Coffee Novelist

 

 

The lost place

In order to finish the first version of the second book of my Trier series I had to start the third. There’s a lot going on in that one short sentence, not the least of which is that it sounds like the start of a word problem from high school math class.

However, I did the same when I finished the Trier. I felt like I needed to see how it “landed”. It worked for me. I discovered that I had my work cut out for me in the opening of the second novel, which I’m calling The Trier goes to London. The first challenge was making 20th century Probat commercial coffee roaster a time machine. Then, I realized that in the book, The Trier goes to London, that the trier doesn’t actually go to London. It stays in the hands of the 800-year-old Ethiopian goat herder named Kollo. But that is what will make the revisions fun.

 

 

An inconvenient booth

One other opportunity presents itself when writing a time travel series based on the energy of coffee is that you can chose to put the next novel anywhere you like. The first two novels were set in the history of coffee.  I began reading Uker’s classic The Romance of Coffee in order to dig up to a spot for the fun to take place. There is no shortage of options since the history of coffee as we know it goes back 800 hundred years, spans the world and is filled with greed, commerce, rivalry, slavery, discovery, lies, lust, and deceit. Almost too good to be true.

I had almost too many choices. So many so that I looked into placing the next novel in the future of coffeehouses.

My space?

Except there may not be one. Our consumer centric society seems so intent on mining people’s mania for ego-separation and instant gratification (by the way, there is no such thing- sorry, I don’t make the rules), that we may no longer have very many spaces where we actually have to tolerate other people. No place will exist where we have to cooperate, assimilate or defer to each other, even for a moment. No way I drink the same coffee brewed for the guy in line in front of me, or the woman behind me. The horror! No thanks, I’ll sit in my car, on my phone, and be pulled somewhere else while doing so. Why go inside and sit near anyone, hear a bit about their lives from the booth or table nearby?
Why form even a momentary connection to someone when I can be told by Instacart that I’m too important to even think about feeding myself? Me, eat every day? I’m way too important to scratch out a grocery list.

Why are drive-thru only coffee shops suddenly popping up all over Louisville? (yahoo.com)

 

A shared space?

The growth sector in coffee these days is coming from drive up chains like Scooters, Dutch Brothers and 7-Brew. I spend a lot of time on the road for my job and can confirm this with my own eyes. At the same time, I cannot deny that my favorite coffee house is a spacious one, with enough space and tables for me to get away and read or write without having to hear people talk.  Yet, I find there is a certain energy that I like to be a part of that is generated by people in coffeehouses. It is a way to connect to the personal and universal at the same time. That is a good thing for coffee novelist, at least.

I may be a little dramatic here, but there is just not enough room for a cast of characters, fun plot twists and dashes of humor in the passenger’s seat of someone’s Chevy Gratuitous. It just does not seem to be a very good location to set a novel based on the type of community coffeehouse’s have always been known for. Or am I missing something?

I will hopefully always be able to sit down at an inconvenient booth, open the laptop and write about a time when we had to tolerate each other, gather for a few minutes, and drink the same coffee as everyone else. Did we all enjoy that option? Not all the time, no. But I think we are rewarded more than ever these days for mistaking the easiest thing for us as being the best thing for us. Something to ponder while waiting for your next coffee to arrive via DoorDash.