Carl Walmsley’s stories have appeared in anthologies such as Death Dealers & Diabolists and Rage of the Behemoth. He’s also contributed material for various RPGs including Traveller, Warhammer Fantasy and RuneQuest. Let’s find out more about the author of “Intrigue in the Unassailable City.”

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
I was lucky enough to grow up with a mum who enjoyed telling me stories. Every time she read a book – often something with supernatural elements – she would give me the child-friendly version. This was probably just as well, as she loved Stephen King!

When I was fourteen, I changed schools and one of my new friends introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. Again, this was a real stroke of luck as it was a fairly obscure hobby back then. I played one adventure, loved it, and asked if I could run the next game. Thirty years later I am still running them.

It was this new hobby that led to my first regular writing work. For about a decade, I produced articles for Signs & Portents, a hobby and gaming magazine. From this, I got the chance to write roleplaying books for games like Runequest and Traveller – and my particular favourite, Deus Vult.

Alongside this, I started writing short stories. I was fortunate enough to have some of these published – one of which was shortlisted for the Harper’s Pen award. I was just building up a head of steam when the first of my lovely daughters arrived; for a few years I set the pen aside and picked up the nappy-bag! Now, they are both a little older and I am finding time to return to my writing.

Your story "Intrigue in the Unassailable City" (from Death Dealers & Diabolists) has a rather unusual setting. Tell us a bit about it and how you came up with it.
I have always enjoyed world-building. I am fascinated by unusual settings and terrain, and the ways in which they would affect people’s lives. Humans are incredibly adaptive – put them in a tough situation and they will often find a way to survive.

I am also a very visual writer; if I can’t see it, I can’t write about it. The Unassailable City arrived in my head more or less fully formed – from its opulent white-stoned summit, to the shells and flotsam shanties at its base. The idea of so many levels of society being crammed together within a finite space seemed like a fruitful setting for stories.

I very much hope to write further adventures in The Unassailable City! I have an idea for one group of people who have manged to live below sea level…

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
If you want to write, then you need to read. A lot. Growing up, I ticked off all the ‘aspiring nerd’ literature – Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, David Gemmell’s heroic tales, and many more. As an English teacher, I’ve had a chance to read more widely. Without this, I may never have read The Great Gatsby (my favourite novel), or the poetry of Tennyson and Rossetti, or…well, you get the idea.

I think we learn something from everything we read. As a writer, you should probably try to be a bit more aware of that process – but it I think happens whether you are or not.

In recent years, I’ve come to admire the brevity of Bernard Cornwell – the man never wastes a word – and the beautiful imagination of Mike Mignola; there’s such a wonderful symbiosis between his words and pictures.

Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
You’ve hit the nail on the head there! There are so many ways to get the word out – but that means there’s a lot of competing noise too.

The truth is that, between full-time teaching and a family, I can just about make time for some writing. There really isn’t any left over for lots of publicity. I post on Facebook, I let my students know when something’s been published…

I hope that it will be different once I have a novel in print – I’m just finishing off my first, now. I might be able to roll back the teaching a little and give myself the chance to pursue the various aspects of the writing life more fully.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
I have tried writing in different ways, for different audiences. I don’t think that there’s ever any wasted writing – you can learn something from everything you do, even the bad stuff – but I’ve definitely come back to writing things that appeal to me. I found there to be something inauthentic about focusing too much on what you think others want. If I have something to say, I want to say it.

Having said that, I do enjoy writing in different genres – I just prefer to think of this as a different version of my voice.

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
My most recent story (‘Virtue is its Own Reward’) was published in Dailysciencefiction.com. I won’t say too much about this as it is available for free online. Please, go have a look!

I have a few other tales working their way through the selection process – everything from a vampire baby to a cursed gunslinger! There’s also that novel I mentioned – currently titled The Goblin’s Recipe Book.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
I recently finished Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King. That was fantastic; I always felt that Joe could be a little sadistic in his early novels – for me, this book perfectly balances that gritty world his characters inhabit with something touchingly human and tender.

An ‘older’ book that I have recently enjoyed was Pride and Prejudice. A younger me would have bemoaned that lack of plot. Now, I am happy to take a long soak in that beautiful writing and enjoy the bubbles of sardonic humour.

Any final words?
If anything good can come out of the world’s current Covid-19 crisis, perhaps it will be that we all read a little more. If we can’t go outside as much and experience the world first-hand, perhaps we can do so through the pages of a good book. I know that I intend to.

I would also like to say thank you to my lovely wife, without whom I would never have the time to do any writing at all. Effectively, she co-authors everything I do!