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Coffee Thoughts #1
Coffee Thoughts was an idea I had to keep a daily blog rolling. These posts will be periodic and free-flowing, with many different thoughts. As for my first ever coffee thought, I think introductions are a good way to get started.
Me in Dean Village! If you haven’t already guessed, I’m Alex, and I enjoy writing, reading, and exploring the world. I have finished and published two separate novels. One is a Christian fantasy book called The Shadow of Our Stars. And the other, which is a historical mystery, is The Victorian Vigilante. Both books were largely written during the COVID pandemic and have mature themes about life, death, and personal sacrifice.
Currently, I am typing the second draft of my murder mystery novel, The Highland Tour. A book that came to me while traveling in Scotland in 2022. This book has been an absolute joy to write, and I’m so excited to get it finished by the end of the year! Very similar to Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley’s novels, this has a complex plot with different points of view that make it interesting from start to finish.
My Freewrite Typewriter is my drafting tool of choice!! Now for the thoughts:
I was thinking the other day about sharing beauty with others. While hiking the Pool of Winds in Washington, I thought about the end result of the hike. The massive gust of icy water hitting your face in a cave-like waterfall— the perfect way to spend a hot day. This isn’t our first time doing this hike. In fact, I think this is the sixth or seventh time. But the beauty remains even after all those other times. When we arrived at the end, you only had a few moments to see it before you kindly stepped aside to allow others to see it. That has become part of the fun for me— watching others fall in love with the sight just like I have. Sometimes sharing is more enjoyable than trying to collect it for yourself, especially when you see something that God has created so brilliantly. Just a thought.
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Back to Basics of Writing
I think for awhile I’ve been so caught up in trying to earn a name for myself that I’ve completely forgotten why I wanted to be a writer in the first place. This blog used to be a place where I wrote short stories and posted poetry. Lately, it has become a barren wasteland, with posts trickling in every few months. I’ve made a decision to purge social media out of my life for a good bit while I focus on much more meaningful things.
My hope in this transition is to get back to the basics and, in doing so, honor the God who gave me this gift in the first place. I will be making a huge effort to post unreleased short stories, detail upcoming travels, and write generally positive and uplifting thoughts about life.
My apologies for being absent for so long. It feels good to get back to what I love. Writing.
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The Victorian Vigilante Preview
Chapter One- London 1884
I dance with death in a dark room.
“Fight!” chants the crowd.
Death explodes at me like a bull, eyes full of rage, driven by sheer madness.
Without a momentary thought, my body glides aside, watching as he rams into the barrier wall. Two people live inside my body and I don’t know how to keep them both sane. Lacking hesitation, I unload punch after punch into his lower back. I’m aiming for the soft tissue in his kidneys, but he proves too intelligent for my advance. A man so agile on his feet, yet he shares the pitiful of all men, a bad temperament. He will fatigue soon like all of my prior opponents, and I will have my chance.
The arena submerges into the earth resembling a shallow grave. In the shape of a rectangle, the walls are caulked in fresh blood from others before me. Others, also, fighting for their lives. I spot the fragment of a tooth poking through the soil. Another reminder that people have died fighting here and possibly, I could be one of them.
“Kill him!” The crowd echoes.
The night’s match pinned me against an Italian man known as Cardillo. He was twice my size and still two widths wider than I. The odds were twenty-to-one according to one of the bystanders. Certainly not ones in my favor, but then they were never in my favor. I think I relished the divide.
Whispers of the Italian’s southpaw traveled all throughout Whitechapel. And I followed him, studying his every move and observed his tendencies. He’d a habit of making wealthy men richer and turning the slumlords in the East into vultures looking for caresses to pick clean for profit. When the Irish immigrants stormed London, it seemed the only way to make a living was to use ones’ hands and fight for it. This part of the city was basking in crime and the pits were established to counteract it, into a profit that was.
“Is that all you got?” he says, wiping the imaginary sweat from his balding brow and advancing forward guard up.
“I’m just getting started.”
I spring to my opponent, sensing the temper swell within me. It will take over soon— a wolf at the obedience of the full moon, with a stomach of fire. My rage needs to be purged periodically in order to keep sane. Stretching from my youth, I’d found opportunity against the boys oppressing my brother, Casper. He was five years older than I and could hardly defend himself. However wrath, like all other violent tendencies, deserved no allowance in a modern society, especially in my home.
