Layers

Coffee Novelist

January 25, 2024

Your relationship with a piece has many layers. As you move through the layers, you see clearer and it sinks into your system. And then you liberate yourself in a healthy way from the technical necessities of the piece. That is when you make music.” Anne-Sophie Mutter, a world-renowned German violinist

Layers

I found this quote in an article I was reading on my phone about ten minutes before ISO’s production of Mozart & the Chevalier. There is a movie out with the same title, but this was the live symphony performance which was just about to start.

Image result for ernest shackleton endurance ship. Size: 202 x 200. Source: www.pinterest.com

The Endurance

I really enjoyed being in the old theatre seeing live music on a frigid Friday evening in January. The work week I endured working outside would have made Earnest Shackleton proud. I wore lots of layers to keep warm. Could be why the quote resonated. I don’t think so. I didn’t finish reading the article as the house lights went down and put my phone away as requested.

I am not a big fan of reviews of any sort. It just doesn’t make sense to me to think I would experience Chicken Carbonara, Romeo & Juliet, or Porky’s in a way remotely close to how anyone else would.

I ain’t trying to prove a point but I say that because I spent a lot of the concert imaging the musicians in their street clothes and sweats practicing, practicing, and practicing the music the needed to in order be ready when it was time to hit the stage in their black gear. I even wondered if they had to buy their own performance night outfits. I suspect that they do. All part of getting through the layers.

Layers upon layers

It takes time to do anything of value. Time in sweats, practicing, moving through the layers, getting familiar with what you are working on. That is why I liked the quote so much, I suppose. It is how I go about my writing practice. I’m in sweats now, writing this post before writing a bit more of the Trier goes to London.

My relationship with the novel is in a good place. We know each other well by now. My favorite characters have emerged from the layers. I have an end in sight but that can change as it gets closer. The technical necessities come later. I know what they are already. They are the performance night blacks, and I will also have to pay for them: editor, proofreader, cover design and all that. Which is not what the violinist is referring to, I know. And, hey, I get that she’s talking about a piece of music. To me, it’s all mental energy to start with and it’s my post, so there you go.

For me, for now

In a few minutes, I will start to find out what the novel wants me to do for this layer, this next paragraph, page and stage of our relationship. We’ve been together long enough now that I can be who I am, and the novel can do the same. The stuff I have to pay for, the technical necessities, don’t matter at all. Nor does a single craft book, blog, podcast, beta-reader or Stephen King.

This relationship is between the manuscript and me. This relationship is only for me, for now. After the technical necessities, it is all yours.

PHOTO

That wonderful state

Coffee Novelist

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January 7, 2024

That Wonderful State

The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in

That wonderful state that makes art inevitable.

-Robert Henri

There it was. I read the above quote from some guy I had never heard of. It is on the first page of Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act- A Way of Being. Not sure if you’ve ever heard of Rick Rubin, either. Never mind if you haven’t because this post and the eighty-one that I plan to post altogether are about me anyway.

Why? Because they have to be, that’s why. I ain’t doing none of this for anybody else. Don’t be fooled. If that doesn’t stop you from reading, maybe this will: If you are writing for anybody but yourself, it ain’t gonna be any good. It won’t last, it won’t resonate, it won’t have the energy from you, the stake, the risk, the offering it takes to be worth reading. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

But I will get to all that and more in the next year or so. And, you know, part of me hopes to look back on what I just wrote and call it nonsense. It may be, but this morning, I don’t think it is. Not to worry, I’ll get to that also. Like I said, I have eighty-two posts planned directly inspired by that guys’ quote and confirmed by Rubin’s book.

I read the quote and knew I would read the book. So I did. I found it landed beautifully into my path that I’ve been on for about ten years now. The book may not do the same for everyone of course. That is why I don’t review books. It is random, a borderline waste of time. How would I know whether you, me or the grand piano would like a book I read?

I didn’t want to call this post a book review, so I won’t call it anything. Labeling and categorizing is also a waste of time. However, I did waste some time trying to label this series (I just did it again) of posts. This morning about half an hour ago, I decided to just release the mental energy (write) and see where it takes me, labels be dammed.

Since I have to start somewhere, for now I will just post, post and post, for me, me, me. Because this morning, I am in that wonderful state. And that wonderful state is all that matters to me. This stuff you’re reading now, not so much.

And why not? Because I’m there. Later it will, just not now.

The quote uses the word art. But I’m talking about my writing, which I do not refer to as art. Hell no.

You can go home again

Coffee Novelist

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November 29, 2023

BuYou can go home again

Trying to go home

I think I was being selfish. But it worked out. I discovered that you can go home again, provided you are paying attention.

