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Emerald City Comic Con 2026 was the place to get the inside scoop on your favorite fantasy authors, doubly so if you find yourself in the room with Matt Dinniman. That was the case for yours truly at the Lit RPG OMG panel held at the Seattle Convention Center, and I had to investigate a rumor I heard about the Dungeon Crawler Carl author, namely, that he wrote an unpublished novel that he's kept locked away from the world. Was there any chance, I asked, that the world would one day see this novel that Dinniman has characterized as a "precursor" to his hit LitRPG series?

"Absolutely fucking not," was the response.

Ah well, I tried.

The good news is that Dinniman was at least willing to talk about what was in this locked-away, untitled project, and even compare it to the work of another very popular work by a very popular author.

"It was a very similar story to Dungeon Crawler Carl," Dinniman said of the novel, "It really wasn't LitRPG; I hadn't really discovered LitRPG yet. If you've read Dungeon Crawler Carl, [the novel's plot] is very similar to the setup for the 5th floor of The Bubbles. It's about a town, one day they wake up and a dome is under them; they need to know whats happening. And that same year, Stephen King came out with Under the Dome."

"That hack!" came a call from the panelist table - comics' own Jim Zub showing his support. 

"The book was almost done," continued Dinniman, "I had the wind pulled so out of my sails. I was an inexperienced writer at the time. I had sold books before, but no one read them, and i was like, 'Well this sucks. Let me write something else.'"

Before we all moved on from Dinniman's unpublished DCC predecessor, though, he did make one fascinating admission. Even though he said the book is both too close to another author's work and not in a place to be published, Dinniman has apparently kept it around.

"I have a database of everything I've ever written," said the author, "I have this really obnoxious way of writing where I write scenes over and over again and I keep every iteration of it. [The novel] is sitting in there."

I don't know Matt, maybe your legions of fans would appreciate if you dug that up? In the meantime, we'll try to get #ReleaseTheDomeCut trending.

Re-live the best of Seattle's Emerald City Comic Con 2026 with:

• On-demand videos of all of the ECCC 2026 Main Stage panels
• A recap of Emerald City Comic Con 2026, from Popverse's POV
• A collection of articles, interviews, and more from ECCC 2026
• A list of ECCC 2026 Artist Alley artists who are accepting commissions