Coffee Novelist

Starbucks books for Starbucks fans, plus one.

Coffee Novelist

October 24, 2026

I was just made aware of a book on Starbucks that I felt like needed to be added to this list. It is titled, It’s Just Coffee-A Starbucks Baristas Decade from the Inside by Riley Studor: it’s just coffee: A Starbucks Barista’s Decade from the Inside: Studor, Riley: 9798998340611: Amazon.com: Books.

I put this book on my “to be read” list and will read it sometime soon. The author and I exchanged a few emails and I’ve read the description on Amazon. It seems like a worthy chronological follow-up to my own novel, Tripio. At first glance, both novels appear to be about a Starbucks that is more difficult to find these days, so one may as well read about.

Books for the Starbucks fan on your shopping list

A while back I read How Starbucks Saved my Life by Michael Gates Gill. In the interest of full disclosure, I read it out of curiosity, as opposed to organic intellectual interest. In other words, I read it to see how that memoir compared to my historical fiction novel, Tripio. I may offer a full review in a later post. But for now, I will simply offer a comparison of “How” to Tripio, ingeniously using coffee as the yardstick.

How Starbucks Saved my Life = Blonde Roast

Lightly roasted coffee that’s soft, mellow and flavorful. Easy drinking on its own and delicious with milk, sugar or flavored with vanilla, caramel or hazelnut.

Tripio = Espresso

A complimentary blend of beans of differing origins: it is intense, deeply flavored and when brewed correctly leaves a lingering sweet aftertaste. And, for my money, this novel gains more value as Starbucks continues to search for an identity. In that light, Tripio, should remind all corporations that baristas, and all employees, or even partners, are not bits of data and it is ludicrous to manage them as such. Sorry, people. It can’t be done.

From Barista to Boardroom=Pike Place Blend

From Barista to Boardroom: Lessons about Life and Leadership from a Career in Coffee

I did read this since I wrote this post several years ago. The part that stuck with me was the very end scene and it seems almost sad now, in light of what has happened to Starbucks. But, I can’t spoil it by going into anymore details.

Take a look. It’s in a book

I have also read several of the titles below. But I’m not a big fan of reviews anyway, so feel free to choose one that interests you.

Coffee for Dummies by Major Cohen

Taking Responsibility: Heart mind and Soul by Jeff Hamill

It’s Not About the Coffee and The Magic Cup both by Howard Behar

Work Freely: Love your Job, Love your Life by Nancy Richardson

The Multiplier Effect of Inclusion by Tony Byers

Female Firebrands by Mikaela Kiner

Steady Work by Karen Guadet

Pour Your Heart into It and From the Ground Up both by Howard Schultz

Found the old pic of me rocking a Starbucks Holiday Season apron

A non-partisan vote

Coffee Novelist

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September 20, 2026

The Trier is the story of a coffee loving, wanna be writer who discovers that the mysterious roaster’s tool holds the power to transport him back into the history of coffee.

And that is just a tease of the Trier trilogy. With that in mind, I humbly, well not that humbly, ask for two seconds of your time to vote for me as AIG’s Storeteller of the Year, using the link below. Thanks! Jerry

https://authorsingrocerystores.com/yearly-award

It was all done via my own, non-outsourced, mind.

Traveling with the trier

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September 10, 2026

Happy to announce that I am taking the trier with me on a book launch tour to celebrate the release of The Trier Goes to London, the second of the Trier novels, which comes out on National Coffee Day September 29th. #coffeenovelist #The Trier #coffee #indieauthor #coffelovers #Pete’s Press

The Green Bean in Cumberland Saturday Sept 12, 11-2 and Wednesday September 30th 10-2

Kroger Downtown- 227 W. Michigan on Tuesday September 29th 12-7

Kroger Zionsville 5 Boone Village on Saturday October 10th 12-5

Kroger Noblesville 14800 Hazel Dell Road Saturday October 24th 12-5

Hancock County Library Author’s Fair November 21st 10:30-3:00

Explore? Who does that?

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July 31, 2026

“Dad. I want to explore.”

When I heard that word explore it took me a second to recognize it. Explore. How quaint. How old-fashioned. My young-adult son and I were on vacation in our traditional rental house on the banks of the Ohio River. We’d arrived a day before everyone else in the family and had some time on our hands.

