Creating the “Third Artist”: A Styx and Stones Q&A with Gary D. Schmidt and Ron Koertge

By this point in the year the novels for kids are beginning to fall into place. We still have yet to see the bulk of the fall releases, but in terms of spring and summer there have been ample delights. One glance at the most recent Heavy Medal post, discussing how we are halfway through the year, is enough to show us that.

That said, it can be difficult to sort out the books if you haven’t read them. I find that getting a bit of background information on a title is an excellent way for teachers, librarians, booksellers, and guardians to tell the newest books apart. And when one has the opportunity to interview both Gary Schmidt AND Ron Koertge about their Greek myth-infused Styx and Stones (out now), one does so. Rapidly. With fervor.

Before getting into all that, though, let’s get a rundown on what the book is about from the publisher:

“Simon expected more from life than being orphaned in ancient Greece and stuck in the Underworld for eternity. Determined not to forget who he is, he commits himself to escaping Hades. Along the way, he faces the monster Cerberus, befriends the tormented Sisyphus, and becomes Persephone’s favorite servant. Then, after centuries of failed attempts, he is finally thrust into modern times—and into the stall of a middle school bathroom. Naked.

With the help of Zeke, a nerdy rich kid on the social fringes, Simon learns to navigate this amazing and bewildering world. And with Simon’s help, Zeke begins to question his comfortable life and understand the true meaning of friendship. Everything seems to be going great . . . until the god of the Underworld sends a demon girl to bring Simon back. And suddenly, it’s not just the secret of Simon’s past that’s threatened, but their very lives—and everyone’s around them, too. Is their friendship strong enough to withstand the Will of Hades and save St. Nikolaos Academy Middle School?”

You have questions? These guys have answers:

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Betsy Bird: Hi guys! Many thanks indeed for answering my questions today. So this is hardly the first time you’ve worked on a project together. In an interview from 2025 you conducted with PW, Gary said, “I remember emailing you about three different projects and saying, ‘How about you pick one?’ Remember what you wrote back? ‘Let’s do all three.’ And now we’re on number four!” You seem to have this down to a science! But if this is number five, who proposed it initially? Where did the notion for it come from?

Gary Schmidt: Betsy, we’re actually still on those early projects; this is Number Two, following A Day at the Beach, which came out last year. We’ve been working on an epistolary novel together, and that will be our third.  I’m not sure we have this down to a science, since each of the books is very different: a collection of short stories, then a novel, then a grouping of letters. I guess that’s not efficient, but it’s a blast to try our hands at something very different each time.

Ron Koertge: I remember being impressed with how often Gary had ideas for so many projects. When Coaltown Jesus came out in 2013, I told my wife that I might be done with KidLit.  That book—a Novel-in-Verse—was  barely 120 pages and honed to a razor’s  edge. I’ve been a poet all my life and I tend to wait in silent expectancy for what the Quakers call “the way.” It took a while, but when Gary wrote about working together, that was the way. 

BB: This would be your first dual entry into middle grade fantasy, territory of the ubiquitous Percy Jackson (to say the least). Yet you still assumed the mantle of Greek myths, to a certain extent, for this book. What, for you each personally, would you say is the allure? Why can’t we quit those dang gods? 

Gary: I think the gods fascinate us because they’re so incredibly fallible.  When I did The Labors of Hercules Beal, that’s what drew me in: Hercules (the mythical one) makes so many stupid mistakes, and the results, because he’s a god, are huge and beyond awful. The Norse gods are fascinating because of what hangs over all of them through all the stories: they know as a certainty that the gods will fall to the ice giants. That’s a given. But with the Greek stories, there’s the fact that the gods are often flawed—and sometimes horribly flawed. Zeus, after all, is a rapist. Hera is overwhelmed by jealousy. Poseidon is the thwarted and resentful lesser brother. And on and on. Rick Riordan captures this in the early Percy Jackson books, in which Apollo is a failed father. We can’t quit the gods because they are ourselves. 

Ron: Completely agree with Gary. I was raised with fire-and-brimstone. Church twice on Sundays, prayer meeting Wednesday night, bible study at someone’s house. It’s no wonder I preferred the error-prone and admirably imperfect Greek belief system. I was less interested in a traditional heaven with streets of gold and preferred the Isles of the Blessed with Achilles and Ajax. Always a smarty-pants, I have a book of prose poems from an indie press called Olympusville where I re-write some of the foundation tales of the Greek myths. You won’t find me re-telling Bible stories!

BB: Ah, but what a sight that might be. Now initially when I read the premise of this book and I had a grasp on the fact that you two wrote it together, I naturally assumed that one of you would assume the voice of Simon and one of you would take on the voice of Zeke. I envisioned you switching off chapters or something (which a number of other co-authors of middle grade books have done in the past). But now looking at it, I’m not so sure. Slake the curiosity of your readers then. What the heck is your writing process? 

Gary: When we did A Day at the Beach, we each wrote a bunch of stories—about forty-five, if I’m remembering. We then narrowed it down to thirty, fifteen by each of us. We went to work on each other’s pieces, so when I look at one that I know I began, I know that much of it is what it is because of Ron’s work on it, but I don’t think I could point to any one sentence and “Yeah, that’s all mine, for sure. Or that’s all Ron’s. That’s true of this novel. We started first by trying to take turns by writing a certain number of pages: Ron would write five or so, then I would write five or so. But that didn’t work. Eventually that expanded to writing scenes, and then we would each chime in on the scenes, and go on to the next. It probably wasn’t the most disciplined way to write; it really was more organic than anything else. Remember how the Dillons used to talk about their illustration work together? They said that they created a “third artist” between them, and so neither one could look at an illustration and say, “That part is mine.” I never really understood that until working with Ron—but I get it now. 

