Coffee Novelist

I couldn’t give it away-Part 1

Coffee Novelist

September 2, 2019

I am an hour into my book release event at Indy Reads Books. My first public attempt to get the word out for my historical fiction novel, Tripio. The first attempt to get the word out about this very personal, private book. So personal that there are parts of the book that reveal things that happened in my life that not even my own family of origin know about. My own adult children have yet to learn things in there about their father’s life in Chicago in the early 90s’ and two of them are characters in the book.

Good. It is too private, too intimate. I put too much of myself into Tripio. I am glad no one is showing up this afternoon to buy it. I am glad that no one has even asked me about the book as they wonder the store. It makes me pleased, deeply relieved that I put my emotional, spiritual and creative ass out for the public to see and no one notices or seems to even care.

“Give it away” Said the Greek.

“Try giving it away.” Not the voice in my head any longer. No. It was the Greek friend of mine who helped me set up the event and has, out of sympathy, stayed with me this entire lonely first hour.

“Give it away?” I asked aloud this time, assured that no one else in the store cared what I said, did, ate or wrote.

I considered the Greek’s words of advice. I asked the store manager if that would be fine with them. She said it was “my book” to do with what I pleased. I considered the Greeks’ words for about 45 more minutes. Surely before the store closes and the event ends someone will buy Tripio. A last minute rush to get the book they’ve heard so much about would make the event worth the time and effort. I would have made some money and be a self-anointed success! Even better, a literary agent who had been held up at the airport would rush in breathlessly, business card in hand, and ask me..”Do you have a minute to talk? I’ve read your book and…”

“Give it away” He said one more time.

Greek friend, I’m liking this fantasy a little better. But I do have to carry these ten boxes of books back to the car. Plus, the store is closing and I feel bad for the people who are about to get kicked out. I’ve been in their place before. I hated being tossed out of a bookstore just as you are about to find that book that will speak to you.

“OK…why not?” I said to the Greek. “I have nothing to lose.”

“May I help who’s next?”

No time to write

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August 26, 2019

I like to record old movies from TCM. They are free from commercials and any additional cost. I am not alone in liking these advantages. I am especially fond of the classic black and white noir films. I recently watched Gilda. I reference it not because it has anything to do with Tripio but because it gives me an excuse to look through photos of Rita Hayworth to use below.

I think that was a good use of my time. One movie I did not record was “No Time for Sergeants”. I reference that because as a writer putting out his first novel, I feel that recently I no longer have time to write.

That struck me as I was rereading two of my recent posts this morning. I have come to truly enjoy writing these posts. That comes as quite a surprise to me. I have never had the need nor inclination to do any writing intended for in blogosphere, the internet, social media etc. Partly I think I took writing posts because they have been replacing my morning journal entries. I write blog posts in the morning before leaving for work. The job has a way of taking up a lot of time each and every week. As does commuting, eating, sleeping, shopping, cleaning and all the countless daily activities one must make time to do. As far as writing fiction in any other form, not much time is left in the normal week.

I prioritized my remaining free time in order to attend the first of three “Author Development” classes at a nearby library. They are presented by a person with a best selling book on Amazon. Previously, I have taken courses at the Indiana Writers Center, and none of those focused on writing, as such. Instead they focused on topics such as building your own brand, SEO and owning my niche audience. All valuable pursuits. And pursuing them takes a lot of time.

One other thing all classes did have in common was that they all emphasized the need for writers to create content. That sound like something I can do! Good thing too. Since I have “no time for writing” anymore.

“May I help who’s next?”

The heart and soul of Tripio

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August 19, 2019

Yesterday when my son came home from work he announced he was moving back out of the house. It was only a matter of time. He had lived away at Purdue for four years and has quite a good job and a nice new car. Still, I was in no hurry to see him go, for a million reasons which I don’t have the time to go into in this post. The only relevant one for today is that he is a vital part of my tech support, self tasked with helping me publish Tripio and develop this blog.

Tripio is my “Starbucks novel”. I am blogging and posting quite a bit about Starbucks for a million reasons, which I don’t have time to go into in this post. But if Starbucks is the body of Tripio and Jay trying to write his first novel is the mind of Tripio, then starting a family is the heart and soul of Tripio.

I can’t spoil the end of Tripio. It is far, far better for both of us if you buy a copy and read it for yourself, discovering and unearthing Tripio’s own unique significance for you. My tech support son appears in the epilogue of Tripio as a much, much younger man. His announced departure has prompted a desire to post about the end of Tripio. Yet I am finding it impossible to do so without revealing the outcome of this heart and soul plot line of Tripio.

