The Stories of Richard Alan Dickson

Greetings!  Welcome to Rick Dickson’s website.  Rick has written well over a hundred stories and novels, including science fiction & fantasy, holiday adventures, humorous tales, and one of his favorites… the “Cat Patrol Delta” series. On this page, we’ll share a little more about this native of the Pacific Northwest.

Before becoming a full-time fiction writer, Rick spent nearly twenty-five years in Corporate America.  After a hungry stint as a fresh-faced, straight-from-college stockbroker, he set aside the glamour of Wall Street, along with the thousands of friends he’d made during dinner-hour cold calls, for a career as an Accounting Assistant in the Seattle office of a large reinsurance company. (Yes, he joined a “cube farm.”)

Once on the corporate ladder, Rick proved that his many childhood years spent climbing trees hadn’t been a complete waste of time by quickly climbing to the position of department manager.  But corporate winds are no less predictable than any other type of wind, and climbing in the wind is never a good idea.  Rick suddenly found himself on the wrong side of the country when his company was forced to scale back its operations ten years later.  They regrouped in New England.  He remained in the Northwest.

Waving good-bye to the moving vans as they motored down the road and disappeared into the distance, Rick carefully considered his next career.  He became a corporate consultant and ran himself happily ragged for the next nine years.   Traveling  the country and racking up more frequent flyer miles than even a CPA could conveniently count, Rick  helped his clients work through a variety of business issues, including liquidity problems, external reporting matters, process mapping, and workflow concerns.

Rick’s final years in Corporate America were spent at one of the major insurance groups.  As a VP, Controller, and then an acting CFO, he traveled from one coast to the other putting the lessons he’d learned during his time as a consultant to good use.

His current career as a fiction writer takes him to places much further away than any cross-country jetliner ever could, and he seldom needs to leave his writing loft to get there.

While Rick no longer climbs trees, he’s no stranger to fun.  He’s been a private pilot for fifteen years and a scuba Divemaster for twenty-five.  He also enjoys archery, bicycling, ceramics, dancing, extra cheese, fantasy game MMORPGs, guitars, hiking, ice cream and pie, jet lag (not!), kite flying, learning, movies, new toys, his fellow members of the Oregon Writers Network, painting, the Q, reading, swimming, target shooting, underwater pumpkin carving, video games, wooden xylophones, yarn monkeys, and, um… well, visiting city zoos.

But most of all, he enjoys his readers.  Thanks for stopping by.