Ron: Carpenters who build a house together can stand back, open a beer or a cold Pepsi and admire the finished product. Bob doesn’t say, “That roof is mine,” because he knows Rick helped him. Bob doesn’t say, “I poured that foundation,” because Rick stepped up and finished it with a screed and a bull float. Rick doesn’t argue that his roof is the finest part of the house. Gary and I were two carpenters who knew which end of the hammer to use, carpenters who trusted each other. We just didn’t have to wear steel-toe Redwing boots to build the house of Styx & Stones.

BB: So what happens when you hit a snag or (heaven forfend) one of you writes something that the other isn’t as keen on? I mean, Ron you’re out in Pasadena and Gary you’re a Michigan man. Are we talking out everything via email, phone calls, Zooms, etc? How do you iron out the wrinkles? 

Gary: You can’t believe—I mean, you really can’t believe—how often I wished that I could walk next door and knock on Ron’s door and we could go for a long walk and hash things out. Ron is a prodigious walker, and I go for long romps with the Border collie, and it would have been so splendid to “write” this novel during walks. But, it really was done mostly through sharing texts.  This was complicated because we write at very different speeds. Ron has written for television and film, and there you have to be quick and productive. I’m the slow dog who has to gnaw at the bone for a good long while. I’m sure I drove him crazy more than once, waiting on getting pages. 

Ron: I am—as they say in horse racing—quick out of the gate. I’d written four or five sketches for A Day at the Beach in the first week of that collaboration. For Styx & Stones, I relished the scene where Zeke and Simon meet in the boy’s bathroom because I knew it needed lots of wham bam dialogue. I don’t believe in Allen Ginsberg’s “First Thought/Best Thought” but I do believe in lots of first thoughts as fast as possible. I like to revise. It’s catnip for me to hover over a page and read out loud. I want to make sure the rhythm of the line or of the scene matches the content. I like to order synonyms around until one that’s just right and still slightly surprising emerges. That’s how I iron out the wrinkles of the garment I want every Reader to put on.

BB: When you were initially working the book out, were there things you distinctly wanted to include right from the get go? Elements you absolutely had to include?

Gary: I’m not sure we articulated specific elements that had to be included. We both taught at the MFA for Writing for Children at Hamline University, and so we both had a sense of life in St. Paul, where that program is located. We both had a sense of who these kids were: Simon, so determined and confident and together. Zeke, so beat up by the ways he has been abandoned. We knew that both of these kids were going to have to learn to depend upon each other. I think it was Ron’s idea to add into that mix a demonic character who undercuts both of these guys and who causes the real sparks of the story. 

Ron: For me, those elements emerged from below rather than being applied from on high. Gary is referring to Evelyn the devil-girl. If we made an early cast of characters—and we didn’t in any formal way—she was not on the list along with Zeke and Simon and Mr. Savalas. Just for fun, let’s compare a book to an automobile. Styx & Stones moved right along on the freeway, but it moved a whole lot faster when Evelyn came on the scene with some rocket fuel. 

BB: And how much does the final product resemble the earliest drafts? What got lost along the way?

Gary: That is really hard to say. It wasn’t like we wrote a draft, evaluated it, then wrote another. We were changing, revising, re-thinking all along the way. So it feels to me that there was not so much that was lost, but that each new exchange brought addition. I remember adding Mr. Savalas, for example—named after the actor Telly Savalas’ brother, who taught in my elementary school—just because I remember how kind he was to someone whose skills in mathematics were not powerful—and so he appeared in a scene. Much of this novel happened like that. Of course, then we’d both fuss with those additions, some growing, some shrinking, some responding to variations on the early ideas. 

Ron: Yes, that’s exactly right. It was almost all addition, rarely subtraction. Both of us sensed when a scene was skimpy or (shudder) over-written. I’m a ruthless editor—years of poetry, remember? So there were things that went under the knife. But that’s what early drafts are for. As Gary said, we changed, re-wrote, and re-thought scenes constantly.

BB: Sorry, I’m still stuck on the fact that Telly Savalas’ brother taught in your elementary school (hunhuna?) Talk about burying the lede. Okay, finally, you know I have to ask it. What’s next for you two? Do you have more projects you’re doing together? And any that you’re doing on your own?

Gary: We do have the epistolary novel to finish, and one we’re setting in a museum. We’re also considering a sequel or two to Styx & Stones. My next loner novel is a ghost story, since I’ve always wanted to try my hand at one; that’s out in Fall 2027. After that, a very short YA novel following a dinner table argument between father and son and focusing on how that argument works out over the next month. (Think a fourteen-year-old idealistic me and add my very German father who served in the military and throw in Vietnam in 1970.)

Ron: I’ve been reading poetry around L.A. since my most recent book from Red Hen Press, Pandora’s Kitchen,  is still getting some attention. Gary and I do have the epistolary novel to polish up and on my own I have a YA that I’m excited about. It’s called The Good You Do. It’s percussive, nimble and dynamic and definitely not Middle Grade! I also post on Substack every Sunday where I write about Poetry, but not with a capital P. And finally, this—my last name is pronounced KUR-chee. Two syllables, accent on the first. 

BB: I know, but only because the audiobook reader for this title did it just perfectly at the start.

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Boy, these guys don’t half-ass things, do they? You send them questions and they go above and beyond the call of duty to answer them. Huge thanks to both Gary and Ron for taking the time and care, and to Sammy Brown and the team at Harper Collins Children’s Books for helping to put this all together. Styx and Stones is out in bookstores and libraries everywhere now. Seek it out.

Filed under: Interviews