Coffee Novelist

Red Apron recipes-some help for writers

Coffee Novelist

May 16, 2019

Red apron recipe #1

Ready in hours, days or weeks

I realize that when we hear the word “recipe” we visualize a list of ingredients. Much the same happens when we hear the words “writing” or “book”. We visualize words on a page. We image an old Dickensian desk lit by a candle. Hunched into that candle light an old bastard scribbles something onto the top piece of a pile of papers.

But neither the list of ingredients nor the words on a page actually have their start on the page. Or the pen in hand. Or laptop. Just as eating begins in the garden, writing begins in the mind. So, my first Red Apron Recipe begins in the tool shed. The one where you keep the basic tools needed to work the mind garden from which your writing, or any creative endeavor, has the best chance to take root and grow your own unique story.

In order to prepare your mind to write or create, work must be done. If you want to eat, the same holds true.

At least for me. I had lots and lots of work to be done. I was starting with an arid rocky, weedy plot of land. I needed every tool in my shed. Below, are a list of tools attached to possible uses for them.

Big shovel yoga

Smaller shovel meditation

Gloves walks in the park, neighborhood

Trowel exercises such as cross training, running

Compost pile dreams

Rake journaling

Buckets, flower pots sauna, whirlpool, poolside

Weed tool intentional distractions such as drives in the country

Since I plan on posting only a recipe a month, it will give you time to find your own tools and apply whatever task you see fit to that tool. It is your shed, your garden and will be your recipes. In this coming month if you get into your shed and you use a tool or two, just notice how you feel afterwards. And if you feel like it, then write down whatever has come to mind.

Too east to publish?

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April 28, 2019

A couple evenings ago my son, who is a Purdue grad and data analyst, and I sat down in his room and could have published Tripio. I like to refer to my son as my “tech support” for the job of self-publishing Tripio. He is way more proficient and comfortable doing anything on the computer than I am. Fortune bade him to move back home at just the right time because without him, I would have had to pay someone to do a lot of what is required to put a manuscript out on Amazon or any other self-publisher. Or, I would tried to stagger through the process myself. I shudder to think of the outbursts of spitting rage my laptop would have received if that path were the one taken.

I say “could have’ published because it was there to do. I decided to direct publish for a lot of reasons, one of which was that I had come to learn how easy it was. Easy if you had half the competency of my tech support. I consider myself behind the curve on using social media, my phone or even this laptop, which I use primarily as a word processor. So it would have been extraordinarily difficult for me to fold flap A into slot C and publish a book. Hard for me, but easy for most everyone else. I’m thinking possibly that it is way too easy.

[[File:Toy building set (AM 1999.104.20-1).jpg|Toy building set (AM 1999.104.20-1)]]

I was taken aback at just how easy. Tripio could have been published two days ago. A dream of mine achieved. I would have two days under my belt as a published author by now. I assume that is why the self-publishing method is looked down on in some circles. Hey, I am new to this whole scene, so when I assume something, I mean assume. I did take an informative “Basics of Self-Publishing” class at the Indiana Writers Center. What I learned was confirmation of what I had experienced when sending queries to agents in New York. Not that I sent a lot, mind you. I guess I sent around 10 or so. I just didn’t feel like I fit in doing that. I do not fancy myself a “literary literary” type at all. And the whole process had the feel of a job search on Indeed or Monster (are they still around?). I have had enough of that kind of subjective dart board nonsense to last a lifetime.

And, it quite simply felt wrong to hand over the energy of Tripio to someone else. I have grown to have tons of faith in myself in the last several years so why release Tripio to someone now? “Because it has always been done that way” is just not good enough. Plus, what I have received from the creation of Tripio is so personal and powerful that I don’t see any upside to having some agent or publisher deem it worthy. What it has done for me cannot be measured by anyone or by any method they may use.

But, that is the same reason that I can’t just publish Tripio half ass, like my tech support and I could have done a couple nights ago. It means too much to me. In fact, it means so much that I did have to make myself let Tripio go. I started to let go of my ownership of Tripio one day after meditating. I had to begin to untether myself emotionally from Tripio and its creative process.

That release of Tripio is not the same thing as clicking the “publish your novel” button. I wrote this post months ago. Tripio is published now on Kindle and in paperback. That remains the easy part.

“May I help who’s next?”

April 11-the day, so far

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April 11, 2019

Good morning! I woke up this morning to see that Tripio was on my Kindle! It looks great, especially the “Ad” that I had worked so hard on finding. Thanks to one and all who bought Tripio on Kindle.

As of 6:30 the cover for the paperback has not been approved. I have already contacted my tech support and we will work to resolve this issue. I have the proof copies and think they look great so I am not sure what the hold up is. I apologize but the paperback will be available as soon as possible!!

Thanks! Jerry

The value of Tripio

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April 8, 2019

My coffee is weak this morning. I have already had my double espresso and as the clock passes 6 a..m. I am clear headed and ready for a long day. Later this afternoon I will be headed to my “Building your own Blog” class at the Indiana Writers Center. As I produced this content, this blog is mostly a concept.

I put down my weak-ass drip coffee (I think I need a new brewer since I just discovered a small puddle of water next to my brewer a minute ago) and began to collect relevant notes for my “Blog” class. I noticed that I have 3 folders entitled “Chicago Days”. One is black, one is green and one is beige. Curiosity got the better of me and I began to look though the beige one which is oldest and most beat up one.

