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
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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 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.
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.”
This year was not going to be a busy Holiday Season. So, about a month before Christmas, I decided to focus on honoring the Winter Solstice. This year, 2025, had not been a great one so this gave me the chance to send it packing on December 21st instead of waiting for the calendar New Year to arrive.
One description of the Winter Solstice that stuck with me was “the death and rebirth of the sun“. Sounds dramatic. But it makes a lot more sense when pondered than a Savior and Santa. At least to me. The days are short and dark as a Solstice approaches and that makes it just bit more difficult to want to do things, go places, and begin things. The sun is dying after all.
I happened to have Winter Solstice off and that morning took a cup of coffee with me out to my front porch. It was warmer than usual that morning, so I sat for few minutes in quiet contemplation. I love writing on my front porch. I will write out there as long as the weather permits. In fact, I have arranged the porch intentionally to provide a desk and light, a chair and pillows, and even small fan when it is hot. All to accommodate writing outside. I feel more at ease near the trees and grass and birds. Writing is just energy, and it flows better in the open air.
I think the sunrise was 7:21 that morning and no neighbors were up and around yet. My house faces east so I had a good spot. On my long days of summer porch writing I start before dawn and will write until the sun rises high enough to shine in my eyes, telling me it’s time to stop unless I want to put on sunglasses to keep going.
The leaves on my neighbors’ trees across the street were long gone of course and the branches bare against a grey pre-dawn. It was cloudy so it wouldn’t be a dramatic sunrise. But the sun was coming back to life regardless and I was going to be there. I sat for a few more minutes. No cars came past, and none of the neighborhood dogs were out barking. I was alone on my porch, with my coffee and thoughts and ready to leaved ’25 behind.
Then I noticed movement way up at the top of the tree directly in my view. A squirrel had joined the party. I wasn’t sure why it was up it that top branch. There was nothing for it to eat and no neighborhood cat had chased it up there. But it was up there anyway, facing east, tail waving and chattering in squirrel-speak. It seemed to me that the squirrel was making sure I didn’t miss out on what it knew without looking at a calendar or device. The sun was alive, and new year had arrived.
Since that morning Christmas and the New Year have come and gone and I did my best to partake. But I had already celebrated the birth of the sun and moved on to the new year. Several weeks later I remain convinced that squirrel went up that tree to celebrate and honor the rebirth of the sun with me. I hope I’m invited back next year.
Thanks for checking in this year. Just been hibernating in the real world and been enjoying the break from all this filtered reality. But I plan on seeing you all next year! Have a great Holiday Season! Thanks, Jerry
It is not an edit, a fix, a mistake. It is an opportunity. A chance to make something better. Who is this world hasn’t benefitted from a second chance in some way or another? I know I have. In fact, I can think of many times when I’ve been given many more chances than I may have deserved. If viewed in a positive light, a mistake is simply an opportunity to learn something.
Editing your own work is a must, but who wants to do that? It is like going out to your garden the day after you pulled weeds and planting them all over again. It must be done, but it ain’t fun. There is a great tempation to send the piece off to an editor you trust, if you are lucky enough to have one, and tell them you’ve done all you can do, now its your problem. Or words to that effect. Problem is, that person charges by the word.
So, it is a great practice to befriend editing your own novel, poem, essay, or work of choice. We all must do what works for us. I have come to trust in the passing of time. If you can’t beat it, join it.
This practice developed over the course of writing the two or three novels that came before The Trier Goes to London. The trust in that process grew over time as well. So much so that I planned on time-editing TGL over the summer to return to it in October. And I have.
And, it has worked for me. The passing of time gives me the distance to see my own writing more objectively, more clearly. Then the decison to move, change, delete and rearrange my own amazing words is just a business decison and not an emotional one.
But I do have to two rules to follow. You heard me. Just two. It’s not that I ignore all the others but the two that guide my hand are:
So, here are just a couple examples of opportunities I’ve let father time reveal to me as I revise The Trier Goes to London. Have a look.
Original 1
“A great many wagons are gone through this place with ammunition for the Saxon army.”
“No use. I can read it.” Philpatrick said.
“Not that. This.” The Widow Giles had emerged from her nook holding the Proclamation out in front of her. She took a step towards Philpatrick.
Father time edit suggestion
“A great many wagons are gone through this place with ammunition for the Saxon army.”
“No use. I can read it.” Philpatrick said.
“Not that,” The Widow Giles had emerged from her nook holding the Proclamation out in front of her. “This.” She took a step towards Philpatrick.
I feel like there is more heat generated by moving “this”
Original 2
“What you selling mate? Your bottom?” The questioner had stepped out of the Blackened Bean to find Altonstreet and Philpatrick blocking his way. ‘How much then?”
