In today’s Author Spotlight, Jo Hackl chats with award-winning author Allan Wolf about his novel, Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom. Allan Wolf is the author of picture books, poetry, and young adult novels. Booklist has named his historical verse novel, The Watch That Ends the Night, one of  “The 50 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.” Allan is also the author of the nonfiction graphic novel The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur, illustrated by Jose Pimienta; and the poetry collection The Gift of the Broken Teacup, illustrated by Jade Orlando. His books celebrate his love of research, history, science, and poetry. He is also a skilled and seasoned performer of over 30 years. Allan Wolf’s dynamic author talks and poetry presentations for all ages are meaningful, educational and unforgettable. Florida Reading Quarterly calls Wolf “the gold standard of performing poetry.” He is a two-time winner of the North Carolina Young Adult Book Award, and a recipient of the Bank Street College Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry. Allan lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with his wife, his sister, and a dog named Mo. Learn more at www.allanwolf.com.

All about the book:

When thirteen-year-old Junius Leak—expert on waterbodies and creator of the encyclopedic Amazing Waterbodies of the World—steps foot on Uncle Spot’s rickety dock on Lake Peigneur, the truth assails him: he may love waterbodies, but that doesn’t mean they love him back. The latest in a long line of Junius Leaks, he’s the first to be doomed to ten days of awkwardness and boredom on a houseboat with a relative he doesn’t know while his parents “work on” their marriage. Delcambre, Louisiana, where Junius was born, is awash with unwelcome surprises.

He determines to learn why his mom left town when he was a baby—and to conquer his fear of water at the same time. But the lake has other plans for him, plans tied to a hundred-year-old family feud and a swashbuckling mystery. When disaster strikes, Junius must dive deep within to emerge an unlikely hero.

Alternating viewpoints spin the perceptions of a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) — and the wry voice of a lake with a long memory—into an inventive tale of sunken treasure and buried secrets anchored by a breathtaking true event.

The Background of Junius Leak:

JH: The title alone is wonderfully dramatic. Can you tell us about the real-life events that inspired Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom?

AW: It was a Thursday, November 20th, 1980. Texaco had set up a 130-foot-tall drilling derrick on a 15-foot-tall platform in the middle of Lake Peigneur, a 1200-acre shallow freshwater lake in southern Louisiana. Texaco was exploring for the oil that gathers in pockets around the massive salt dome beneath the lake. When the derrick’s 14-inch drill bit accidentally pierced a massive salt mine that had been excavated beneath the lake, water began to drain into the mine, eventually opening up into a vortex, a quarter-mile wide, effectively draining the lake’s 3.5 billion gallons of water like a big bathtub. The ever-widening sinkhole, created a 150-foot waterfall made up of water from the Delcambre Canal that had begun to flow in reverse, filling the lake back in with salt-water from the Gulf of Mexico, nine miles away. Within four hours the hole had devoured a tugboat, eleven large salt barges, two working derricks, and about 58 acres of a beautiful botanical garden located near the lake’s shore. Amazingly, after another 48 hours, Lake Peigneur filled back in, transforming from a 10-foot deep freshwater lake into a salt-water lake with a 250-foot-deep crater in the middle of it. Even with 55 miners working beneath the lake that day, not a single human life was lost.

JH: That disaster served as inspiration for this story in your graphic novel, The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur illustrated by Jose Pimienta (You can find the interview with Allan and Jose here). How did you go about creating the fictional character of Junius Leak to explore this world?

AW:  The historical fiction story, Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom, grew out of the same research I was doing for my graphic nonfiction account, The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur. You might say that the two books were like paternal twins, developing separately while sharing the same womb. I began to see so many metaphors (swirling, spiraling, loss, sudden rejuvenation, etc.) emerging from the historical facts that a fictional story jumped out at me unbidden. I was already keen to try my hand at middle-grade fiction, so twelve-year-old Junius Leak sprung out of me. I had been exploring the world of Lake Peigneur as an adult for so long, it made sense to create my own 12-year-old doppelganger, Junius Leak to experience that world with me.