I hadn’t looked these pages over since spring of 2017. So, I had a go. After just a couple minutes I came across the page that became the opening of Tripio. It is not the prologue, which is younger by nearly 27 years. This is the opening passage of Tripio, where Jay is “sitting at my writing desk, shirtless on a muggy day in Chicago.”

File:Summer Morning in Chicago (30791823248).jpg|Summer Morning in Chicago 30791823248

Re-writing and editing changed this passage to some degree. In reading the passage twenty eight years later, I am struck by many thoughts. Perhaps the least disputable one of them all is that when I sat down at my typewriter in my second floor apartment in Lakeview that day, I didn’t do it with the intention of starting a novel.

That fact that it happened, for me, is what is as interesting as the actual constructive writing of the novel itself. I see the words on the page. The page is aged and stained and a large piece on the middle right hand side is chipped off. The words on this page have stayed the same. I have changed them. That is the only way it makes sense to me. How else could this passage become the beginning of a novel called Tripio?

More recently Tripio has changed. As soon as it came from my editor as the “final assembly”, I began thinking about publishing it. It is the thing to do, right? Like I said earlier that was not on the mind of that angry young man at his typewriter in Lakeview nearly three decades ago. His words have stayed the same, but he has changed. Hasn’t he?

I would prefer to conclude that I have uncovered the better Jay. The Jay who was there all along and needed to be uncovered. I know a second thing for sure, that the writing of Tripio has been an essential and vital part of that journey. Which is, for me, the real value of Tripio, published or not.

“May I help who’s next?”

Why April 11th?

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March 31, 2019

I will do my best to tell you all why I chose april 11th as the release date for Tripio. I have hesitated up until now because that date is integral to the plotline that has the most built in drama in Tripio, especially for the readers of the book who don’t already know me. There must a few of you out there, right?

In the book, April 11th is the due date given to Kati and Jay for the birth of their baby. The reason so much drama is attached to the date is that Kati has a “birth defect” that will produce a high risk pregnancy. A pregnancy in which it will be highly unlikely for the baby to go full term. What will happen on the way to April 11th? I hope you all buy and read Tripio to discover the answer. That is all I can say for now.

Well, not all. The above seems an obvious explanation as to why I chose April 11th as the date to publish Tripio. But I seemed to want to make that decision harder on myself than necessary. Last fall when I had decided to self publish Tripio I needed a release date. At that time, I was lamenting the fact that I had not started Tripio about a year earlier. That way, I would have been able to time the release date of Tripio with the 25th anniversary of the Starbucks IPO. It made some sense to me because in Tripio Jay participates in said historic IPO, I had my clothes picked out for tomorrow. I even had my khaki pants cleaned for the big day. Pants cost more but were worth it. I was not sure what to expect, but tomorrow would be a different day, to say the least. I read my stock market book at my coffee house under the tracks and now get that as of tomorrow, Cosmodemonic will be a publicly traded company”.

I was a year too late for that opportunity but I was hoping to attach Tripio to some other historic event in Starbucks history in order to get some kind of publicity. I looked over the Starbucks timeline on its website but nothing seemed to fit. Nothing fit because Tripio is not the story of Starbucks. It is Jay and Kati’s story. The story of Starbucks has been and is still being told by others.

So, to the dozen or so readers who will read Tripio and don’t know me personally, that is why I chose April 11th as the release date of Tripio. And even those who know me will find that Tripio isn’t a suspense thriller. It isn’t really the outcomes of the three plot lines that create the essence of the book. It is what Jay does with the outcomes of the plotlines that give Tripio its unique selling point. After all, who wants another book about Starbucks? Who want another celebrity author to ‘follow”? You see, for me, the lasting appeal in Tripio starts before April 11th, when Jay will begin to to see and understand that…..

Ooops…I better not go on anymore.

Starbucks store #204

Coffee Novelist

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March 22, 2019

In my coffee shop fiction novel, Tripio, Jay works at a Starbucks 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. This was a very early Starbucks location as there were fewer than 100 Starbucks up and running as Tripio opens. But, #204 was showing sings of decay from 1,000 transaction Saturday mornings when Jay arrives there as the new Lead Clerk. Jay 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 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”So, it was no shock that I had a strong desire to go back and revisit store #204. 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. All that could be fixed by a night at the Days Inn. But no money, no way.

Photo Cred: https://www.tripadvisor.co.nz/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g35805-d87571-i27458403-Hotel_Versey_Days_Inn_by_Wyndham_Chicago-Chicago_Illinois.html

As summer 2017 arrived I took the opportunity to drive to Chicago and see both places. I wanted to confirm the details of #204. After all, it had been 20 plus years. My trip to Chicago 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. I could visualize where it stood in the new collection of storefronts that had taken over the whole building that housed and surrounded #204. I can’t say I was crushed or even surprised. 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. All that was still in my mind.

As I think it over now, perhaps not having a physical confirmation of #204 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, the trip worked, just not in the way I anticipated. One thing that did work out more to plan was that I finally got to stay at the Days Inn. Now it is called The Versey https://www.hotelversey.com/ but the ghost of the Days Inn was still there. And it was put to rest. But best of all, my daughter and I had a grand time in Chicago…

“May I help who’s next?”