About

I’m Stacy Swearingen, and I write from my current home in Minneapolis and of my past homes throughout the States and South America in addition to tutoring middle & high school students most afternoons.

I’ve just begun querying A Chaperone’s Guide to Fighting Crime, a multi-POV upmarket, suspense novel about a trio of teacher-chaperones and 50 8th graders, who become the flashpoint of foul play on a school trip to D.C. I developed an obsession with the mystery-suspense-thriller genre during the pandemic and have had a ton of fun writing one with a rollicking vibe that hews closely to my worst nightmares as a former D.C. school trip chaperone.

While it was still titled Smoochie Stays Fresh, my second manuscriptThe Year We Grew Young, was named a finalist in the Romance/Women’s Fiction category in RMFA’s Colorado Gold Literary Contest for unpublished novelists. I temporarily abandoned my first manuscript After L.A. when four of the eleven agents I queried requested the full manuscript then offered helpful feedback with their rejection. Six years later I’m still planning to develop the origin story of Maura and Piper’s toxic friendship.

I’m an active participant of online workshops sponsored by the Loft Literary Center, Manuscript Academy, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association, as well as meeting regularly with my very talented, inspiring writing critique group. My short fiction piece “No, You Stink” was published in Flash Fiction magazine in November 2019, and I’ve submitted my latest flash fiction story, “Pillow Tutorial,” so stay tuned.

Please click on the “In-progress Fiction” tab for some of my recent writing samples.