All Roads Lead to DIXIANA
Greetings, faithful readers, I return from a period of blog silence with news: five years after I began writing it, the Dixiana saga is now almost publication-ready. My, how time flies when you’re in the throes of creative apotheosis.
Links within the site will take you to numerous posts about the process of crafting this nine-part Neo-Southern Gothic saga, but below dwell details regarding all nine forthcoming episodes of this darkly comic literary journey through the history of fictional Edgewater County, SC, as seen through the eyes of over a dozen major characters.
All this personal achievement comes with a price, though: If the life’s-work writer’s journey of Dixiana represents my literary white whale, I ponder Ahab—if he had actually bested and caught Moby Dick, what would the obsessed commander of the Pequod have done next? Answering this will inform and inspire the next steps I take on my own life-path, likely offering fodder for future blog posts, journal entries, and who knows what other forms of writing.
For now, though, I offer a full-blown ebook cover reveal, along with synopses of this work of fiction I dreamed of writing for decades. As it starts becoming available later this year, I hope readers will find the task of absorbing Dixiana as fulfilling as its author found the process of creating it.
BOOK ONE: DIRT SURFER
After cuckolded ‘fruitshake’ millionaire Roy E. Pettus is called home to Tillman Falls, SC as the unhappy heir to his grandfather’s semi-famous honkytonk, The Dixiana, on whose stage everyone from Johnny Cash to Roy’s grandmother, ‘Mama Runelle,’ has played, he finds its glory days rest long in the past. With his marriage in tatters and time on his hands, however, Roy sees in his moribund hometown a place he can remake in his own image, as well as settle old scores with heartbreaking girlfriends, bullies, organized crime figures, and pretty much anyone upon whom he decides to turn the ire of his grief-stricken sights. It’s all about control with this rich guy, and the reality he’s been handed, including a ninety year-old grandmother for whom to care as well as a controversial Confederate flag mural half the town wants gone, isn’t suitable. Right or wrong, he’ll forge a new reality—for him, for all of them. And anybody who doesn’t like it? T-S.
BOOK TWO: BLACK BLADE
Roy turns first to the staff of The Dixiana, whom he treats to a dressing down for the ages; they know who will now be in charge. Meanwhile, the debate about the mural on the side of the honkytonk remains a bone of contention, one of many issues discussed by Roy and his sort-of cousin Button Sykes, a hippie and no-nukes activist who helps mellow out the stressed prodigal son by turning him onto Eastern ways of thinking. The thread of mysticism goes beyond Button’s New Age outlook—many think the ‘General Reb‘ mural painted on the side of The Dixiana itself seems to have magical powers, ensuring winning seasons for the Southeastern University sports teams on which the local rednecks risk their wagering money. Getting rid of the mural won’t be as easy as Roy would like—or will it?
BOOK THREE: DOUBTLESS THE SEA
As tensions run high over the mural, the ultimate fate of the honkytonk, a suicide attempt by Roy’s estranged wife Creedence, and an enormous misunderstanding over whether a memorial service for Roy’s grandfather Reynolds ‘Rabbit’ Pettus is to be public or private, Roy seizes control of the mural controversy with a rash and bold act that forever settles the matter.
Much, however, remains unresolved, with supporting characters facing issues such as dementia, adultery, alcohol recovery, and the disposition of a rapidly putrefying dead body, a storyline that introduces key players Christy Beaudock, an abused, developmentally challenged teen, and Howdy Shull, the town crazy who walks the streets pontificating about ancient Egypt, Hindu mysticism, and other esoteric knowledge. Their strange relationship will drive the conflict in the subsequent books to a place of confrontation that turns deadly for Roy and Button.
BOOK FOUR: CRACKERBOX PALACE
With his estranged wife Creedence in rehab and grandmother Mama Runelle taking the death of her husband in stride, Roy zeroes in on his plan to tear down The Dixiana and build in its place a mixed-use retail development anchored by his coffee shop brand, the Carolina Beanery. Everyone’s fired except Button, in whom Roy thinks he might have found a new mate. Only problem is that she’s not only like family? And all? But gay, dude, and pining for her lost love Heather Ponderview. Roy’s challenges also include the fulfilling of his grandfather’s last request, which is to put on a folk music festival on the town green, an event he’d never been allowed to stage by the stuffy, Old South fussbudgets running the show in Tillman Falls.