I am conflicted this morning. Which makes sense, because in the book, Jay spends a good deal of time conflicted as well. Conflict is partly what I hope anyone feels when reading Tripio. Because Jay’s internal conflict is what drives Tripio. The energy generated by his internal conflict is the life force of Tripio. There would be no book without it. Jay’s energy in the book is not always good. He is afraid of his future and that fear prompts selfish and terrible thoughts in his mind.

As I started this post I heard my son’s alarm going off upstairs. As I finish, he has left for his job. I will miss him, his car in the driveway and his vegan foods in the fridge, among a million other things which I don’t have time to go into in this post. When you are finished reading Tripio, it is also my hope you will empathize and understand why.

‘May I help who’s next?”

I have a cunning plan?

Coffee Novelist

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August 16, 2019

I have recently started watching a series called Walking Through History with Tony Robinson: channel4.com/programmes/walking-through-history

/episode-guide/https://www. For me, it is the perfect show to relax to after toiling in anonymity on Tripio before going into work, toiling in anonymity while there, and then coming home and parenting in anonymity. For those who don’t remember The Blackadder series

Tony Robinson played Baldrick. Baldrick was daft, unwashed and on the receiving end of lots of comedic physical and verbal abuse. In this newer series he is much better off. He takes three or four day walks in various regions of England to discover and uncover the “history embedded in the landscape”. And he gets paid to do it.

Speaking of getting paid, this morning after making my coffee I checked Amazon to see that Tripio had been approved for Pre-Sale. I could now conceivably be making money off Tripio!

Now What?

Bill Boaden / The ridge-top

Well, after emailing my family of origin and texting my own kids, there followed about two hours of pointless activity. I was energized by the news of Tripio being available to buy. Of course, it was only six a.m. so there weren’t a lot of other people up at that hour to call and share my exciting news. I started a blog post. No focus. I started my review of From the Ground up. Awful. I wanted to capitalize on the energy created by this milestone event. I called the FedEX store to see if my Tripio table talkers were ready. Oh yeah, they don’t open until ten. Damn. What to do?

Whenever I had to clear my mind when working on Tripio, I cleaned the house. So I followed that formula and headed back upstairs to make my bed and straighten my room. There I took out the Tony Robinson Walking Through History disc to put it back in its case. In my hand was the answer! Do what you always tell your own children to do when they reach a milestone in their lives: Stay put at the top of that ridge, turn around and look over where you’ve been!!

I had forgotten my own advice and wanted to rush ahead to the next place, the next thing, the next milestone. I had forgotten that I always counsel that the journey is the meaning. I casually advise others to take time to honor yourself for what you’ve done. So I did. I listened to my own words.

Unlike Tony Robinson, I am not in Derbyshire or Nottingham or anywhere near a ridge or hilltop overlooking the beautiful countryside of England. So, I went to get some cardio and sit in the sauna at my health club. You do what you gotta do.

From my mental vantage point I was first able to see that I had lots of help on my path. But I did manage to give myself credit as I sat there taking it all in. I managed to relax and let myself enjoy and honor this moment. I felt, as I sweated in the sauna, that it had been the right decision to stop on this path and rest for a minute or two. I felt quite good by the time I was dry and dressed. Thanks, Tony.

“May I help who’s next?”

Tripio Launch Event Happens tomorrow

August 16, 2019

Expectations for Tripio

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August 12, 2019

Every morning before I go to work, I practice Yoga for about five minutes. I have been doing this for years now. Along with three cups of coffee, this short practice gets me energized for the long day ahead.

Recently the practice has undergone a momentous evolution and change of intent. Since the day five years ago that I discovered Recovery Yoga, my yoga practice has been preventative in nature and direction. I practiced yoga in order ”not to”. It was a practice that was hopeful yet fundamentally defensive. I practiced Yoga in those mornings, and every other time I practiced, not to be afraid of my future, not to drink, not to feel sorry for myself, not to give up on my life in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Over the more recent years my practice has become, in conjunction with many other intentions and practices I have discovered and implemented, one of belief and encouragement. I slowly began to align the asanas with my mind and knew that I would have a good day following each practice. Yes, I have been fooled a few times over the years but that is why I call it a “practice’.

The most recent development to this evolution ties directly to Tripio. I now start every morning” letting go” of my expectations for the book. I think I had to do this around the time Howard Behar http://howardbehar.com/ signed up to provide a blurb for Tripio. Things seemed to be going so well for Tripio that I began to dream of possible financial success for the book. I began an imaginary list of things I would buy and places I would go with the buckets of money I would make off the sale of Tripio. The possible outcomes could be said to be beyond my wildest dreams, although I can dream pretty wildly. Some of that mental wondering is understandable. I did decide to publish Tripio with the hope it would provide a second revenue stream. When the expectations began to include a parasailing weekend in Malta with Scarlett Johansson, then I needed realign my expectations.

