Even though it’s September, there’s still time to get in your summer reading! Summer is perfect paperback season—you can take a paperback anywhere!—so we’re giving away six of our favorite summer reads over at Pinterest, where you can enter for the chance to win a prize pack of books by creating a board showcasing your dream vacation! We’ve asked the authors of those books to tell us how they spent their summer vacation. Here is what Una LaMarche, author of Five Summers andLike No Other, had to tell us:

One of the worst things about adulthood—besides surprise chin hair and turning into the kind of person who earnestly adds socks to their Christmas list—is that summer vacation suddenly shrinks from two months to about a week. However, so as not to be a total buzz kill, I will pretend that I was “on vacation” in July instead of “writing another novel.” 

But mostly, I wrote another novel. This process involved a lot of breaks to post on Facebook and Twitter about how hard I was working, and to Instagram photos of my Say Anything MacBook decal:

 Near the end of July, my book Like No Other published! It even got reviewed in the New York Times. Naturally, I was there to Instagram the moment:

I also got the first galley of my comic essay collection, Unabrow.

In celebration I started getting my eyebrows professionally waxed by stern-looking Korean women instead of stabbing at my own face with tweezers while simultaneously trying to watch The Mindy Project. (The waxers politely declined to comment on the surprise chin hair.)

As I neared the August deadline for my new manuscript, I decided to let my two year-old son help me write. (This will explain why Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba makes a surprise cameo in the third act.) 

Finally, I submitted the book and we vacated to Block Island, which is a little island off the coast of Rhode Island. 

While there, my family took turns reading my book on the toilet, which is how you know they’re taking it really seriously:

I also read some great books on vacation (not on the toilet, no offense to the authors):

I did a few other notable things, like hiding under the table at a family reunion…

And giving my son some sick inverted dinosaur shin tats. 

As is my family custom, I declined to produce any kind of tan, or manage to successfully toss a Frisbee, for the duration of the season.

So, yeah. All in all it was a memorable summer, but now I’m ready to begin curating my fall wardrobe based on Janeane Garofalo’s character from Reality Bites, as well as stockpiling Halloween candy. Also, obviously, I need to start campaigning for my Christmas socks. It’s never too early.

Enter for the chance to win a copy of Five Summers and five other great summer paperbacks over on Pinterest!