Coffee Novelist

Back to “Back outta the World”

Coffee Novelist

March 9, 2021

As promised, I am attempting to keep this blog as current as possible on the progress I’m making on my second novel, the prequel to Tripio, Back outta the World. I am slogging through my fourth, I believe, rewrite. This will be the final time for me to work on it alone. Once this is done, I will find an editor and we will work together.

Disclaimer follows – Well, was I wrong. I posted this in early January, 2020. Since then I have learned two things. The first one is how to embed a song on a post. I may embed the song every time I post about BotW over the coming year. Then again, we both may bet sick of it. Let me know. The second thing learned since the original post is that I was not done with Back Outta the World. I did not find an editor. That, my friends, was partly the universe telling me that BotW was not done and partly just dumb luck. In short I am back to Back outta the World again. Hey, don’t say your sorry. I have enjoyed this pass even more. Which means the rest of this post resonates even more. Read on….End Disclaimer

In short, I love it. There are passages in the novel that I enjoy tremendously. In reviewing, revising and enhancing those passages, I believe that I am making Back outta the World a better experience, a better product if you will, for all future readers.

For example, I must have been temporarily visited by genius when I revised the section where Jay and his friend Kyle visit a casino in the UP. Here, I compare the green velvet covering the poker and pool tables they are visiting that night to the green of the grass of the yards that Jay and Kyle played on as kids. Kyle is Jay’s security blanket. Jay is riddled with doubts about the purpose of the current road trip and the future he sees beyond that. Even if Kyle is not a wonderful person, Jay finds comfort and reassurance in his presence. Kyle’s presence doesn’t help in this part of the novel though, as the old friends are about to get tossed out of the casino.

Poker Table - Texas Holdem Stock Footage Video (100% Royalty-free) 9983510 | Shutterstock

Botw Excerpt– This fake green table was just another yard to play on. Just like the pool table. Jay was free to play here too. His own game though, not controlled by the clicking chips. He had left his world and traveled good ways to meet up with his oldest friend and they were now together at a casino in the Upper Peninsula. Not that this casino even mattered. The forms had all of Jay’s chips but they had been here before him and would be here after Kyle and he left. Jay and Kyle had their friendship and the lasting historic strength that it gave them both. The dealing continued. Jay and Kyle made more jokes among themselves. One wordless form got up from the table. Jay no longer wanted a seat at this table. Jay and Kyle didn’t need plastic, clicking chips telling them how to have fun. Their secret, shared history was revealed to the other forms by way of their jokes and loud laughter. This was now their yard, their green playground. The players of the other game in their yard became less important. They had no idea how to play the new game in Jay and Kyle’s yard. They didn’t get the point. Now was a moment in the history of the two’s friendship and who cares if it were in front of a table or even an entire casino full of wordless strangers? Kyle and Jay weren’t here to break any of their rules, just to play by their own, as far as Jay could reason. These forms were taking the plastic, clinking chips too seriously, or just doing what they were told by them. Either way, Jay and Kyle were laughing and playing a fun game. So, when two very large and very silent uniformed men arrived and stood between Jay and Kyle, they knew what to do. Their game was over. Time to go home for dinner. This time, Jay was a couple steps ahead of Kyle, as they turned away from the green table and left the other players to return to their own game.

As I said, I now really like that bit in the book as revised. And even more a year on as revised again. The problem is that, as of this morning, there is no way of knowing if I improved that passage in Back outta the World one little bit. The attainment of external validation for a novelist is a slow process. A good thing I have two coffee makers to get me through. After I finish this post and cup of coffee, I am going to spend an hour or so working on the next part of Back outta the World. I placed the quote below in this post because I believe it applies directly to working on a novel. One has to work the soil everyday, as a peasant would. It doesn’t matter a hell of a lot what I think about what I did yesterday,or last year. If I don’t work the earth today, no one one eats tomorrow. A bit dramatic I know, but you get the point.

**“*There is a peasant in every novelist*“-Fitzgerald**

“May I help who’s next?”

Don’t write your novel, find it – A red apron recipe – practices to keep the mind in writing shape

Coffee Novelist

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March 2, 2021

“I’m sittin’ in first class and they can all kiss my ass, ‘cuase I’m goin’ back baby, back outta world.”

