C. V. Wooster, Blog

A history teacher and writer reflects on Sir Patrick Stewart, the Yorkshire boy who rose from a hard home through a teacher, a library, and Shakespeare, and showed a generation of young men what dignity looks like.

Isabel Allende just took the €1 million Premio Planeta by returning to Alba Trueba and the House of the Spirits universe.

How Route 66 became a line in time: postwar cars, power steering and A/C, JFK, Vietnam, color TV, the interstate, and Mrs. Orcutt's driveway.

People love Route 66 the way they love family. Steinbeck called it the Mother Road, and attachment psychology helps explain why the name stuck: a secure base, a bond with place, grief and nostalgia.

Travelers cross oceans to stand at the Bagdad Cafe on old Route 66. Awe, borrowed nostalgia, ruins and found family in the Mojave go a long way toward explaining it.

The cowboy-artist legend around Cormac McCarthy does not survive the public record, and what's left is more interesting: a writer who simply did the work.

Voice is the set of things a book is willing to notice. It can travel from a philosophical thriller to a desert history without wearing the same sentence twice.

A writing week survives by separating the kind of work a book actually needs, protecting one deep block, and letting a bad day end without a speech.

Pressure belongs in the work. Identifiable living people do not. The useful move is to keep the cost and change the address.

Launch week is a short sequence: a page that tells the truth, a retail link that works, the list you already promised, and one piece of writing that is not an ad.

A free piece should taste like the book it invites. The Examined Life matches a shelf of questions. A mismatched gift teaches the reader not to trust the next offer.

Research earns its place when it changes a decision in the scene. The rest of the archive can stay in the notebook, admired and unused.

Theme lands when someone other than the hero acts on it. A speech can announce a value. A side character can make the value cost something.

A one-page author brand style guide is the sheet you hold against a cover, a letter, and a new book so the name still means one kind of attention.

The public record of Rocky is a story that nearly left the person who made it. Hiding a tale can protect the living. It can also empty the page.

Horologium does not forgive a late second. In September 2026, A Wound in Time reached #1 Amazon Best Seller in Teen & Young Adult Steampunk, Steampunk eBooks, and Alternative History, and #1 Amazon Hot New Release in Teen & Young Adult Historical Mysteries & Thrillers. This is that morning from the author's chair, Wren's city, a kettle, and the hour strangers walked into the tower.