Canton resident publishes children's book, 'Vampire Vacation'

Jul. 27—CANTON — Canton resident Laura H. Lavoie has been into writing since she was young and at one time thought she might one day write novels.

In 2015, while pregnant with her eldest daughter, she started reading picture books and thought that might be an avenue for her writing urges.

That thought turned into reality this spring when Viking Books for Young Readers published Ms. Lavoie's first book, "Vampire Vacation."

"Vampire Vacation" is the story of a young vampire named Fang who does not want to go on another family trip to Transylvania. Fang would rather spend his vacation at the beach and needs to talk his parents into making a change.

Ms. Lavoie started writing the book in January 2019 just before learning that she had been accepted into a program called Writing With the Stars, in which unpublished authors win a three- to four-month mentorship with a published children's author.

Ms. Lavoie's mentor was Jason June, a New York Times best-selling author of picture books and young adult contemporary rom-coms.

Ms. Lavoie worked with Jason June from February through May 2019.

"He was fantastic and really helped me polish things up," Ms. Lavoie said.

Shortly after that, Ms. Lavoie had a literary agent and then sold her first book.

Now, three years later, the book is available in book stores everywhere, including Brewer Bookstore in Canton.

"Picture books tend to take a while with all the illustrations," Ms. LaVoie said.

Ms. Lavoie has another book coming out next summer from Roaring Brook Press, called "Monster Baker."

"Monster Baker" focuses on a young monster baking a birthday cake for her grandmonster.

"It's about mishaps that happen while she is trying to bake a cake all by herself," she said.

"Monster Baker" is part of a two-book deal with Roaring Brook but the second book is still undecided.

In 2024, she has a book coming out from Doubleday which is a rhyming story called "Duck, Duck, Taco Truck."

"It is a food truck battle between some ducks and a goose," she said.

Ms. Lavoie said she has about seven manuscripts waiting to find the right time for publication.

Even though two of her published books are monster themed and even though her favorite holiday is Halloween, Ms. Lavoie said she has only one other manuscript that features monsters.

"It is just coincidental that those two are the ones that got picked up first," she said.

While Ms. Lavoie's books are for children, as a mother of two, she knows that the books have to appeal to the people who will doing the reading — the parents.

"There is a scene in 'Vampire Vacation' where they're down in the dad's man cave and there are album covers," she said. "The album covers have names like The Screach Boys and Dread Zeppelin."

The key is to be relatable to kids while giving funny nods to parents, she said.

"Vampire Vacation" is illustrated by Micah Player, an author himself and an illustrator of books and games who was first published in 2012.

The art in picture books is generally left completely to the illustrator, Ms. Lavoie said.

"When I saw the first sketches of 'Vampire Vacation,' that was the first time that I had ever seen what the vampires were going to look like," she said.

Finding out what the characters looked like after working on them for more than a year was interesting, she said.

"I was pleasantly surprised at how cute the vampires turned out," she said.

Ms. Lavoie recently read her book to a rapt crowd of about 30 children as part of the Canton Free Library's Books on the Beach event at Taylor Park and judging from the questions and the laughter the book was a hit.

A preview of the book can be viewed at wdt.me/84xhCJ.

Ms. Lavoie, who is the director of wellness education and student engagement at St. Lawrence University, does not have any other appearances planned as she gets ready for the upcoming school year. She does plan to be making appearances and will be reading her book, appropriately, around Halloween.