parts of both of ourselves and dumped them into Eric. Yeah, he's an amalgamation of gosh, the worst of that humanity can offer with while also hope hopefully having some redeeming qualities too. Agreed.

He actually does. I was I was gonna say, as you read book one, once you get closer towards the end of the book, he does you you see a little glimmer there every once in a while of you know, maybe he gets a little bit of empathy, a little bit of understanding. It starts, it starts to get in there.

Yeah. Um the epitome of suffering produces character.

Yep. The entire story is sort of modeled after a Christmas carol, uh, with with Eric being Scrooge in this case, because he is miserly, he has a lot of money, he's very self-assured, self-righteous, self-confident to a horrific degree. And uh he kind of views everyone else as beneath him, which is certainly not something that Luke and I subscribe to ourselves in in person, or maybe a little bit for Luke. But um we we wanted to not specifically retell the Christmas Carol, because I don't think it needs to be retold, but it is that type of story. It's that type of redemptive experience for a character who has a lot of misbeliefs and misconceptions about the way the world works, or or the way the world should, he thinks, revolve around him.

Yeah, I can kind of see that too. What was

The Co-Writing Workflow And Trust

the biggest lesson you learned co-writing a book together, or the most surprising thing that you learned?

Do you have something?

Um, yeah, I mean, in a way, I think our case is a little unique in a sense that it's been very agreeable and worked very well. We also have very similar perspectives and values and what we appreciate, not only in life morality, but also in literature. I think for me is realizing my own weakness and my own, like I don't keep intense, meticulous track of certain things. That I don't need to, it's all in my head. That almost sounds like I'm a bad writer and I'm fine with that. No, um, I haven't needed to for systems and things. I can usually keep it in my head, but it's like I I need to be better about that communication and writing down and keeping track of it all, just so it streamlines the process between he and I. So for my part, it was like, oh wow, you're not just in a bubble anymore and learning those things that I take for granted to try and make the process smoother for us both. I don't know.

And I'd say for me, I I want to echo that this this is easily the best professional collaboration I've ever had on anything ever. And I've been in this industry for going on 17 years. And that I know that sounds impressive, it's it's not that impressive. But what is impressive is is the quality of the collaboration that we have, and I think that what's so helpful for that is we've worked together on other stuff before. Again, I I edited his entire four-book Terra Incognita series, which is published by Athon. Um, he's read most of my books, so we have a good sense of what each other are capable of, and that's part of the reason that I wanted to work with Luke on something, especially with it being Rickshaw, is because we both have a great sense of humor, we both have similar interests, and we we we write sort of in the same direction. And so instead of having to pull against each other, we're just like dancing down the street arm in arm, skipping, and having a great time doing it because frolicking, I dare say. Frolicking indeed, and and that made made writing Rickshaw just super easy because we worked on the outline together, we we worked through it, we figured out the story, and we have we have the entire series more or less figured out in broad strokes. And so every individual book, we do the outline, and then Luke jumps in and he does the initial draft and he sends it to me in chunks. So it's not like he writes the whole book and then I come at it, he'll do a few chapters, 10, 20, 30,000 words, whatever he's got time for. He'll send it to me, he'll take a break, I will go through and come at it with a hatchet or with uh with more words or whatever it needs. And we just we share a lot of trust in that way. Like, I know he's gonna give me something great to work with, and then he knows how would you phrase it?

Yeah, I know I'm gonna get something great back. Like it's it's almost it's almost fun. Like when he sends it back, I like sit down with oh, all right, get the coffee. What have we got? What have we added? Yep, and then we'll be texting him like, dude, this line you added is phenomenal, and how did you feel about this? And honestly, it's been we haven't needed any really heavy course corrections other than both of us solidifying the intention for the series and certain plot points.

I will say that the endings of the first two books, you set me up, and then then I'd I jump in and I really just go after it and and bring the endings home. But I couldn't do that without you having uh already done such a great job with everything else leading up to it. Like I know we're kind of buttering each other's bread here, but that's that's the relationship.