I had been trying for months to get a book signing and selling event in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio. It was one of my first intentions made when I decided to take my novel The Trier on its book launch tour. The tour has covered two states, been staged at libraries, bookstores, coffeehouses, and even a Coffee festival.

However, I had not been able to get an event in Dayton, Ohio which is, not surprisingly, where the novel is set. I really wanted to bring the book to Dayton and better yet, to a coffeehouse in the Oregon Historic District. That older, quirky neighborhood bordering downtown Dayton is where the actual coffeehouse that I based the Trier was located. Perfect spot for a book event. Yet nothing turned up.

Made it

I kept trying, and eventually I found a host for a book signing and selling event with Ghostlight coffee. Boom. Ghostlight was as close to the Oregon District as I was going to get. The event was set for Black Friday, and I was even featured in local media on Dayton.com.

I had been to Ghostlight two times on recon and planning missions and liked the coffeehouse right away and felt like it had the feel of what the Trier would be like if it were real. I was given a corner spot near the front at the window. It looked out on Wayne Avenue. Just up Wayne is where Jay lives in the Trier, and where yours truly once lived. The spot for my table came with a classic coffeehouse beat-up wooden couch to use, the day outside was sunny, the place busy, and I sold a book right away. I was off to a good start.

My approach to selling in a coffeehouse it to stay out of the way overall. I figure a strange person sitting at a table behind a rack of books will passively draw attention. But I have my promo signing postcard piece to use. I use my years of experience behind the bar and when I see that the line of customers is long, I offer the promo card to those waiting. It distracts them from the wait for a minute or two for as they look it over. Some scan the QR code, others just read it, some take it with them and some folks toss it on the counter.

Really enjoyed being back home

In between the lines and sales, I sat in my window seat, read a little, made entries in my journal and looked at the window. I began to really enjoy being in a coffeehouse. It had been a long time since I sat in a coffeehouse in Dayton soaking in the music, the talk, the sound of the steam wand kicking on and off.

A street in my old neighborhood. It is the inspiration of my character’s name in The Trier : Jay Altonstreet.

The corner I looked out on was busy enough to bear watching. Two women waited forever to cross at the light. About half an hour later they went the way they came with a new broom and a bag of cleaning supplies. Another guy picked up something on the sidewalk and put it in his own plastic bag. More than a few folks tried to come into the front door of Ghostlight. The door sits right on Wayne Avenue, but it is locked and can’t be opened even during business hours. No sign was there to let them know, so they walked around to the side door. I thought of asking the crew why there was no sign on the door.

Then it occurred to me that would be boring, too corporate coffee. That’s when it occurred to me that I was paying attention. An entry door that doesn’t open would be a great detail to use if I were to write a novel set in a funky old coffeehouse in Dayton, Ohio.

Oh, wait, I already have. I was back home.

Rick Rubin for writers

Coffee Novelist

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November 8, 2023

Rick Rubin for writers

If you don’t know who Rick Rubin is, don’t feel too bad. If you click on his name, you’ll find the link to his bio on Encyclopedia Brittanica. So, there you go.

I bought his book. Not the one in the photo above. That is from the library, hence all the mini sticky notes. It is obvious that the book resonates with me. It does mostly because it confirms so much of what I have experienced and recognized the past years while writing novels.

The Rick Rubin books is entitled, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. When I said I bought it, the hardback copy, I bought it for my son, who creates painting, choosing to use his mental energy that way.

I use my mental energy in lots of ways, as we all do. However, I set the intention to use a lot of my mental energy, my mind’s sustained intention and attention, my mind blood, if you will, to write.

Rick Rubin is right

The Rick Rubin book is about creating, not just writing, which is why it worked to buy it for my son, who paints.

What I’m getting at is that there are so many ways to be creative. And we are all creators. But since my blog is about writing mostly, I felt like taking a few Rubin wisdoms and focus them on writing, or at least how I experience it. Let me direct some intention and attention to creating those below. Let me pick a few sticky notes…

Am I right, too? Not that I care

And here you go:

“The work is done when you feel it is.“- A confirmation on the pointlessness of word count as a measurement of achieving anything in writing.

“Hanging on to your work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary.”- This is why it is a good practice to write some every day, and release it the next.

“A dedication to the practice of showing up on regular basis is the main requirement.- The creative process is found in and born from the grunt work.

“Not all projects take time, but they do take a lifetime.”- The journey is the reward. The writing is in the rewriting, the discovery of what you learn about yourself from your own words.

“Demanding to control a work of art would be just as foolish as demanding that a oak tree grow according to your will.”- There is great joy in acceptance.

Five sticky notes down, a hundred more to go.

Next time, buy the book. It will be easier.

Readers direct to author

Coffee Novelist

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October 27, 2023

No one in the way of this book buyer!