In Tripio, the protagonist Jay is writing his first novel. It is a road book. One of Jay’s literary heroes in Tripio is Jack “That’s not writing, that’s typing” Kerouac. It is in character for Jay to have attempted his first novel based on the two month road trip he had taken as part of his aimless post college graduation life. Tripio starts with Jay nearing the end of writing the novel. He is not exactly struggling with the ending of it. After all, it is finite. The book will end with end of the journal he kept for its duration. Jay is confronted more by the fact that he is afraid he doesn’t even know what the book he has almost finished writing, has worked hard on, is even about.

In real life, that was also true. Today, I describe “Back Outta the World” as a road trip in which the main character’s mind and body are on two different trips and meet at the end. I only came to that conclusion as I reworked Back outta the World (BotW) prior to starting Tripio. I arrived at that conclusion approximately 20 years after I finished physically writing BotW. You will have to buy and read Tripio to find that section describing how I felt upon finishing BotW . I will tell you that it is one of the few parts of Tripio that remains word for word in the novel, as it was recorded in my journal on that day in my Chicago apartment over twenty years ago.

If I am promoting and publishing Tripio as a Starbucks novel, reflecting on it daily now as the story of my early adult life, then I am writing about my writing twice over. In other words there could be no Tripio without BotW. Yet, In Tripio, I was hesitant at first to even give Back outta the World a name. Early in the writing of Tripio, I referred to BotW as “my writing” or “the novel”. Then, as I began to feel confident and came to see possibility of completing, publishing and marketing of Tripio, I made it a point to name “the novel” embedded in Tripio. In fact, I had too. In order for Tripio to “work” (you be the judge), BotW had to be a powerful, named presence in Jay’s mind. It had to be identified so that it could carry it’s third of the book.

Speaking of Jay’s mind, I did find out what Back outta the World is about. It is not recorded in however, in Tripio. Or, as I like to put it, Back outta the World told me what it was about. It is in the above entry from my journal, or Sketchbook of the Mind, or Sotm, from 2016. I frantically recorded the moment on the page pictured above. Btw, my handwriting always looks like that, frantic or not. I remember standing over the entry and thinking that it was so incredibly obvious that when I was writing Botw that I was chasing my own “monkey mind”. That as a young man in those days I had no idea. I felt that events came at me. I felt I was watching things happen to me instead of making them happen myself. I did not know it consciously then, but it showed up in the pages of BotW. And, it sure did feel good to realize I could and did catch my monkey mind. As to the Red Apron recipe, I believe this moment help me understand to try not “write” your novel so much as “find” it. I hope for your sake it doesn’t take 20 years. Your interpretation of this recipe will take all shapes and forms for your work. But, believe me, it is always there. Write honestly with inward attention and intention and it, the novel, the meaning, is always there, waiting. To put it another way, don’t write “to” finish your novel ( they are never really finished anyway) or to sell it. Rather, write it and then let it do the work for you. It will take rewriting and rewriting and hopefully not two decades but what comes out may surprise you and will be well worth it.

As for the marketing the books as companions, that remains to be happen. Tripio has to find it’s market first. As I update this repost nine months later and two years after Tripio’s publication, Tripio has yet to do so. Either way, I will find a path to publishing BotW later next year. Botw helped Tripio come into existence in the first place, so it seems fitting the Tripio is out there trying to help BotW find its way into the world.

**Don’t try to write your novel, find your novel**

“May I help who’s next?”

Don’t write your novel, find it – A red apron recipe

Coffee Novelist

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March 2, 2021

**“I’m sittin’ in first class and they can all kiss my ass, ‘cuase I’m goin’ back baby, back outta the world.”**

In real life, that was also true. Today, I describe “Back Outta the World” as a road trip in which the main character’s mind and body are on two different trips and meet at the end. I only came to that conclusion as I reworked Back outta the World (BotW) prior to starting Tripio. I arrived at this conclusion approximately 20 years after I finished physically writing BotW. You will have to buy and read Tripio to find that section describing how I felt upon finishing BotW . I will tell you that it is one of the few parts of Tripio that remains word for word in the novel, as it was recorded in my journal on that day in my Chicago apartment over twenty years ago.