Naturally, I took matters to conceal the devil inside.
I’d punch my pillows until the feathers went flat or release fury in the inside of my wardrobe. I smashed holes in my walls— my lady’s maid began to notice. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the night of my mother’s murder that I lost all self-control and found myself unable to turn back. My brother had been shipped to France without explanation and I was left alone to grieve in isolation.
Anger bred hatred, malice birthed vengeance.
For many years I tried to bury this quality, but within the last couple years it was becoming impossible to do. Streets came alive at night, beasts hunted in the dark, and I searched for salvation. And in the process, I found the pits. In some sadistic kind of way, horror found purpose— I found deliverance.
I had no other choice.
It would consume me if I did not.
“Come on!”
His fist tears across my face in slow motion.
I, unbeknownst to anyone’s knowledge, am a woman.
I return the favor knocking the wind from his gut.
I’d drawn up my silver hair and smeared a handful of coal across my pale feminine complexion, leaving the only color on my face, the turquoise in my eyes. My chest was bound tight restricting my lungs of oxygen. And the garb I dressed resembled a character dwelling in the darkest places, a fighter— a warrior. I was a nobody here.
I envied that.
Cardillo steps forward, lowering his guard in mockery. “Shalt I even try?” he sneers in broken English.
It was a challenge.
“Fight!” They ring out again.
Cigar smoke bellows in my face.
My hand collides with his abdomen, yet stops short as it encounters coiled muscle.
He grins reaching for my wrapped fist and yanks it towards him. A punch contacts my ribs with a deafening crack. Great, I’ve broken one.
He hits like rod iron.
That will leave a nasty bruise.
The crowd roars in ecstasy as I return a fist clean over his jaw, a trail of blood spews from his mouth covering their faces.
I grin maliciously knowing all the men who would lose their inheritances tonight. With twenty-to-one odds, I will make a pretty penny. Rightfully so, gambling on another man’s fist was a daft way to squander a lavish lifestyle. Even I recognized that.
Shaking his embarrassment, Cardillo jabs with his left.
There it was.
His stronger hand.
He was a southpaw.
I spin around gracefully, quick and agile on my feet, striking him again in his abdominal region. Adrenaline pulses through my veins. I can hear him wincing in pain with each strike, the rage taking over more of me until I see black.
Time slows down.
The faces behind the bleached curtain go dark.
A man spits at Cardillo, “Knob-head!”
Necks like corded wires. They want something to happen, fast.
And I’ll give it to them.
“You come to regret that,” he says, shaking his head with broken English.
“We’ll see.”
Cardillo broods, leaping with his arms around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. His muscles flex like a boa constrictor. I can see it in his eyes. Submission isn’t his target, he wants death. A vein in his neck throbs as his blood-stained teeth bar at me.
“Die!” he confirms. “You will die for this.”
There’s an instance where I think I might, but this situation is not one I’m unfamiliar with. Adrenaline is keeping me alive. How do I win? If I knee him in the groin, it would further enrage him. No. Instead, I need to give in the very force driving him. It is calculated. My breaths shorten to preserve oxygen whilst I ram the temple of my skull through his Italian smug nose. A fountain of blood gushes from his oval-sized nostrils. I broke it. A sliver of ivory protrudes from his torn skin. Disorientated, he releases me.
Now is my chance to turn the tides— to strike.
I meet with Cardillo’s nose again with the palm of my hand, over and over again—blood splatters everywhere coating my face. And when my palm can no longer take the force, I ball up my fist to finish the job. The last punch I recall, someone pulls me from his unconscious body and both of my knuckles are leaking.
There’s an eruption of outrage as the pit’s laborers drag what remains of Cardillo from the dirt.
He’ll awake in a few days not knowing what took him.
I smile as they announce my victory.
“They’s done it again!” the man yells into the crammed room. “The Silver-Haired Devil triumphs again!”
Now to collect my winnings.
I weave through the crowd towards the bookie’s booth.
“How in hell’s name have ya done that?” the pit’s bookie says. “I could have tripled tonight if I would have known you’d beat him bloody.”
“Then who would I fight, Arthur?”