It's honest, though.

I'm not right. I like I I really value what Luke brings to this collaboration. This was a story I could have written it by myself, it just wouldn't have been as fun, it wouldn't have been as good. Because Luke, his perspective on things really brought the series and the characters and the antics to life, and especially for book two, because we we go to a video game that I have never played in my life, and the whole middle section is in this particular video game, and Luke has played that game, so with his ex too much, with his experience coming into play there, it really enriches the story world and and all the fun stuff that the characters have to deal with.

Yeah, and and I feel that way about the ending because that's been another thing too, is collaboratively, it's it's strange for me. It's like we're both flying the plane, right? And we each have our responsibilities, but it's like, okay, this landing, I'm not sure. I don't feel like I'm landing my plane per se. So that's been more challenging. Um so I endeavor to give you everything you need to work with, and then you take us home. And that's always fun. Like, even recently, getting to read the complete ending of book two, and I'm just like, okay, settling in.

He only read it like the other day. I sent it to the printer before he had a chance to read it because Luke Luke was that's that's how much I trust you though. What I do. That's that that's true. That speaks to the trust, yeah.

So this is like uh an adorable bromance that you guys have going on.

It is, it is, absolutely. He makes me better. I like to think that I make him better, and it's I wish he lived closer because we would just hang out all the time.

At least for the rest of the series.

Yeah. At least for the rest of the series. But even then, like hopefully it does well, and and he'll be stuck with me for the long term in in terms of making doing appearances or writing peripheral content or just whatever.

Yeah, he got a lot of really good chuckles out of the

Why A VR MMO Story Works

book. Uh so this is it's gonna be it's a VR MMO, which has not been wildly popular in LitRPG in at least a few years. It you used to see them all the time, and then they kind of slowed down, and other tropes kind of take over. What made you decide to do a VR MMO?

I think I'll jump in on this one. For me, it was because I came up with the concept, that's the only way this particular story would function because it so directly pulls from existing IPs in a fun and what we think of fun and an inventive and creative way. And and so getting the character into the world, it kind of had to be a VR MMO. But because VR MMO is not as popular right now, it's not as in vogue for lit RPG. We decided that once you're in the game, you're in the game. There's no jacking in and out, so you don't have to worry about like, oh, what's happening in the real world world? Uh, you don't the readers don't have to keep track of that. We're keeping track of that for you. And that's not to say that the entire series will be like that, but at least for now, the the main story problem is that everyone is stuck in the virtual world. And so that we're hoping that even though VR MMO is not as popular right now, we're we're hoping that folks will give it a chance because again, once everybody's in the world, the rest of the story, almost all of it, as we've envisioned it, will take place in the world of the all-verse, which is where everything takes happens.

Yeah, it's like a nice VR MMO isekai hybrid kind of yeah, yeah.

And I am newer into this this genre, but I guess some of the philosophy that even if something's not in vogue, you can change that. You don't have to do the same recipe everyone's done. You can make it interesting, and that's a fun challenge. Yep.

So that's my stance too. Like I know conventional wisdom says follow trends, write write to existing audiences and all that. I have not done that in my career, and there that's why my career kind of looks the way it is 17 years in. But this one we're we're aiming a little bit more at an established audience, and we're just hoping folks will give us a shot because we poured our hearts and souls into this thing, especially in book two, and it's gonna continue book three, four, five, and six until we're done. Uh, and man, it's just it's a wild ride. We're having so much fun with it.

I am looking forward to finding out what video game is in book two that

Eric Shaw Name And The Rickshaw Choice

you have never played.

It's a big one. We'll say that. It's a it's a big, a big fantasy one.

So the main character is Eric Shaw.

Yes.

The name of the book is Rick Shaw Riot, and he that is his class when he ends up finding one after one is stolen from him in the very beginning of the book. Did you come up with the character's name first or the vehicle that he had to drive around first?

