Dakota Krout is a New York Times bestselling American author of LitRPG - game-structured fantasy adventure - and the co-founder of one of the genre's leading independent publishers.
A US Army veteran who took a computer science degree in punishing 22-credit semesters while serving, and then worked as a web developer, he self-published his first novel, Dungeon Born, in 2016 and sold more than ten thousand copies within five months. On that success he and his wife, Danielle, founded Mountaindale Press in 2018 - he as president and author, she as CEO - which has grown into a home for a stable of LitRPG and progression-fantasy writers.
His own series anchor the list. The Divine Dungeon, beginning with Dungeon Born, follows a soul trapped in stone that awakens as a sentient, growing dungeon; the Completionist Chronicles gives a terminally ill man a second life in a game world where his obsessive urge to do everything becomes his edge; and Full Murderhobo plays the genre for comedy. His work has been picked among Audible's top fantasy of all time.
His motto - 'Good. Clean. Fun.' - sums up the warm, upbeat spirit he brings to the genre; he hopes, he says, that you 'read every book with a smile'.