So every morning I tell those expectations for Tripio to get on their horses and leave town. My morning yoga practice is now one in which I am trying to prevent expectations for my life from being unrealistically good, instead of fear ridden and preventative. I call that progress. Though I am still keeping a weekend free for Scarlett.

“May I help who’s next?”

Oregon Street Coffee House

Coffee Novelist

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August 5, 2019

Tripio opens with a prologue, which was the suggestion of my editor. He felt the book needed something to grab the reader right away. My immediate reactionary, immature and arrogant thought was that Tripio is great and that its greatness demands patience! Those thoughts did not travel from my mind to my mouth and I mumbled a more agreeable and conciliatory response to my editor.

As it happened, just before that conversation I had been looking through my notes and old journals for the want ad I responded to for the job at Starbucks. I did not find it but knew I now wanted to use the original want ad for the prologue. This is covered in fascinating detail in post #17. Today, I want to go a little further back to a time before Jay knew Starbucks existed.

The prologue finds Jay working at the Oregon Street Coffee house in Dayton, Ohio. That coffee house was situated in the middle of a slowly gentrifying section of downtown Dayton called the Oregon District. As such, the Oregon Street Coffee house had neighbors that were becoming upscale bars and restaurants, a comic book store with a vast selection of porn mags in the back, and a vacant but soon to be rehabbed stand-alone movie theatre.

If the neighborhood could be described as up and coming, that could not be said for a good deal of Oregon Street’s regulars. Oregon Street opened its doors at nine in the morning and the regulars would take their stools at the bar and spend hours there sipping their coffee, smoking cigarettes, and discussing their plans for the afternoon or evening. Those regulars were indeed sitting at a bar, because the Oregon Street coffee house was a real bar for many years. But in Jay’s time the drink they served there was warm and brown coffee supplied by Dayton’s one and only coffee roaster. The regulars and the history of the place were only a couple factors contributing to the character and unique vibe Jay found while employed at the Oregon Street coffee house. The coffee was not what Jay liked however. Later in Tripio Jay admits that “the Cosmodemonic does the coffee right’, after he tries a cup of coffee at a coffee house in Chicago that reminds him of Oregon Street’s brew.

The visits Jay takes to his “coffee house under the tracks” show that Jay is homesick for his artsy coffee house in Dayton. At the same time, he acknowledges that his new employer has better coffee. Tripio is set in 1992 but Jay’s choice in where he finds his coffee fix has been repeated millions and millions of times since then. In the novel, Jay is simply going about his life making day to day decisions. He wasn’t choosing sides in any debate over whether his employer was responsible for the closing of coffee house like Oregon Street. That is the subject for books to come. Jay is about to face life changing circumstances which will make him decide bigger things than where to get his coffee: his employer is growing and is offering opportunities, he is trying to sell his first novel and his new lover is expecting a baby.

By the way, if you are ever in Dayton, don’t bother looking for the Oregon Street Coffee House, it closed a long time ago.

NOTE: I wrote this post many months ago. In light of the tragic shooting that occurred yesterday, I hope this post will help show that the Oregon District in my hometown has been in existence for some time and will continue on. It will take effort one day at a time to recover, but it will.

What if I stayed at Starbucks?

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July 22, 2019

“I think I wrote Tripio in part to close the loop of “what if”?” Those are my words from an email to Kevin Knox. I was thanking him for reading Tripio and providing the great blurb I used on the back cover. The “what if?” refers to the proposition embedded in Tripio that Jay could have stayed at Starbucks, having been granted 268 shares of Starbucks Stock Options, and as of 2018 became a millionaire. A millionaire just by steaming milk. Of course, it is not quite that simple, as you will see when you read Tripio.

There is so much truth in what I expressed to Kevin Knox in that email. I now find it odd that it had not really occurred to me consciously that that question is surely what helped generate the creation of Tripio. I was tired of carrying “what if?” with me. Tired of replaying the decision to leave Starbucks. Tired of doing it every time I heard about Starbucks, saw a Starbucks location, cup or commercial.

The days when I was contemplating leaving Starbucks were conflicting and confusing. My significant other and I wanted to raise a family of more than one, but not in a big city like Chicago. This was 1994 and as hard as it is to believe now there were not Starbucks everywhere. I knew that Starbucks was “blowing up”. I did not think, however, that Starbucks would blow up to the extent that they would have 3,600 locations in China as of today (read fast-they are building one there every 15 hours). About the clearest memory I have is of a 3 week long headache I had as I made the decision to leave.

