As a career journalist and former newspaper reporter, Rick Polito has covered everything from political scandals and natural disasters to taking his dog to a pet psychic seminar. Polito attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism and worked at newspapers in Arizona and California. Along the way, he won multiple state and national feature and news writing awards and fit in a stretch as a syndicated humor columnist. Polito prides himself on “thinking three jokes ahead,” a skill he has taken on stage as an occasional standup comic. Off Trail is his first published novel, and Polito says he writes in the young adult genre 
because he appreciates the “urgency” of the teen years and believes it takes readers to a place that is both dramatic and familiar to everyone.
“Boredom and dread share an uneasy balance.”
Wise Wolf Books: You spent 21 years in newspapers. Can you tell us a bit about that experience and how it shaped your fiction writing?
Rick Polito: Newspaper reporting pushes you into some really raw experiences. I’ve seen dead bodies. I’ve covered murders and plane crashes. It gives you a depth of experience you wouldn’t encounter in almost any other job. But it also exposes you to people from all walks of life. I’ve interviewed celebrities and I’ve interviewed people in prison. You learn not only that everybody has a story, but that they all tell their story differently. It tuned my ear to how people talk, the words they choose and the rhythms they use to string those words together. I think all of that helps me write characters who are real and dialogue that is authentic. And let’s face it, newspaper reporting puts you at the keyboard every day. You develop a mind/body connection with that keyboard. I think in keystrokes. Give me a pen and I can barely scrawl out a thank you note. Give me a keyboard and I’ll have a whole story for you 30 minutes later.
WWB: What attracts you to writing young-adult fiction?
RP: I think there is an urgency about that time in our lives. When we’re teens the possibilities feel endless, but the stakes feel high. In a very few years you go from being a kid to being an independent adult. And all of this happens just as your first real understanding of who you are as a person making your own choices begins to emerge. Characters who are just beginning to understand themselves are characters who are in motion. They’re moving through life in way that feels more compelling to me than a lot of adult literature. It’s that high stakes/high drama rush that draws me in.
WWB: What has been the most exciting part of seeing your first published novel come to life during the publishing process?
RP: Just hearing from book professionals that they “get” Off Trail feels exciting. I have described my book as a 74,000-word comedy set masquerading as a novel, but writing humor is like telling jokes in a dark room with your ears plugged– you can’t hear anybody laughing. When the Wise Wolf Books team read it and told me it was hilarious, I could finally hear the laughs and I can’t be certain that I would have heard those laughs anywhere else in the publishing world. A lot of publishers say they are looking for laugh-out-loud fiction but I don’t know how many are ready for comedy in young adult that doesn’t stay between the lines. I didn’t set out to break all the rules, but that’s because I didn’t even look at the rules before I started. Finding out that Wise Wolf was ready and open for that was really exciting.
WWB: You have two children, do you let them read your work or ever bounce ideas off them?
RP: My line is that Off Trail is so authentic that it could trigger some uncomfortably authentic conversations with my kids about my own teen experience. I’ve invited both of them to read it. Neither of them has taken me up on it yet. They both enjoyed a pair of sci-fi novels I wrote a few years ago but I imagine there are some cringeworthy moments for them in Off Trail. I’ve bounced other ideas off them, particularly the books I am working on now. They are 15 and 20, smack dab in the middle of the target market.
Let’s talk a little about the book, Off Trail:
WWB: What was the inspiration behind Off Trail?
RP: When I was a newspaper reporter, I followed a group of at-risk students through a semester of “experiential education.” One of the experiences was backpacking in Death Valley. There was something about the troubled-kids-in-the-desert dynamic that I found very interesting, but it took me a long time to figure out that it could be a comedy. I didn’t need armed drug runners, UFOs or cannibal cultists! It could just be kids in the desert. I also grew up the desert, in Tucson, and there was a wilderness therapy program in town that was the boogeyman fear of every stoner teen I knew. Also, even though nobody actually uses drugs in Off Trail, I wanted to present the stoner culture that I remember and do it without all the afterschool-special “you’re gonna die!” tropes. I mean; the primary risk of smoking dope for the greatest number of teenagers is becoming that boring guy that the girls don’t want to go out with. That’d be a more effective message than so much of the anti-drug stuff they used on us.
WWB: You describe, very well, what I would imagine it would be like to be in a 15-year-old male’s head. Besides having been 15 at one point, how do you think you managed to write Daniel so well?
RP: You’re making an assumption that men grow out of being a 15-year-olds. Where did you hear that? I actually wrote this whole thing from the seat of my pants. I wanted something that felt authentic and I think part of the authenticity came from not knowing where the story was going to lurch from moment to moment. That’s how those years feel when you’re living them. I also wanted a story that sounded like somebody telling a story, not a writer writing a story, and that meant wallowing in my immaturity. I actually had to go back and take out about 100 F-bombs and there still a lot left. That’s how F’ing authentic I got, and I think it kept me in that 15-year-old mindset.
“I did what most teenage boys do when a teenage girl presents them with an opportunity to show them how cool they were. I showed her how cool I wasn’t.”
WWB: Off Trail is laugh-out-loud funny. Without giving away too many spoilers, what was your favorite scene to write and why?
RP: There are a few ridiculous self-affirmation exercises that a too-groovy counselor forces on the characters and there is one where they are asked to pretend they are a desert animal and explain how that animal is resilient. It was a good chance to show how kids can see through stupid stuff that grownups think will turn them into better people and it set up one of my favorite lines in the book.
WWB: You have experience as a comedian, how does comedy influence your writing?
RP: I think we all hear the voice in our head when we write but that might not be the voice the reader hears when they read it. When you are on stage, you have a lot more control of tone and timing. And you know when it works. You lose that crutch on the page and I had to constantly remind myself of that. Still, I think I was able to use some of what I’ve learned from the few times I’ve been on stage to get the timing right. But maybe the most important thing I learned from comedy was something a comedian told me when I was getting ready for my first standup set. I was doing it for a newspaper story and one of the comics I interviewed for tips on technique told me something I will never forget. He said “You’ve got to think it’s funny. If they don’t think it’s funny, f- em’.” I think Off Trail is very funny.
WWB: Throughout the book we can see Daniel’s perception and beliefs start to change – how does this influence his character growth and relationships with those in his life?
RP: Off Trail is basically a coming-of-age story. Daniel grew up in the shadow of an incredibly reckless older sister whose bad choices left him feeling like a bystander to the never-ending storm of her excess. When he gets away from his family, he is able to discover a better sense of his own identity, and with that identity he is able to cobble together some confidence. He’d accepted that his role in the family defined who he is and once he sheds that, he finds a stronger and more interesting real person underneath, somebody who can take action in the world and take charge of his life.
One last thing…
WWB: Can you please tell us what happened at the pet psychic seminar you attended and what lies in your dog Rocket’s future?
RP: I attended the seminar as a reporter. I learned that people really crave a close connection with their dogs but I’m not sure they understand how close that connection already is. The funniest part was when a woman asked if she was going to hear her dog talking in her head and whether her dog would speak “in the voice of Raymond Burr.” The dog I took to the pet psychic seminar was my first terrier, Vito, a dog who fooled me into thinking that Jack Russell Terriers were conducive to a normal life. Rocket isn’t as easy, but he is just as loveable. I think he has a great future in barking at squirrels and using his devious criminal skills to get into food he isn’t supposed to have. How does a dog open a glass jar with a metal lid? I wish I’d had a nanny cam for that one.