Tyler Whitesides: Janitors School of Garbage: Volume 1

My friend Tyler Whitesides stopped by the Book Drop Mic to discuss his return to the wonderful world of Janitors. Listen and learn why he felt inspired to revisit his beloved universe of garbage.

Buy Tyler's book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1639931686

Learn more about Tyler:
http://www.tylerwhitesides.com

Learn more about Jason:
http://www.jasonfwright.com

About the book:
Ordinary trash becomes extraordinary at the magical school of garbage―a summer school for young garbologists.

Garbage has come to life as animated creatures called junklets and are wreaking havoc in elementary schools. Only the specially trained kids from the magical School of Garbage can stop the rise of the trash monsters. With the school’s magical janitorial supplies―brooms that can fly, toilet plungers that can reverse gravity, and mops that can capture anything in their strings―the ordinary becomes extraordinary. 

Landon Murphy discovers the undercover janitorial world when his soon-to-be-stepsister, Jade Shu, guides him through a magical portal at the bottom of a dumpster that leads to a fantastical landfill and the home of the School of Garbage, where she has secretly been a student for the last few years. 

Problems at home with his family make it hard for Landon to feel like he belongs anywhere, but he is quickly welcomed as a student at the intriguing school for wizard-like janitors. His class on the science of garbology is like being a crime-scene investigator, and every student gets to bond with one of three Servites―small, magical animals who exhale enchanted dust to help kids focus or be creative or have energy. 

Landon and Jade―along with allies from the original series―are tasked to take out the trash and figure out who―or what―is behind the mysterious garbage attacks and stop them before the entire world is literally trashed.

This podcast is brought to you by InkVeins, your source for book publicity, promo, press releases and more. Text 540-212-4095 for more information.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Hello, my friends, welcome back to the Book Drop Mike brought to you by Inkvames, your source for book publicity, promo and press releases. A reminder, folks, that Scar Dakota is now available on e-book and audio, and a hardcover is coming in May. I cannot wait. I finally got my hands on a hardcover. I had some advanced copies shipped to me by air and they are gorgeous. It looks so good. Big shout out to my friend Brandon Dorman, the illustrator. The cover is just, it's stunning into the printer, it's just. You're going to love it. And, as I said, if you don't want to wait, you can pick up the ebook and the audio Audio, by the way, by Kirby, our good friend Kirby Hayborn, available now Every place. You get your audiobooks All right.

Speaker 1 0:47

I have known today's guest boy for probably a decade or so, but I'm not sure we have been in the same room since then. His name is Tyler Whitesides. His latest of many books is called Janitor's School of Garbage. Tyler, what's up? Hey, how you doing, I am am doing. When is the last time we were in the same room? Do you have any idea?

Speaker 1 1:11

I mean I think maybe 2016 yeah, somewhere some eight years ago, eight, ten years ago. It's been a minute, it's been a minute, it's been a minute and uh, janitor's, the original Janitor series was blowing up then that was the five book original series. Is that right, five in that series?

Speaker 2 1:33

Yeah, the first one of that came out Janitor's volume one released in 2011, and then we did one a year, so 2015,. That series concluded.

Speaker 1 1:43

Awesome. Okay, all right, and I'm sure we have people listening that are familiar with that. So before we talk about what's new, let me just say anyone that looks up in the show notes you'll see links to all the good stuff Tyler's doing, including to this series, to this new series. You may notice this book has been out for a little while and, tyler, you don't need to give us your full health history per HIPAA guidelines, right? But I know you had a little bit of an interesting kind of a trial and a season of your life last fall when this book hit that sort of prevented you from maybe doing quite as much press and promotion as you might have. Is that right?

Speaker 2 2:20

Yeah, it kind of took everything I had leading up to just the pub date doing a little bit of publicity and stuff, and then I was down for the count with some health problems which out on when that original release happened just because of some health problems.