I did recognize the word after a moment. Explore. You mean just go out and discover what’s out there without using the phone?

That is what he meant. I do want to point out that the young man who asked me the question spends no time on social media. I ain’t gonna make no grand conclusions but it seems something worth considering.

Off we go

My idea of a great vacation includes not driving, and since we were on vacation and my son said he’d drive, we went exploring. And we learned a few things via direct experience. This has been about three weeks now. The experience has remained with me to such an extent that I had to write about it. Lucky for you all.

They say that highways are the rivers of today. Or something like that. It means, however you want to put it, that there was a lot of life happening on the Ohio river in its time as a primary means of travel. This would be just before trains, telegraphs, and the Civil War.

It turned out that even though we’d spend a good amount of time here over the years, there was lot to discover. One place was Rome, Indiana. This small town sat on the river and around 200 hundred years ago was the county seat. My son and I checked out the courthouse building from 1812. It had been a school at one point and a few other official places of importance. It was blazing hot on this 4th of July weekend and the old brick building sat in the middle of town like it didn’t care at all.

A little later we stopped on the side of the road to read on of those historical marker signs. We were stading on the sight of an actual Civil War battle. Sure, it was a small one by Civil War standard but it happened on banks of the Ohio River where now there was a hell of a lot of corn growing.

The spot that we visited resonated with me the most was one that, in the interest of transparency, was one I’d been to before. This was in Magnet, Indiana which is a small town that sits on the- you guessed it- The Ohio river. I’d been here but it was about ten years ago on one of the first times we came to our rental on the river. So, of course, I got us lost on the way. But to me that’s just a different way to explore, so it counts.

I wanted to revisit the ten graves of Civil War soldiers who died in steamboat explosion. There had been discharged, the war was over, and they were heading home. The headstones sit across the road, in a grove of trees a rock throw away from the river. Most of the men were from Cincinnati, but one headstone is marked ‘anonymous”. As I said it was hot as all hell that day, but the trees helped keep us cool enough to take our time to read the headstones. Three of the men were named John as it happens. And as it was 4th of July Weekend, someone had carefully placed a small bouquet of flowers, topped with mini-American flag at each stone. Under the shade, near the mighty river seemed a fine place to be laid to rest.

The time years ago that I came across these headstones I told myself there’s a novel to write here. Maybe I just started it. But this is a blog post. So, we’ll keep it at that. I guess the point of the post is that external exploration can lead to internal exploration. Either one is better for your mind than asking the phone for an answer.

Trying to sell The Trier

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July 24, 2026

If you think I’m handy with the trier in real life, wait until I send it back in time to London in 1675. The Trier Goes to London will be available on September 29th, which just happens to be National Coffee Day. #coffeenovelist #The Trier #coffee #indieauthor #coffelovers #nationalcoffeeday2026 #Pete’s Press

10,000 views, 100 days

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June 22, 2026

I have struggling with coming up with ideas for posts recently. Not that I don’t have lots of them, it’s just that I don’t see the need to add to the clutter and chaos of everybody else’s lives via my blog. I mean, the few who do read the blog, all have lives to lead, and I have never been a huge fan of using filtered reality to reach people.

In fact, I have been having a great time setting up my table in grocery stores as part of the National Author’s in Grocery Stores Program. I feel much more comfortable talking to folks face to face, one at a time.

I am taking the time and effort to do this partly because it gets me out of the house. But mostly because I am launching the second Trier novel, The Trier Goes to London. In order to promote that book, I’ve been out talking up the first novel in the series, The Trier. The third novel in the series is already written, and I invented my own genre, coffee magic realism, in the process. Hmmm. Maybe that is why I haven’t found the time nor inspiration to post here.

That ended when I saw that WordPress sent a congratulations on reaching 10K views on this old warhorse of a blog. That happened just as I asked my phone how many days there were until National Coffee Day 2026, when The Trier Goes to London comes out. Math to the rescue!

All that happened Saturday morning on my porch over a cup of coffee, where so much of the Trier novels came to life. And so many of the posts for the blog. May as well add this one and start on the next 10K views.

And now that it is Monday, it is 100 days until The Trier Goes to London is published.

