Roger Sutton: Did you come up with the snail thing first or the vampire thing first?
Andrea Zuill: The snail. I used to make art prints, and I created this character called the Snail of Fury. It's basically this little snail screaming, because I found that very funny. Snails are one of the calmest looking animals—almost emotionless, you know—and I thought it was very funny to make one that was full of fury. And after that I did several other snail pieces, including one that was a vampire snail. So that's how Bob first came about. I had that illustration of a vampire snail for probably ten years before I decided to write a story about him.
RS: How did you make the transition from being a fine artist to being a picture-book artist?
AZ: For years I did oil painting, contemporary art, figurative art; I’d been in art galleries and all that. And I was getting really tired of that. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I was getting burned out. Then a little company came online called Etsy. I took a look, and I really liked what they were doing. It was a lot of lighter artwork that was humorous and cute or just really fun, and I was in the mood for fun. So I thought, Hey, maybe I can do that. I started playing around with it, and I was like, Oh wow, I can! And all of a sudden, I started noticing that the characters I was playing around with would be good in a children’s story. I still wasn’t thinking of making children’s books because at the time I hadn't done much writing. But I took an adult art course, just to break out of old habits—I've been an artist for a long time, but I get stuck in habits. I took a class from an artist named Lori Mitchell, just to renew myself. And she told me that I should be doing children's books. I said, “I don't know,” and she said, “Well, I do!” She told me about the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and I started going to their meetings. And at the same time, I was doing a lot of drawing and starting to figure out how to make a book. Through SCBWI I took a class on how to make book dummies, how to tell a story, how to write a text. I was an illustrator first. I thought I would just do illustrations, but then my agent said. “You should really learn how to write,” and I said, “I hate you so much,” because I was absolutely terrified. Words have never been my medium.
RS: I’m surprised, because you really seem to understand narrative.
AZ: Well, it took a while. I’ve heard writers say that picture books are one of the hardest books to write because there's so few pages, there’s a quick story arc, and you can't have a lot of words—and writers tend to like words. I'm terrified of words, so when my agent told me I had five hundred words or fewer, I was like, “Thank you!” But all those little prints I made for Etsy actually have words underneath them that go with the image. In fact, for a lot of them people would tell me, “I had no idea what this image meant until I read the words underneath.” And I was always making it funny. My very first book was Wolf Camp, which I did with Schwartz and Wade. And bless their hearts. My agent submitted the worst dummy and some okay drawings and some okay writing, but they went out on a limb and said, “We would like to do this book with you, but we're going to give you like two years to do it.” So my first book took forever. But they were awesome.
RS: Anne Schwartz and Lee Wade know their way around a picture book.
AZ: Yeah, they were really good at critiquing, and always in a very kind and empowering way. For probably about a year and a half, the book was just eating my brain cells up. It was like, “I can't quite figure this out,” and then all of a sudden it just kind of hit. I redid the dummy and they sent back notices saying, “Hooray!” They were like, “You're figuring it out.”
RS: “By George, she's got it.”
AZ: When I mentor people, I tell them, “It looks simple, but it really isn't, so don't beat yourself up. Just keep doing it, it'll eventually click.” I was really excited when I got Wolf Camp done because I could tell that I now had an understanding of what to do, and I immediately wrote another book because now it's like, “I get it. I know how to pace, I know what a page-turn is, I understand the rhythm.” But I give credit to Schwartz and Wade—they really explained a lot of that to me while I was working on the book. They were very patient. I panicked several times during the process, and they had to tell me, “Just calm down. Don't rush it. Take your time.” They’re awesome. Our egos are put aside. We just go back and forth, and when we disagree there's absolutely no animosity, it's just like, “Well, let's talk this through.”
RS: I was glad to hear your plug for SCBWI, too, because at the Horn Book, we often get people saying, “I want to break into children's books. I want to write a children's book.” And we tell them it's going to be a lot more work than you think, and you should get in touch with SCBWI.
AZ: I owe a lot to them. I started going to their meetings and of course meeting everybody. Children's book people—I'm sure you found this, too—are extremely friendly, and all the ones I've met have not been judgmental and have been kind and helpful. So automatically that makes it where it's like, “Hey, that's a pretty good field to be in.” As I said, I went to meetings and also several talks and classes, which helped greatly. Then I went to their big conference in LA. I submitted a portfolio and received one of the mentee awards, and that's how I got my agent. So basically I got my agent and my first job through SCBWI, plus I met so many people. |
RS: I was wondering how you were going to handle that one.
AZ: I didn’t want to show him sucking the blood of his friends or anything. At one moment I have him trying to, and his friends tell him to knock it off. So, the story could very possibly get scary, but I’m shutting that scary down very fast. And Bob also has a conscience, so part of him is like, “What am I doing? This isn't me.” Then I had to think of what could maybe be equal to drinking blood. My husband is a gardener, constantly at war with squirrels and slugs and snails and rabbits and everything out there. So I thought of tomatoes, because as an adult I’m thinking, Tomatoes are red, that can equate to a blood source, right? Not really, but I think it stays with the lore. And tomatoes are juicy. So Bob can bite the tomato, and the illustration shows it's been drained of juice, but nobody's hurt, and he's satisfied.
RS: You know, when you talked earlier about keeping in mind that you have to get by parents and caregivers to children—that did not strike me at all as I read the book. I thought what you were doing was finding just the right level of slightly spooky and very funny so that a little kid wouldn't get too freaked out. Older kids with gorier imaginations can—and will!—lean into that freak-out, and other kids who are more timid will still be comfortable in the world that you created.
AZ: Well, even though I like horror, most of the horror I read isn’t gory. The absolute most important to me is that it has to be funny. I want the kid to laugh. Even my stories that may seem to have a teaching moment in them, I wrote them because I could think of some really funny jokes to go with the character. With Bob there's a little element of, “Oh you've changed, now you have to accept yourself,” but I was more like, “No, what if a snail turned into a vampire? What funny things and shenanigans can he get up to or have to deal with?”
RS: You do seem to like these creatures who find themselves a little bit different from everybody else, though. That’s a big theme in your work.
AZ: Well, in my family we’re all a bunch of weirdos. We are diagnosed with ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression—we cover the gamut. We also tend to be very creative. And I find that I like that kind of person. So many people in the children’s book world are neurodivergent, for instance. I mean, we'll start talking and before you know it, we're talking about what disorders we have.
RS: How do you think your own weirdness serves your creative life?
AZ: I think when you have something that makes you vulnerable, you understand the vulnerability of other people. Someone will say, “I'm having a hard time because of this,” and it's like, “Oh my gosh, I have felt that way too.” I like to see vulnerable people succeed. People with schizophrenia and depression and such—I think that when they succeed, it gives hope to everybody else. And success doesn't mean that you're cured; it's more of an understanding that sometimes it's going to be bad, sometimes it's going to be really good. And some of us are lucky and have a big support system. If people are not good with their families, I want them to know that you can make your own family. You can find your people. Let your freak flag fly a little bit because they’ll recognize you and they’ll understand when you have good days and bad days. But Bob's situation is more that he doesn't like a lot of excitement, and excitement is thrust upon him. And I think he manages pretty well. He's being his freaky little vampire self and he meets somebody who is also a freaky little vampire, and that’s how he finds a friend. If you keep true to yourself, there’s somebody who is going to recognize that, and they're going to actually like that about you.
RS: How does creating books help you?
AZ: The older I get, the more I lean toward joyful things. I've always liked dark things, but I liked dark things that were funny, not mean-hearted or grotesque. Like Tim Burton kind of things, kind of creepy, but... |
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