This was this was an evolving process, and you feel free to jump in as well, Luke. But when I initially conceived of this, the idea was a crazy taxi simulator, but up against all the all the other video games. And the more we talked about it and discussed it, the more we both sort of came to realize uh it's funnier. We we hadn't let me step back one step. We had initially thought, what if he had to start with a rickshaw and then upgrade to the taxi? And we decided it was way funnier if he was just forever stuck with the rickshaw. So, yeah, so it is essentially he's playing he's playing crazy taxi, but he has to pull a rickshaw to do it. Meanwhile, there are actually, as as I'm sure you read in the book, people who are playing a crazy taxi variant as well and doing other racing games, Grand Theft Auto, Mario Kart, so on and so forth. They're all verse equivalents. The name of the series was originally going to be Rickshaw Erickshaw, and we realized that's fun, but that's kind of a mouthful, so we just changed it to Rickshaw Riot.

Which is a great name.

Thank you. I think we came up with Eric's name while we were talking about the Rickshaw because we're like his last name should be Shaw because that's funny. Yeah. And the more we like he just sounds like an Eric. Like it just started to stick. And I think we had the well, obviously, we had the three main, you know, Sidney, Eric. Like we had Silas. Silas, yeah. Kind of settled in, and then from there, Nate. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody else.

The Not Octopus Companion

What made you choose an a not octopus octopus as the animal companion? Who out of water almost the entire book?

Yeah. Yeah. This is just like me. No, um, I don't this is a lot like where to start with this. Same with it was like a brewing idea I'd had. I was I was inspired from another project I'd worked on where I was converting some material, and I felt that there were these the sentient octopuses that they they used them for a brief moment, but I'm like, you are just leaving money on the table with antics. Like, why wouldn't you capitalize on this? You're leaving animal companions, you're there's just so much. So I started playing around with this this character, and at the time he just sort of bloomed into this strange, endearing, but continuously left field comment. Like you can never quite track his mentality. And I don't know why, I just kind of relate to that a little bit. I don't know why. And he's absurd, like he's just absolutely absurd, even down to he's pretty much an octopus, but he's not. And it was a bunch of elements that mismatched elements we thought that fit this world very well. Yeah. The idea that something so out of place seemed in place seamlessly with this stitched together world.

And he gets very upset when you call him an octopus.

Yes, well, yes, he does. It's well, it's insulting. Can you imagine? You've clearly told someone you're a human and they just can't get that. You strange biped.

I mean, but that's Eric Shaw in a nutshell. He just doesn't pay attention to things. And

The Allverse World And Game Parodies

so the world is the Allverse, which is, I believe, also the name of the game. It's the UGE.

The ultimate gaming experience. Yes. Yeah. That's that's just a marketing, uh, a marketing quip from Eric's company. But yes, the the overarching world is the Alverse, and within the Allverse, you can the original intent was you could play any game you wanted and have crossover opportunities. So if you wanted to play Halo, you could be playing Halo and go blow apart a bunch of people playing Frogger if you wanted to, or vice versa.

Well, it's the game we always thought we'd get at some point, right?

Right. Like where are all these awesome crossovers that we see in all sorts of books and movies, team-ups, but we don't have that in a video game. So we decided we would do that for our world. And of course it went horribly wrong. Uh, and things are getting corrupted and changed and and and weird, but that's the kind of insane backdrop we want for Rickshaw.

And they do. You've got uh some of my favorites are Hall of Duty, yeah.

Assassins bleed. Oh man. There are going to be other assassins showing up at some point, just as a heads up. Yeah, we'll we'll be cranking them out just like Ubisoft has. Yep.

Do you have any favorites that you put in book one?

I mean, shoulder mon is is just right now. That one's my favorite. I think my second favorite one is I don't want to spoil too much, but the fork knife antics are pretty great. Uh fork knife instead of Fortnite, which is colloquially what it's called, anyways. A lot of a lot of people call it fork knife. So that that whole sequence, and then uh Immortal Combat, which was another good one.

