J. Michael Jones

Please put a bookmark in your COVID-19 reading schedule for June as that will be the estimated release of my new novel Ristretto Rain. I am very excited about this book that got its start way back in 2018. Then there were interruptions such as life-threatening cancer, bone marrow transplants, oh. . . then a pandemic. You know, just the ordinary kinds of things. The book is in the genre of drama with romance overtones written with the backdrop of San Juan Island living, fine coffee making, wooden boats and exploring the secret places of villagers’ hearts. Someone asked me if the book is G rated, like a Hallmark movie. No. Life is at least R rated and this book imitates life, not a fake world without conflicts and disappointments.

This morning the Ristretto Rain manuscript went off to the profession editor (Max) who is an editor for McGraw-Hill (education publisher) but is a freelancer for Mount Erie Press. I’ve worked with Max for two other book projects and he is very good. He does not hesitate to say something is crap or needs re-writing or that somethings is very good.

This will be my third novel and my seventh book. Between each book I’ve worked hard in fine tuning my writing skills by reading the classics and more recent Pulitzer Prize winning books.

Here is a summary of the story:

Halem was one of Seattle’s finest coffee roasters and baristas. Sandra, a wealthy divorcee rescued her from an abusive relationship and took her away to create a world-class coffee shop in a very remote village in Washington state’s San Juan Islands. The Rock Harbor Coffee Roasters, her little shop, was perched on a bluff overlooking a remarkably beautiful marina. She had her regular customers, mostly commercial fishermen and eccentrics who, each, had their own reasons for escaping mainstream society. She also served a host of transient tourists arriving by personal boats each day.

One morning, a mysterious and handsome man named Winston came rowing in from the Pacific Ocean in a little wooden boat. He was the most remarkable man Halem had ever met. He had the uncanny ability to look directly into her, and her customer’s souls and put his finger on their greatest emotional conflicts. Halem had her own personal labyrinth, which was far more convoluted than just her abusive Seattle boyfriend but stretched back into unresolved grief as a child.

During his short stay in the harbor, Winston became involved in helping several people navigate out of their personal quagmires. About this time, Sandra discovers that Winston is really a liar had swindled people in other harbor towns out of money. She chases him out of their little village. But it was too late for Halem as her heart was already lost to this man and was broken with his departure. But was Sandra correct? Could Halem find the truth? Was Winston the greatest man she had ever met… or the most conniving fraud? Would her world finally find peace or an unbearable heartbreak?