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In Bob the Vampire Snail, author-illustrator Andrea Zuill presents us with another creature (see also Sweety and Regina Is Not a Little Dinosaur) at odds with the world. We talk below about what such animal tales tell us about all-too-human dilemmas.

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: It’s a community as well as a career.

AZ: Yes, definitely. One thing that's kind of sad for me is that since COVID, SCBWI hasn't been doing live conferences in LA, and I miss them. I met so many people at those conferences. When you have that tag around your neck saying you're one of the attendees, then you're automatically friends with everybody there, and I like that they're so open, with all kinds of people. It's very inclusive, which I really, really like, because I grew up with parents of the generation that said, “Don't talk to that person, you shouldn’t. You shouldn't talk to that one either. What will people say?” As an adult, I relish that I'm in a work environment where you’re encouraged to talk to everybody and everybody has value. So yeah, I like the organization, and I always recommend that beginners join it. You have to put in the effort but ask anybody there and they'll start directing you to the best of their ability. Of course, a lot of people don't like to be criticized. I know what it's like—when I was younger, I was criticized about my art, in a very cruel manner.

RS: As a student or as a professional?

AZ: As a student. There’s something great about age. Because now that I’m older, I couldn’t care less. Don’t let it fool you, I have my hair dyed, there's gray under there! I know now as an adult that not everybody is going to like what I do, but that's not necessary. Enough people like what I do that I can sell books, which is awesome. But I never try to fit in. They might say, for example, “Right now dragon books are in.” But I'm not going to write a dragon book because at this point it just doesn't click in my head. I'm going to do what I do and know that there's somebody out there who’s going to appreciate my work.

RS: Librarians and writers’ groups would often ask me to come and talk about trends. “What are the trends in children's books?” I could see would-be writers carefully taking notes on the trends, but by the time you get your book done, everyone is going to have moved on.

AZ: Yeah, exactly. I mean I’m sure there are people that can do it. But I can’t. If the idea hasn’t tickled that little fun part in my brain, I’m not going to be able to do it. My brain will just shut down and fold its arms and turn its back to me and say, “We’re not doing this, because this isn’t you.” People told me that I had to study Publishers Weekly to see what's trending, but that isn't how my brain works. I mean, it's neat to see what's popular, but I don't think creative people should force themselves in a different direction from where they should naturally be going.

RS: A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?

AZ: Exactly. That was one of the things I had to let go of to learn how to write. I would see people who were different from me, but I liked what they did, and I thought, Maybe I can do that. But every ounce of me would be going no no no no no. At the same time I did find people I had more of a connection with, such as Terry Pratchett. He is my absolute favorite author in the entire world. He has ruined me for every other book out there because his humor fits so well with my brain. I have used his kind of humor in some of my books. In Wolf Camp, for instance, Homer the dog writes a letter home to his family in a very kidlike manner: “How are you? I am fine. Please send me more snacks. I hate it here.” You know, a typical camp letter. That was based on the character Carrot in Pratchett’s Night Watch books writing home to his parents. So anyway, boy, I wish I could have met Terry Pratchett. His humor fits me so well and I think I've absorbed it, and some of it comes out in my books.

RS: Were you a big reader as a child?

AZ: Mildly. I liked fact books. So I would get books on facts about animals, such as the scariest animals in the ocean, or I would get The Guinness Book of World Records or horror books. My reading actually picked up as a young adult in my twenties. But as a child, it was a lot of facts. When I talk to kids now, I include lots of facts because I find kids like that too. I wrote a book called Regina Is Not a Little Dinosaur, so when I give talks to children, I give them facts about dinosaurs. I found that, at least with me, they're not that interested in how the book was made, but they do like dinosaurs.

RS: We get some little facts about snails here.

AZ: Oh, because I know I have some talks coming up, I've been making a list of interesting facts. I already know that there is such a thing as a real-life vampire snail.

RS: That I did not know.

AZ: The real-life vampire snail is a very innocuous-looking thing that has a little proboscis, and when a fish is sleeping, it attaches and sucks the blood out of the fish. Very dainty, right? Nothing like our idea of a vampire. Anyway, I've been going through all kinds of snail facts I think kids would like. I always find it interesting that I sometimes have to edit out things I know kids will like but will make their parents squeamish. That’s why in Bob I never show how he becomes a vampire; it’s just implied with a bunch of sounds — “SCREAM!” “STOMP, STOMP, STOMP” “CRACK” “DRIP” etc.

RS: Very entertaining sound effects.

AZ: I love doing that.

RS: I would love reading this book out loud in a story hour.

AZ: I needed something to balance out the gore. I do have the word drip in there that has a little blood drop coming down to imply that somewhere in there, blood has happened. With all those noises, you know something happened without actually seeing it, and I decided that kid readers can use their imaginations to figure it out. Then, “poof,” he is transformed. You don't see it, it’s offstage, you hear all these sounds and you have to come to your own conclusions about how that transformation occurred. And now — something pretty exciting has been thrust upon my character, and I get to have fun. I try to bring the vampire tropes in in the cutest way imaginable. After he’s been transformed into a vampire snail, Bob can't see his reflection in the puddle, and he thinks that the puddle is out of order because he doesn't see anything. And then comes the problem: what do vampire snails eat?

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...

RS: ...sweet.

AZ: Exactly, and I find that when I write children's books, I can make them sweet. They may have oddballs in them, but there's sweetness and kindness, and I love those things.

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