Speaker 1 2:52

Yeah, no, I get that, and I actually had an awful case of the summer flu when one of my novels came out back more than a decade ago and I had to cancel some dates the week that the book came out, some one because I was I was flying cross country and my wife was like you will not survive that flight if you get on with a fever and people will hate you. You're going to, you're going to have to cancel that one. So I know what that's like. You have this, you have this baby, you've worked so hard on this book coming out and then you feel like you're not able to kind of give it everything, to promote it and to talk about it, and so I'm glad that we have this opportunity now to to do this, and, of course, this will tie into book two, which we'll get to in a minute. First, tell us a little bit about, about tyler whiteside. Who, who are you? Where are you? What do we need to know about you before we talk about your work?

Speaker 2 3:41

well, a funny buried memory came to my mind when you were talking about having to cancel because of the flu. I was remembering one time I was during the original janitor's years. I was doing a school visit presentation, hundreds of kids in this auditorium and I got sick. And I got sick and I realized I was very sick and I was like, can we get it? Can we get like, maybe a garbage can up here just in case I throw up while I'm presenting? And I muscled through, I pushed through it, finished and got out of there. I did have to cancel the next school, have to cancel the next school. So anyway, that's yeah, those are uh, unpredictable when you think you're you're presenting and then your body has other plans.

Speaker 2 4:33

Yeah, yeah, I have been writing for full-time now for it's like 13 years, I think. So before that, people always say you know, don't quit your day job if you're a writer, and I fall into a very lucky category that I guess it's lucky that never really had a day job. The closest thing I had was just a part time. I was working as a custodian at a middle school when I was in college, at a middle school when I was in college, and it was actually there, at that job that I kind of had the idea for the janitor's series and what led me to that which I think has kind of set the precedent for my whole career and my life that ordinary things that are happening to you in your life, a job as a custodian, taking out the trash, may lead to other opportunities and may lead to something great if you keep yourself open to it.

Speaker 1 5:35

Amen to that. I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about a Walmart general manager who makes a quarter of a million dollars a year managing a Walmart, a large store in Texas, and who started as a part-time cashier in high school years ago in that same store and has worked her way up to now managing a team of 300 plus and making a quarter of a million dollars a year, and I thought that that's what it's all about, right there.

Speaker 2 6:05

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I think that's, that's the dedication and the sort of almost even like the rags to riches type approach.

Speaker 1 6:15

Yeah, stick with it. And for sure, you never know that experience you're having today, particularly if you're a creative person. You and I have been talking for almost an hour before we hit the record button. But if you're a creative person, you just never know what experience the person that you meet, that interaction on the sidewalk or in line in the store or whatever that might turn into that next great thing, that next great story, that next great novel. So, speaking of great novels, you've written a bunch of them. Tell us what's new.

Speaker 2 6:49

Tell us about Janitors and why we're back in this universe of characters. Yeah, so I have dipped back to the Janitors series with a spinoff trilogy. The first book is Janitors School of Gar of garbage. It takes place 12 years after the original series and the reason I picked 12 years was was strategic, because it was it was very intentional 12 years from the release of the first book of the janitor's series to the second book well, to the second, uh, spinoff trilogy, sorry. And so what we see is that the main characters from the first series are now 12 years older. They were 12 in the original and now they're in their 20s.

Speaker 2 7:35

And this kind of came to me because I remember one time I was at Wendy's. I was driving through Wendy's, probably getting a Baconator or something, and I handed the girl working there. I handed her my credit card and she saw my name on the card and she said, oh, are you Tyler Whitesides, the author? And I said, yeah, I am. And she said I loved your books when I was a kid, growing up, and I was like, wait a minute, it's been that long.

Speaker 2 8:12

I thought my readers would forever stay 12. But alas, they grow and they change and they enter the adult world and the workforce and it started making me think about that. I've had a lot of experiences since then. So many people in their 20s now coming up to me saying I loved your books when I was a kid. Your books meant a lot to me. I read them when I was a kid. Your books meant a lot to me. I read them when I was growing up and as I thought about that, I started thinking about the main characters in the original Janitor series, who were 12. And I thought, like my readers, surely they would grow up and what are they doing as they enter the workforce? And how has life turned out for those characters that I loved, those characters that got me started on my career? Is life going?

