Conversations with Seven Asmund

Today we’d like to introduce you to Seven Asmund.

Hi Seven, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
My name is Seven, and I’ve been independently publishing my stories and poetry for 15 years. Having been an editor of a literary journal, I found the process of the politics of publishing disheartening. We would accept work that was mundane and average because the author was a friend of a friend, but we would turn away exceptional, exciting work because we didn’t know who they were and we didn’t have the space anymore.

I never liked that, and over the years I began to take my self-publishing more seriously. Since 2007, I have written or published over 30 projects, including books of poetry, short stories, novels, tabletop role-playing games, card games, board games, tarot decks, oracle dice, and more. I flit back and forth between my interests and publish what is of interest to me at the time.

In 2021, after 15 other crowdfunding campaigns, I ran the Alleyman’s Tarot, the largest tarot kickstarter of all time, bringing in 1.4 million dollars and 20,000 supporters. and I made a follow-up fiction podcast, the Alleyman Podcast. The Alleyman’s Tarot was a 137-card tarot deck made up of individual cards I licensed or created from other tarot decks, This made it the first patchwork deck, with unique styles and cards every time you flip one over.

Just in 2022, I released the 2nd edition of my Oracle Dice, the Publishing Goblin’s Oracle Dice, my apocalyptic city-building board game New Avernus, and the Alleyman Podcast CD set with a companion book of the scripts and behind-the-scenes info, as well as some extra tarot cards that went in the set.

In 2023, I am looking to launch the Alleyway Oracles, the follow-up to the Alleyman’s Tarot, which will feature three different decks, a standard tarot, and two oracle decks. As with the Alleyman’s Tarot, where I created several fake brands that the Alleyman character collected items such as a tarot cloth, matchbox, cigar box, and satin bag, I will be creating fake branded artifacts that these new decks will come in, adding to the mythos around the Alleyman character.

I will also be releasing a couple of new projects besides, but mostly in 2023, we’ll be focusing on 2024, the Year of the Goblin, where I will have prepared a new project for crowdfunding support for each month of the year, including my large-scale tabletop roleplaying game, Confluence.

I’m a perpetual creator, always thinking of new strange ideas, and then talking to manufacturers to see what we can make happen, what can become real. I hope to always push boundaries and create strange new items, divination tools, magic tools, game playing tools. Things that people can touch and interact with, or hopefully get lost in.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I had a day job up until early 2021 and had to leave it due to COVID-related concerns. The projects I was running at the time were bringing in little bits of money, but not enough to keep me afloat. For a brief moment, I was borrowing forward on money I just didn’t and wouldn’t have, because I had no other choices. When I ran the Alleyman’s Tarot project on Kickstarter in 2021, I needed it to break $85k or I would drown in debt.

It exploded to 1.4 million, but I didn’t know that, and couldn’t have known. The road that led to that moment was not easy. 14 years of publishing and having very few people care about it was a struggle. I’m not a social media personality, I didn’t have a booming following. I gained people project to project, very slowly over time.

I keep making things people support and appreciate, and I hope to keep doing that forever. But even family used to tell me that if things don’t work out, I should drop my publishing and move towards a more formal career eventually. I have been lucky, but I don’t know how big or small my next projects will be. The support I receive from here on will determine everything.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a writer first and foremost. I write poetry, fiction, short and long, and games both rules and fluffy world information. I write guides for tarot decks and oracle tools. I want to, and that will always be my focus. But I also do some digital collages, a little bit of illustration, and digital painting. I adore leaning toward horror, but I’ve written everything.

I’ve written screenplays, movies, and tv shows. I’ve written technical instructions and esoteric ones. I do the layout for my books, and often the editing. I’ve developed branding graphics for my projects, packaging, etc. I’ve become a one-person publisher, able to do all the parts. It’s necessary when you’re independent!

I would say what I’m known for is weaving worlds around what I make. My Alleyman’s Tarot project wasn’t just a tarot deck, it had a mythology behind it, which I explored in my fictional podcast on the myth itself. My creations are rarely surface-level, they dive into their depths to explore.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Tenacity and obsession. I didn’t turn a real profit from self-publishing until the 14th year of doing it. But I keep doing it because I’m obsessed. I can’t stop creating things. My brain sometimes won’t let me sleep.

I don’t think it’s always healthy, and it isn’t conducive to a normal sleep schedule. But it’s simply true. I can’t stop creating things, even if it takes a bad turn and crash and burns in the future, I’ll work another job if I have to, but it will always be to fund the creation of more things.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.PublishingGoblin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/publishinggoblin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PublishingGoblin
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaneAsmund
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoW_Cl3JIQimqmO1qJG_MoQ
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-269984501-363922479
• Other: www.AlleymanTarot.com