A page from a journal

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April 15, 2026

I just finished my latest journal, which I call sketchbooks of the mind. This one held about nine months of thoughts and was a little heavy I put it on the shelf next to the 37 others. I use the journals more to clear my mind, and I was happy not to be carrying all those thoughts with me any longer.

But on a whim, I pulled another Sotm down and cracked it open. The thoughts now have a different energy than they did years ago. I liked seeing them, unique to me, stored away, and generated from my one and only mind. Take that, Ai.

Now after dinner on Sunday. Ribs and winter veggies

Chakra 1) Survival

p. 451 “I never believed speed and ease are conducive to a living fully.”

Good talk with Terry just now

Sunday almost April

Just finished River Horse. Finally. My bedtime book for months. A good feeling. I can start a new book and new job at the same time. I think it is a good sign.

**What’s so** **hard about using your own mind?**

Feel free to read this great review

Coffee Novelist

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April 14, 2026

I am not reposting this simply for an ego boost. I feel like this recent review will help a potential reader of The Trier more than me. Hey, the book ain’t mine no more. Since one is forced to put one’s book into a genre or category -thanks to Amazon- I created my own. I like to call The Trier (and following books in the series) “coffee magic realism”. Yet, I’m not sure what it is. The review and reviewer may have provided clarification on that.

**Just making it up as I go along. More fun that way.**

Book Review: The Trier: A Week in the Life and Death of a Coffeehouse by Jerry Vanschaik

Are you mad at Starbucks?

Coffee Novelist

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February 9, 2026

I’ve started to look through my old Starbucks related posts, partly because of the ongoing baristas strikes. Despite the title, I don’t think this one has much in common. But here it is below.

I had tried to reach out to the new Starbucks regime. After all new CEO Brian Niccol recently said, “It’s time to tell our story again and reintroduce Starbucks to the world.” I let them know I’d already done that with Tripio. That has been a while now. I’m guessing that they want’ to tell the Starbucks story how they prefer to tell it, not how it actually happened to and for all the baristas who actually built the company one latte at a time. Wait a minute. Maybe Jay in Tripio did have something in common with the Striking Starbucks Baristas. Maybe Cosmodemonic was the right word choice after all.

THE REPOST PART

A reasonable question

“Are you mad at Starbucks?”

My editor asked me over the phone. He had just finished reading an excerpt from Tripio. I had sent him an excerpt from in middle of Tripio. He offered that it had been his experience in editing that writers most often refined the beginnings and ends of their manuscripts. He felt that an excerpt from somewhere in the middle of a manuscript offered him a clearer picture of the job ahead. So, I had send him a what he asked for.

Another reasonable question

“Why are you calling Starbucks the “Cosmodemonic Coffee Company”?

I had not thought about it all that much when writing Tripio. I think because it is how I referred to Starbucks throughout the journals that I kept during the early 1990s when I worked at Starbucks. Those journals were the source material for Tripio. It should obvious that I could only be referring to Starbucks when I subbed Cosmodemonic. I saw no urgency or reason not to call Starbucks by the name Cosmodemonic when writing Tripio. Tripio is the authentic telling of how I interacted with and related to Starbucks when I worked there. But no, I was not mad at Starbucks.

**Is Starbucks Cosmodemonic? He would know**.

Why Cosmodemonic if you are not mad at Starbucks?

My future editor was fine with that but was also interested in the “Why?’ So, I explained further. In Tripio, the Jay main character and his new lover Kati, who also worked at Starbucks, both had read lots of Henry Miller at the time their romance starts. Henry Miller briefly worked for Western Union and referred to it as the Cosmodemonic Telephone and Telegraph Company. In Tripio, Jay and Kati use Cosmodemonic as a nickname more out of homage to Henry Miller than anything to do with Starbucks. My editor was not at all sure readers, even readers of Henry Miller, would get the reference. He said that he would like to see me provide a clarification of my use of Cosmodemonic. I told him I would do so.

In Tripio Starbucks is Cosmodemonic

Since Tripio is at least part memoir and there are many passages where Jay is taking notes or reviewing his SotMs, he also uses Cosmodemonic, “to keep work out of my mind as I take notes and go about my off hours”. This shows the struggle the protagonist Jay faces in Tripio. Jay moved to Chicago to “test his metal as a writer, not to find a career.” He is also actively questioning whether he has what it takes to actually succeed as a novelist. The safer but less writerly option is climbing the ladder at this fast growing coffee company he has been working for over two years. In using the word Cosmodemonic in his personal journals Jay is identifying himself more as a writer, like Henry Miller, than just as cog in the growing Cosmodemonic/Starbucks machine.

