After several hours of looking for the answer I've had no luck.
Can anyone point me to an example of how to create a torrent and seed that brand new torrent in python?
So far I can download just fine and I can produce torrent files.  However, when I try to start my own torrent I get stuck on downloading rather than seeding.  Obviously this is a problem since the swarm contains only my host, which is supposed to be the seeder.
Any advice?
Make sure to set the download directory to the place where the original files reside, when adding the torrent to the session. The torrent will detect that the files are already there and hash them to verify that they are correct, and seed any pieces that matched the expected hash.
You can force libtorrent to trust you that the pieces/files are all there by setting the seed_mode in the add_torrent_params when adding the torrent. This will make libtorrent assume the files are there and not check them until they are requested.
How do I seed a directory or file using python-libtorrent?