Speaker 2 9:05

well for them or is life not going well? And what challenges have they faced and what unexpected things have they gone through that they didn't think they'd have to go through? But, seeing as how I'm a middle grade writer, they'd have to go through. But, seeing as how I'm a middle grade writer, I wanted still the focus to be on a readership of young, you know, 12 year old kids, and so I decided to introduce a new cast of young characters. They're my main characters in this series.

Speaker 2 9:36

You find out that the original series members have grown up and they have started a school of garbage where they study garbology, which is touched upon in the original series. It's kind of a Sherlock Holmes of the trash. You can look at the garbage, you can study, you can read the trash and the clues to find out, you know who's been in the room before you, why they've thrown things away. You can piece together mysteries by looking in the room before you why they've thrown things away. You can piece together mysteries by looking in the trash. And so two of my favorite characters from the original series, now grown up, have started a school of garbage and my main characters are two kids who attend this summer school type camp where they go to this landfill where the school is located and they study the clues and they study the garbage.

Speaker 1 10:29

That's fantastic. I love the idea that you said I'm going to pick this thing back up and go back to the world as if time has passed like in real time. Right, I love that. Why not? Why not do that? Why not give that little treat to those original readers that the young lady at Wendy's? I love that.

Speaker 2 10:48

Yeah, and I just signed a book to a reader in his twenties who was very excited had seen that School of Garbage had released and and was very excited to pick up those characters again. School of Garbage had released and was very excited to pick up those characters again and I hope that as he reads them he has a good time realizing that those characters have grown up with him. And yeah, it's been really. Another reason I did it that way was I wanted this trilogy to be able to be read independently of the first five books, the people listening right now.

Speaker 1 11:24

they don't need to go back and read the original series. I mean they did right, I mean why not? But they don't have to.

Speaker 2 11:32

But it feels like as a kid, it feels like a big commitment to think oh, I'm really excited. I like the cover of this new School of Garbage book and I like the author came to my school and talked about his new book, but I've got to slog through five other books before I can read this new one that he wrote. I didn't want to do that to my little young readers and so I decided I would write School of Garbage independently, so it'll be a trilogy and you can. Readers. I've talked to many readers. In fact. Interestingly enough, my editor for the School of Garbage series, the wonderful Lisa Mangum, had not read the original janitors, the original five janitors books, because she was not my editor on those.

Speaker 2 12:20

emily watts had been my editor on on the original five and she'd done a great job. And what's been fun is to see lisa coming in and uh, she's, she's reading with a fresh eye, she's reading like with the eye of all those readers who haven't read the original series and she's done a good job, raising some flags to me saying, okay, you're, you know, I don't understand this without context from the original or how do we do this? And so I've had that. I've had her kind of championing those new readers that are just coming into the School of Garbage and skipping the first Janitor series. But interestingly enough, we've also brought Emily Watson on the project with School of Garbage and skipping the first Janitor series. But interestingly enough, we've also brought Emily Watson on the project with School of Garbage and it's been fun to hear her feedback because she remembers the original series as well and those kind of big moments like oh, fun to see that character come back.

Speaker 1 13:16

That's awesome. Well, a shout out to Lisa Mangum, who has her own book on writing a nonfiction project coming out, I believe, this fall. Is it this fall or next spring?

Speaker 2 13:29

I'm not sure on the release date of it. I did feel very honored because she has a little story about pitching and when I got my start it was a pitch to Lisa Mangum that got janitors published and she shares that in her book.

Speaker 1 13:48

I love that. That's awesome. Yeah, she's been great. I've worked with her on a couple of projects and she's not just a great editor but a great writer in her own right. So we'll put a link to that. I assume it's out there for pre-order on Amazon. But if you want to read a book on writing, it's a pretty good idea to pick up a book on writing by someone who has acquired manuscripts and who has edited manuscripts the way Lisa has for so many years. That's awesome. Okay, tyler, tell me.