I just checked an on-line dictionary site and found that no definition for the word Cosmodemonic exists. Since Henry Miller is no longer alive, I can’t ask him for his permission to use the word. Too bad, because I would also liked to have asked him what he thought about the Cosmodemonic Coffee Company.

I use Cosmodemonic 199 times in Tripio, each one literary reference.

**My Starbucks days were as a book is it to painting.**

Not a book review

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February 6, 2026

I don’t review books and hesitate to even suggest books to other folks, unless I know them really, really well. I go into this in an entirely different old blog post. But I just tried to find it but couldn’t in my previous posts. Hmmm, maybe it doesn’t exist. So, to put it briefly, I see a book and a mind as two types of energy. One, a rainstorm and the other a growing tree. When a raindrop hits a leaf, they connect. What are the chances my raindrop hits your leaf? Maybe it’s better I didn’t find that post after all.

Anyway, in Breath, I came across a reference to The Five Tibetans. I don’t even know for sure what to call them. It is perhaps a series of 5 yoga-like movements done in order that conenct the Chakras, mind, body and spirit. The big quailifier here is that you have to believe they do. And I do.

After I came across the reference to the Five Tibetans in Breath, I began to wonder why I do. I think I found most of the answer in this old post that I shared below.

As for Breath, I found it worth reading. But that doesn’t mean you will.

The Repost March 13, 2017

I found it. As I have been writing these posts it has become important to confirm facts and dates. If the writing of Tripio, as recounted in this blog, is going to help even one person find their own voice and thus create their own unique work, then I have to check the facts. In this case, they are found in my journals, or what I call Sketchbooks of the Mind (SotM). Those contain the dates, times and places I need. I keep and always have kept a SotM to track where my thought-producing mind is. I know that now. For the first 25 SotMs I did not realize that that was what I was doing. I am quite happy to be able to pinpoint the birth ofTripio https://www.amazon.com/Tripio-novel-Starbucks-Millionaire-Novelist-ebook/dp/B07NQ1413V as a seed planted in my mind garden. But the date is only relevant as it tracks where my thoughts were at that time. My thoughts give the date meaning and not the other way around.

My thoughts in the days before Tripio was born were occupied on a variety of things, which is the norm for most all of us. I was reading the books of James Allen. I noted a few days or two earlier that a 22 minute mediation was “just about the quickest 22 minutes to ever pass”. I was now getting Mondays off as part of the 4-10 hours a day work week. I was religiously practicing the Five Tibetan Yoga rites.

My job was getting to me and I was keeping busy with my two older kids still at the house. My writing consisted of a short story called My Dinner with Padre and an attempt to re-work another short story called Altonstreet and Philpatrick and the Mystical Antagonist. I had also been searching old letters and typed notes from the years I lived in Chicago and put those in a folder which I labeled Chicago Days. This was all noted in the SotM and all taking place in and around the grocery store, paying bills, watching sports on TV, placing calls to relatives and making visits to my therapist.

Why recount all this? I hope I am making clear that there is no “one size fits all” approach to writing and creating. There is no “one size fits all” approach that works for anything in life, really. Tripio was born on an early spring Monday in 2017 among events, people and places that will never be sequenced, made relevant, or affect me the same way ever again. So, there is no prescription for starting a novel here except perhaps to begin your practice of paying attention to your own thoughts which are growing out of your own wonderful, unique, bountiful and beautiful mind.

Maybe that was a prescription. Be that as it may, as spring of 2017 arrived, I was just becoming comfortable with that practice. And, believe me, I am not claiming to be an expert on anything. I just know that just as I was discovering how to track and cultivate my thoughts from an observed mind, Tripio was born. These more closely observed and carefully cultivated thoughts were noted in the SotMs of course. One of which records the original seed of Tripio:

“Odd, but I’m trying to hit on what to write next. And maybe I have. The early days of the Cosmodemonic Coffee Company are stirring in me. It’s there and ready on my desk.”