That was another good one. Yep, that whole scene, that whole scene was fantastic.

Yeah. The oh my gosh. We that and that's looking back, we can't help but smile because we just had so much fun writing this book. And and book two is even more insane in in a lot of ways.

Yeah, there is more room for all the different so there was there was an entire brainstorm session of every alternative name we could find, and being amused by that, like I remember a few of them being almost in tears, and and now the pro the more our bigger problem is like, can we actually fit all these that we thought of into this book? Maybe, maybe uh the the highlights, but yeah, I same for me, like Shoulderman, uh Immortal Combat is yeah, great. Yeah, they're fun.

I was gonna ask, was were these names something that you came up with as you were writing the book and you needed something, or did you just spitball all of these and make a huge list beforehand and find ways to work them in?

We definitely made the big list beforehand, and then by doing that, it actually set us up pretty well to uh to come up with like the plot. Like what what do they encounter next? Why are they encountering it next? What does that do to the plot? What does it do for the characters? Part of storytelling, at least from my perspective, I think Luke would probably agree with this, is it's not just a sequence of events that happen to the character, the character is making choices that lead him into the next debacle that he's got to figure out, and that opens up opportunities for more hilarity and more game types to pop up in the book and and in this game world.

Plot Planning And A Six-Book Ending

And now they are all stuck in the game. Do we find out what is going on outside of the game? Because they have speculated that they, well, they don't know if there is any kind of time dilation or time difference between in-game and out-of-game.

How much should we say here, Luke? Minimal. I think we can give a teaser, but minimal. I think suffice it to say, we more or less know what's happening and how it's happening outside the world, outside the game world. We also know the trajectory of where the series is going and why it's going that way. We and that was one of the things I wanted to do with Luke on the front end was I wanted to make sure we had an actual ending for the series. Some of the big, big guys went on too long as far as litRPG goes, uh, in my opinion, and in the opinion of some readers. And so we were like, when we were trying to figure this out, we were like, is this five books? Is it six books? Is it ten books? And as we were working through it, we came to a very natural conclusion at the end of the sixth book. And so we're like, if we can do it in six, we're gonna do it in six. We don't need to expand this, we don't need to, it's not a cash grab. We want to tell a tight, a tight, concise, meaningful story in six books, and that's what we're going to do. And we've done it so far in books one and two, uh, with maybe a little bit of gratuitousness in in book two as far as the length, because book two is about twice as long as book one. But man, we were just having so much fun that we decided we had to do it. So what what are you gonna jump in and say?

I was just sorry, we'll loop around to the original question. But it was too, I think book two, it really we really hit that sweet spot of the characters are getting to know each other, so the character development opportunities kept opening up and blooming, and that's part of why it got longer too. But that's not something you want to squelch if it's or rush past it. Yeah, or rush past or anything or cheapen it. And um, but so yeah, suffice it to say though.

We have a plan, and uh all will more will be revealed, especially in book three. You're we're gonna have some pretty big puzzle pieces start to kind of fit into place. Uh, end of book one sets up book two really well. Book two, we start kind of like seeing a little bit more of the big picture, and then then book three. You start getting some pretty meaningful answers. And again, then nothing is wasted. Nothing is uh we're we're not adding filler to this series, we're just writing it clean, we're writing it tight to make sure that the story keeps moving, the characters keep developing, and the the plot keeps progressing.

Yeah, and I think having kind of a loose idea of how many books you want to be in the series is good, and then leaving it open in case the story deserves an extra book or the story kind of deserves to finish in book five. You never know. I think gratuitously having a long series just for the sake of having a long series. There are too many long series out there.

