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“Dad. I want to explore.” When I heard that word explore it took me a second to recognize it. Explore. How quaint. How old-fashioned. My young-adult son and I were on vacation in our traditional rental house on the banks of the Ohio River. We’d arrived a day before everyone else in the family and had some time on our hands. I did recognize the word after a moment. Explore. You mean just go out…

If  you think I’m handy with the trier in real life, wait until I send it back in time to London in 1675. The Trier Goes to London will be available on September 29th, which just happens to be National Coffee Day. #coffeenovelist #The Trier #coffee #indieauthor #coffelovers #nationalcoffeeday2026 #Pete’s Press

I have struggling with coming up with ideas for posts recently. Not that I don’t have lots of them, it’s just that I don’t see the need to add to the clutter and chaos of everybody else’s lives via my blog. I mean, the few who do read the blog, all have lives to lead, and I have never been a huge fan of using filtered reality to reach people. In fact, I have been having a great time setting up…

I jsut finished my latest journal, which I call sketchbooks of the mind. This one held about nine months of thoughts and was a little heavy I put it on the shelf next to the 37 others. I use the journals more to clear my mind, and I was happy not to be carrying all those thoughts with me any longer. But on a whim, I pulled another Sotm down and cracked it open. The thoughts now have a different…

I am not reposting this simply for an ego boost. I feel like this recent review will help a potential reader of The Trier more than me. Hey, the book ain’t mine no more. Since one is forced to put one’s book into a genre or category -thanks to Amazon- I created my own. I like to call The Trier (and following books in the series) “coffee magic realism”. Yet, I’m not sure what it is. The review and…

      I don’t review books and hesitate to even suggest books to other folks, unless I know them really, really well. I go into this in an entirely different old blog post. But I just tried to find it but couldn’t in my previous posts. Hmmm, maybe it doesn’t exist. So, to put it briefly, I see a book and a mind as two types of energy. One, a rainstorm and the other a growing tree. When a…

This year was not going to be a busy Holiday Season. So, about a month before Christmas, I decided to focus on honoring the Winter Solstice. This year, 2025, had not been a great one so this gave me the chance to send it packing on December 21st instead of waiting for the calendar New Year to arrive. One description of the Winter Solstice that stuck with me was “the death and rebirth of the…

Thanks for checking in this year. Just been hibernating in the real world and been enjoying the break from all this filtered reality. But I plan on seeing you all next year! Have a great Holiday Season! Thanks, Jerry WordPress just congratulated me on 7 years of blogging.

It is not an edit, a fix, a mistake. It is an opportunity. A chance to make something better. Who is this world hasn’t benefitted from a second chance in some way or another? I know I have. In fact, I can think of many times when I’ve been given many more chances than I may have deserved. If viewed in a positive light, a mistake is simply an opportunity to learn something. Editing your own work…

     This is a repost for National Coffee Day 2025 – To submit a query, please use the form below. Please fill out all fields. If an agent wishes to read your submission, he or she will contact you in response to your query, usually within 6-8 weeks.     Which agent would like to submit to? https://www.fineprintart.com/art/history-of-the-starbucks-logo     There she is. My agent. She and I…

Wow. I found this in my drafts folder. I thought I had posted more about Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. I guess not. It strikes me that since I read Meditations that Ai has been creeping more and more into our lives and even our minds. In the year or so that I read Meditations, Ai has become part of our everyday lives. Nothing has changed in humans since the times of Aurelius. The mind and the…

I hope you enjoyed the popcorn and used the restroom during the intermission. I have continued to grind away. Before I move on, I must clarify my grind type. As you may be aware, not all grinds are the same. I have a drip coffee maker, an espresso machine, and a French Press maker. Each performs best with a different grind. The espresso is very fine, the French Press is coarse, and the drip in…

Well, I paused and leaned into the question, “You have to grind away until you find a way.” That will be my response one of these days when I’m asked how I become a global literary superstar. Until then, I will rerun the pretend interview in my head. What is not pretend is that everything is work in the end. With my writing practice on intentional hold for now, I’ve found myself noticing how…

A trip to my Starbucks #204 It is the summer of 1992. In my “Starbucks novel”, Tripio, Jay works at a Starbucks store #204 located on north side of Chicago on the corner of Clark, Diversey and Broadway. In Tripio, for the sake of brevity and authenticity, I refer to it simply as store #204, or even just #204. Tripio is a historical fiction novel, set at time when there were around 100 Starbucks…

Rosenberg’s critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting’s creation. Action Writing? So, my novels are residue? I’ll take that. I’ll take whatever outside external definition comes with putting them out there.…

Thinking is hard. Reacting isn’t. Working on something of any worth requires intention and attention. Producing activity is easy. I am not sure about all you all, but I have hard time sitting still. Somewhere inside me a little voice with a big mouth is telling me that I have to be doing something. The little voice with the big mouth is usually right of course. There are always dishes to be done,…