Meanwhile, Christy Beaudock, fired Dixiana employee Newbie Harrell, and town wacko Howdy Shull form an unlikely friendship that coalesces around diminutive hippie chick Button Sykes, whose petition to put a Free Speech tent on the town green, a kind of information clearinghouse to hand out environmentally conscious literature, has been approved by town council (but only so long “as it don’t turn into no Occupy Edgewater County mess,” as she’s warned). It’s a quaint idea—she fancies herself a pamphleteer in the grand tradition of the American revolution. She’s worried that the high cancer rates in Edgewater County, SC, have something to do with the aging Sugeree River Nuclear Station where they’re building more reactors. She’s also worried as heck about the sore throat that won’t go away, and the stitch in her side, and the weight loss. Cancer runs in her family. Hell, she ought to know—her dad used to run the plant. Until he died of cancer.
BOOK FIVE: THE PARTNERS
Roy explores the idea of forming a merchant’s association in Tillman Falls of like-minded individuals to challenge the existing power structures represented by the Edgewater Ladies’ Munificence Society (ELMS) as well as the ‘back room boys’ like gangster Jezmund Rembert who have long directed the underground economy of Edgewater County, and who once did it out of the old ‘upstairs’ VIP rooms in The Dixiana. Roy, forging new friendships with musician-slash-restauranteur Manny Theodore, arts center director Rebecca LaFreniere, as well as a former childhood bully and nemesis turned adult ally Cecil Waugh, also reaffirms important childhood partnerships such as Dobbs Vandegrift, editor of the local rag the Edgewater Advocate.
But when Roy, still simmering in confrontational mode, reveals his hateful plans for the beloved if decrepit honkytonk, he finds himself physically attacked both by the husband of the disgraced Dixiana manager he fired (Trudy Pirkle, also his first love) as well as Roy’s own cousin Mervin, who wants to live in an old family house Roy now owns. Button’s lectures about letting go and not using dark energy like anger to control others seem to settle in Roy’s spirit along with the blows he receives to his body. The old Roy would’ve reduced those attackers to rubble, verbally and maybe physically, though violence is far from his nature: His vicious words are his broadsword, the metaphorical Black Blade. Maybe he’ll try forgiveness and patience now. Maybe.
BOOK SIX: DOCTRINE AND RITUAL
Christy Beaudock discovers Howdy Shull isn’t as smart as he seems to be from all his lectures on ancient history and other esoteric subjects—it’s WAY over Christy’s head, and yet not, somehow. In the spooky basement of the old abandoned textile mill that used to be the economic hub of the county, Christy and Newbie discover Howdy may be into more than the gas he’s huffing and the wacky history lessons he spins out in his mellifluous Old South brogue: his behavior seems downright ritualistic. A circle in the floor. A symbol on the wall. It’s a hooked cross that Christy knows must be Satanic.
A powerful sense of presence like Christy has never known comes over him. Forget that gas huffing, though. He’ll leave that to Newbie, another little druggie and pill popper like Christy’s no-good Daddy. He took care of that problem, didn’t he, and would do the same to Newbie, Howdy, or anyone else he finds irritating. Who keep him from the flight simulator game he so loves. Best thing in his life. One day he will fly. His dreams confirm it. Maybe Roy Pettus, the big bossman and hobby pilot who keeps telling Christy to stay away from Button—grrrr, Christy thinks—will one day take him flying in the Piper Meridian Roy owns. This cockblocking by Roy Pettus, as Newbie explains the concept to emotionally inchoate, physically enormous teenager Christy, feels extra super duper irritating—Christy has fallen in love with Button.
As he tries to reconnect with his reluctant and recovering wife, Roy is involved in twin climaxes involving police shootings: one in which Roy’s trying to help an injured pet, and another in which a hail of gunfire ushers a major character off the stage. In all this activity comes the revelation of a possible supernatural element, a firebug of a ghost named Agatha of Aberdeen who appears to several characters in the roiling flames of what becomes an involuntary self-immolation no one involved will ever forget. Fires have plagued Edgewater County for two hundred years. Agatha, a busy and nefarious spirit.
In the end much remains unsettled, but a trip to Heather Ponderview‘s mountain estate sets Button on a path of possible reconciliation with her long-lost great love, while the revelation of a secret from Heather’s past casts in a different light all that happened between them. Roy’s inability to reconnect with his wife Creedence, who has grown into her independent role running the coffee shop down on Sedge Island where they lived together, remains his primary conflict, and while he’s growing spiritually and learning to let go, our hero nonetheless makes a dark bargain that belies this progress: instead of trusting Creedence’s growth and recovery, Roy pays an island cop, Phil Webhannet, to keep tabs on her. What Roy doesn’t know, however, is just how much his estranged wife, lonely and confused, has become attracted to the same policeman he’s paying to shadow her.
