Love that first mug of morning coffee!

This is another of life’s small puzzles. I love coffee in the morning. In fact, there is a line in Shades of Murder about the pleasure of that first cup. I usually have 3-4 cups in the morning, but I tend to only have coffee in the afternoon in social settings. Coffee after a nice dinner in a restaurant is also a habit, but if at a friends’ house for dinner, I don’t want them to make it just for me. I did not, in fact, drink coffee until I joined the Army, but that is an entirely different post.Then of course, we had the coming of the wonderful accessibility of coffees from all parts of the world and the profusion of coffee shops. While I don’t use coffee shops as a setting nearly as much as I do bars in my novels and short stories, I do include them at times. I created a lovely little place – Jumping Java –  for Deadly Doubloons.

In general, I prefer medium roast coffees because I drink them black and don’t use sweetener unless it’s a robust one. I rarely use cream, but do enjoy a skim milk latte or cappucino and variations of that. The point here is that for some reason, however, I don’t like coffee flavored items. I can’t stand cold coffee beverages that are all the rage, coffee candy, coffee ice cream, etc., I genuinely don’t understand why that is. So, if there are any coffee experts out there – what’s the deal with that?