Kind of play it out. And we don't want, we're we're gonna finish this thing too. We're not gonna do a Rothfuss or a George R.R. Martin and leave everyone hanging. Um we're we're gonna get done. But and we're also not gonna do what some of our other big lit RPG authors are doing where they oh, this series will go on forever. If that's what you want to do, good for good for you. More power to you. If you can keep your readers engaged that long, great. Uh, frankly, we know our limits, and so we we know we can keep you enthralled for so many books, and then after that, we're gonna have to start throwing filler in there, then we don't want to do that. So we're just yeah, want to keep it tight.

Very, very anti-filler. I mean, even for me too, a good ending is part of what I enjoy about a story. There have been stories, yeah, and there's even been a handful of stories where I've either read or watched through, and I'm like, this is decent, but the way the ending capped it off, it put immense value into the rest of the story. And that's that's an art and that's a needful thing, and that's always been kind of my philosophy with it.

So we're gonna stick the landing, like because we already know how it ends, and I I can't say that for all of my books, like for some of my books. Uh, I've got uh with with the new one that just went to the printer, I have 30 titles out now, and Luke has got four with more on the way. Uh, well, plus plus brickshaw, so I guess you're up to six technically. But um, we both have a passion for sticking the landing. His series, his Terra Incognita series, sci-fi, uh military sci-fi series, brilliant. He sticks the landing not only in each individual book, but then for the last book, he rounds out the series. It's beautiful. I almost cried. Uh, because I I got to read it before pretty much everyone else, and I got to because I was editing it, and I just had nothing but good things to say about it, and still have nothing but good things to say about it. So that's I mean, one of many reasons why I wanted to work with Luke is because I know that he values sticking the landing as far as the ending goes as well. And so that's something that we're definitely going to bring to the Rickshaw series.

Yeah, like it's a good solid ending on a book.

I think our plan for the ending for this one is that by the end, everybody will understand everything that's going on, why it happened, how how it happened, the reasons behind it, and on top of that, the resolution will be a very, I would say very concrete resolution.

Yeah, because that's I think one of the most valuable components is the resolution with all the elements in. We want to tie off all the loose threads.

Yeah.

And you do kind of hint a little bit in book one about why they're all stuck in the all verse.

Youth Filter Jokes And Clean Profanity

Just a tiny bit. You drop just a little tiny crumb in there.

There are several reasons that it could be, and we know the truth. And so the truth will be revealed. Well, I do.

Luke is like, I don't know what's going on in the in the game. When so there is like a youth filter, right, that is in the game because it's an all-ages game. And so you have these hilarious curseword alternatives, and there is no nudity in the game. So Eric, when he is naked, has a sensor bar over himself that continues to get smaller and smaller and smaller and just drives him crazy. And I think it was every time he tried to change his pants.

That was part of it. I think I think it was just sort of in hindsight, it was a gag for the sake of being a gag. But now that I where we've made some progress, at least in my head, it's smaller and smaller because he hadn't chosen a class. And so it was one of Lucretia's sort of Lucretia's the governing AI, um, the the AI that runs the story. So I break you.

Yeah, I don't know why. That was just excellent.

So so it's kind of her way, the AI's way of like saying, you need to pick a class here, or it's it's gonna get worse and worse and worse for you. Uh, and even when he does finally pick a class, the basically with with the the boxers and all that, he um yeah, anytime he has to take them off, the sensor bar is still there for for modesty's sake, but yeah, it's it gets smaller and smaller because she doesn't she wants him to pick a class, but also she doesn't want nudity in the game world because the content filters on, and so it's it's just the in my mind it's the system AI just kind of nudging him to like do the right thing.

Yeah, I like that hilarious, and now the curse words that are in the game. Did you come up with those the same way you came up with the video game alternative name? So did you just come up with a huge list of just weird alternatives?

Mentally, I would say yes.

Um but mentally, practically, I think we were just like, well, we knew we wanted to keep it clean in that way for reasons. So I'm like, hey, I think we should have a competition of who can come up with the most ludicrous and funny replacements, and I'm like that. Let's go.

Yeah, because they're also very situational.

Yes, we try to keep them situational whenever possible. Sometimes it just doesn't work, but yes, yeah, whenever possible, there's situational pseudo-profanity.

