It’s Bean Day! (and a MORGARTEN update)

June 25, 2012

Three or four times a year comes a holiday that makes me twitch like a four year-old lying in bed listening for the bells of Santa’s reindeer, and today is that day.

Hallelujah! My shipment of green coffee beans has arrived!

Yeah, I’m a coffee nerd. To anyone who’s read my short story Playing with Fire it’s no secret. I roast my own stuff at home and distribute it to a select group of family and friends. Often in late-night meetings from the trunk of my car.

I started drinking coffee when I was 13. Horrid, canned crystals that had more in common with ground-up asphalt than the roasted pit of a coffee cherry. But it’s amazing what 2 heaping teaspoons of Coffee Mate (also known as “powdered death” in some circles) will do to a rancid cup of asphalt water.

I drank it. I survived. And now I make up stories about the stuff. Well, actually only one so far. Most people’s reactions to Playing with Fire go something like this:

“Uh, wow, JK. This is really…different…than…you know…your regular historical stuff.”

I then shrug and say, “I’m a complicated man. I have sides.”

At this point they usually mumble something about how they wished I would just write another Forest Knights novel.

Which reminds me, I wanted to mention that the final revisions for MORGARTEN (Book 2 of the Forest Knights) are going amazingly well and I am on target for a release sometime late this summer or early fall. I don’t have a date yet, because it has to go back to my editor for one more pass, but when I know for sure I’ll post it here.

I will also put up a “sneak peek” snippet from the book here on my blog sometime soon.

But right now, I have to go roast some coffee.

Happy Bean Day everyone!