As you are starting out in B/G there are very few kits available, and not too much published information on the model rocket side. In general you can find a ton more information about glider construction/flying from the model airplane HLG and DLG (discus launch gliders) world than from the NAR site. But pretty much any good hand launch glider plan can be converted to a rocket glider by putting the rudder on the underside of the boom and adding a motor pod.
A good HLG build and trimming article by a serious expert that I hadn't found before:
https://www.modelresearchlabs.com/legacy.htm and some more articles here
https://www.modelresearchlabs.com/applications.htm.
This is pretty much what I was trying to get at, but in simplified form. Since we've opened the worm can, here's a video I did on actually implementing Curt Stevens' article you reference.
I've been using his basic method for the past 15 years and to pretty good effect. One should not overlook, however, that there's some obvious ego showing through in the article and that the general theory he uses is somewhat dated. He downplays the advances made by Lee Hines (a personal friend of mine and one of the top 5 free flight glider guys EVER) and makes no mention of the work done by Stan Buddenbohm (also a friend of mine). While that galls me to no end, it doesn't reduce the value in the trimming section. I take serious issue with some of his construction stuff as he majors on the minors in my opinion. Yes, he's got the right airfoils, etc, but the level of precision he's after is completely unnecessary, and I've got enough free flight contest experience, both indoors and out, to back my claims. There are several videos of my flying rather cobbled together models to 60+ seconds in dead air from a catapult, which is mostly on par with Lee or Stan. I had several 70 second flights in Johnson City back in the day which would have put me in the top 3 had I not managed to use up all my official flights on a more fragile model which kept promising to perform but never did. That' not to toot my own horn, but rather to clarify that you don't need the OCD building philosophy to get good flights. I'm not as good as Stan and Lee and I'm happy to admit that.
I know a lot of folks use the tissuing method for rocket powered models but I haven't really found it to be necessary unless you're getting into the D-E range. I've had no problems with flutter from my Carbonette 19 R/C BGs and they're built pretty light. I get 2 minutes in dead air on B engines, and that's with the R/C stuff hanging out in the breeze. You could probably do 2:30-3:00 with a free flight version. It borrows pretty heavily from Stan's Swee' Cat, for what that's worth.
I think someone with good ingenuity could make a pretty competitive no-moving-parts D RG from one of Stan's DLG kits by putting the motor over the wing at the CG. Trim it out as a DLG and it should give a really nice spiral climb under rocket power. One of these days I'll get around to trying that on one of mine.