JH: You wrote in your author’s note that there is a lot of Allan Wolf in Junius. To which parts of Junius do you most relate?

AW:  As a child I was profoundly lonely and, even when I started making friends, I found these relationships to be exhausting and awkward. I now know that I suffered from some pretty debilitating anxiety, but back then no one knew what anxiety was. Back in 60’s and 70’s it was usually just called cowardice. And that’s how I always felt, like a coward pretending to be a normal person. I had escapes that helped me feel at ease: athletics, reading, skateboarding, and (especially) writing on my bedroom walls. Junius shares a lot of my own quirks, and he uses a lot of my own coping mechanisms.

JH: Did Junius surprise you at any point while you were writing the book?

AW:  Yes. I think any really good character (when given enough freedom) will surprise the author. With Junius I had to write a good bit to arrive at that spot in which he took on an intrinsically motivated life of his own. Picture a grown-up helping a kid to ride a bike. The grown-up runs alongside, one hand on the handlebars, one hand on the child’s back. The kid has a nervous but determined look on his face. Gradually the adult lets go and steps away, leaving the kid to zoom off all alone, usually shouting out, “I’m doing it!”

That’s pretty much the relationship between author and character. The author can create the bicycle, and the street, and even the character. But there comes a point in any character’s development when that character begins to make his or her own choices. I was most surprised at how Junius Leak, the character, had sort of a snarky sarcastic streak about him. As a kid who is arguably “on the spectrum,” he has trouble interpreting and projecting social cues. And yet he seems to understand sarcasm which requires a pretty sophisticated sense of one’s self in the world.  And that was perhaps the greatest surprise of all. When all is said and done, Junius Leak has an intrinsic sense of himself, something that I struggled with as a kid.

JH: If you could drop yourself into one scene from the book, which would you choose—and why?

AW:  There is a climactic scene toward the end of the story when something pretty miraculous comes springing up from the depths of the lake. That’s the scene I’d choose, and maybe a few other moments toward the end. I can’t say specifics without spoilers, but I can say that I love scenes when some long-forgotten detail comes back to fill in the last missing piece of a puzzle. Or the missing piece might have been there under your nose all the time. Point is, you’ve been taking this detail (an event or a character maybe) for granted; you’ve dismissed it as only a bit actor. I love these moments because they fill in the gaps emotionally. I love it when the puzzle pieces fall together. I find the emerging sense of order to be very soothing.

Writing for Middle Grade Readers

JH: What drew you to write for middle-grade readers?

AW:  Of all my novels, this is the first directed specifically at middle-grade readers. My books are typically marketed for YA and teens. So Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom, is “my take” on a middle-grade novel. The story unfolds more slowly, perhaps, than a typical middle grade plot. That’s just how I write right now. It’s something that serves me. I’m working out something stylistically. Hopefully with each progressive book, I will get better and better at it. As a professional writer of books for youth, I was drawn to middle grade because I’d never written one, and because middle grade seems the most steadfast place to be right now, in the constantly changing world of publishing.

JH: Middle-grade books often balance humor, adventure, and emotional depth. How did you approach that balance while writing this story?

AW:  When it comes to telling a story, my motto is “You can’t have ha, ha without a little ah ha!.” There’s nothing wrong with a good therapeutic chuckle. I love laughter, as long as it helps to further the story. But the most enduring humor has humanity at its core. So, I’d rather go for the kind of laugh that makes you cry, if that makes sense. Of course, you have to keep readers (young and old) moving forward in a plot-driven direction, but it is those emotional interjections that resonate in readers’ imaginations long after reading the final page.

JH: Were there any books that you loved growing up that influenced your storytelling?