Speaker 1 14:17

I don't know if you've been in a Barnes Noble lately or any bookstore, but you walk in and the children's sections, I think, are larger than ever. My favorite Barnes Noble that I'm in pretty frequently down in Harrisonburg, virginia Shout out to my good friend Chris in Harrisonburg, the children's section, I think it feels twice the size as it used to be. There are so many books. I mean it's heaven. If you like children's books, if you're a kid, if you're a kid going in to pick up a middle grade novel, the choices are endless. So tell me, tyler Whitesides, why janitors walk into a bookstore with my kid and I'm looking at at a hundred feet of books in this space middle grade fantasy with a kind of a contemporary feel. Why janitors?

Speaker 2 15:10

It's a great question and I agree with you. I think that we are at this golden age of middle grade fantasy. I think that we've been in the golden age for 10 years or so, I think. Probably Harry Potter, uh, issued that in because I remember when I was a kid there there wasn't as much, and now there is almost an overwhelming number of books. Um, for for any reader to walk into the store and feel overwhelmed. And why? Why janitors? Well, one of the fun things that I've seen with readers over the years who've enjoyed the janitor series, and I think you'll find the same thing with this new janitors trilogy.

Speaker 2 15:57

I get emails from parents sometimes and they'll include a picture they've taken of their kid sweeping the floor and they say I don't know what's going on here, but my kid has started asking me where the cleaning supplies are in the house and and they want to play with the brooms and the spray bottle. And I said honey, some of those are chemicals. You can't play with spray. You can't shoot your sibling with a spray bottle. And and anyway they say they say, um, that there's like you know some. So sometimes I come across these kids that are playing janitors, and I have two kids of my own. I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, and we've read School of Garbage and we just finished reading the second one as well. My eight-year-old was so jazzed about it he went back and he picked up the original book and he's been reading Janitor's Book One and I see that kind of same.

Speaker 2 17:02

He's always wanting to talk about what magical effect a cleaning supply would have, and I think that's one of the cool things about this series is all of the magical. All of the cleaning supplies in the book have magical powers. But only things that could be justifiably used in cleaning or maintenance can be made magical. So something really awesome, like I don't know, like a car, can't really be made magical. Well, I guess I mean debatably, but a garbage truck can see, a garbage truck can and is.

Speaker 2 17:43

There are many of these magic garbage trucks that they use throughout the old series and the new series as well, and so what it does is it kind of narrows down. It gives the imagination some parameters. The parameters are cleaning supplies, and those are things that kids are, at least in passing, familiar with. Now my kids don't pick them up and use them as much as I would like to actually clean. But they're at least familiar because they've seen me mopping, they've seen me sweeping, me vacuuming, and so it's fun because all of a sudden we'll be driving and they'll be thinking about it, and then one of them will say what would a magic dustpan do? What would a magic mop do? Plunger, toilet plunger. All all these different things.

Speaker 2 18:33

And most of them I have an answer for, because throughout the original janitor series I, I made magical about 50 different cleaning supplies, um, and and so I think I think that's one thing that helps the janitor series stand out. If you went into a store and you looked at the shelves, you would see the cover is ordinary items like garbage and cleaning supplies. But they are. They become wondrous and magical in the imagination as kids read them.

Speaker 1 19:11

And in a world dominated, even among young people, by these things, devices and endless screen time, my goodness, if you're listening to this or you're watching this on social media and you want your kids to ignite something in their, in their imagination, deep in there, that has nothing to do with their physical eyes and their device or their game or whatever, but that same imagination that you relied on when you were young to read and create and imagine a better world, then yeah, it's janitors and maybe they'll pick up a month. That's even better.

Speaker 2 19:49

Maybe, maybe they'll pick up a month, that's even better. I recently spoke to a pretty large group of teen writers and artists and the topic that I was doing bored, embrace the boredom and allow themselves to sink deep into the pit of boredom. Because often the inspiration is not found until you hit the bottom of that boredom pit. And we are so worried about falling into boredom that we claw onto the sides and we scramble up and we do anything we can. We pull out our devices, our screens, we do anything we can to prevent ourselves from getting bored and in turn we rob ourselves of the creativity that's waiting for us at the bottom of that pit.

