If we were having coffee, it being National Donut Day weekend, I’d be inclined to read you a passage from The Fever, about a legendary Austin donut shop:
“The aggravation of Austin’s rush hour traffic spurred Sam to make a side trip on the way to work. Mrs. Johnson’s was a doughnut shop that had carved a niche in the collective appetite of Austin. If he drove past the shop late at night when the hot doughnuts were being freshly glazed, the aroma would permeate the air with a sweet and luscious fragrance that was impossible to ignore without stopping.
“My car starts shaking and then automatically pulls in,” he would joke to friends.
Despite its reputation, the store itself was not impressive. It was a low-slung frame building with peeling paint and a parking lot that resembled the lunar surface.
“A dozen glazed,” was his order. The clerk sauntered over to the production line and pulled his order from the warm doughnuts that were resting after being glazed. As he carried his prize back to the car, he savored the irresistible aroma and could feel a gentle warmth radiating from the box.”
sit down, have a cupWow, how about a cup of coffee? If we were having coffee, it might be time for me to tell you a little about my time as a barista. It seems only fitting because, depending on where we were having coffee, the subject would come up sooner or later.
Throughout the nineties, I was an old-school barista at a gourmet food store in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I admit it, I was a coffee snob back then. Ah, but we got a discount, plus … we ground beans fresh every day for the coffee bar, so whatever dabs of coffee were left for the day were free for the taking. I drank high-quality beans every day for YEARS.
Okay, it’s our turn … you know what I’d order? A coffee.
Internally I’ll smirk if you ordered anything else. Although I don’t insist on pricey gourmet beans anymore at home, I’m still a little bit of a coffee snob out at a coffee bar. Especially at that Ess-place. Sure, if I’m dragging and need a cup of coffee and it’s the only place around I’ll pop in there but to me they’ve both popularized coffee and ruined coffee at the same time.
I worked in a simple, traditional coffee bar environment. We had a full range of coffee drinks but nothing fanciful or made up. We served drinks in real glasses and cups with real spoons. It was thought that you’d sit down and enjoy your expertly made coffee drink so you could appreciate the skill and care that went into it.
I’m going to tell you a secret that most of the current crop of baristas don’t know. That latte that you pay $$ for in a paper cup? You’ve just bought a shot of espresso and a lot of milk in a paper cup.
Here’s the secret: a latte is a visual drink, meant to be served in a tall glass … meaning one actually made out of glass. A cappuccino? The same … It is also a visual drink, although it is a bit more subtle than a latte, it should be made in a large cup with a saucer.
The artistry in my lattes was in using the glass itself as a canvas, ending up with three distinct layers of milk, espresso, and froth, with the espresso just beginning to cascade down into the milk like an ever-changing sunset of subtle hues and swirls until the unwitting customer drops a glob of sugar into it and swirls it into oblivion. Brownian motion, I guess. A cappuccino has a slight dome of froth that is ringed with a halo of thick crema. I would serve them and point out the beauty, proud of my work.
Sigh. A traditional barista lives in such moments, each instant replaced by a stir and then you move on to the next order. It reflects in the tip jar … I made a lot of tips, but not on to-go orders in paper cups.
What about all those fancy artistic flares places do these days, like drawing with the crema in the froth? I’d never make it because as a visual artist I am a total flop. I might be able to do a Bob Ross thing, you know, “maybe add a little log cabin over there,” but your drink would be stone cold by the time I finished.
At our bar we didn’t make up new drinks like frapa-whatever (a pet peeve because people would come in and order those and since it is a proprietary item we’d have to pretend we didn’t know what it was) or reinvent a drink with a traditional name, like macchiato, forcing us to ask you if you know what that really was, a specific drink that is totally NOT like at that other place.
There isn’t much else to espresso drinks. When you are training, you learn to froth, you learn to make shots. Good froth and good shots. There is a process to do it right. The rest is really just recipes using those building blocks along with things like flavorings. Don’t get me started on flavorings. But those are really all the tools you need.
I always almost laugh out loud when I see a thermometer on the frothing pitcher. Thermometer? You hold a stainless steel pitcher in your hand … you froth by feel, by smell, and by sound. If it gets too hot, it is too hot to hold. Really. You can smell it if it scalds. It happens. You throw it out. A froth that sounds bad is like fingers on a blackboard to me. Something is wrong. Try again. There is an artistry to it and it takes a while to master but like riding a bicycle, once you have it, you have it.
My advice to anyone who likes coffee drinks? Get what you like, as long as you understand you are paying for a glass of milk. Oh, and if there are several of you, count shots. If the place has two double spout espresso heads and you’re ordering five or six shots remember that they can only make four shots at a time and the time between means several drinks are sitting getting cold. There are four of you but only you are getting a double … everybody loses. And keep an eye on that barista. If they draw espresso first, then froth they are doing it wrong. The milk will stay hot longer than the espresso, so they should froth first, then pull.