If I am promoting and publishing Tripio as a Starbucks novel, reflecting on it daily now as the story of my early adult life, then I am writing about my writing twice over. In other words there could be no Tripio without BotW. Yet, In Tripio, I was hesitant at first to even give Back outta the World a name. Early in the writing of Tripio, I referred to BotW as “my writing” or “the novel”. Then, as I began to feel confident and came to see possibility of completing, publishing and marketing of Tripio, I made it a point to name “the novel” embedded in Tripio. In fact, I had too. In order for Tripio to “work” (you be the judge), BotW had to be a powerful, named presence in Jay’s mind. It had to be identified so that it could carry it’s third of the book.

The Day I found my novel

Most importantly and to the point of this post, I did find out what Back outta the World is about. It is not recorded in however, in Tripio. It is in the above entry from my journal, or Sketchbook of the Mind, or Sotm, from 2016. I frantically recorded the moment on the page pictured above. I remember standing over the entry and thinking that it was so incredibly obvious that when I was writing Botw that I was chasing my own “monkey mind“. As a young man in those days that became Back outta the World, I had no idea. I felt that events came at me. I felt I was watching things happen to me instead of making them happen myself. I did not know it consciously then, but it showed up in the pages of BotW.

To conclude, it did feel good to realize I could and did find my monkey mind. As to the Red Apron recipe, I believe this moment helped me understand that it is best, for me for me at least, not to “write” your novel so much as “find” it. I hope for your sake it doesn’t take 20 years. Your interpretation of this recipe will take all shapes and forms for your work. But, believe me, it is always there. Write honestly with inward attention and intention and it, the novel, the meaning, is always there, waiting. I do think a lapse of time between rewrites helps. I am not recommending waiting two decades. A middle path will appear for you and your work. To put it another way, don’t write to finish your novel ( they are never really finished anyway) to sell it. Rather, write it and then let it do the work for you. It will take rewriting and rewriting and hopefully not two decades but what comes out may surprise you and will be well worth it.

“May I help who’s next?”

Can money buy happiness?-part 2

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February 24, 2021

“Have you looked into getting it to a publisher?’

“Tripio. The book?’ I responded. Howard appeared to be not overly concerned with my book sales. ‘Oh, yea early on. But I found the process to be too much like looking for a job. Like sending out countless resumes…and crossing your fingers. I have had enough of that in my life.”

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 41+mF2MQiXL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I paused a second to consider that response. I did send some queries out to literary agents early on. I reasoned that someone who received my query would like have a cup of Starbucks on their desk, just returned from Starbucks, or had stock in the company. I told myself over and over that Starbucks still moves the meter. But the random nature and “pick- me, pick-me” element of it all brought back too many memories of lay offs, restructuring and downsizing. There were too many scars, too many similarities. Direct publishing put everything in my hands. I didn’t know what I was doing but it felt way, way better. I did not want to get into my financial status with Howard. Pay check to paycheck would sum it up. Year after year. Tripio was right though. I did find my calling in becoming a dad. A windowed one for eight years. Now, I was sitting across the table from a millionaire who was in the coffee business with me a long time ago. It struck me suddenly that I should have called him in 1994 when I was considering leaving Starbucks. I was Lead Clerk at the store at the Metra station. I had a headache for two weeks as I decided what to do. Sitting here now, as a man changed so much by what happened in the four years I worked for Howard Behar and Starbucks, I know if I called him, he would have listened to me. Maybe he would have given me more wisdom. I mean, he is asking about my life now and he has no reason to. It would have been so easy. Instead, as the silence between us grew, I asked a question anybody with a blog and who had ever been to a Starbucks could have asked,

“What do you drink when you come here?”

“A tall american with an extra shot. You?”