BOOK SEVEN: THIS INSUBSTANTIAL PAGEANT
Alone in Edgewater County, further rejected by estranged wife Creedence and with no real passion or drive, our hero Roy Earl Pettus wallows and dreams of fading away into the mountains like he’d visited at Heather Ponderview’s with friend and spiritual advisor Button Sykes. As Roy already possesses everything a modern human being could ostensibly need, his decision regarding The Dixiana’s future will test his newfound sense of love and healing, and he begins to suspect that life can be made into whatever he wishes. News that another important figure in his life has fallen ill dredges up all of the desire to control he’s tried so hard to release, however.
The planning of the Rabbit Pettus Memorial Folk Music Festival, Roy’s last act of service to his past in Edgewater County, proceeds apace, but authorities requiring an inordinate amount of security measures, including the denial of a permit to an Middle Eastern vendor with family members on a watch list, irritate him beyond measure. Roy says, hey, this is my show, and I decide who’s allowed to vend! T-S, he’s told by the DHS and the cops. None of this sits well with the bossman.
Meanwhile, Christy Beaudock, finding a book on magic in a garbage can and pursuing the wicked left-hand path, hatches a plan of revenge against Roy E. Pettus: stealing the bossman’s Piper Meridian and flying away from Edgewater County forever. Suddenly Newbie Harrell seems less ally than impediment to what Christy has in mind. Or might Newbie prove useful in another capacity: that of a literal blood sacrifice, one offered in order to make Christy powerful indeed?
Creedence Pettus, struggling to decide between being single or resuming her marriage, is smitten with Phil Webhannet, but the cop remains mysteriously steadfast in his refusal to engage with her. Roy confronts his wife about the real reason for her reticence to rejoin with him. Just who might be involved besides the two of them. The answer resolves much, setting them on a course of closure.
Meanwhile, Button Sykes faces her greatest spiritual challenge yet, a difficult transit that can only be completed with the help of friends Roy and Heather, each assisting in their own ways. Button, courageous, thought herself into her predicament, however, so maybe she’ll imagine herself out of it, too.
BOOK EIGHT: HONKYTONK MAN
Here we follow young Rabbit Pettus, Mama Runelle, Button’s grandfather Burnham Sykes and a dozen other major characters through the years 1933 to 2003 in Edgewater County, and elsewhere in the world: War experiences from Panama to the Rhineland to Port Moresby to Da Nang, the formation of a family, farming the frozen North Dakota prairie, the origins of The Dixiana and the power structures in Edgewater County, the deaths of Roy’s parents, the many famous visitors to the honkytonk, back room deals, heartbreaks, betrayals, losses and grief the likes of which no one will ever fully know without living through it themselves all comprise the crucial and edifying flashback episode of the DIXIANA Saga.
After this section, we’re left with only a few questions to answer… but they’re big ones.
BOOK NINE: RETURN ECHO
While Roy continues to plan the festival, the illness of a pet proves crucial in the disposition of Roy and Creedence’s broken marriage, while all other characters find their threads coalescing for the last time there on the town green in the heart of Edgewater County, SC during the folk music festival.
Unfolding under a perfect springtime Carolina sky, however, forces of darkness gather, with other figures planning mayhem independently of Christy’s intention to disrupt the festival. Certain actors in the climax appear supernatural, but in this marvelous, mysterious, unfolding dream of life, who can truly say what is and isn’t real?
In any case, a number of familiar players, in particular Button, contribute to either the success or failure of Roy and Christy’s particular missions, both of which involve leaving Edgewater County for keeps, the fondest desire for both of these crucial characters hurtling toward a final confrontation with each other.
An epilogue picks back up quite a long while after the end of the book proper, when the surviving characters will receive one last surprise visitor from Edgewater County, a mythical character whose appearance ties the entire saga together with a neat little thematic ribbon. The end.
And… that’s it for Dixiana, at least until the prequel Mansion of High Ghosts is released in late 2020. For now, thanks for taking the time to learn about the Dixiana series.
About dmac
James D. McCallister is a South Carolina author of novels, short stories, journalism, creative nonfiction and poetry. His neo-Southern Gothic novel series DIXIANA was released in 2019.