You should approach this as a two step process.
First make your api installable using pip by creating a setup.py file for the project and use setuptools. There is quite a lot to go through and I recommend you follow some of the examples out there to go through the steps before you start tweaking to get your own project installable this way. Extension in e.g. C that need compilation can be included.¹
Once that works correctly, you can use stdeb to base a Debian installable package from that (.deb).
The facilities for building an rpm are built-in, but require the rpm utility to be available.²
¹ If you get confused about setuptools, distutils, distribute, etc., welcome to the club. Read this stackoverflow answer for some comparison and history, and put this under your pillow
² It takes some care to get this to work, it is possible to have a working setup.py that doesn't work (well) as .rpm or .deb. Start with the working examples and go from there