Why You Shouldn't Air Your Dirty Laundry on the Internet – Daily Plate of Crazy

‘Oh, I like to stay with a grande, or whatever they call it these days. Coffee of the day.” My mind was still too close to the money, the times of unemployment, my financial dirty laundry. If my old boss asked about it, I’d have to tell him. I didn’t want to, so I stayed with coffee. “Speaking of coffee…what did you used to say? We’re not in the coffee business-“

“We’re in the people business serving coffee, not the coffee business serving people.” Howard smiled as he finished. He seemed to enjoy taking that trip back to his Starbucks days. He glanced again to the street. This time he saw what he was looking for. ‘There’s my wife with the dogs. She doesn’t like to bring them around on her walks. Too many people ask about them. She wants to get her steps in.” It was friendly and matter of fact, but Howard had to go.

“Ok. I’ve got to get to work.” I said, knowing it was also matter of fact.

He and I stood up, both looking to make sure the table was clear of any debris. Had to be clear for the next customer.

“Well, thanks for your time. And thanks again for the blurb. I’m redoing the cover to highlight it.”

“Sure.”

“If I run across any alumni from Chicago I’ll let you know.” I said as a send off. I had only really looked for Kevin Knox and Howard Behar. I did not look for any of the people I worked the most with and based the characters on. Mark, Doug, Sarah. The list goes on. I have had the passing fancy of tracking down all 500 or so recipients of that first IPO in 1992. I would write a quick page or two about each. What become of them all? Who, like Howard was rich and who like Kevin Knox and I were not. I was not sure why I offered that to Howard. But he seemed to appreciate it and smiled at me, adding,

‘I’d like that. Good to talk with you. Best of luck on the book ” Howard waved to his wife across the street. He looked back to me, “And especially with the family, Jerry…. You sound happy.”

“May I help who’s next?”

A Tripio back in time with Howard Behar- Can money buy happiness??

Coffee Novelist

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February 24, 2021

“Have you looked into getting it to a publisher?’

“What do you drink when you come here?”

“A tall american with an extra shot. You?”

“Ok. I’ve got to get to work.” I said, knowing it was also matter of fact.

He and I stood up, both looking to make sure the table was clear of any debris. Had to be clear for the next customer.

“Well, thanks for your time. And thanks again for the blurb. I’m redoing the cover to highlight it.”

“Sure.”

“If I run across any alumni from Chicago I’ll let you know.” I said as a send off. I had only really looked for Kevin Knox and Howard Behar. I did not look for any of the people I worked the most with and based the characters on. Mark, Doug, Sarah. The list goes on. I have had the passing fancy of tracking down all 500 or so recipients of that first IPO in 1992. I would write a quick page or two about each. What become of them all? Who, like Howard was rich and who like Kevin Knox and I were not. I was not sure why I offered that to Howard. But he seemed to appreciate it and smiled at me adding,

‘I’d like that. Good to talk with you. Best of luck on the book ” Howard waved to his wife across the street. He looked back to me to add “And especially with the family, Jerry…. You sound happy.”

“May I help who’s next?”

A Tripio back in time with Kevin Knox-Can money buy happiness?

Coffee Novelist

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February 23, 2021

Question for Kevin- In Tripio, Jay leaves Starbucks for a future as a father. It is hinted that he will find happiness there… Do you regret leaving Starbucks in some way? Do you think money can bring happiness?

Answer- I think I’ve already answered with some of my regrets. It would have been a lot better for me and for my family if I had stayed, and in retrospect better for Starbucks too because I was truly the coffee conscience and would have been able to at least greatly slow the rate of descent into marketing-driven mediocrity.

Money may not buy happiness but poverty is certainly miserable. A happy medium would have been nice. I live in a 55+ mobile home park on around $2000 a month now, while Schultz and Olsen probably need a spreadsheet to keep track of the contents of their wine cellars in Tuscany. And of course I still did better than you and countless others who worked unbelievably hard to build Starbucks in those early years Jerry. Marriages were ruined, health trashed. I knew people in the store architecture department who didn’t take a single day off for a year.