That was another thing that I got a good chuckle out of. And now you

Soundbooth Partnership And Casting The Audiobook

have partnered up with Soundbooth for this. They are who uh is doing the audiobook. How did you team up with Soundbooth?

I met Jeff through Matt Dinneman, and I've known Matt since before he started writing Dungeon Crawler Carl. Jeff and I got connected. I started writing for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel. It expanded from there. Jeff had me work on some other projects with him. Um, Soundbooth did the audio for my Blood Mercenaries Fantasy series, which is available on the Soundbooth app. They're doing the audio for my Santa series. Uh, the third book and then the bonus short story come out this uh this Christmas. And so the entire series will be out on audio now, which is really exciting. And then I've I've worked with them on some other stuff, and then Luke has jumped in with them and done some script conversion work. Have you done other stuff with them too? Or just mostly that, yeah. And then the the interesting part of this, the the point of connection, our narrator for Rickshaw is Ryan Reid. And Ryan, yeah, he's amazing, he's wonderful. Uh, Ryan approached me at Gen Con one year uh because I was exhibiting. He approached our table. My wife and uh my wife and I are both authors, and he approached us and he saw her and was like, ooh, she's scary. I don't want to talk to her. She's gorgeous and intimidating, and I barely even talked to her when I initially met her because I was so like, oh my gosh, she's gorgeous. But that worked out. So um he came up and talked to us and said, Hey, do you need an audiobook? Uh and I'm like, dude, I'm at Gen Con, which is my busiest show of the year. I'm trying to sell books to people, and you're talking to me about this. Now I didn't say any of that aloud, I was just thinking it very loudly in my head. But Ryan Oblivious was just, no, no, I'm going to talk to you and it's going to be wonderful. And he did have a nice, lustrous, deep voice, and so I was like, maybe this guy has some potential. And at that same Gen Con, Jeff Hayes was hanging out with his friends from Dimension Games because he had done some audio for one of their properties. And I said, you know what? I'm set for audiobooks. I said, you should go talk to my friend Jeff Hayes. And this was back in 23, maybe 22. And so Jeff was had blown up a little bit, but not to the extent that it is now. Yeah. And so he was a little bit more accessible. And I sent Ryan over to his booth. I said, he's at that booth, go talk to him. And so he went and talked to Jeff and submitted a demo, and Jeff liked it, and he's been with the company ever since. And uh, sort of as a way to say thank you, uh, Jeff put him in charge of my Blood Mercenaries fantasy series. And so Ryan is the lead narrator for all four of those books. And when it came time to do Rickshaw, Luke and I were talking about it, and because Jeff's so busy, you know, we wanted him to be involved, and he is definitely involved with the audiobook, but he's not the narrator. And also because we have such a both of us have such a close personal connection with Ryan, we thought, you know, I think I can really hear Ryan's voice for this. And so we wrote it with Ryan in mind to voice Eric. And we've both been listening to the audio proofs for it, like in the last couple days, and my goodness, did we make the right choice? He absolutely knocks it out of the park. He's he's sarcastic and rude, and a lot like he is in real life in a lot of ways. But that's why we wanted him to do it, is because we knew he could capture Eric so so well.

And even, you know, Ryan's a sweet guy. He is, but he he has a very similar sense of humor. And so I would say he will push it further than we would.

Yes, he already has. Yes, he already has.

And so there were there were things writing that I'm like, man, I just I could hear Ryan saying that. And yeah.

And of course, Jeff uh Jeff is in the the book as well. I don't want to give up give away too much about that, but he essentially he voices the villain, and we're thrilled that he is involved with that because the villain in book one, like it's it's a super important part. The villain is is around beyond book one. I don't want to say too much, but we'll just say that the villain is beyond around beyond book one, and so we want Jeff in that role because it's going to require some heavy acting at certain parts that are not just comedy, but have some real dramatic and emotional pull to them. Same with Ryan, because Ryan's all also capable of that, and same with the rest of the cast as well. We want we wanted the best team in the world for audiobooks to be working on this series, and that's exactly what we got. And so we're just really excited. Yeah, it is Soundbooth, absolutely. So we're blessed and very fortunate and very grateful to be working with Soundbooth.

