We’ve filled you in quite extensively about Virginia author (and, yes, occasional contributor to RVA Magazine) James Wayland, and his current Kickstarter campaign to fund his second novel, Dirty Southside Jam. A rollicking thriller about two small-town losers who stumble onto a big score and get way more than they bargained for, Dirty Southside Jam stands in contrast to Wayland’s previous novel, Trailer Park Trash & Vampires, in that it involves no supernatural elements.
We’ve filled you in quite extensively about Virginia author (and, yes, occasional contributor to RVA Magazine) James Wayland, and his current Kickstarter campaign to fund his second novel, Dirty Southside Jam. A rollicking thriller about two small-town losers who stumble onto a big score and get way more than they bargained for, Dirty Southside Jam stands in contrast to Wayland’s previous novel, Trailer Park Trash & Vampires, in that it involves no supernatural elements. However, it does still focus on life in the more downtrodden sections of small-town America, and it’s definitely packed with action, suspense, and dark comedy of the first order. We wanted to get a glimpse of Wayland’s creative process, so we got in touch with him to talk about the transition from supernatural to non-supernatural thematic elements and capturing small town life in literary form, as well as how his Kickstarter experience has been thus far. Here’s what he had to say:
What made you switch gears from the horror genre to the thriller genre?
As a reader, I favor horror and thrillers, and when a thriller has a real mean streak, I’m not entirely sure that the two genres are all that different. I think that books like Red Dragon by Thomas Harris or Shattered by Dean Koontz are thrillers because they lack any of the supernatural elements typically found in a horror novel, but they’re still scary as hell. I’m cool with that kind of material, and I wanted to do something along those lines—though, like always, I had to change things up.
What makes Dirty Southside Jam unique?
Well, it seems like most of the thrillers that I read have an urban setting. Even when the setting happens to be rural, it usually winds up being a desert or a forest—it seems like thrillers are set in sprawling cities or massive expanses of some sort of wilderness.
I have spent most of my life in Henry County and Patrick County, small patches of countryside in good old Virginia, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen that type of small town used as the setting for a thriller. It’s definitely uncommon, and I wanted to write a thriller that unfolds in my neck of woods.
Plus, too many thrillers utilize a cop or a soldier as the protagonist. Maybe an ex-cop or a veteran, or maybe even a spy or some sort of government official, someone we expect to find at the wheel of such a tale. Not only did I want to get away from the cities and those primeval landscapes, but I wanted to ditch the traditional good guy as well. I wanted to write a “South Bassett Thriller”—that’s actually how I referred to Dirty Southside Jam as I was writing it. I wanted it to happen in a little town, and I wanted to trade the cops and robbers for potheads and hicks.
Are you pleased with how the book turned out?
Of course! When you spend this long with a story, you’re going to develop some affection for it, so I’m obviously pleased with the book. I think the best thing about Dirty Southside Jam is the way it allows me to put all of my strengths on display. There’s excitement, there’s a lot of humor, and there are some nasty bits that should make my readers cringe. Regardless of the genre I’m working in, I like to bring a lot of different elements into play, and Dirty Southside Jam definitely allowed me to do that.
There’s a road at the center of the book that has a lot of character, a dangerous stretch of highway with a lot of history. In many ways, I used that road as a model of sorts; I wanted the book to have lots of twists and turns, and I wanted it to veer from action to humor, and then swing back to action and suspense. It’s a short book, and it’s fast-paced, so whenever it seems to be settling down something happens to shake things up.
So, yeah, I’m very pleased.
James (center) with the makers of Young Blood: Evil Intentions
You’re trying to gain funding for the book on Kickstarter. Simple question: why should people back Dirty Southside Jam?
First off, I’m doing my best to reward everyone for their contributions. $10 pledges are rewarded with copies of the book. I’m offering up signed copies of Dirty Southside Jam and Trailer Park Trash & Vampires for bigger pledges, and I’m also willing to put any donor’s name in the Acknowledgements section of the book if they throw down $50. If someone goes all in and pledges $100, they get the books and I’m willing to name a character after them in the upcoming sequel to Trailer Park Trash & Vampires. All of the books that I write take place in the same vicinity, and there are some crossover elements in play. Readers may notice a few nods to TPT&V in Dirty Southside Jam, and one of the primary characters from Dirty Southisde Jam also plays a pivotal role in the TPT&V sequel. All of this stuff is interconnected, so it makes sense to bring everything together, both on the page and in the rewards I’m dishing out to my backers.
Secondly, I’m not the type of writer who has any easy ins in this world, and my work is offbeat enough to compound that problem. Seriously, I’m not an English professor, I have no claims to any sort of celebrity status, and I don’t have a glamorous career—think judge, doctor, detective, something of that ilk—that’s going to open doors for me. I’m just a dude who likes to write, and I’ve been doing it for a long time. I like to think I’m pretty damn good at it, but that’s a small piece of the puzzle in this day and age. There are enough of those cats out there churning out the same old same old, but if you’re in the mood for a South Bassett thriller, with lovable losers who smoke pot and drive fast squaring off against crooked cops and redneck drug dealers, you need me. You need to help me muscle my way into the scene. I’ll back your play with an entertaining book, I promise you that. We may not win any awards along the way, but we’re going to have a good time.
What will you use the funds for if your Kickstarter campaign is a success?
My primary purpose is to land a stellar cover, and I want to hook my editor up as well. Excess funds would allow for some marketing and broader avenues of distribution. It’s all about making sure that I’m giving readers the product they deserve, and I love my readers. I think they deserve a lot, and this campaign is all about making sure that the copy of Dirty Southside Jam that they get to read is the best-looking and most entertaining novel that I can provide them with. That’s my goal.
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James Wayland’s Kickstarter campaign for Dirty Southside Jam ends on Saturday, so you’ve got just under 72 hours left in which to offer a pledge. $10 is really a great price for an independent trade paperback (most publishers charge $14-18 for a similar book), so you really can’t beat the rewards he’s offering. Click here to pledge: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/102269573/dirty-southside-jam
And if you’d like to read an excerpt of Dirty Southside Jam, click here to do so: https://rvamag.comarticles/full/22202/check-out-an-excerpt-from-james-waylands-dirty-southside-jam
