Robert Wescott
Writer, father, baker, inventor, and the person behind The Sage Dad.
A life in the making
Robert Wescott has spent much of his life helping new ideas find their place in the world. Now he writes about what happens when those ideas acquire power over the people who made them.
His path to fiction has moved through digital media, business development, artificial intelligence, family life, school bus driving, a home bakery, and the stubborn work of turning an invention into something useful. The turns are part of the story. They have given him a close view of both complex systems and the ordinary decisions those systems affect.
Media and technology
Robert earned a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Communication and Marketing from Rochester Institute of Technology. He worked in audience development at The Oklahoman as newspapers navigated the shift to digital publishing, then held senior business development roles across media and technology businesses.
His work brought him into AI and language technology, health technology, and other fields where a product’s promise can be compelling while its consequences are harder to see. He also founded an AI-assisted document analysis venture. Years spent explaining complex systems to customers sharpened his interest in the gap between what a system is meant to do and what it actually does to people.
Family and attention
Fatherhood across generations has changed Robert’s sense of time, attention, and success. His experience driving a school bus brought another view of responsibility into focus: children and families depend on people who must make sound decisions in the moment, not just follow a process.
That belief also shaped Batteries Not Included, his attempt to build a retail business around play and engagement without screens. The store did not become the lasting business he hoped for. The idea remains central to how he thinks about family life: make room for imagination, shared attention, and the things people can do together with their hands.
Bread as a way back to the real world
Through The Sage Dad, Robert bakes sourdough for local customers and shares the practical work behind it. Baking asks for observation, patience, revision, and a willingness to learn from a loaf that did not behave as expected. It also creates a reason to meet people face to face.
Repeated problems at the baking bench led him to develop Boule Band, a reusable proofing collar for sourdough. The project connects his technical and entrepreneurial instincts with his daily work as a baker: test an idea, see what happens, and improve it.
Why Sovereign Mercy
Robert’s serialized novel Sovereign Mercy brings these experiences into a near-future political thriller. A government creates an intelligence powerful enough to police other AI systems, then confronts the meaning of the command it has given that intelligence: protect the innocent.
The fiction asks who defines a good outcome, who is allowed to sacrifice someone else for it, and whether human judgment can survive when institutions become accustomed to delegating decisions. The chapters and their discussion live elsewhere on this site; this page is about the experiences and questions that brought Robert to the story.
AI assistance & authorship
Robert uses AI tools in developing Sovereign Mercy, including for story exploration and draft prose. He directs the work and approves each chapter before publication.
From the page to the bakery bench.
Read the novel here, or follow the baking and invention projects that inform the work.
Help refine the manuscript
Reader observations help shape the next revision. Tell me what held your attention, where you lost the thread, or what detail deserves another look. Substantive feedback will receive an acknowledgment in the book’s website edition, with your chosen name, pseudonym or anonymous credit. Feedback is voluntary and unpaid; the submission terms explain how it may be used.