It begins:

“I woke that morning with blood on my pillow. Red blossoms on white linen, like roses in snow.”

Additional Photos

Sarah Thomson’s latest book, “Mercy – The Last New England Vampire,” is based in part on the true story of a young woman named Mercy Brown, whose body was exhumed and desecrated during a wave of vampire hysteria in the 19th century. Barnes and Noble named the book to its 10-best list for young adult readers in 2011. John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Sarah Thomson, a Portland writer who has captivated young readers with more than two dozen books, knows one thing if nothing more about writing for today’s youth.

“It’s an audience that doesn’t give you an inch. If you bore them, they’re gone. They have other things to do.”

Thomson isn’t boring them. Her latest is a book of historical fiction, “Mercy: The Last New England Vampire.” The national bookseller Barnes and Noble named “Mercy” one of the 10 best books for young adult readers in 2011. It won the silver medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for young adult fiction, and is this month’s top-shelf book for middle school readers in an annual list of recommended reads by the Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine.

Thomson is a quiet and somewhat soft-spoken 41-year-old mom who lives in Portland’s Rosemont neighborhood. She moved to Maine in 2003 after quitting a book-editing job in New York to concentrate on her writing. She writes and edits full time, committing first drafts by hand, pen to paper, but otherwise spends most of her day at the keyboard.

“I sit in a room all day and type,” she said over coffee at Arabica. “I realized I could move anywhere I wanted, and I decided to make it here. Portland has all of the big-city things with a small-city feel.”

“Mercy” is Thomson’s 29th book and fifth novel. She writes almost exclusively for the young-adult and children’s markets, but notes with a smile, “Grown-ups are allowed to read it too.”

BASED ON A TRUE STORY

Thomson’s book tells the story of 14-year-old Haley Brown, who lives in modern-day Rhode Island. She traces her family history and finds a vampire in her ancestral past.

The vampire part of the story is true, Thomson said.

Mercy Brown died in 1892 at age 19 in the midst of a tuberculosis outbreak across New England. Hysteria bred superstition, which led authorities to suspect that Mary was a vampire. They ordered the body exhumed from her grave in Exeter, R.I. Fueled by ignorance and frenzy, townsfolk confirmed their suspicions and desecrated Brown’s body after her casket was opened.

Thomson incorporates that true story while creating a fictional contemporary component. She introduces 14-year-old Haley to tell the story as she uncovers her family history while researching a school project.

“Mercy” takes advantage of the resurgent popularity of vampires without indulging it, said Kirsten Cappy, who works in Portland and handles marketing for several children’s authors across the country. Thomson is her client.

She thinks the book works because Thomson plays with a different vampire legend.

“I think there is some vampire fatigue setting in. We’re all ‘Twilighted’ out,” Cappy said. “But Sarah has done something very different. She thought about the vampire legend when we really did believe in vampires, when they were frightening, frightening things.

“But the most terrifying thing of all is ignorance. All of the finger-pointing and blame that is put on a single teenage girl is far more terrifying than what we put in fiction.”

Connie Burns, Mahoney Middle School librarian in South Portland, passed the book around at a book club. The students loved the book, and invited Thomson in for a chat.

“I really liked that Sarah tapped into the vampire frenzy, but she didn’t romanticize the vampires,” said Burns. “She took that vampire interest and spun a historical tale out of it.”

Justin Busque, 20, read the book after meeting Thomson at a book event organized by the Portland Public Library. He enjoyed the parallel stories within “Mercy” and proclaimed it “beautifully done, vivid in detail and an excellent mix between fiction and true story.”

This is the first book for Yarmouth-based Islandport Press targeted at young adults, said senior editor Melissa Kim.

“Sarah is a great writer,” Kim said. “She is well published and very experienced. She has a quality to her that we are always delighted to have. It was a treat for us to say, ‘Sarah, we would love to work with you.’ “

Thomson landed on her idea for the book somewhat by default. An editor at another publishing house solicited a proposal for a vampire book to take advantage of the “Twilight” craze. Thomson hurried off a five-page proposal, which was summarily rejected.

IF YOU DON’T SUCCEED AT FIRST …

Still interested in the idea, Thomson stumbled across the New England vampire tradition, and in so doing, found the Mercy Brown story.

“It was a remarkable story because it was true,” she said. “We live in such a romanticized vampire world. This took you back to the days when vampires were not a fantasy. Mercy’s story is a true story. Her family dug her up. This was a way to get original with vampires and go back to when they really were scary.”

Thomson always wanted to be a writer. It’s all she ever remembers wanting to be growing up, but assumed such a goal was out of reach. “I thought real people couldn’t do it.”

Her first novel, “The Dragon’s Son,” published in 2001, started as a high school novel. She worked on it through college and finished it sometime later. It stayed in her drawer for years, safe from the public eye.

“The lovely thing about having it in a drawer is that nobody reads it,” she said, laughing.

Thomson grew up in the Midwest — in St. Louis and Madison, Wis. Her world was populated by J.R.R. Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen.

She earned a bachelor’s in English from Oberlin, and after graduation headed to New York for a job in publishing. She edited children’s books at HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, all the while remembering her novel tucked safely away in the drawer. She allowed a friend to read it, who liked it. It was passed up the chain of command.

Thomson was devastated when the rejection letter arrived. “The first rejection is painfully crushing,” she said.

But she overcame the hurt and kept trying. And now, all these years later, she feels blessed that she supports herself and a child while working as a writer. It’s particularly gratifying when organizations like Barnes and Noble call attention to your work.

“When you get something like Barnes and Noble’s best fiction of 2011, you know it connected,” she said. “That’s all you can hope for. It’s your baby. You send it out in the world, and you don’t know what will happen.”

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or:

bkeyes@perssherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

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