I love Soundbooth and I love Ryan, and this story is gonna lend incredibly well to audio.

We agree, and so far again, so far from what we've listened to, and we're not very far into just a few chapters. We're we're helping proof everything uh in time for launch. But yeah, we we fully agree, and the execution is brilliant. The the other cool thing about the audiobook for this series is that it's like partially cinematic. So I'm sure you're familiar with the audio immersion tunnel. It's not quite to that level, but it's closer than I was expecting it would be, honestly. So there's sound effects, there's original music, it's a full uh I won't say a full cast, but a multicast. There's six voice actors on this thing. So we're we're very blessed and fortunate that Soundbooth believes in this project and wants it to succeed.

Truly fantastic.

Release Schedule Events And Where To Buy

So book one's gonna be out on July 14th. And when is book two set to release?

Well, we just had a conversation about that last night. Um, the it's it's ready to go, but because of Ryan and everybody else's schedule, realistically the audio won't come out until probably January. Um, but that's okay because that gives us time to stack up the next book and then the next book and the next book. So I think what we're going to end up doing is a release every six months, give or take. And so technically, the release as now, uh as we're filming this right now, today is July 7th. The ebook is out today today, and the audio and the print version officially release next week on uh July 14th, uh, both of them at the same time. And so about six months from now in January is when we're planning on launching book two. And that was a recent change based on Ryan taking a good look at his schedule and just having a fair and honest conversation with us. And so we're pivoting. Uh, he's gonna start recording probably in October, and then just to make sure he gives it it gives it enough time and gives the other actors enough time. January is probably what it's gonna be for the launch.

Will that be a simultaneous release in January for book two?

That's what we're gonna aim to do, yeah. So the the pre-order is currently set for like October 20th or something for the uh for the the ebook, but uh usually if we do a simultaneous release, then we can maybe get a little bit of love from Audible to help push the series. That's it's not guaranteed, it's one of the things that we apply for, and it may or may not happen. But because that's an option that we're considering, that's probably what we're gonna do. We just had this conversation yesterday, so I haven't changed or updated anything in Amazon or whatever, but um, that's probably what we'll end up doing, subject to change though. With that said, if any of you find me at a show or an event in the next six months, I will have copies of book two with me because I can't help myself. And I have readers who are like clamoring for book two already, so I have to, you know, make sure that they're satiated.

Yeah, I'm one of those readers.

Excellent. We'll set you up at uh at uh LitRPG Con.

Yay. Uh, so I think that was everything that I had for you guys. Uh, do you have anything that you wanted to mention that I didn't ask about?

Not specifically for me. I just, you know, go go grab it, give it a try. Uh, pre-order is live for the audiobook on Audible. We definitely recommend checking it out. It's gonna be a heck of a great experience. If you're more into ebooks, the ebooks out now. And print books, you can either get them on Amazon or if you want to get them signed, you can go to benwolf.com. He he doesn't have a website, so I just kind of he leeches on to mine. Um, but that's good though, because like less less for you to have to worry about. Like, you don't want to deal with all that stuff. I really don't, that's I appreciate it. So you can get Rickshaw from me if you want it signed and personalized. Um, and there's a decent chance that you can see Luke and me at an upcoming event this summer as well. Uh, so we're doing LitRPGCon, then we're doing Gen Con, then we're doing PhoenixCon, which is in Appleton, Wisconsin, then we're doing DragonCon together. So four really great opportunities to come and meet us, chat about Rickshaw and all that fun stuff.

Thank you guys for taking out time. Yeah, thank you for sticking around. Thank you, everybody else, for sticking around and uh keep leveling up.