Speaker 2 20:45

But it's uncomfortable to fall. It's uncomfortable to let yourself dive and just free fall into that pit of despair and boredom. It feels like the worst thing imaginable, especially to a kid. But as you lay there at the bottom and you're crashed down in the bottom of that boredom pit, your brain starts to just tingle with ideas Because your brain is trying to rescue you from being bored and it's starting to give you ideas and it's and it and it pulls you out and before you know it you've done something creative or at the very least had a creative thought yeah, and it may be.

Speaker 1 21:26

You know, if you're, if you're a kiddo is at the bottom of that pit and they happen to have a flashlight and a copy of a Tyler Whitesides book. That's okay too, right.

Speaker 2 21:35

Yeah, yeah, that's good too. Well, sometimes the solution to that boredom is pick up a book.

Speaker 1 21:40

Yeah, pick up a book, something that does not.

Speaker 2 21:42

Yeah, exactly that doesn't have a house dragging your feet and saying I'm so bored and me responding it's nice to meet you. Bored, I'm dead.

Speaker 1 21:54

You just want to whack that kid in the back of the head with a book. So tell us about, then the drive now toward book two. We saw it's up for pre-order now on Amazon, so people can see the cover now and read the synopsis now. When does book two come out and what do we need to know about it?

Speaker 2 22:15

Yeah, so it'll be coming out this September. It is called Trials of the Trash Janitor's School of Garbage.

Speaker 1 22:23

Love that ARC there.

Speaker 2 22:25

Brandon Dorman did the cover art on the original Janitor's series as well as the new trilogy, the cover art on the original janitor series as well as the new trilogy. So it will release in september and it picks up shortly after the first book ends. And after reading them recently somewhat back to back to out loud to my kids I was talking to my eight-year-old, he described them this way and I thought it was really good. He said school, school of garbage. The first one is almost a detective story. As they study the trash they're looking for clues. Something has gone wrong with the garbage and the garbage is trashing neighborhoods and they don't know why and they're trying to figure out why. And so these young garbologists are on the trail studying the trash, trying to figure out why. And so these young garbologists are on the trail studying the trash, trying to figure out the clues and determine what has caused this awakening of the trash. And so while the first one reads like a mystery, the second one reads like an action adventure. They hit the ground running with book two immediately. A lot of the questions that they were searching for answers. They find the answers in the end of book one, but it leads to some really big consequences in book two and and that's, I think, what makes the second book there is no time to breathe. These characters are just. They're just moving as fast as they can from one adventure to the next. Training time at the school of garbage study time. Class time is over and we are now in crisis mode with Trials of the Trash.

Speaker 2 24:08

The third book will actually I'm writing the third right now. I'm actually on the downhill. I'm coming up to the climax of the story and the third one so far. Our title for it is War of the Wasteland, and that will conclude the School of Garbage trilogy. And I was talking about consequences. Those just continue to build. There are some really big things at stake in the third book. I would say that the War of the Wasteland will have the biggest stakes of any janitor's book that I've written, including the original series series.

Speaker 1 24:55

I bet that makes your editors and marketing folks very, very happy. We love high stakes, don't we? We love high stakes, we love high stakes.

Wrap up

Speaker 1 25:00

Well, this has been so much fun, so good catching up with you, and there's a part of me that wishes we had recorded the first hour of us catching up about life, and part of me, no, maybe not such a good idea it was good to chat with you, though, and catch up on everything absolutely well and and um, it's fun to see you coming back to a world that is beloved by so many people, and you know, I know that brandon mull went through this a little bit when he kind of returned to the world of fable haven, and so it's fun just doing that with these characters that I know from my own experience. They become real to you. You know, we know it's fiction, we get it, but there's something I don't know, kind of a connection to these characters that you have created and lived with for so many years. So to go back there and to give them a few more acts in their story is, I think, it's pretty special. I think readers are going to love it.

Speaker 1 25:53

All right, folks, thanks for listening. Check the show notes. Links to the website, how you can get in touch with Tyler, of course, links to other episodes and to all his good things on Amazon. Anything else I need to know about Tyler Whitesides.

Speaker 2 26:09

I just want to say thank you so much for having me. It's been long overdue. I'm grateful for the chance to be on your podcast and catch up with you.

Speaker 1 26:17

Yeah, we'll do it again soon. Thanks, man, Great thanks.