Ah, our coffee is done, time to get on with the day. Thank heavens we didn’t have fajitas, Lord knows, I could go on and on about fajitas …
Writer Thomas Fenske is author of The Fever and A Curse That Bites Deep (due out in September) … read more about him at http://thefensk.com
This is just a friendly reminder that there are still TWO COPIES (Kindle version) of my novel, THE FEVER up for grabs on an Amazon Giveaway. No purchase necessary, just go and enter for a chance to win.
What’s The Fever? I’m glad you asked.
What if someone told you how to find a lost gold mine?
What would YOU do?
THE FEVER is about Sam Milton, and that’s exactly what happened to him. Now he is obsessed with finding it and it hasn’t been easy. Time, money, skepticism … he deals with all these things and, in the process, he’s lost friends, lost love, and begins to question his own sanity. Still he goes out … again and again, trespassing, risking his life, and his freedom … for what? He doesn’t know anything except the raw urging that tugs at his soul, driving him to continue.
How far would you go to feed your FEVER?
Click below to enter the giveaway … it takes just a second … and you don’t need a kindle to enter.
If we were having coffee, I’d have to tell you about the kitten. “Yes, another cat,” I’d say.
We already have eight but this one just showed up about a month ago, living in the crawl space under the house. I was afraid we had a litter or something, it was so tiny. But it was alone. I waited a few days after I first saw it, just to check for more, or to see if it found its way home. We have one outside cat, Buddy, abandoned by a family who moved away. He basically came with the house. He was the source of food for the kitten. So one night when I fed him I pretended to go into the house and here she came, right on cue. I was shocked at how tiny she was, I estimated she was no more than three months old. Smart too. She already had the food routine down pat.
I have some experience with feral cats and I knew one thing immediately, this cat, although wary, was not feral. She had been handled. Once the ice was broken, it took very little time for her to let me pet her and pick her up.
Was she cute? She’s a kitten, how could she not be cute.
Of course we don’t need another cat but understand this … all our cats are rescues, most from a feral mother who turned our detached garage into a nursery before I finally trapped her and had her spayed. Then I released her back to the wild. She came and went in the years after that, always coming back to hang around a little. Sadly, after about five more years she was hit by a car. I found her in the road not far from our house. She probably lived longer than she might have as a permanent unwed mother, but it was sad.
That’s the thing about five of our cats, since they were her kittens we know their story. Two others were adopted from a local shelter, so we know at least part of their story too.
But this kitten is like Tex, our other cat. He showed up one day about nine years ago. He was smallish but the vet thought he was full grown based on his teeth. What a cute full-grown 8 pound cat we thought. His life on the road had obviously been long and hard. He’s a monster now, pushing 20 pounds, paws almost twice the size of any of our other full-grown cats. I assume his development had been interrupted by the rough conditions of his life on the road. He wasn’t feral either.
That’s the thing about strays like Tex and the kitten … you wish they could tell you their stories. I mean, she’s still a baby. How did this tiny thing appear at our house, barely weaned? How did she figure out how to survive? How did she find her way into our crawlspace, then find a warm cubbyhole to sleep, then find food, and so quickly learn the routine? She probably started out getting Buddy’s leavings, but pretty soon I think it was Buddy who was dining on her leftovers.
She’s headstrong and assertive and smart as a whip. She’s a survivor.
“And,” I would add as I drained the last of my cup, “she’s found a home.”
I’m a writer living in North Carolina … for more information about me and my current and upcoming publications go to http://thefensk.com
Enter below for a chance to win a free kindle edition of my novel,The Fever
I’ve always secretly wished someone would name a sandwich after me.
That has long been my theoretical high-water mark of fame. I’ve just about given up on that one, but I’ve always subscribed to the notion that if the wind is just right, sometimes a wisp of fame might blow across one’s brow.
I feel a bit like that today because something exciting has happened: The popular YouTube cooking show, Hilah Cooking just released a new video featuring a dish inspired by my novel, The Fever.
I am very humbled by her effort. In the novel, the dish Huevos Rancheros Especial, was a specialty of a café that is not only mentioned, becomes a major locale in the book (as well as the upcoming sequel).
Okay, I confess, I’ve known Hilah for a quite a while and, since she is a friend, she read my novel. I am gratified that she said she really liked it. We kind of joked about her doing a video early on, but then I realized something … she was serious: she really wanted to recreate the dish.
Ah, but first I had actually make the dish I had described. Think “Proof of Concept” here.
I did, and I have to admit that it was delicious and although I had completely made it up for the book, it tasted exactly like I had imagined it would.
Like any great cook, Hilah took what I did and tweaked it to fit her style. And of course, she knew what to do to make it look great on screen too. She did an awesome job! Did I say I was humbled? I am downright gobsmacked!
So I urge you to go watch the video, and while you’re there check out some of Hilah’s other awesome videos. You will be there a while because there are a LOT.
Picture me blushing right now – I may not be famous but I am surely honored.
It’s April Fool’s Day and I’m fessing up … I did play a little joke on my readers and now, finally, the truth will come out.
This is about character names. Names are always tough for a writer. My old creative writing professor at the University of Houston, Mr. Karchmer, always chastised us for worrying too much about names. Everybody did it, and looking around at a lot of the current deluge of writers, everybody still does it.
