School visits · in person and virtual
The author is also the teacher.
I teach seventh and eighth grade English in South Carolina, and I write the books my students read. They get the manuscripts before anyone else does — my classes have been reading my next middle-grade novel aloud, chapter by chapter, telling me exactly which parts are boring. A visit is that, in your room.
Free within driving distanceVirtual anywhereGrades 6–8, either side on request
Robert Cade Thompson · teacher, author, and the reason there are so many plants in these books
Why me
I am in a middle school classroom every day this week.
Which means I am not guessing what holds a room of thirteen-year-olds, and I am not surprised by anything that happens in one.
I write for the exact age I teach. Echo Island is YA fantasy, five books planned, book two out 6 October 2026. Subterrania is YA science fiction and goes darker — that one is for your older readers, and I will say so. There is also a middle-grade novel in progress that my own students are workshopping in real time.
I also run things that are not books. I founded a robotics club that now has thirty members and pays me nothing, and I film wild places — swamps, woods, whatever is happening two feet off the trail — then invent the versions that do not exist and put them in a novel. BA in creative writing, Utah Tech.
None of that is a sales pitch. It is the reason a visit does not feel like a stranger being wheeled in for an hour.
What I can run
Four formats. Pick one, or tell me what you actually need.
Every one of these works in person or over video, and I will shape it around what your teachers are already doing rather than running a script at them.
The Closet of Doom
There is a decommissioned bathroom in the back corner of my classroom. I told my students it was the closet of doom, and instead of avoiding it they started begging to be thrown in. That became a novel. It is a talk about where a story actually comes from, and it lands because it started in a room exactly like theirs.
Author talk or assembly
How a book gets made, start to finish — the notebook, the swamp, the draft nobody sees, the part where it gets published. Scales from one class to a full assembly. Q&A at the end, and I do not dodge the question about how much money authors make.
Writing workshop, one class period
Hands-on, one class at a time. Usually worldbuilding — invent a plant, then make it obey rules — or revision, which is the part nobody teaches. Students leave with something on the page.
Field footage into fiction
I film wild places and then write the ones that do not exist. We watch real footage of things most people walk past, then look at the invented version in the book and work out what I changed and what I did not. Fits ELA and science both, and it reaches the kids who have decided they do not like reading.
The practical part
Everything you need before you email me.
No media kit to request, no form to fill in for a rate sheet. The answers are on this page.
- Who it suits
- Middle school is home ground — sixth through eighth. Upper elementary and high school work too. Ask, and if a group is not a fit I will tell you rather than take the booking.
- Where
- In person within driving distance of Florence, South Carolina. Virtual anywhere — and virtual is the one I can schedule fastest.
- When
- Virtual visits during the school day. In person after school, evenings, Saturdays, and across school breaks and summer. I teach full time, so say what you need and I will tell you straight whether I can be there.
- What it costs
- Nothing, within driving distance. Farther out, travel and lodging plus a fee, quoted before you commit to anything. Virtual is free wherever you are.
- What I need
- A room, a teacher in it, and a screen if we are doing the field footage. That is the whole list.
- Books
- No purchase requirement, ever. If you do want copies on hand I will tell you in advance which title suits the grade, and I will sign them.
How to book
- Email me. One message is enough to start.
- Tell me the grade and roughly how many students.
- Say in person or virtual, and the window you are working with.
- Name a format from above, or describe what you are actually trying to do and let me pick.
- If it is a library, bookstore or festival rather than a school, say so — it changes the shape, not the answer.
I answer these myself · usually within a couple of days