Blog Tour: Middleworld by Jon and Pam Voelkel!

Today I have with me the authors of the Middleworld series, Jon and Pam Voelkel! A huge thanks goes out to them for stopping by for an interview!

1. Can you tell us a little bit about your book, The Jaguar Stones, Book One: Middleworld?

On one level, it’s a fast-paced adventure set in present-day Central America. On another level, it’s a tale of teenage angst and finding your place in the world. When Max Murphy, a city boy from Boston, gets lost in the perilous jungle, he gets a crash course in survival from Lola, a modern Maya girl who has her own identity issues. It turns out that a tropical rainforest is a lot like junior high – so many different species jostling to co-exist and find their own little spot in the sun. Against a background of haunted temples, raging underground rivers, and the ever-present frisson of human sacrifice, Max and Lola must work together to solve a terrible mystery - and, quite possibly, save the world from the ancient Maya Lords of Death.

2. A lot of Middleworld takes place in Latin America, and the main character, Max, ends up encountering quite a bit of Mayan culture. What kind of research went into this part of the book?

There’s a lot of misinformation about the Maya out there, so we’ve tried to make the information in our book as accurate as possible. The Jaguar Stones themselves are fictitious but everything else – the gods, the myths, the calendar, the astronomy, the language - are authentic. To research it, we’ve read every book we could find on the Maya, we’ve attended archaeology conferences, Jon took a course at Harvard on reading and writing glyphs, and we’ve made several trips down to Central America to explore ancient sites and meet modern Maya people. Most important of all, we run the manuscript past a leading archaeologist at Harvard for double-checking.

3. The two of you used to work in advertising. What made you decide to start writing for young adults?

We needed to take a break from advertising. We were working very long hours and not spending enough time with our children. We moved from central London to the wilds of Vermont with the idea of simplifying our lives. We were planning to do some teaching and whatever freelance work we could find. Jon was supposed to be writing a marketing book but he found himself doodling pictures of Maya pyramids instead. The plot was based on a bedtime story he used to tell our son called The Monkey Girl. I’d been a writer in advertising all my working life, so I was quickly drafted in to spruce up the narrative. Soon we were both spending every spare minute on it and the idea of our new life was born. As to writing for young adults, it’s my favorite age group. They’re young enough to believe that anything is possible but old enough to understand about consequences. I love sharing adventures with them and taking them to a different world.

4. Are you working on anything else right now?

We’re finishing up the illustrations and glossary for The Jaguar Stones, Book 2: The End Of The World Club, which is due to be published at the end of the year. Then we’ll start work on writing and illustrating Book 3. We also have lots of book tour commitments and school visits coming up. And, of course, I’m always trying to sneak in more trips to Central America.

5. Anything else you'd like to add?

The Maya did NOT predict that the world would end in 2012.

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Thanks so much for the interview!

You can find out more about Middleworld by checking out my review.