A Figuring-it-out Fall

A September update + some upcoming events 🍂

I’ve long been a summer girl, but this is the first year in a long while where I’ve greeted September with open arms. It’s hard to embrace autumn in Wisconsin; for a long time, all I’ve seen it as is the welcoming mat for the five-month hellhole that is soon to descend upon my muddy, wet-socked, red-cheeked life. But this year I found myself leaning more towards the Instagram Girlies that pull out their pumpkin mugs and turn on their Gilmore Girls while it’s still 90 degrees out. I even painted my nails a deep crunchy-leaves-red. I think for me it’s less about craving potato soup and more about delighting in routine. After a bumpy summer in terms of childcare and a long Europe trip to see extended family, there’s just nothing like waving goodbye to that school bus and going back into an empty living room.

I was drenched—head-to-toe, sopping wet—in mom guilt for increasing our childcare for my youngest to two full days a week. But even as I type that, I roll my eyes at myself. Two full days?! With book deadlines and two substack newsletters and plenty of other work besides!?!? That’s nothing! And I know every family is different and thrives under different circumstances because every kid + mama need different things. But for us, this is working, man. The days I’m in full-time mom mode have been so sweet and delightful, and the days I’m working I’ve been a productive, joyful little soldier.

Why do we do this? Why do we beat ourselves up over things that are working? I’m exploring this theme quite a bit in my next adult release, Like a Mother (out late 2025…ish from HarperCollins) and while just living my very real life. I feel guilt when I’m curled up reading Franklin with my daughter, knowing that I just turned down an opportunity to travel to speak on my books because it didn’t feel like a good idea during a busy season. I feel guilt when I’m typing away at a coffee shop, while my daughter is cared for by wonderful, trained professionals who adore her and know her favorite TV show and color and food. My mom has reminded me endlessly that this is the way of mothering; it’s the way it’s always been and it’s the way it always will be. I am not going to solve this problem with a witty essay or a long nap. I suppose I could write out a long treatise on how it shouldn’t be that way, but I think right now I’m simply leaning into the gentle fact that it is. Oh. This is guilt. This is being a broken human in a broken world and trying my best.

So, here's what September will look like: Lots of storytelling. Lots of piles of laundry. Some slow-cooker cinnamon apples for our pancakes. Fall Mall™, the shopping day I go on with my sisters where we get our first pumpkin spice lattes of the year and buy fall decor for our porches like the basic little bumblebees we are. Only Murders in the Building, which is genuinely the perfect TV show. Long walks with my kids where we discuss which Hogwarts house we’d be in (we all agree that Krzys + Benjamin are Ravenclaws while Tess + I are Gryffindors. Bridget is too young for such diagnostics but we’re all leaning towards Hufflepuff.)

I have nothing very profound to say today; my brain is fried on drafting one book (Like a Mother) getting ready to edit another (Each and Every Spark, my historical fiction middle grade coming next year) and promoting a third (Take it From the Top.) But I’m going to shut this laptop and read Franklin anyway, feeling the guilt and the guts and the glory of it all.

GUYS. I know we’re supposed to be all cool + relaxed about reviews, and while in theory I completely agree that reviews don’t sell books, I do want to remind you that I called my mom and SOBBED when Kirkus didn’t like one of my books¹. Legitimate sobs. So the starred review they gave Take It From the Top felt like a redemption arc. If you have a middle grader in your life who just got back from summer camp or is super excited for the Wicked movie, please consider giving Take It From the Top a preorder!

I have a couple of events coming up!

More to come, but so far on my fall calendar:

Elkhorn, WI: I’ll be at Matheson Memorial Library on 9/20 at 6:00 to talk about The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County and sign any books. This is a free event, but Funeral Ladies will be available for purchase!

Kenosha, WI: I’ll be at Southport Literary Fair on 10/5. This is another free event with books available for sale + signing. I’ll be on two panels—for more details, keep an eye out at their website.

I also have a billion and one virtual + in-person school visits—if I’m coming to your school, I’m SO excited! Eeeek! I’m currently booking school visits for February-April 2025—reach out to claireswinarski@gmail.com if you’d like to bring me to your school.

And lastly, a book I’ve loved lately for…

Kids: What my kids have been loving (and making me read 97,000 times a day) is the picture book version of Disney’s Mulan and the second Franklin treasury, but what *I* have been loving is Johnny Appleseed by Reeve Lindbergh, with exquisite paintings by Kathy Jakobsen.

Middle graders: I embarked on a re-read of the Sammy Keyes series by Wendell van Draanen that I mentioned in this podcast I was on and man, they hold up. A perfect series for preteen or young teen girls who would be described as “firecrackers” or told they “need to stop talking so much” in class. Start with Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief.

Adults: I’m a total francophile (and just announced that I’m leading a trip for women there next year—whee! Come to Provence with me!) and I’ve really been enjoying James Gardner’s The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum. It’s very niche but if you also like French history, it’s really cool how that one place can almost tell the story of France’s many risings + fallings.

Thanks for reading along!

-Claire-

1. I will forever—FOREVER—be grateful to my dear friend Jen, who listened to me cry and complain and lament the fact that my career was over before it started (I should add that this was in the thick of COVID and I had no childcare and cried over things like the wrong beverage a la a toddler) when she gently listened, affirmed me, and then carefully goes “so…this really stinks, but…what is…a Kirkus?” reminding me that normal midwestern moms, aka THE BACKBONE OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY, have no idea that these things exist. 😂