Tuscan Wine Cellar - Creative Design Construction

Tripio Expert- We have to try to save to buy our own house. A house to raise the family. I can’t help it, it fills my mind. Only because it would have so easy…if…

Maybe that is why I don’t keep a SotM now. I would fill it with ifs. If only I had stayed at the Cosmodemonic*. If only I could have found the missing money. Instead, DM Kyle let me step down, resign from being Manager at 308. Looking back, he seemed relieved. I think he knew my heart wasn’t in it. He let me step down and my Cosmodemonic career slowly ended at the Dearborn and Division store 236. I worked with Candace’s brother who coincidentally had also stepped down from just being a Lead at Armitage. So, it was as close as DM Kyle could get me to Kati and the baby under the circumstances. The end result was that it gave me more time to plan the move and find try to find a job.

When I take a break at Mega Books, I sometimes head to the newspapers and periodicals. I still look at a Barron’s or IBD and check on the Cosmodemonic stock. The last time I did, it had just split. If I had held on to it, I could pick and choose any house around here to make a down payment on. With a yard as big as the one little park we had in our Lakeview neighborhood. If. If. If. See, I knew it.

*In Tripio, I call Starbucks the Cosmodemonic Coffee Company

**Sounds like it would make a great novel**

May I help who’s next?

The cost of doing business at Starbucks

Coffee Novelist

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February 16, 2021

HOWARD BEHAR AND I ‘TALK’ AT A STARBUCKS

“You know the store where Tripio takes place is gone now?” I asked Howard next. I had no idea why.

“Oak Park?” He looked back from the street to meet my eyes.

‘No. The one on the corner of Diversey, Clark and Broadway. Dickens is stll there, though.’

“I thought you lived in Indy“

“I did, I mean. Still do. My youngest son just started college. Well, on Zoom in his room. My oldest two sons both graduated from Purdue. I call them the Fantastic Four.”

‘Four?’

“Yeah. I have a daughter. She and I went to Chicago to research Tripio. Plus, I took her to Chicago as a present before she went off to college. And just to see if what I remembered was right. I could talk about the Fantastic Four for days. Anyway, Diversey was closed. The whole building is different now.”

“Diversey and Dickens. Yea. Both had the the espresso bar as theater. You know, there were 28 stores when I moved there. Looked up a few years later and there were 300. The pace, the growth did cost us some really good people. That’s one thing I would say I regret.”

Tripio excerpt- It’s been just over 3 years of my life spent here. All of it gainfully employed by the *Cosmodemonic. Every day I go in something big could happen: stock split, a new market, a headline in Barron’s about some agreement we’ve made to buy a competitor. In fact, we are soon going to have cafes going up inside Mega sized bookstores. And I am one of the quickly shrinking percentage of people who got the first stock grant. There won’t be a second one. No second chance to spill apple cider on my khakis as a toast to the event. I have taken to telling customers that you will never see a Cosmodemonic at a rest stop along the highway or in a strip mall. Now, I can’t be sure of anything. People I started with those 3 years ago are scarce now. The coffee god is long gone. So is Candace. Mark. Lost track of Doug. Kati may be next.

* In Tripio I call Starbucks the Cosmodemonic Coffee Company

From cars passing on the street out front and even to the people walking by, Howard and I were just two guys talking at a Starbucks. A scene so commonplace that no one would even notice. One had so much to do with making it commonplace on the grand scale and one by steaming milk in the trenches. Howard talked evenly, without embellishment of those days, making no claims of greatness for himself. He was talking about his Starbucks days like he had left those days well behind him. I didn’t ask when and why he left Starbucks. I was enjoying the old memories as well. The stores had a certain scent when you first opened them in the early morning. The first thing you did was start to brew the coffee of the day into huge canisters. They were breaking down doors to get in back in those days. If the open didn’t go well, if your location was behind when you opened the doors, it was like Helm’s Deep. As the huge urns brewed they produced different noises at different parts of the process which one could here throughout the now empty store. As an opener with a key, I knew that if I had certain things done by the time the first urns were full and fell silent, then I would be ready to open the doors. I wondered there and then what Howard’s private, seldom recalled memories were. Not the ones in other interviews and books. I did like the chicken soup one from earlier. I wondered more really, how they made him feel, or what actions they produced. His memories were his and mine mine. He left Starbucks and so did I.