His point: they are just names, concentrate on the story. I know writers who get baby books for ideas, and there are online guides for “most popular names” for given years. All good stuff. I have an unpublished completed draft where the main character is Tucker Bailey … those are the names of two of my cats.
For my novel, The Fever, I decided to have a little fun. I spent way too much time on this too because it was a lot harder than I imagined it would be. When I started planning the novel, although I had already worked out most of the major plot elements in my head, I needed a number of good character names. I got an idea. What about … anagrams? So I experimented with a few choice phrases that had some bearing on the plot. A few of them were zero … I don’t remember exactly what I tried at first … but then I tried lostgoldmine. I used an online anagram generator for this and got a wide range of what looked like usable words. I had to ignore the words lost, mine and gold along with combinations that included those words because they was too obvious (for example, golden and mein).
I poured over the lengthy list pulling out what I hoped were suitable names worthy of the characters I imagined. Sometimes I found I could combine items on the list into viable names that didn’t appear directly in the list.
Through quite a number of revisions, all the names remained intact but down the line, as I solicited input from test readers, about ¾ of them hated my main character’s name … his first name was Milt. It was too bad, too, because I kinda liked old Milt. Another character had a name that was really just too similar to another character … that was Midge.
So in later revisions I changed them both to more accessible names. But a majority of the other character names survived intact: Smidgeon Toll, Loot Meldings, Godson Millet, Ted “Slim” Longo, Gillet Osmond .. even a place name made the cut, Dolings Motel. All should be anagrams of lost gold mine (barring a typo in this hasty blog entry).
I also added another small similar touch … Loot Meldings lived at 4653 Tesoro Rd … using a phone numberpad anagram, 4653=GOLD and of course Tesoro is Spanish for treasure.
I also have a confession … on two stray pages, I messed up and called Milt Mitch. Of course when I did a global search and replace to change Milt to Sam, those references to “Mitch” were missed. Although I corrected it in the publisher galleys, somehow that change did not make it into the Amazon kindle edition … and after MONTHS, I am still trying to get them to upload the fix. Nook, iBook, print editions are all good but the Amazon problem persists. The question, “Who the hell is Mitch” has been directed to me a number of times.
Anyway, please forgive me my bit of fun. I think it worked out okay.
It’s about Sam. All you really need to know about Sam is that his life revolves around a cryptic riddle and the mystery of a lost gold mine.
Here’s a tidbit one of my readers recently shared. Women love Sam. Readers, I mean. Men enjoy the story but women seem to get involved with it.
I have to admit, never expected that when I cobbled this idea together into a novel.
Back to the story: As Sam struggles to solve the riddle, he knows deep in his heart that the clues will eventually lead him to his treasure, but his obsession has always resulted in frustrating dead ends and the danger increases every time he heads out into the unknown.
Still, he continues to trespasses over difficult terrain in all weather conditions, always seeking an elusive truth he knows is out there … somewhere.
His fruitless obsession has alienated family and friends and he even lost the woman he loved. For what? Something that is always just out of reach, somewhere beyond the next ridge or up the next gully.
As he manages to piece together the clues, his simmering gold fever begins to burns hot, unleashing a passion that drives him to make yet another hazardous trip into the rugged and remote West Texas wilderness.
The Fever drives him on … but how far will his lust for gold take him?
People keep asking me about the sequel to The Fever.
Both the initial draft and first revision pass are complete. I’m about a third of the way through a second pass, firmly in what I call “who the heck wrote this crap?” mode.
Bear in mind that I have made just enough money on The Fever to definitely NOT quit my day job, so it is slow going.
But it is coming along, with more than a few surprises. Stay tuned!
Sadly, thomasfenske-dot-com was already in use.
No, seriously, it was. Kudos to you, thomas fenske, wherever you are.
Then I thought about my long-time handle, thefensk … it is a user name, it is an email handle, it is even my twitter handle … why not use it as a unique and catchy domain name?
So, thefensk.com was born. I think Cookie approves.
In case you were wondering, my name is pronounced Fence-key … but going way back some people seemed to call me Fensk … not that I liked it, but I tolerated it.
in the early days of the internet (I’ve been on it since long before Al Gore ever heard of it) I could easily use fenske as a username. But there are more of us than you might think and it wasn’t long before variations were needed. It is not a common name but it is not rare either. Once, on some site, “thefensk” was one of the suggested usernames and I sort of liked the idea of it. The suggestion came about, I’m sure, due to my first name and middle initial .. THomas E FENSKe … thefensk. I liked it.
So there it is … same website (for now) but I will be updating it very soon.
If we were having coffee, it being National Donut Day weekend, I’d be inclined to read you a passage from The Fever, about a legendary Austin donut shop:
Like any great cook, Hilah took what I did and tweaked it to fit her style. And of course, she knew what to do to make it look great on screen too. She did an awesome job! Did I say I was humbled? I am downright gobsmacked!
It’s April Fool’s Day and I’m fessing up … I did play a little joke on my readers and now, finally, the truth will come out.
I am often asked: what is 
My cat Cookie is relieved!
Scratching the Surface 