What if? I would have a million dollars, all things being equal, and that would automatically make me happy. Isn’t that what everybody wants? My life would have been so different. I would have a beach house on the ocean, cars, travel experiences and a secure financial future.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG/120px-Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG

So why didn’t I stay? Well, you will have to read Tripio to find that out. By saying that I am not merely trying to sell the book. I had to put that question to rest, just as I told Kevin Knox. The “what if?” question is better off in the pages of Tripio than relentlessly occupying my thoughts all these years later.

“May I help who’s next?’

Fear is now my bitch

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July 18, 2019

“Have a little faith baby, have a little faith.” Oddball-Kelly’s Heroes

I made it home Friday around five p.m. after a cold, physically tiring work week. As soon as possible, I took a soothing hot shower, in which I envisioned the work week literally being washed down the drain. Dried off, I opened my email. Good news! I have been accepted to appear on a coffee centered podcast out of Hawaii called, My Favorite Coffee Story. That is when they resumed the podcast after a break. This was, however, just what I needed to hear as the long week had worn me out. I took the news as a reward for the work I had done on Tripio all week, most of it before leaving for my job at 6:15 a.m.

Yet, the podcast success meant more to me than a pat on my own now cleaned and dried back. I had a moment on Tuesday morning before I went to start that 12 hour day when I almost sent the original version of the podcast query. I had written it. I had revised it quickly one time. I had to get to work. But, if I sent this query now, in the dark and cold predawn hour, hope of its eventual success would get me through the long cold day on the job! I would get a “yes” and be one step closer to making Tripio a financial success!! I will send it now and be on cloud nine all day at work! Good idea, I thought.

But in that moment, I caught myself. This was how I used to think. This thinking was a carry over from my stress filled job search days. Days when I felt my family was in a state of financial stress. The job I had then was not cutting it. If I had a job, that is. Those days were hard and I don’t want to recall them here. But, I did send off countless resumes and applications in that mind frame of momentary hope. It was, unfortunately, a hope born of fear and anxiety.

Jobs were hard to come by during the “Great Recession”. I will never know for sure if those fear induced applications, resumes and cover letters did not work because I sent them off hastily. Looking back, all I am sure of was that I sent lots of them off just to give me a few moments of mental relief. This Tuesday morning there was enough of that emotional debris left in my head to make me want to click “send “on the Coffee Story podcast query.

Fortunately there was also a newer, stronger recognition from me that morning. I knew what I was doing. I was going to send a fear based query, just like the good old days when fear ruled my mind. Well, these days fear is my bitch. I did not click send. I went off to work. I then spent Wednesday and Thursday mornings reviewing and enhancing the Coffee Story query and sent it Thursday evening. Yesterday, I received tangible positive acknowledgement that I had learned something. “Coffee Story” had like the query and said yes.

The decision to wait and go to work on Tuesday without the fear based hope that I’d be on a podcast promoting Tripio by lunchtime was a better one than clicking send on a poorly constructed query letter. It reflected a change in me from one of a fear based mentality to one of confidence and belief. Over the last few years, I have learned to take Oddball’s advice and have a little faith, baby.

May I help who’s next?”

A dream of Tripio

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July 16, 2019

I spent yesterday doing lots of laundry, food preparation and watching sports on TV. In and around these day to day activities I looked through some old journals (Sketchbooks of the Mind) for topics for posts. Luckily for you I found quite an interesting reference to “my Starbucks story”.

The excerpt I found was written in January 2016 but I did not yet note the exact date of every entry as I do now. The rest of this SotM shows me that I was applying the wisdoms and practices I had been reading and researching since getting out of rehab a few years earlier. The dream excerpt is from an entry called “Detecting Dream” and follows:

“On the bookshelves are books and such and also old Starbucks paraphernalia and maps and facts. The woman, a mother, explains that her daughter is a District Manager in Pittsburgh. I tell her, in turn, my Starbucks story”

I was studying dreams and doing some dream interpretation at that time. Dream interpretation can take some time and can be a tedious process. However, I have also found it to be very rewarding and enlightening. After all, one is tapping into your own subconscious mind as it is free from the burdens of physicality (sorry football broadcasters if I use this word correctly). In fact, the following year I compiled an entire separate dream journal and found it to be a rewarding use of my time.

But in this case, I did not interpret this dream. I did not follow up on searching for any meaning. I simply recorded it and moved on. Oddly enough the very next dream I had was noted and I recorded an interpretation of it.

I wish this post could motive a reader with something as simple as “Dreams do come true!” or “Follow your dreams!” Well, it does not. The entries that followed regarding writing projects I was contemplating were on projects that did not come to be. They did not mention starting a novel about my days at Starbucks.

I might have to sleep on that one….

“May I help who’s next?”