Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Carl Wilhoyte
Book Title: Ultimart
Released: 04/23/25
Genre: Dystopian SciFi
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “Ultimart”?
Wilhoyte: It was kinda hard not to write this book. The idea came about post-Great Recession and a lot of disillusionment about capitalism and the systems that were supposed there to protect us. Guess what? That was all an illusion and much of the American economy is three scams in a trenchcoat. I picked up the idea post-2016 and worked on it on and off. COVID hit and that really gave me the juice to talk about social fracturing and brittle, precarious lives we're all forced to live. So, I guess the inspiration was "living in modern America".
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Wilhoyte: Corwin Scaggs is a name I got from a spam email I received. It was such a weird and awful name, I had to use it. It felt like something low-rent, scuzzy, and assigned like a serial number. Coyote Voyd was a combo of things, I wanted her to have a type of enigmatic but frightening energy, kind of like a coyote on the edge of a campfire. Her last name spoke to her vacuous sociopathic soul. Best part, it's a "brand name" she chose herself.
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Wilhoyte: I tend to gestate on an idea for a long time. I write a lot of notes and really only draft when I feel something has the gas to be something. I also don't edit or rewrite extensively, I'm pretty confident of something when it gets to a drafting stage. Editing happens in the idea and notes stage for me.
If "Ultimart” were adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Wilhoyte: If they made this into a movie, I'd eat a shoe on camera like Werner Herzog. But if somehow they wanted to spend $80 million on this turkey, and miraculously gave me casting approval, I'd say Sam Rockwell, LaKeith Stanfield, or Steven Yeun. For Coyote, I'd say either Naomi Watts or Denise Gough. There's something about blonde white women from Europe that allows them to play the best sociopathic Americans possible. Kathryn Hahn would be an interesting choice, too.
When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Wilhoyte: When I'm stuck on something, I just don't work on it. I step away and work on something else. Typically, I find writer's block to be a combination of mental exhaustion but also idea exhaustion. I always work on the part of a book or story that I'm excited to work on. I always have a collection of ideas to develop. Typically, I outline pretty extensively and know the shape of something going in, so if one chapter or story is kinda not going anywhere, I'll just jump somewhere else where I'm more confident.
Lastly, you need to give yourself permission to write crap. You can always edit and revise later, but an unwritten draft tends to stay unwritten.
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Wilhoyte: Yeah: don't. I'm serious, don't start writing unless you're ready for a thankless chore 70% of the time. If you want to do it as a fun hobby, go nuts, but if you're wanting to publish and get out in front of people, it's a marathon. I find too many aspiring writers are really in love with some romanticized idea of writing than the actual work of it. They think it's sitting in a NYC coffee shop with a scarf and a scone. They love the propaganda image of the superstar writer. The preponderance of AI slop shortcuts (AKA hack non-writing for frauds) is a clear hallmark that some people just don't have the patience and discipline for this. Using AI is admitting you don't have what it takes.
So if you want to write and be serious about it, have the expectation that no one will care about your writing. You need to be prepared for that, because that's a genuine possibility. You may never sell a single book and you need to be happy with your work despite that. Also, there's an enormous amount of non-writing work that follows finishing a book: publishing, marketing, and building your career as a writer. It's also very expensive to make a professional-looking book, so be prepared for that. Don't half-ass it and don't daydream. Do the work.
What is your favorite book, genre, and/or author?
Wilhoyte: I tend to love weird, cross-genre speculative fiction. It has to have a strong central premise and get to the good stuff as soon as possible. I simply don't have the stomach for an 700 page book anymore.
Favorite book? That's a tough one. I'd probably have to say Breakfast of Champion by Vonnegut. He's the blueprint for like 90% of what I do. A wizard.
What are you working on next?
Wilhoyte: I got a few things in the oven. One is a direct followup to Ultimart, but that book was a pain in the ass to write and also extremely emotionally heavy, making it hard to stay in that depressed headspace during, well, what we're experiencing now. That may take a break for a bit.
Another is a modern retelling of Frankenstein told through an epistolary structure, like a fictional non-fiction historical novel.
My favorite right now, the one I'm most excited about, is dumb gory fun book that asks the question "What if an NPR art critic had to become the Doom Guy?"
Interested in checking out the book for yourself?
Find it for purchase here
Want to learn more about Ultimart and Carl Wilhoyte?
Bluesky: @carlwilhoyte.bsky.social
Instagram: @carlwilhoyte
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