Author Directed

I have been committed to self-publishing, author directed publishing, or whatever you may call it for a while now. I can pinpoint it to the day I took a Basics of Self-Publishing class at the IWC, taught by YA author Robert Kent. November 4th, 2018.

In that time, I have posted a few times on my decision to forgo the Big Five route. I haven’t regretted the decision and kept writing and working on all the rest of the stuff that goes with author directed publishing. Yet, the choice remained a kind of theory….until this weekend.

I have had successful book selling events before at bookstores and coffee houses. I have had events not selling books at bookstores and coffeehouses.

No one between me and the book buyers

This weekend I was in the Cincinnati Music hall with nearly 100 other vendors. This weekend I experienced clearly why it makes sense to take one’s books directly to the readers. I was the only guy selling books. Hundreds of festival goers passed my table over the weekend. Some stopped to talk. Some stopped to buy. And some passed by an hour later showed up to buy. Others ignored me entirely. All of them had the option to do exactly what they wanted to do about my books.

They did the same with Seven Hill Coffee. Boston Stoker Coffee. Evolve Pastries. It Spells Good Pastries. Sky the Tea guy was given the same treatment.

You can’t get more direct that someone talking in to you in person. Perhaps even picking up your book, reading the back cover, admiring the interior design. They did the roughly the same with the other 100 vendors and their products.

Don’t see the point

If I were to ask each person who decided to buy one of books to drive to New York first and let a Big Five Publishing house to approve the sale, I have a feeling my sales would vanish. So why let them? Boston Stoker doesn’t have to get the SCA to sign off on their offerings. Neither did Seven Hills or Tinker. So why should I?

Before print-on-demand publishing, authors had no other realistic choice but to use traditional publishing houses to get their books to readers. Now that has changed. Big Five and even boutique publishing house still have a place of course. It just wasn’t at the Coffee Festival.

Direct and to the point, don’t you think?

Work on it

Coffee Novelist

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October 18, 2023

The chain is broken

Melted in the flame of my knowledge.

Turning his face from the fruit,

He needs nothing;

Work

In a week I am going to set up my book table at the Cincinnati Coffee Festival. Last year I was there as a humble coffee lover with one novel to his name. The Trier was not finished. In fact, as I type I can’t tell you where in the book I was. I know it wasn’t done however because if it were, I would not have set the intention to return to Cincinnati in a year.

In the year between then and now, I worked on writing the book. My book producer then took the book from my laptop and got it to Amazon and Ingram Spark by early June. I set the intention to return with the novel completed. That intention was met. I don’t even have to make the trip to sell a single book to know that all my work means what it is supposed to mean.

Work

Ideal industry, work, and purpose is free from the judgement of others. Results driven. Paycheck. Fruit of the labor. There is no reward in any of these. If there is, then you are giving something, or some arbitrary person, the power to define what your effort means to you. What your early mornings and tired body mean to it’s owner and founder. How can any one else know what that is worth? They can’t. Its just a guess at best. Do not let what lands in your bank account on payday define what the work you do means.

Work

So, I am going to have a blast, a caffeinated joy ride surrounded my books. I will sell a good amount of books because work went into making that inevitable. But the real reward, the true lasting fruit that cannot go rotten, lies in working on the next book. Or books.

In the above quote, I define chain as paycheck, and fruit as money. But that’s just me.

The (ten) Myth(s) of Kaldi

Coffee Novelist

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October 1, 2023

The origins of coffee | The legend of Kaldi & more | Essense Coffee

Have a great International Coffee Day

Many an independent coffee house features a Kaldi’s Blend. If you asked ten different baristas what was in the Kaldi’s Blend you would most likely get ten different responses. It may be a blend of any two varietals. There may be a third in for fun.

Is it any wonder? I roasted a few batches in my time. Here’s a secret of the trade- there can be a rotating selection of coffees made up to create any blend’s flavor profile. In other words, if Kaldi’s Blend tastes like Kaldi’s blend this week, who cares if there was Bolivian in it before and now its a Nicaraguan?

However, all this Kaldi’s confusion starts at the beginning, whenever that was. A look into my coffee books, the internet and a variety of articles yielded ten versions of the Myth of Kaldi. They are collected below.

Even though I worked in coffee for over two decades, I had never given the myth much thought. Maybe I was the only coffee lover not to. Anyway, I first saw it explained in detail few years ago in Stewart Lee Allen’s fabulous book, The Devil’s Cup.

My version of who Kaldi is can be found in The Trier.

Enjoyin’ my coffee

Coffee Novelist

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September 29, 2023

This is a repost for National Coffee Day 2023

Today, I am going to write about how pleased I am to be able to be enjoyin’ my coffee once again. The past month I have experienced many disruptions to my mind, body and soul. It is not recommended to dwell on the past, so I won’t.

