Of all the places Gig Harbor author Matt Dinniman likes to write, the most easily accessible one — his home office — rarely gets used. He might go to a coffee shop, the library or maybe even Panera Bread (which he knows closes at 9 p.m.). Every day it will be different, and most likely not at home.
“I can’t work at the same place two days in a row,” Dinniman said.
Whatever Dinniman’s system for writing is, it works. He’s set to release the eighth book in his bestselling “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series in May. But first, his latest, a stand-alone called “Operation Bounce House,” is out Feb. 10 from Ace. The book follows Oliver Lewis, who lives peacefully with his sister, Lulu, on the planet of New Sonora. He oversees the crop rotations on his grandfather’s farm with the help of a squad of robots.
Many years before Oliver’s generation, interplanetary colonists left civilization on Earth to settle new societies across the galaxy. Before he died, the elder Lewis helped settle New Sonora and worked as a mechanic and engineer for the planet’s integrated robot population. An AI unit known as Roger acts as both a companion and teacher to Oliver and Lulu.
After years of peace with Earth, megacorporation Apex Industries funds an “eviction action” across the planet with the intent to eliminate the New Sonora population. Their mode of eviction is a video game called Operation Bounce House. Instead of traveling to the planet or creating AI soldiers, Apex charges Earth players to remotely operate a vehicle (called a “mech”) on New Sonora with the expressed intent to kill everyone in their path. Oliver and his crew have five days to protect their planet and people from mass destruction.
“Operation Bounce House” is a departure for Dinniman, who is widely known for the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series. Dinniman originally self-published the series on Amazon, where it sold “several hundred thousand copies,” he said. The first “Carl” book was traditionally published by Ace in August 2024 and went on to sell more than a million copies. The series has been featured in The New York Times, television rights have sold to Seth MacFarlane’s production company and the graphic novel adaptation is set to release this May.
Dinniman was writing “Operation Bounce House” and the eighth installment in the “Carl” series, “A Parade of Horribles” (out May 12 from Ace), simultaneously.
“I was doing two at the same time, which was new for me,” Dinniman said. “It wasn’t all that easy, honestly … I think I work best under super crazy tight deadlines.”
The idea for a video game-inspired story came to Dinniman while playing an online Call of Duty game. “There’s these 12-year-olds arguing over which one had more sex with my mom the night before,” he recalled. He said the anonymity of the online space “allows you to be a terrible person,” and added that video games are a prime example of anonymity breeding negativity.
Players from Earth hurl insults like the ones Dinniman encountered toward Oliver and the inhabitants of New Sonora. But Dinniman takes it a step further. One of the first remote players Oliver comes across has a name on their mech: “X_SuBhuM@nSlæy3r_X.” Earthers begin referring to New Sonora residents as “subhuman.”
“They called us that because our genes had been altered so we could better survive on this planet,” Oliver says. The inhabitants of New Sonora look and sound exactly like the people on Earth. But throughout the book, the people of Earth continue to see the planet colonies as an “other.”
Dinniman’s stories unfold moment-by-moment as he writes them. He doesn’t know how the books are going to turn out — or what messages are going to take hold — but larger themes of political activism and upholding morality make their way into “Operation Bounce House.”
“I strongly feel that words and worlds that are devoid of that sort of thing, that undercurrent rippling through whatever’s happening, don’t feel authentic,” he said. At one point in the book, after hearing about the regularity of gun violence on Earth, Oliver reflects that the planet sounds like a “dystopian nightmare.”
In between the fighting and conversations about how AI has radically altered their world, Oliver and his friends find time for another passion of Dinniman’s. The group plays in a band called “Rhythm Mafia,” with Oliver on drums, his friend Sam (who wears a relic of a hat “for some sports team called the Seattle Supersonics”) on bass and a few others on guitar and vocals. Oliver and Sam don’t play to make it big but just to hang out.
Dinniman picked up the bass as a child and has been in bands ever since. He’s also an avid bass collector (“I have, I think, 27 of them now”) and plays in a group called Digging for Change. His book tour schedule has proved difficult to make gigs around the Tacoma area, but like Oliver and Sam, it’s all about showing up when he can and spending time with friends. The band plays a significant role in the book’s plot, and Dinniman leaves plenty of room for bass and drummer jokes.
Another new element around “Operation Bounce House” for Dinniman revolved around his writing process: he wasn’t able to post chapters and solicit feedback on his Patreon like he’s done with the “Carl” series. Dinniman’s publishing contract for the series is unlike many others in the industry. Ace/Penguin Random House only has the rights to sell print copies of the books, which leaves Dinniman free to post chapters online and ask his community of fans for feedback and suggestions.
Traditional publishing, he says, is “so different than self-publishing. Self-publishing is what I’ve been doing since, like, 2016-2017. And those worlds are very different. And they don’t understand each other at all … It’s really interesting being someone that’s on both sides of the fence.”
Without chapter-by-chapter feedback, Dinniman felt the pressure of writing what he calls a “grown-up book” alone.
“I’m terrified because it’s a really important book,” he said. “I need to show people that I can write stuff that’s not ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl.’”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com ’
