A Peek Behind the Scenes with Middle Grade Author, Rick Stevens

Get to know Rick Stevens, a psychology professor who recently discovered his passion for writing during the Covid lockdown. With a laid-back approach to storytelling and a focus on characters that resonate with his own professional experience, Rick shares insights into his two middle grade novels, "Lacy Pita.ATYPICALGIRL" and "WECU Inc." Join us for a casual and insightful discussion about his journey into writing, his unique characters, and the imaginative worlds he crafts for young readers.

Could you share a little about yourself and your current middle grade novel?

I just started writing during the Covid lockdown.  I’m an old psychology professor who teaches the nerdy side of psychology.  I teach cognition, sensation & perception, statistics, and research methods.  I’ve been teaching over 30 years.  I’ve written two novels recently.  The first is Lacy Pita.ATYPICALGIRL.  It follows the main character’s development, I think of it as emerging from her chrysalis.  It is very nerdy.  She meets her first friend at her first activity away from home, a Girls Who Code camp.  There is a fair amount of computer talk and she wonders if the AI she is talking to is a person.  She overhears her parents use the term ‘atypical cognition’ in reference to her social fears and difficulties and decides to own term and asks to be called Lacy Pita (her name was Miranda) not telling her parents it is an anagram of ‘atypical’.  She likes number facts, anagrams…  It is late MG.  It lacks any of the dating angst and stressful themes of YA.  BTW, the subtitle atypicagirl is run together to be a play on Atypical Girl, like a superhero, or a typical girl.  She is very nerdy because she is a younger, smarter version of me. 

I wrote a second book that is more clearly MG.  WECU Inc. (We See You).  Two 12-year-olds live in a big, old apartment building.  They form a ‘Scooby Doo style’ group of kid detectives.  They have a couple of false starts, then solve a crime.  To break up some of the action, the group decides to write a fantasy short story with themselves as characters.  While Lacy Pita was kind of a girl’s journey into her personality, this is more just kids having fun and having some impact on the adult world. 

What inspired you to start writing middle grade fiction?

I wrote Lacy Pita first.  I have a Fitbit and was walking every hour for a few minutes.  I just started seeing pictures, scenes in my head as I walked and started writing them down.  I found it to be fun.  I knew almost nothing about marking labels like MG and YA when I started.  When I was mostly done, I started looking online and found that Lacy Pita was at the older end for MG, but I looked at a YA writer’s group and found that the themes and tone of writing were not mine.  With WECU, I did start off with 12-year-olds thinking that they would fit MG more clearly.

How do you approach crafting characters that resonate with middle grade readers?

I wish I knew that kids like the characters.  I don’t, yet.  I write characters that appeal to me and I’m regressing into my second childhood.

Do you have a favorite middle grade book?

I read The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet back in the 1960’s.  I soon transitioned to the regular (Clarke, Asimov) science fiction section of the library.

Can you describe your typical writing day?

I am not typical.  I have a full-time job.  Sometimes I get there early and write 30 minutes or so before work as the coffee kicks in.  Other times, I just don’t write until pictures start bouncing around in my head. 

What do you hope young readers will take away from your books?

I hope that kids reading Lacy Pita enjoy following a girl who goes through changes as she gains confidence and comes into her personality.  With WECU, I just hope that they think the characters are fun and it is an enjoyable story about kids doing something positive.  The kids in the story write a story.  It might give kids the idea that they could do it, too.

Can you share any tips or advice for aspiring middle grade authors?

Not really.  I’m probably not a good role model for people wanting to be professionals.

How do you incorporate humor and adventure into your middle grade stories?

In WECU, the story within the story is fantasy and involves some adventure/violent conflict, but I think it seems less stressful since it is presented that way.  In Lacy Pita, she leaves the house alone for the first time and there is tension as she accomplishes a task, but no real violence.  I guess the adventure/stress is going down a dark alley by herself.  I’m not sure about the humor.  Students often don’t think my jokes are funny.

What upcoming project can readers look forward to from you?

Since I am approaching this as a hobby, I feel free to not worry about marketing conventions.  Lacy Pita and WECU are pretty different.  However, they have one supporting character in common and they are set at the same time and in the same city.  Book three will see the common character introduce some of the characters of both books for a dual sequel of sorts.  I might say that Lacy Pita was the story of a nerdy girl finding her path and WECU was kids having fun in a positive way.  The third will likely be a little more complex with the kids making a movie out of their expanded fantasy story and also making an app designed to be a new approach to a utopia story.

Is there anything else you’d like to share that I haven’t covered in the interview?

I could imagine that you are looking for serious, professional authors and I won’t be insulted if I don’t fit your project.  I see that you teach kids.  I know someone who does a summer program, likely for underprivileged kids.  We have talked about me giving them some of my books and talking to them this summer.  One thing about the WECU book is that it portrays the kids as entering a short story in an online contest.  I thought that it might give them the idea that writing could be a fun activity. 

I’ve found the process surprisingly entertaining.  I also only write when characters start coming out of my subconscious and breaking into my walks.  Forcing myself to write X hours a day and spending the rest of the day working social media does not sound fun.  I am such an amateur that I had minimal editing help from a non-pro friend on the first one and the second one was just me and Grammarly.  The Lacy cover is made with a graphic I made when I was playing graphic art hobbyist during a couple of summers that I had off.  The WECU cover is bits made with AI text-to-image programs and slapped together.

Just FYI, I’m trying something in book 3 where I take the limited (appropriately for being authored by kids) fantasy short story within the story in book 3 and develop it a step more.  I tell the story with bits of story text and dialog interspersed with the director’s instructions and bits of movie-making stuff that the kids are doing to make the fantasy movie.