Apparently I’ve Been Lying To Myself For Twenty Years

 We’ve all heard the saying “you learn something new every day” and boy oh boy did today not


disappoint…at all. 

My routine has been the same all summer. Get up, head to the coffee shop for a few hours, get my Butterbeer (one of their unique specialty drinks) and sit down and write. Every now and then though, I like to change it up a bit and get a caramel macchiato, one of my favorite drinks of all time. Every time I’ve ever ordered one, no one has said a word to me that I was ordering it wrong. 

Today, I ordered a caramel macchiato, shocking the coffee shop owner — because let’s be honest, he’s never seen me order anything other than my usual. He didn’t even flinch when I asked for added vanilla, which is my secret sauce for making local shop macchiatos taste like Starbucks macchiatos.


A few days ago, I discovered that was the difference — Starbucks adds vanilla syrup. My reaction at the time? Well, that’s good to know.


Fast forward to this morning. I’m sipping my drink and minding my business when I overhear the owner talking to his new employee.


“Do you know what a macchiato is?” he asks.


I giggle to myself, thinking, Way to have faith in your team, Quinn.


I completely tuned out the rest of the conversation… until I heard him say:


“And that’s why there’s no such thing as a caramel macchiato. There’s just a macchiato… with caramel flavor added.”


Excuse me, sir?? What kind of blasphemy is this?!


Naturally, I looked it up. Sure enough — he was right. Caramel macchiatos aren’t a thing. Starbucks invented them. The “real” macchiato is just espresso “stained” with a dollop of milk foam.


The kicker? I have an entire scene in my book where my FMC walks into a local coffee shop and orders… wait for it… a caramel macchiato with extra vanilla — just like she would at Starbucks.


So, to recap:


  • I’ve been drinking macchiatos for 20+ years.
  • I had no clue what they actually were.
  • I am now questioning my entire personality.



And this, my friends, is why I write books instead of making your coffee.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to the Chaos

  On a warm, sunny day back in May, life changed.  I had quit my job back in March and picked up DoorDashing to make ends meet, but the truth was, I wasn’t enjoying life. As a mom of three amazing kids—and with a supportive, loving husband who is his own personal hurricane, complete with a hat collection that seems to multiply overnight—I hadn’t had anything that was just mine in years. My car? It looks like three tornadoes tore through it at once.  My house? It’s less of a home and more of a storm front, with the eight-year-old’s toys and the sixteen-year-old’s makeup claiming every room.  And my bedroom? That’s the eye of the storm, where the chaos of family life collides with my husband’s whirlwind ways, and the floor tells its own story. So, I made a decision: I needed to carve out a space that was mine, untouched by the storms swirling around me. That’s when the coffee shop hunt began. I wanted someplace I could slip into each morning, coffee in hand, and just b...
Read more

The Time For Silence Is Over

The days are getting more overwhelming as we go along. A week ago, I was going about my day as usual — starting at the coffee shop, getting everyone where they needed to go, squeezing in a little DoorDash. That afternoon, I heard about the untimely death of a certain someone (I refuse to speak his name because, frankly, he has gotten far too much attention this past week) and I didn’t feel any sort of way. If you had told me then that the United States would be even more divided than it already was over the passing of someone who made racism, transphobia, and anti-women’s rights part of his platform, I would have thought you were crazy. And if you had told me that his death would cause left-leaning people to turn against left-leaning people — and some on the right to turn against their own — I would have called that impossible. I have tried so hard to keep the peace on my social media. I rarely post political content. I don’t stir the pot or rock the boat. And I take full respon...
Read more

The Hardest Scenes are Sometimes the Truest

Image
One of my characters is based on one of my best friends. Just as my best friend has always come through for me, that’s how I’ve written this character. Comatose is filled with fictional events, but it also draws from real moments in my life. I’d always planned for Adyson (the best friend) to have her moment to shine—a scene of pure, raw emotion about everything her friend has put her through over the years. Last night, I finally wrote it. I thought one of the darker, more traumatic scenes would be the hardest to write. I was wrong. The hardest part was stepping into my best friend’s mind, seeing through her eyes, and putting into words the pain I’ve caused her. It’s the only scene in the entire book where I had to stop, leave myself an author’s note in my notebook, and take the rest of the night off. As people, we don’t always see things the way others do. We may not realize how our actions affect someone until we try to stand in their shoes—feel their thoughts, their body, their gri...
Read more