Owner of popular fall attraction is also award-winning author

POCATELLO – In the winter of 2018, the first thing Wendy Swore’s son asked her every day when he got home from school was if she had another chapter finished.

If the answer was no, the 10-year-old’s question was, “Well, why not? Where is it?” If the answer was yes, the two would sit down and read what she had written that day for her in-progress novel, which would be called “A Monster Like Me.” Although this was the fourth book that Swore had written, it was the first that would find its way onto bookshelves.

“We would sit in his room, and he would read along with me as I read him what I had written that day,” Swore reminisced. “He would point out typos and things, and he would tell me if he thought that was a good chapter or not.”

Not only did Swore cherish this time with her son, it also pushed her to keep working on her story.

“That was a super wonderful bonding experience, to be able to share that part of my childhood and that part of my story with my child and have us cheering for it together,” Swore said.

Six years later, Wendy S. Swore has published four middle grade novels. The three that followed her first were “The Wish and the Peacock” in 2020, “Strong Like The Sea” in 2021, and most recently, “Seeping Spells and Dragon Scales” in April of this year.

Although kids from across the country may recognize her from her book tours, east Idahoans may have seen her while visiting a popular autumn tourist attraction in their backyard. Swore and her husband, Mike, are the owners of Swore Farms, north of Pocatello on the Fort Hall Reservation.

Every fall, the Swores’ farm is crowded with paying visitors grabbing a bite to eat, picking out pumpkins to take home and trying to find their way through an expansive corn maze. In the spring and summer, the Swores farm the 33 acres they own and the 70 they rent and prepare for the busy holiday season. And in the winter, Swore puts time into her writing projects.

Once published, “A Monster Like Me” won numerous awards, including the Foreward Indies Juvenile Fiction Gold and a starred review from Booklist.

When Swore found a publisher for the book, she wasn’t even officially submitting it. While at the Storymakers Conference in Provo, Utah, she read an excerpt from “A Monster Like Me,” and an editor she knew named Lisa Mangum heard it.

Mangum requested a copy of the excerpt, and she expected to get some useful feedback from her after she read it.

“But what she did on the sly is she submitted it to their department at Shadow Mountain,” Swore said. “And then they sent it out to people who didn’t know me from anywhere, and they came back and they wanted to publish it.”

While this sounds like a miraculous stroke of luck considering that many writers never find a publisher, it only came after years of writing and attending conferences. Swore had known Mangum for nine years, since she first started to attend the conference.

She finished her first book in 2009 and got the chance to pitch it to the editor of James Dashner (of “Maze Runner” fame). Swore explained the plot of the book, which is that a girl runs away from her farm after her dad is injured. The editor asked her if it was a horror story, which wasn’t Swore’s intention.

“She didn’t even know what it was. That’s how far off I was,” Swore said.

Swore also spent her winters writing other stories, and spent time in the “query trenches” sending query letters to prospective agents.

By the time Swore started writing “A Monster Like Me,” she had finally found her voice. She had been writing books targeted at a young adult audience, but this one was for middle-grade readers.

And just like all of the books that she published since that one, she put a part of herself into the story.

“A Monster Like Me” is about a girl named Sophie who has always seen herself as a monster, due to the hemangioma, a noncancerous sore, on her face. Armed with her “Big Book of Monsters,” she relates to the creatures she reads about and learns to have the courage to stand up for herself.

When Swore herself was growing up, she had a tumor on her face as well, which she said was the size of a golf ball.

“I was 10 years old, and walking around with that, everybody sees it and you’re self-conscious,” Swore said.

Many people shot looks her way, and others outwardly mocked her. One year, a woman with her kids pointed to Swore and said, “Hey look, that kid doesn’t need a costume for Halloween.”

Another time, Swore came home from school and asked her mom why she had “the mark of the devil,” because a teacher at school had told other kids not to play with her, because they’d be “infected by my badness.”

After that incident, Swore changed schools, and when she was 10 had her tumor removed, but it’s always stayed a part of her. The idea for “A Monster Like Me” came about when she reflected on these experiences.

“What if I believed them when they called me a monster?” Swore wondered.

As she toured to promote the book, she met other children with similar issues. Some had tumors hidden in their hair. She met one boy who told her that he used to have warts all up and down his arms, and eventually traded them for scars when he had them lasered off.

“He said people treated him like a pariah. The teachers, even adults, didn’t want him around. They were afraid of getting it,” Swore said. “And he said, ‘When I read your book, it was the first time I’d ever felt seen.’”

This upcoming winter, Swore is working on another book for Shadow Mountain. She doesn’t have a pitch for it yet, or a title, but it also contains a piece of herself. For people who want to learn more about her books, they can find them on her website.

“They’re all a part of you as a writer,” Swore said. “It has to come from somewhere.”