SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “A Parade of Horribles,” the eighth book in Matt Dinniman‘s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series.
The “Dungeon Crawler Carl” lit RPG novel series ended its eighth installment, “A Parade of Horribles,” with several bombshells that will shake up the journey for Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, Ren and their now-expanded party.
But among the many revelations for “Carl” readers (the dungeon AI isn’t an artificial intelligence — it’s an aggregate intelligence of the seemingly extinct Primal race; the nine-tier Scolopendra attack is no myth, but a retelling of history; and Samantha is absolutely even more important to this whole thing than Carl has been suspecting), the most off-the-rails surprise was one author Matt Dinniman did not have planned out when he started writing the final pages of Book 8.
Carl not only fights and “beats” the dungeon’s ultimate boss, the towering, fearsome Scolopendra, but he and Donut inadvertently turn the big bad into a companion who is now hot for Carl. And it looks like they’re going to be stuck with her as the party tries to make its way from where they are now entering the 12th floor all the way through the 18th floor before time runs out on this season of “Dungeon Crawler World.”
“The way I write, when I come into a scene, especially a big scene, I don’t know how it’s gonna go. I have no idea,” Dinniman told Variety. “I have no idea. The book ends with Carl summoning the final boss of the dungeon, which is itself a surprise. I didn’t think I was gonna do that. I knew he had the ability to summon two creatures to the floor, and when I first gave him that ability, I didn’t know what I was gonna pick. When I was writing, I was like, let’s have him summon the final boss of the dungeon, but I don’t want it to be like this big, giant movie climax fight that every other story has, where there’s explosions and fighting. And in the end, you don’t even remember what happens, you just remember that he defeats the bad guy. And I never want that.”
Dinniman continued: “So I ended up adding that scene earlier on, when Prepotente has this issue with the pet biscuits. I actually wrote that right around the same time, and then added it to the front of the book. So my Patreon readers didn’t see that scene until near the end — if that makes sense. So I planted the seed of the pet biscuits existing, and then I added the scene where Scolopendra gets the wrong pet biscuit [from Donut during the fight] and turns into, you know, Sexy Scolopendra.”
Is that the official character name moving forward? Is that what we’re calling her?
“I think we are,” Dinniman said, before the book was released. “I was actually kind of waiting to see if people start doing that, because I’m already writing Book 9, and I am calling her Sexy Scolopendra. I’m not sure if it’s gonna stay that way.
With Scolopendra no longer a foe, but a new member of the crew, does this mean the final two books in the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series won’t be about a big fight finale, but a race to the end? (A race Carl has internally decided he’s going to make sure others survive, even if he gets left behind.)
“Sort of,” Dinniman said. “It’s a race to keep the end from happening.”
Read more from Variety‘s interview with Dinniman about “A Parade of Horribles” below, including an update on the live-action “Dungeon Crawler Carl” TV series.
How did you decide how much time you were going to spend on Floor 10 and how much on Floor 11 in this book?
I knew that I had to keep this one a little bit shorter than the previous one because the previous one was a little too long, I think, in terms of, I promised people I would not end a book in the middle of a floor. So I wanted the vast majority of it to be Floor 10, because I wanted whatever happens on the 11th floor — and I had no idea what that was going to be, but I had the idea that it was going to be cut short. Something fast, like Floor 7, but different. Something that goes by very, very quickly, because we’re going to be doing that probably quite a bit in the last two books. We want to see all 18 floors, but we only have two books to get from basically 12 to 18.
Let’s talk about getting to all 18 floors, because now I’ve got a little bit of a headache trying to understand what the 18th floor is if Scolopendra is now on Floor 11 — because Floor 18 was previously Club Scolopendra, inside Scolopendra.
A big empty room right now. But there’s a door there.
I was sad to see less of Mordecai in this book.
We’ll see more Mordecai in the next books. Definitely.