AW:  A few picture books that have stuck with me: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel; Ferdinand the Bull; Harry the Dirty Dog. Chapter books: Winnie the Pooh; Dr. Doolittle, Charlotte’s Web, James and the Giant Peach. And later, the novels of Paul Zindel. Much of my voice, though, comes from later exposure to Karen Hesse, Eloise Greenfield, Karla Kuskin, and especially Paul Fleischman. My own book, Junius Leak, has been compared to Holes by Luis Sacar, and I can see why. That book had a profound impact on me.

Writing Craft

JH: Did this book begin with a character, a plot idea, or your irresistible title?

AW:  As often as not, my book ideas begin with a startling and memorable image. Maybe because I was raised on movies and comic books. The image of the lake’s face swirling like a bathtub, and drawing in trees, boats, houses, and shoreline; that’s what I started with. Or the image of a solitary chimney sticking up out of the water in the middle of a lake; that’s what I start with. Then I might develop plot and character with that main controlling image in mind.

As for the book’s title, I worked with an actor named Junius Leek back in the 1990’s and vowed then to someday use his name as a character in a book. This watery book turned out to be the moment. As for the spiraling part of the title: again, that was inspired by image, and the overambitious vortex of doom is more of an ohmage to melodramatics of youth. It also sounds a bit “piratey,” so winner-winner-chicken-dinner. I do admit, that once I settled on the title, the book began to really take shape. A good title can do that . . . just make everything gel.

JH: Were there any scenes that were especially fun—or especially difficult—to write?

AW:  There is a scene in which Junius reunites with his mother and they have a chat. Originally, I left this scene out. In fact, Junius’ mom never even appeared in the book in real-time. But my editor, Katie Cunningham, thought the mother needed a scene near the end of the story. When I sat down to write it, only then did I realize why I hadn’t written it in the first place. I was dreading where I had to go as a writer. I had to essentially sit down with my own mother (who had recently passed away). That was hard. But worth it.

Jo: How long did it take from the first spark of the idea to the finished manuscript?

AW:  The spark came in 2007 when I first saw the lone chimney rising up out of Lake Peigneur. It was in 2019 when I sold the idea as a two-book deal to Elizabeth Bicknell at Candlewick Press. I researched documents and did in-person interviews for years. The initial writing itself took perhaps two years. I’m always working on more than one thing at a time. So, its often hard to tell what hours are spent on what book.

Jo: What was the biggest revision you made to the story during the editing process?

AW:  Not sure if this is really the “biggest” revision, but it was certainly a memorable edit.  I had named the town sheriff in my book after a real-life sheriff who had played a minor role in the Texaco-Lake Peigneur disaster. My idea was to use his name as a sort of ohmage. Much later I found out this particular sheriff had been a divisive person both personally and professionally. Rather than play into the controversy, I changed the sheriff’s name to Connor Murphy—the name of a little kid who lived down the street from me in Asheville, NC.

JH: What advice would you give to writers trying to write humor for middle-grade readers?

AW:  I would re-read my comments about humor above. Humor without humanity is hollow. Also, I would avoid making a joke at someone’s expense. It is mean and petty. If someone deserves to be put in their place, allow it to happen in the plot without your main protagonist simply acting out of a need for revenge. And of course, you should read a lot, lot, lot of funny books. I recommend Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos.

What’s Next

JH: What projects are you currently working on?

AW:  I have a collection of Christmas poems in the works from Candlewick Press. And I’m writing a memoir (on spec) about how I began writing on my bedroom walls, as a 13 year old . . . fifty years ago!

————

Lightning Round!

Favorite place to write:
My desk.

Plotter or pantser?
I pants within a plot.

 If you were not a writer, what might you do for a living?
Mortician. Drummer in a rock band.

Coffee, tea, or some other beverage while writing:
Mostly coffee.

Your favorite writing snacks:

Cheez-its and goldfish.

Favorite fictional hero:

Underdog.

Favorite fictional villain:

Boss Hogg.

Jo: Thanks for chatting with us Allan!