- Interview Location: New York Comic Con 2025
- Interview Date: 10/10/2025
- Interview Format: Round-Robin
Anime Herald: So… a cat show artist?
Matt Dinniman: Yeah. A long time ago, I lied about knowing Photoshop to get a job as an obituary editor in a daily newspaper. In doing that, I taught myself Photoshop. I became a big fan of drawing for fun, and drawing in Photoshop with a mouse. I was never a very good artist. I started drawing animals with hats, and silly cats and dogs.
I started selling them on Etsy, and going to comic cons, and having an Artist’s Alley-style booth. I would sell my art prints.
A lot of people suggested to me that I should start going to dog shows and cat shows. I started doing that. I would go to small local cat shows at the Holiday Inn or something like that. I would have my art up. That’s how I learned about that world.
Anime Herald: And that just kept going. “We finally have someone who understands us!”
Matt Dinniman: Pretty much. There’s a small, but dedicated group of artists that go to these things. They travel all over and they make bank. There are carpenters that do cat trees, they do installations in these people’s houses.
Anime Herald: I love that.
Matt Dinniman: There are all sorts of vendors that go to these cat shows.
Anime Herald: Are you a pet owner yourself?
Matt Dinniman: I’ve been a pet owner most of my life. I have four dogs and three cats right now.
Anime Herald: Awesome. How do they get along?
Matt Dinniman: Oh, they all hate each other. It’s pretty typical.
Anime Herald: What is your favorite part about writing for Samantha?
Matt Dinniman: Samantha is chaos incarnate. She’s very fun to write because whatever pops into my head, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense at the time, I can make it make sense later. She’s one of my favorite characters to write.
Anime Herald: It makes sense to her.
Matt Dinniman: Exactly.
Anime Herald: I view her as some sort of goddess of love. She’s heartbroken. She wants to reconnect.
Matt Dinniman: She always is heartbroken. We don’t really know who she is. There are some suggestions that she might be the goddess of jilted ex-girlfriends.
Anime Herald: Ha! That I can believe. Tell me about the Audio Immersion Tunnel. An old-timey radio show.
Matt Dinniman: It’s a good old-fashioned audio drama, with sound effects, original music, and a full cast. Soundbooth Theater does it. It’s exclusively on their app. Jeff Hays, the guy who does the regular audio book, directs it. He still does the voices of Carl and (Princess) Donut. It works out pretty well.
Anime Herald: Jeff Hays is awesome. You’ve known him for many years.
Matt Dinniman: I have.
Anime Herald: Can you tell me why audio is so important to the LitRPG (Literary Role-Playing Game) world?
Matt Dinniman: LitRPG specifically has a very high instance of readers who are audiobook listeners. A lot of that is because a lot of them are new readers or people who don’t normally read books. A lot of them became fans of reading while at their jobs like trucking, or construction. To answer your question, it’s a lot of new readers who aren’t necessarily sitting down at night with a book. So many of them are in younger demographics, or people who work in jobs that allow them to consume audio books and become big fans of them.
(Editor’s note: This interview took place at the signing booth for Webtoons. A fan named Brian came up and chatted with Matt. I have decided to include the brief Q&A.)
Brian: I remember reading this as a novel. It wasn’t bad. I really liked it.
Matt Dinniman: It is a novel. The Webtoon is new.
Brian: I read the newest one. I like the story.
Matt Dinniman: Thank you man. I appreciate it.
Brian: How have you been, this con?
Matt Dinniman: I’m having a good time. This is my first New York Comic Con. I’ve been doing cons a lot, but I’d never been to New York.
Brian: How do you like it?
Matt Dinniman: I love it. It’s amazing.
Brian: Will you come back?
Matt Dinniman: Probably. If it’s during the right time. It’s usually next weekend and that’s a hard one for me because I usually have a lot of stuff going on.
Brian: Hopefully you can come back again.
Matt Dinniman: Thank you.
Anime Herald: You can buy food now. How has that been?
Matt Dinniman: It’s nice to be able to eat. Especially when you have four children.
Anime Herald: Any favorites?
Matt Dinniman: Of my children?
Anime Herald: Of food.
Matt Dinniman: I like Italian food.
Anime Herald: In that case, I have a recommendation, Da Umberto.
How has your vision for the series changed?
Matt Dinniman: When I first started writing it, I was writing a very simple straightforward story about a dude and his cat on an alien gameshow. I wasn’t anticipating such a complicated overarching political plot. As I started working and going on, that’s kind of what happened.
Anime Herald: Yes. There’s the new Running Man movie coming out. It’s a lot closer to the original book. That’s a lot of the same vibes.
Matt Dinniman: Yes. I have read that book.
Anime Herald: That was your original vision. It was fairly Spartan, and now it has exploded into the Donut-verse.
Matt Dinniman: Yes, it has.
Anime Herald: What is it like going forward, without spoilers?
Matt Dinniman: I’m working on book eight now and it’s probably going to be ten books. We’re past the arc of the arrow. We’re on the way back. I kind of see where the arrow is going to land.
Anime Herald: You get to be a pantser, writing off of the seat of your pants.
Matt Dinniman: I am a pantser.
Anime Herald: Carl and Princess Donut are fighting for their lives. Does Carl get to plan ahead while you get to pants it?
Matt Dinniman: Carl is a planner, but his plans tend to go awry at the last second. He’s very good at coming up with new ideas. That’s a deliberate decision on my part to make him like that. Most people don’t think as fast as he does.
Anime Herald: What would you like people to know about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series?
Matt Dinniman: It’s going to be ten books. I’m working on book eight. Even if I’m working on other books, this is my number one priority, and it will be my number one priority until it comes out. I’m pretty excited for everything that’s coming in the future.