The ending of this book features many revelations, including that the Scolopendra myth is not a myth at all and the original attacks were real. What’s happening in the dungeon now is based on real events — and the next part of the attacks is called “This Inevitable Ruin,” which happens to be the title of Book 7. What does that mean?
We’re going backwards now. So every title has been intentional.
So eventually we will get to a “Doomsday Device” (the title of Book 2) in some way related to the attacks?
We’ll see.
You’ve been teasing for a while that the AI in “Dungeon Crawler Carl” is different from your average artifical intelligence and now that’s confirmed. To be very clear: the AI is a mass combined consciousness of the seemingly extinct Primal race?
The AI stands for aggregate intelligence, not artificial intelligence.
So is it inherently tied to Carl and his consciousness because he has become a Primal since the start of the Dungeon?
We’ll see. You’re not meant to know. I do know the story, I just don’t know what we’re gonna do with that yet, because there’s lots of stuff going on in his head, and there’s many different ways this could end.
The “river” that Carl says he feels rushing through his mind and seems to intensify the longer the dungeon goes on — is there something more to that, or are fans reading into all those references?
It’s a little bit of both. I know what the river is.
Samantha leaves the group at the end of the book, and we don’t know why or what her larger purpose is here. Is that planned out yet?
Samantha is a good example of I know exactly who she is, but I don’t know how it’s gonna pay off.
You have two books left in the series. You’ve now said that the titles are going in reverse order — so what does that mean for what you have planned for the final two titles?
I don’t know yet. I’m pretty sure I know what the title of Book 10 is going to be, but I’m not sure what we’re gonna do. It’s something I have to fear. This is something that’s actively rattling around in my brain at this very moment. So we’ll figure something out. It’ll be fine.
Your new non-“Carl” book, “Operation Bounce House,” is available as an audibook on Spotify. During a panel at BookCon, a fan actually asked about the availability of your books across platforms, including libraries. How did this partnership with Spotify come about?
For “Operation Bounce House,” specifically, I sold it to Penguin Random House. And when I sold it to them, I sold them the whole kit and caboodle. They got the ebook, the physical books, and the audio rights. And PRH audio is not exclusive on Audible, what they do is they spread it out. It’s in the library system, it’s on Spotify, it’s on Audible. So that’s why “Operation Bounce House” is wide. That’s the term we use, wide. It’s available in all audio platforms, and that’s fantastic.
As of earlier this month, the “Carl” ebooks are now available through libraries via the Libby app. Do you think the audiobooks could make it to libraries and other platforms?
We made an exclusive deal with Audible pretty early on in our careers, and as long as that contract is in place, it’s gonna stay on Audible. However, like I said at the [BookCon] panel, I also put my eBooks — because I still own the ebook rights — on Kindle Unlimited in the very beginning, because that’s what most lit RPG authors do, and I promised the readers that it would stay on Kindle Unlimited. And for Kindle Unlimited, you have the ebooks exclusively on Kindle Unlimited. But recently, because of pressure from fans, they allowed it to be in the library system, because they view it as a non-competitor. And the moment that happened, I allowed them to be in the library system. So now you can borrow the “Carl” ebooks in the library system, and hopefully we can talk Audible into doing the same thing with audiobooks. And I actually think that may happen if there’s enough pressure. So hopefully we can get the fans pressuring Audible to allow the libraries to have it. That would be fantastic.
It’s now been announced that the live-action “Dungeon Crawler Carl” TV series has been set up at Peacock. What made that the right home for it and what did you see during development that encouraged you to proceed with it being live action?
So live action has always been the talk, because we wanted to try live action. Seth MacFarlane’s company, Fuzzy Door, is already at Peacock with the show “Ted.” And they have a great relationship, and I was very happy to get there. And as far as anything else that’s happening, I haven’t seen much, personally. Nothing has changed since we last talked, to be honest with you. That news had already happened, it just hadn’t been announced yet.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