‘Uh, no. He wants to see the.. the magic…no… the pouch in my back pocket,’ Altonstreet said.
“He wants to see it first then?” The customer looked at Philpatrick. “Buyer beware, eh?”
Father time edit suggestion 2
“What you selling, mate?” The questioner had stepped out of the Blackened Bean to find Altonstreet and Philpatrick blocking his way. He faced them empty-handed, a few days of growth on his chin, a smile on his lips and caffeine blossoms on his cheeks.
“Selling?’ Altonstreet asked more to acknowledge that he understood. He understood the language, the fact that it was a question, and that he and Philpatrick would be able to communicate here in London in sixteen seventy-five, or thereabouts, without much difficulty.
“Your bottom?” The questioner had stepped out of the Blackened Bean to find Altonstreet and Philpatrick blocking his way. He must have enjoyed his time in the Blackened Bean as he seemed to not be too irritated that the two strangers were directly in his path. “How much, then?” He asked, keeping the smile in place.
‘Uh, no. He wants to see the.. the magic…no… the pouch in my back pocket,’ Altonstreet said.
“He wants to see it first then?” The man with the caffeine blossoms looked at Philpatrick. “Buyer beware, eh?”
Felt like I took the easy way out by just describing the plot-expediting character as “questioner”.
It is the summer of 1992. In my “Starbucks novel”, Tripio, Jay works at a Starbucks store #204 located on north side of Chicago on the corner of Clark, Diversey and Broadway. In Tripio, for the sake of brevity and authenticity, I refer to it simply as store #204, or even just #204. Tripio is a historical fiction novel, set at time when there were around 100 Starbucks locations up and running. However, store #204 was already showing sings of decay from 1,000 transaction Saturday mornings when Jay arrives there as the new Lead Clerk. Jay is an aspiring novelist and so he liked the store’s physical character and the stories it told. His co-workers were mostly aspiring to make a living at one art form or another, so Jay felt he fit right in.
There are several passages in the book when Jay writes that he feels at home at #204. He finds comfort settling back in there for a shift after returning to the city from a trip downstate: “ I had spent too much time here not to treat #204 as a home away from home.” Looking back, that was no accident. The decision Howard Schultz made to empower employee partners with health insurance and stock options was vital to it’s growth and success. In effect, that decision put owners in every Starbucks.
I had a strong desire to physically take a trip back to Starbucks store #204 as I was writing Tripio to confirm the details that had gone into the book. I also wanted to look again on the Days Inn that stood diagonally and across the street from #204. There were many, many nights I closed #204 and had to get back to open or at the very least be back for a morning shift. If I closed, I locked that door after midnight. If I opened the next morning, it was at 5:30 or 6 a.m.
The Days Inn stood just across the street on those nights, calling me, tempting me. A shower and bed was just minutes away. My apartment was a long bus ride up Clark. It could take almost an hour before a shower and bed there. I would then have to make the return trip on almost no sleep. A night at the Days Inn would remedy all of this. But no money, no way. So, I made do with my tripio over ice.
Then, the summer 2017 arrived I took the opportunity to drive to Chicago and see both places. I had finished Tripio. I wanted to confirm the details of #204. It had been 20 plus years. My trip back to Starbucks store #204 was also a gift for my daughter. She was headed to college in the fall and we went together as a going away present. That is why I did no research on whether #204 still existed. I was going anyway.
Not surprisingly #204 was no more. If it is true that you can’t go home again, at least you have a shot if it still standing. A new collection of newer storefronts had taken over the whole building that housed and surrounded #204. I can’t say I was actually surprised. However, Store #204 was still very, very much there for me: I could still hear the thud of the filter basket hitting the bar across the dump bucket positioned on either end of the espresso bar, the grinders clicking on and the shriek of the hot steaming wand entering the cold milk. I pictured where I stood to expedite the lines during the 1,000 transaction mornings. I thought that I could even catch the scent of a massive urn of Sumatra Mandheling brewing as the morning crew went about the opening process.
Not having a physical confirmation of #204 may have made me work harder to recreate #204 in Tripio. I had to work to rebuild it, and I did. Look for proof when you read Tripio in the scene where Jay dusts off an “order here” sign that hung unnoticed by almost every customer and most partners who had ever entered #204.
So, my trip back to Starbucks store #204 was a success even if it physically was no more. I had confirmed my memories. But the best part was that I finally got to stay at the Days Inn. It is now called The Versey. Yes, the bed and shower sure felt great after all those years of waiting to get there.
Coffee Novelist 
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