As Tripio brilliantly tells, I could have stayed and been a yacht buying millionaire like my coffee drinking,and one time colleague across from me – If I stayed for just 20 more years. Life took me in other directions. It had other plans for me and they did materialize. But, I never left Starbucks truly behind until I wrote Tripio. I am sure I partly wrote Tripio as a cathartic exercise, in order to release, at last, the question of “Why didn’t I stay?“. All this recollection only took a second or two and I was about to ask Howard when and why he left Starbucks but he beat me to it with a question of his own.

“So how many copies of the book have you sold?”

“121.” I responded quickly like I knew. I really had no idea. I had lapsed into “my boss asked me a questions so I better have an answer” mode. Maybe I hadn’t left Starbucks completely behind me after all.

**I do know that that Tripio was 117,422 on Amazon in October.**

A Tripio back in time with Howard Behar- The cost of doing business at Starbucks

Coffee Novelist

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February 16, 2021

“You know the store where Tripio takes place is gone now?” I asked Howard next. I had no idea why.

“Oak Park?” He looked back from the street to meet my eyes.

‘No. The one on the corner of Diversey, Clark and Broadway. Dickens is stll there, though.’

“I thought you lived in Indy“

“I did, I mean. Still do. My youngest son just started college. Well, on Zoom in his room. My oldest two sons both graduated from Purdue. I call them the Fantastic Four.”

‘Four?’

* In Tripio I call Starbucks the Cosmodemonic Coffee Company

“So how many copies of the book have you sold?”

**I do knew that that Tripio was 117,422 on Amazon in October.**

Too easy to criticize Starbucks?

Coffee Novelist

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February 10, 2021

Kevin Knox answers another of my questions

Question-In the blogosphere, Starbucks seems to be an easy target to hate on for easy clicks. It tends to bother me. Does it bother you? Or is it deserved?

Kevin’s Answer-I think most of the criticism is uninformed. Howard Schultz deserves enormous respect on the business side (along with enormous disrespect for lying to those of us who built the business and not including us in the gigantic stock option windfall of people like Behar, Olsen, etc. who were at best peers in terms of actual coffee knowledge and expertise of people like myself and many others in middle management who got nothing).

As for industry criticism, in order to earn the right to criticize Starbucks you need to have surpassed them in the quality and consistency of the coffee you offer and few if any of the newer chains or even regional independents meet that standard. There’s a lot of arrogance out there on the part of people who never spent the years learning best practices from the Italian master roasters (e.g. Illycaffe) and Peet’s, never apprenticed with master cuppers, etc.

Anyway for informed criticism of both Starbucks and the Third Wave folks who think they’ve improved things I humbly recommend my now largely dead coffee blog:

http://coffeecontrarian.blogspot.com

How Howard Schultz conquered self-doubt to build Starbucks — **I don’t hate Starbucks or Howard, even though he mispronounced my name.**

Tripio Excerpt- At the Open Forum I saw a lot of faces I didn’t know. But plenty that I did. Of course, it was a lot of the same people from last week, management, that is. The big exception was HS of course. I had never seen him in person but liked his vibe even from across the room. When he got up to speak, he sounded different from Dennis’ impersonation from last Christmas season. I did have to smile to myself, recalling that, as I applauded HS taking the podium.

Like everyone else in the audience I sat in silence and listened intently. It was mostly all great news. The Cosmodemonic is just getting started and not taking any prisoners. HS didn’t put in those terms but that’s how I remember it. And I very clearly remember HS saying that “They are going to write books about the Cosmodemonic, people.” That stuck in my head: write & books. The reasons are obvious. The reason I don’t’ remember much of the rest is that a few minutes after the speech was over, HS called some partners to the stage for recognition. I was one of them. He called my name about halfway through the presentation (he mispronounced the last name and I politely corrected him), handed me a Cosmo Bravo Award and shook my hand. It was for the “exceptional customer service experience” demonstrated to the Midas guy who bought a half pound of everything. Recognition in front of everyone. From HS himself.“

**“Anyone can have an opinion” -Pete Townshend from White City**

A Tripio back in time with Kevin Knox-Too easy to criticize Starbucks?

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February 9, 2021

Question-In the blogosphere, Starbucks seems to be an easy target to hate on for easy clicks. It tends to bother me. Does it bother you? Or is it deserved?