Arthur shrugs. “Rightfully so.”
“How’d I do tonight?”
“Half-sovereign.”
I pocket it.
“Well, it’s been a pleasure, as always,” I say, relieving the man of my cut.
Another night in hell, another triumphant moment escaping from it. “Until next time.”
If you would like to continue reading, purchase a copy of my newest book, The Victorian Vigilante!!
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NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
I am proud to announce the release of my newest novel, THE VICTORIAN VIGILANTE on March 28, 2023. I have been teasing it slowly for over a year, and I can finally share it with you all. If you like books with strong female protagonists set in historical London, this one is for you!
PRE-ORDER link: The Victorian Vigilante https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BT8MGDBM?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_Q7QV01H1F3CQSJRJ7FN6
SYNOPSIS:
LONDON, 1884.
Una Egerton is a woman adrift in a world dominated by man’s corruption and crisis. Riddled with a dark side herself, when night falls Una cloaks her feminine appearance and becomes the fighter known in the London Underground as the Silver-Haired Devil. But just as Una finally has a grip on her abnormal condition, the body of a woman is found floating in the Thames River in an oddly familiar way to that which claimed the life of her mother a decade ago. This murder sets off a series of events that fall one after another. Her alter ego is rapidly labeled a person of interest and the mysterious death toll continues to climb. A secret society hidden in the shadows begins to emerge having her question everything she thought she held dear.
Una must set aside her convictions and become the detective her city desperately needs. With themes of sacrifice and personal virtue, The Victorian Vigilante is a grounded take on vigilantism with an elaborate plot canvasing Ancient Egypt and the London underbelly known as the East End.
EARLY REVIEWS:
“A mystery with endless twists and turns.” – Ellen Z.
“Brilliant.” -Early Beta Reader
Available early 2023, preorder details will be up soon and I will be announcing giveaways for free copies of the book in the coming weeks. Excited to have this baby out and share it will you all! It has been a labor to write but every much worth it!
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DEBUT NOVEL: The Shadow of Our Stars
The Shadow of Our Stars can be found for sale as an ebook or paperback exclusively on Amazon.com by clicking here.
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The Impassionate Diary of a Window Watcher: Part 3
Bound to the rule of another, higher in their own eyes than Our Creator. They mistake me. They think:
We cannot act…
We cannot be okay…
We are not free…
Nature flees from this unknown assualt with a new horizon ahead and the lonley bird flys as far east as it can ready to be hunted down like a trophy by the wolves and the vultures. I can smell the air entering my lungs– I want to understand it for what it is and not what it’s not. When did all of our choices start impacting nothing? If all we’re meant to do is follow along, what’s the point?
But the dark understands nothing.
Happiness is a sailing ship wading through the roughage in the harbor. It’s to be boarded next Sunday afternoon. Where will we lower our anchor next? The ocean’s current brings all things to one epicenter.
There’s new seas to be explored, new creatures to discover, and your heart to recover.
“Where to next?” asks the Captain.
You reply. “My heart’s desire.”
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kaleidoscoping light
Light waves reflect from the surface of my skin. I know where I am, but I don’t know where I’ve been. The rush of electricity feels foreign to my dismal way of thinking. Perhaps I am meant to be grounded. I twist the dial once more to my left. The picture changes. I see my variant laughing on the side of the highway looking for a ride east. He’s alone, but happier than I am now. The dial twists again. This time I am surrounded in tapestries of wool– a castle of old with a man of new. The grim taste of earth lines my lips and I am somewhat taken back to a time long before I existed. Both images petrify me. I hoped things would be different, but– in some way beyond my comprehension, they are just the way they’re meant to be. I cannot change what is down the road from me, no matter how many times I turn the dial, my path is set in concrete.
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The Truth About Working From Home [UPDATE]
![The Truth About Working From Home [UPDATE]](https://teacupwritertravel.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/img_4385.jpg?w=1024)
Hello,
I cannot believe it has been over a year and a half since taking this plunge into working from home. If you would have asked me how long I saw this lasting, I would have laughed and said, “Not long at all!” But here we are. And I’m starting to wonder what it’s even like to see the faces of the public anymore. Will we ever return to the normalcy of the prior world? Or, will we create a new norm, one that forbids handshakes and emphasizes sanitation and personal spaces?
