Author Aaron Starmer knows how to keep young readers engaged
May 8, 2025 | By Madelyn McDonald | Community News Service 
Author Aaron Starmer discusses his new young adult novel, “Night Swimming,” with readers at Bridgeside Books in Waterbury on May 1. Photos courtesy of Bridgeside Books
Waterbury author Aaron Starmer is always looking for new ways to keep young readers excited.
Starmer has written more than a dozen middle-grade and young-adult books, including the 2020 humorous-horror novel “Spontaneous,” the “Riverman” trilogy, and the popular “Locker 37” and “Math Mysteries” series stories.
His newest novel, “Night Swimming,” also features an eerie vibe. Set in the mid-90s, it follows two teenagers determined to swim in every pool in their town…but there is a magical twist.
At Bridgeside Books in Waterbury, Starmer last week launched a tour of independent bookstores in Vermont to promote his latest title and to get to meet and talk with readers.
Starmer also spoke with UVM’s Community News Service on assignment for the Waterbury Roundabout. He discussed “Night Swimming” and what makes kids tick when it comes to reading. He talked about the process he’s developed for his storytelling that’s likely informed by his own varied life experiences.
Born in northern California, he grew up near Syracuse, New York. He has a bachelor's degree from Drew University in New Jersey and a Master of Arts from New York University. Starmer, 48, said he and his family moved to Vermont over a decade ago “for a change of pace, more nature, and more room for our family after living for 15 years in an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey.”
Starmer said he, his wife, and two daughters now enjoy living in a converted farmhouse in Waterbury Center.
Q: What made you want to be a writer?
A: I grew up writing and did all sorts of things from stories, songs, and plays, so I’ve always been attracted to storytelling. I’ve tried to do that in different ways over the years and eventually found my way into writing books for young readers.
Q: Did you always want to write for a younger audience?
A: I had been trying to write things for a number of years in my 20s. I had just written a novel for adults that wasn’t particularly good but had sections in it about some young characters. I noticed that was probably where the best writing was—these young characters.
Q: Where do you usually get your story ideas from? Are they ideas that come to you in a moment or do you have to sit down and think about them?
A: It can be a combination. I usually have an idea whether it’s a character, setting, or scene that gets me excited. You always need that one thing that excites you. In the case of my new book “Night Swimming,” it was the idea of two characters going and swimming in all the pools in their town, and I thought, “Hey, I could write a whole book around that.”
Q: Do you have any inspiration for your books like a person, place, or thing?
A: Every book is different when it comes to what’s inspiring it. With this new book, I was certainly inspired by where I grew up in central New York during the 90s. The title of the book is a reference to a song from the 90s, and all the chapters are named after different songs from that period. I used a lot of those songs as inspiration, not just through lyrics, but through the mood and pacing to form the story.
Q: How did you choose which songs to include for the chapters?
A: Well, I literally went through all the major albums of that period and had a list of maybe 50 or 60 songs that I was picking from. I wanted them to be songs the characters might be listening to, and so I focused on this sort of indie-rock-alternative music that was a particular subset back then. The songs I ended up choosing felt like they resonated and fit with the book the most in a variety of ways.
Q: What was the process of “Night Swimming” like? Any fun or challenging moments?
A: I originally wrote it as a screenplay, but that was difficult to get into. I had always liked the idea and had it in the back of mind, so I started writing it as a book instead. That was a sort of stop-and-start process because I had written the beginning of the book and then put it down for a while. I guess I wanted to have a new perspective on it and have a different energy going into the second part—and I think it worked.
Q: You have books that are geared towards younger kids and then some others that are more young adult themed. What’s the difference in how you write those books?
A: Ultimately, it’s about what excites kids at different ages. That can be different things because they’re all going through different times in their lives. I try to write towards that and use myself as a guide of what I was like when I was kid. And you know because of that I feel like I’ve got a good view into what young kids are into these days.
Author Aaron Starmer. Courtesy photo
Q: Do you have any favorite moments of being an author?
A: It’s always fun to visit schools and festivals where you get to meet young readers because they are so excited about the books and want to talk to you. I’ve certainly gotten ideas from kids bringing up things I never thought about. Kids tend to read books closer in a sense compared to adults. They get in deep with the books that they love.
Q: What do you hope kids and young adults take away from your books?
A: I hope they have emotional reactions, I mean that’s what I look for in books. I don’t write simple, happy-ever-afters, but I hope I don’t write bleak books. I’m a big fan of a bittersweet ending where at the end you have a little bit of hope—but like the hard type of hope because that’s sort of realistic in the world we’re living in. There are a lot of difficult things to go through, but you can get through them, and I want young people to take away that message.
UVM’s Community News Service is a journalism internship that provides community newspapers with reporting, including the Waterbury Roundabout.