During the summer, Salisbury High School library media teacher Robin Burns held a virtual author visit with Wendy S. Swore.

Swore is a middle school author with books including “A Monster Like Me,” “The Wish and The Peacock” and “Strong Like The Sea.”

Swore lives on a 100-acre Native American reservation in southeast Idaho where she and her husband and their five children farm. Currently, they have a 3.36 acre corn maze and a pumpkin patch on 16 acres. They have 14 acres of sweet corn, five acres of red potatoes and seven greenhouses. On much of the remaining land they grow wheat.

She is also a rescue for cats, having 18 to 22 cats at a time.

They also had seven peacocks, ducks, guinea hens, cats and dogs.

“We had a fox family move in at one point but with 30 chickens, we had to re-home the peacocks and chickens,” Swore said. “We now only have cats and dogs for our animals because the fox are too sneaky and I don’t want anyone hurt.”

When Swore was growing up, her fourth grade teacher encouraged her to write and told her she was a good writer. She hoped to be an English and Spanish teacher or a veterinarian. She knew she wanted to travel and spent five months in Europe.

After getting married, having children and farming, her husband suggested she write about the farm. So Swore sat down and wrote a long story about the farm, finding out later her husband meant she should create a coloring book.

She began writing in 2008. She farms during the spring, summer and fall and writes in the winter.

During her presentation, she talked about the books she has written. “A Monster Like Me” was written with a character who had a hemangioma.

“When I was a child, I had a hemangioma on my forehead that stuck out far enough that my bangs could not cover it no matter how hard my mother tried. I remember feeling my heartbeat pulsing inside it.

“When the hydra lady in the first chapter says, ‘Hey look kids! That girl doesn’t even need a Halloween costume. She’s already got one!’ that’s word for word what a woman said to my mother and me at a grocery store. Eventually, my hemangioma deflated and was removed. I traded it for a scar,” Swore said.

Swore said she was bullied because of the hemangioma.

“There were kids and adults that were cruel about it. My dad recalls chasing off a pack of bullies that followed me home one day making fun of me and pushing me into the street because of my birthmark.

“Even though I did sometimes wish I could hide from bullies, I didn’t let my birthmark stop me from making new friends or doing activities.

“Everyone gets bullied at some point because of where they’re from, how they look, how they talk, how they dress or for some other silly reason. The challenge is to never let the bad things bullies say define who we are.”

Swore also talks about compassion in this book and encourages readers to “be the one to make a difference.”

In “The Wish and the Peacock,” Swore writes about a farm girl because she says, “I am a farm girl!” She said she wanted to give readers a glimpse of what farm life is really like.

In her latest book, “Strong Like the Sea,” Swore writes in codes.

“When I was a kid, my best friend and I wrote notes back in forth in a code we made up so the teachers couldn’t read them if they found a note. (We didn’t write anything bad, just normal stuff). I still can write in that code almost as fast as I can write in regular handwriting.

“When I grew up, my kids were always figuring out what their presents were before Christmas, so I started writing their names in codes, cyphers, picture/word puzzles, etc. so they spent all their time trying to figure out who the present belonged to instead of what was in the box. They’ve had to use books, maps and all sorts of things to learn who gets to open which present.

“We don’t have big Christmases, but they take more time because the codes slow the opening down. It keeps them on their toes. And, not gonna lie, I might have a little evil villain inside my head going ‘Muahahaha’ when they hit an especially tricky code and have to work together to solve it.”

Swore said being a writer is fun because she gets to meet lots of people. In her presentation, she said reading makes you happy and makes you smart. She also talked about the process of writing and how she encourages writers to get ideas to write about.

“Take any regular situation and change it to ‘what if,’” Swore said.

“If doing chores, what if I had to do them underwater?

“What if I believed things people said about me?

“What if change could happen and there could still be a happy ending?

Swore plans another virtual visit to the Salisbury Township School District in November. Following the presentation, students will be able to write their own stories.

For more information on Swore, visit www.wendyswore.com.