These questions may result in grim answers. I very much want to take a time machine back to years ago and experience the peace of the past, but time machines are not  readily available as of now. So, I will either find myself romanticizing about the peace of yesterday or be thrusted into this new way of doing things. *Lord be with me*
Reflection:
Initially, the work from home order was issued back in March of 2020 and now it’s May of 2021, nearly June. The same realizations from my previous truth about working from home remain, but with some added discoveries.
First and foremost, the word normal no longer holds any value or hope. I have spent days and days worrying about the challenges of tomorrow only to find myself more let down when lockdown presses on. In that momentary let down, I’ve learned to be thankful for the things I have, rather than of the things I do not. I have an  exquisite kitchen to cook my meals in and a personal domain ruled by me and my golden retriever, Willow from 8 am to 5 pm. ( After 5 pm, the rule over domain is bestowed to my beautiful wife.) I have also come to discover the power of prayer and finding hope in the Lord rather than my employment. All of these “struggles” as I may view them, are temporary and will not last forever.
Secondly, this time of living in an office cave has given me the opportunity to write more frequently when I have the time. (Obviously not on the company’s dollar.) I published my first novel during quarantine and am rounding the corner of the first draft for a second. Now, rather than letting go ideas escape into my subconsciousness, I ink them down on fabulous paper with a good fashioned fountain pen. (I think I have discovered my old soul in 2020.) I find myself writing letters to my spouse too, complete with wax seals and everything. (Another task to complete while on breaks but slightly mirrors the current reality of my job description). 
Collectively, I have discovered who I am. Isolation, don’t get my wrong here, is utterly terrible. I would not wish it on my worst of enemies, but it was the hand all of us were dealt. I merely learned to be okay with it, rather than complain. (I am sure I still do that occasionally.) And through the tragedies that have enveloped the world, I have found God in the chaos who has nurtured me and my spiritual gifts. (For He I am most grateful.)
So, as updates go, I am far better that I was before and have learned a lot over the last year. I only look fondly into the future awaiting the age-old handshake to make its triumphant return! 
As always,
Alexander
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. ”
Matthew 6:34
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The Impassionate Diary of a Window Watcher: Part 2
Night wanes and clouds collide orchestrating a bleak activation to my morning ritual. Outside I see grey. I can sense it in the air, thick with desolation, it will volley as it did the preceding era. And the delusions of my subconscious can offer no escape. I am entombed in a cycle of permanent nature. Why must things be this or that? Black or white? Why must we pick our chosen conduit before having given sensible thought? Clock in. Clock out. Clock in. Clock out. It repeats itself. Where are the turquoises and greeneries of the overlooked? Where does the wind blow when it prefers not to shadow the tides? How does the moon wax when there is nothing for it to convert? Why do we fear simplicity and voyage far more than a nauseating routine? Have we lied to ourselves about vocation? Are we missing the beauty set forth into this world by Our Creator? Have we fallen from our deliberate hallways into a somber of reminiscing? We do not know what could be, because we are content with just being. I, for one, can no longer observe while the world grows distant to me.
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The Impassionate Diary of a Window Watcher: Part 1
I inspect from my office window frame the season’s transformation—the red to the gold, the snow to the sun, awaiting escapism. The mundane tragedy of a corporate existence extracts the very life within like the squeezing of an orange. All the good bits inside are expelled for the pleasure of another. For I will never taste the truest zests of the juice. I will remain, eyes glued to the pane, observing what goes about on the other side while the clock ticks… For the larger part of my life, I have been ensnared in a net of black and white– of paper and pens, ethics, and performance evaluations. The delight of maturity in grade school was a predatory falsehood served with faux hopefulness. I, like so many others, swallowed the reality. I graduated college with the ambition of financial prosperity and occupational ventures but found I am a caveman primitively existing amongst folks shackled to their vices. The art of fire, my only spoken language, is lost to all memory. Hidden in the dark, oral stories of long ago and the peril of what the end of the age will bring– haunt me. I will live out the rest of my days behind this bureau until another faux promise comes to fruition. Then, I will depart this world and pass on into the subsequent, not knowing what life could have been if I seized the risks it presented.
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Alexander Richter 