Is C.G.Rousing Of Rousing Books Woke?

Company Overview

C.G. Rousing of Rousing Books is a one-author independent publishing imprint based in San Diego, California, the vehicle for the novels and spiritual works of author C.G. Rousing. The flagship title, Thoughts to Die For, is a young-adult metaphysical fantasy first published in 2013, following high school sophomore Levi Levy into an eleventh dimension where thoughts manifest as solid entities and survival depends on mastering positive thinking; reviewers grouped it with YA fantasy of the Harry Potter-adjacent variety, and the author's own marketing reached toward law-of-attraction and mindset audiences, with a blog that cheerfully engaged Abraham Hicks readers among others. A second work, The Intenders: We Must Tell the People, a short, illustrated spiritual allegory about a tribe of thought-chasing reality shapers with characters named Presence, Egononda, Zenny, and Konshis, appeared in 2019, and the San Diego Public Library's local author showcase listings document additional later titles, including 2021 political tribute works under the same imprint.

This is self-publishing in its classic form: an author with a singular vision, a small imprint name, Amazon and Barnes & Noble distribution, and a WordPress site with book blurbs, reviews, events, a glossary, and even a book-cover contest that invited readers to vote on the paperback art. The imprint's website, cgrousing.com, has since gone dark, with the Wayback Machine's last full captures from the mid-2010s and a final flicker in 2024, so this profile is documentary: the books remain findable through major retailers while the storefront has folded. Rounding out the picture: Goodreads rates Thoughts to Die For around 3.9 stars from its modest reader base, and the San Diego library system has repeatedly listed Rousing among its local authors, a quiet civic recognition most indie authors never receive.

ESG & Sustainability

A one-woman publishing imprint has no ESG program, and Rousing Books never pretended otherwise. There are no sustainability reports, no governance documents, no corporate pledges of any kind, and no pretense that a word processor needs a climate strategy. The environmental story of a micro-publisher is simply scale: print-on-demand and retail-distributed paperbacks mean no pulped overruns, and the imprint's digital-era operations were a website and a word processor. Values-scanning buyers will find nothing to evaluate and nothing to object to, which at this scale is the honest finding, and a useful reminder that most of the American economy's publishers have never had an ESG officer and never needed one.

DEI Programs

There is no DEI programming, no diversity statements, and no institutional apparatus of any kind at Rousing Books, whose entire institutional apparatus is its author. The books' themes, the power of thought, intention, and spiritual growth, are individualist and inward-facing rather than identity-focused, drawing on New Thought and law-of-attraction traditions rather than contemporary social-justice frameworks. Readers evaluating the imprint on values grounds will find a worldview that predates and sits apart from the culture war entirely, concerned with consciousness and personal transformation rather than demographic categories. The author's online presence, from the old blog to the Goodreads quotes, is relentlessly about mindset, imagination, and intention, full stop.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

There is no record of LGBTQ+ advocacy, Pride participation, or related positioning in the imprint's or the author's public materials. The novels' spiritual-metaphysical themes do not engage sexual-identity politics, and the author's marketing reached toward mindset, fantasy, and spiritual audiences without cause-oriented messaging of any kind. On the standard markers, the record is blank: this was an author writing about the power of thought, not a brand taking positions, and the books' contents match their covers in a way modern publishing marketing departments rarely risk.

Political Activity

Here the record has one genuine wrinkle worth reporting straight: the San Diego library's local-author listing notes 2021 tribute titles with political subject matter under the Rousing Books imprint, indicating the author turned to explicitly political writing in that period. Public records show no PAC, donations, or organizational political activity; the politics, such as they are, live inside the books themselves, sold to whoever buys them. Buyers should understand this as an author's expressive trajectory, from YA fantasy to spiritual allegory to political tribute, rather than as corporate activism, and evaluate the individual titles on their own content if that history matters to their purchase decision.

Consumer Impact

For readers, the practical takeaway is that Rousing Books is a curiosity worth discovering rather than a going concern: Thoughts to Die For remains a likable indie YA fantasy with a genuinely original premise, thoughts as literal, deadly matter, available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon, and The Intenders is a short spiritual parable in the New Thought tradition, available through Barnes & Noble's catalog. The values profile is clean on every corporate marker, no ESG, no DEI, no advocacy, no institutional politics, with the sole nuance that the author's later tribute titles are political in content. Buying the books supports nothing but the legacy of an independent San Diego author's singular output, and the library-showcase recognition is a decent quality signal for the curious.

For collectors of indie fiction and spiritual-lit curio shelves, that is recommendation enough; for everyone else, it is a documentary entry in the catalog of genuinely independent American publishing, where one person's imagination was the whole institution, for better and occasionally for stranger.

• Verdict: Not woke. A one-author indie imprint with zero corporate activism; late titles turned political in content.
• Best for: indie YA fantasy and New Thought spiritual readers; findable via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
• Caveat: imprint website is dead (last archived 2024); books remain available through major retailers.