Luis Sepulveda aka ThinkTwice is a LitRPG and Progression Fantasy author who began his journey on RoyalRoad and now brings his fast-paced, system-driven stories to Amazon.
In this interview, he shares the inspiration behind The Root of All Evil, his writing process using voice-to-text technology, and why he loves crafting progression systems that challenge both his characters and his readers.
Dollar starts with the advantage of past-life experience, but Ioa isn’t a world that plays by familiar rules. What interested you in exploring the tension between what he already knows and what he still has to learn?
For me, the tension between the unfamiliar and familiar is my favorite part of the Isekai genre! I love exploring new worlds, and the best way to do that is by giving the experience of an outside perspective. A person from another world grows up knowing the customs and traditions of their culture. To them, it’s a natural thing to know their cities and ways of life. Which also makes it harder to write those things into the story naturally. Making the main character a person from Earth gives me a chance to show the weird and wonderful new aspects of Ioa through the lens of someone who needs just as much explanation as we do.
Magic babies? That’s a thing that needs exploring!
Runic magic? Let’s deep dive!
Ancient monsters seeking to end humanity? We need to know what to do in emergencies!
For me, the tension between the known and the unknown is the bread and butter of why I write. Every story that I write starts with a step forward, followed by a stumble and question of why everything is happening. Can I tell all of it in a single go? No! And it’s not because I don’t want to, but because I’m exploring these worlds just as the main character is, waiting for them to surprise me at every turn.
The world of The Root of All Evil is full of danger from both monsters and people. How did you decide how much focus and intensity to give each type of threat so that neither overwhelms the story or feels underdeveloped?
This is an incredibly complex issue. I would even call it a weak point in my writing. My main goal with my stories has always been to try and make them more action oriented. That goal has never really been met.
For the most part, monsters in my world have always been massive threats that require entire books to deal with. The solution to the threat they bring is often violence. Which is why they can’t be the only enemy in the book. Human enemies give flavour and excitement for when the monsters need to bide their time to attack. Humans are complex. They introduce new dynamics economically, with reputation, or politically, and half a dozen other ways. Their threats are often subtle and even when there’s a sword pointed at the main character a dozen non-violent answers may grow as a response. And the characters grow with them. So, I would say that the focus I give depends on what kind of dynamic I want the characters to experience and which solution I want to solve the problem.
Rune crafting plays a central role in Dollar’s rise. What inspired you to make this such a core mechanic in the story? Were you aiming to create a system with near-limitless creative potential?
The answer to this question is a funny one. In truth, the idea for the Root of All Evil came from a reddit comment response that I gave to someone asking if there were any series that focused on symbol or formation usage. I replied they weren’t many that focused on it exclusively, but that I wanted to read a series that was. The issue was that every series that started with a main character using symbols eventually branched out into them using weapons or magic that surpassed the symbols in power. And then the symbols all fell into the background until they were needed later for use as a minor plot device.
I decided that I would write that series myself. That’s exactly the reason why Dollar doesn’t use magic and barely uses his sword. The goal of the books was to make a series where the main character stuck to the formations/runes that they used.
Dollar spends a lot of time fighting alone deep in enemy territory. How do you balance action-packed solo scenes with the emotional growth that makes his story resonate?
Action and emotion often go hand and hand in my story. Dollar very much spends the entirety of the beginning of the series at the bottom of the emotional food chain. He’s a bastard. And that’s on purpose. I wanted to make a character who could go from being a villain to a human. Not necessarily a good human, but a human all the same.
As such, a lot of his action scenes involve him having to trust others or confront aspects of himself that he never had to do previously while on Earth. It’s easy to ignore everyone around you when you’re peaceful. It’s a lot harder to not ask for help when a bandit has a knife to your throat.
These conflicts force emotional growth by being the kind of things that Dollar has never encountered before on Earth. They make him wonder what it’s like to trust and feel joy. And just by thinking about those things, he learns more about them, and even begins to experience them.
It’s a very satisfying part of my writing to be able to see his emotional journey through the conflict that he encounters.
There’s a sense of looming legacy in this world—bloodlines, ancient forces, powerful enemies. How much of that long-game mythology did you map out ahead of time vs. discovering it as you wrote?
This series is based on the same world of my previous series, Mark of the Crijik. As such, I had a lot of the world building already down pat. Some things are different, though I haven’t revealed the reason for that yet in the books, but for the most part the culture and attitudes of the people in the world were prewritten or at least at the forefront of my mind before I’d even started writing the Root of All Evil.
In fact, one of the reasons for writing Dollar’s family situation was because I wanted to explore what it was like to be on the bottom rungs of Ioa as a world, instead of at the top like Andross is in Mark of the Crijik. Andross gets to see what rich people have. Dollar has to see what the others do not have.
If readers walk away from Book 2 with one lingering question or feeling, what do you hope it is?
Like they’ve just read something epic.
What’s one survival skill Dollar has that you wish you did?
The ability to make money feels like a really good skill to have. Also his ability to communicate with our worldly forces and utilize them to create artefacts.
Would you rather unlock a new rune… or overhear your enemy’s strategy meeting?
New rune. For sure. There are some incredibly powerful runes out there, some of which would make my head explode. Possibly literally.
It would be really nice to have a satisfaction rune that would make eating, drinking, and bad sleep a distant memory.
Favorite kind of scene to write: brutal battle, high-stakes infiltration, or internal trial?
Brutal battles are always my favourite scenes to write, even if they don’t feature too prominently in my series. There’s something about imagining the battle as it happens that makes each word a delight to put onto the page.
If you were dropped into Dollar’s world for 24 hours, what’s the first thing you’d do (besides panic)?
There are a lot of organisations that would be able to help me and give me a job. That being said, where I get dropped off plays a big part of it.
If I’m dropped into the western or southern continents then I’m relatively safe. If I’m dropped off in the central continent then I know I’m okay!
The eastern and northern continents are okay, but both have incredible dangers lurking within them. And neither are very kind to those who aren’t rugged enough to survive alone.
The wildlands I died approximately two seconds after stepping into them. You will not find my body.
Get ThinkTwice’s latest series, The Root of All Evil, available now on Amazon & Audible.
Reborn in a forest of flames. Surrounded by monsters. Master the System and survive.
In his past life, Dollar was an unparalleled mind forged by the flames of tribulation. He’d built his wealth and influence from nothing and never looked back.
But after dying and reincarnating into the world of Ioa, he is thrust into poverty and trapped in a forest of flames with nothing but a decrepit wooden hut to protect him.
With family out to kill him, an army of monsters surrounding him, and omnipotent gods sent to assassinate him, Dollar finds that in this new world, success is defined by adversity.
He’s climbed his way up from rock bottom once, and he refuses to stay there again.
Knowing he will need his wits and more to survive, he learns the art of rune crafting and gains access to a System. From there, he’ll begin his ascent. With the power to craft infinite effects and mold existence itself, nothing will stand in his way.
With the entire world stacked against him, Dollar has them right where he wants them…
Don’t miss the next action-packed, reincarnation isekai LitRPG series from ThinkTwice, the bestselling author of Mark of the Crijik. Join an unexpected protagonist in the fight for his life as he progresses in power, masters the System, learns magical abilities, and discovers what’s really important in life.
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