Coffee is a thing

What I will do is express gratitude for simply being able to taste, savor and enjoy a cup of coffee once again. Yes, I know coffee is a thing. I see many blogs out there with coffee tie-ins. I see blogs started with the first, second or even third post being reviews of coffee houses, coffee drinks or coffee makers. It is a good choice to do this because coffee can and often does attract clicks on said blogs. A blog on coffee stands a better chance of getting noticed than one about shirt buttons, for example.

Image result for Buttons. Size: 131 x 133. Source: www.istockphoto.com

I am writing about coffee this morning for my own reason. I am writing about coffee because I don’t have a choice. You see, I’ve been at this coffee thing since the late 80’s. As I say above, I was deluded and separated throughout June. I sorted through and crawled out of the wreckage day by day. I have slowly returned to myself. There have many other small milestones and I have passed as I cleared the debris from my mind. However, being able to sit on my porch with my ritual cup of straight black drip coffee brings a historically personal confirmation to my day.

Enjoyin’ my coffee this morning

The two cups I have had this morning did not make me anxious. In fact, the opposite took place. The ritual morning coffee reassured me. It reminded me that I have overcome many other trials and tribulations over the past decades. The repeated sips collaborated with my clear, energized mind. The mind I recharged with real night of unpolluted sleep.

The list of things I left behind over the past weeks is quite lengthy. Some of these I will sadly never be able to get back. Others I simply will never be able to recall. I am looking forward to appreciating many people, places and things once again. I chose coffee from that list because this is partly a coffee blog and because as I said, I have no other choice. Simply put, if I’m enjoyin’ my coffee once again, that means I’m enjoyin’ my life again.

Still enjoyin’ my coffee two years later

The value of Tripio

Coffee Novelist

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September 29, 2023

The value of writing Tripio

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 three 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.

Used Books for sale

I hadn’t looked these pages over since spring of twenty seventeen. 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 twenty seven years. This is the opening passage of Tripio, where Jay is “sitting at my writing desk, shirtless on a muggy day in Chicago.”

Re-writing and editing changed this passage to some degree. In reading the passage twenty eight, now close to thirty, 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 did not do it with the intention of starting a novel.

That fact that it happened, for me, is what is as interesting as the actual 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?

Not the sticker price

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.

This is a repost for National Coffee Day 2023

Coffee and writing

Coffee Novelist

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September 29, 2023

Some writing with your coffee?

It is not yet seven a.m. on Sunday morning. And I have been up for close to ninety minutes. This is my schedule. I have come to the conclusion that sleeping in is overrated. This is my day off and one hears a lot about how others relish the chance to “sleep in” on their off days. I can’t, even if I try, I can’t. So, I get up and make coffee. Or, I simply warm up the leftovers from the day before and get to work. I always, always, always have a cup of coffee near me when I write.

This brings me to Stephen Fry. Why Fry? Well, I read once that when he was working on a screenplay for Peter Jackson he could not get going on it to save his skin. It took him awhile to understand the reason but it struck him that at the time he was working on the screenplay he was trying to give up smoking. Smoking energized his mind while at the same time the smoking ritual calmed and rewarded him as he wrote. I feel almost exactly the same about my cups of coffee. This morning, I am wondering if I could have written Tripio without coffee?

No Starbucks, no coffee, no way.

One indisputable answer is no. No coffee, no Starbucks. No Starbucks, no Tripio. Starbucks did not invent coffee. I drank plenty of coffee before Starbucks was available. In Tripio, Jay refers to a coffee house where he was working before he moved to Chicago. And even after Jay is working at Starbucks, he often goes to a favorite coffee house that “sat on an alley under the El tracks”. I come by my love of coffee honestly. Hey, I loved coffee before it was trendy and pricey.

The point here, however, isn’t how cool I am. I was thinking as I started this post that it could be a bad thing that I believe I have to have a cup of coffee within arm’s reach anytime I write. At times, I know that I will not drink the contents of the mug but that I have to have it close regardless. If I were feeling somehow inadequate about myself for not being able to write without coffee near, I arrived at the conclusion to stop it. One reason is that I am in good company with Stephen Fry. The second is that I would have never responded to the Starbucks want ad if I hadn’t already loved coffee. For proof I refer again to Tripio and Jay thinking to himself “about the only real qualification I have is that I’m a coffee lover.”

Read, write and coffee today.

And I am not alone! The spectacular growth of Starbucks confirms this. If you are reading this blog with a cup of coffee nearby, then drink up! And, if you are doing so at your local coffee house or Starbucks then that’s even better. If you have come across this post on National or International Coffee Day 2023, that may prove that coffee is as much a part of your life as it was Jay’s. How cool is that?