My Midnight Deadline brew: A story in every cup

Just last autumn, after an eternity of procrastination, I finally launched my own website and the blog you are reading right now.

My wife was the catalyst.

“You need to introduce your writing to the world at large,” she said. “Create the stage for your own creativity.”

She was right, of course.

And when it was at last up and running, I felt a sense of pride.

No longer was I a mere cog of a greater whole, a newspaper site that published my work, but I was the whole. The site spoke in my voice and my voice only.

Then my wife upped the ante.

“You need to monetize your site,” she insisted.

Monetize?

I hated even the sound of the word.

You know, she continued, make money.

Cough, cough, I did?

You mean I can’t just publish my journalism and blog posts and sit back with the satisfaction that people actually continued to read me?

That isn’t enough?

I have to actually make money?

She leveled me in that gaze.

Yep.

I do not share my wife’s business acumen. And while I am proud of my work, to actually charge people to read it seemed a hurdle too high.

Then one day it came to me, like a caffeinated adrenaline blast.

Yes, indeed, I actually could make money on johnglionna.com.

I would sell coffee.

My website designer kept an office in an industrial complex just west of the Las Vegas airport. The place evoked in me two sensations.

As I drove up, I flinched from the roar of the planes gaining altitude just overhead.

And when I stepped inside the building, I smelled the coffee.

Owen was a young entrepreneur. In the front offices he ran an internet design company. Out back, in the loading area, he imported sustainably-grown coffee beans from around the world, which he would resell to companies, repackaged under their own corporate logos. 

He even did it for individuals, he said, showing me one-pound bags that bore his father’s image.

Then he made the proposal: He could rework my website to feature a sales space to sell my own brand of coffee as an advertising tool and a way to make money.

He would handle all the orders, deliveries and online upkeep. 

All I had to do was attract customers and count my profits.

The mind buzzed with possibilities.

My website is called Midnight Deadline, a nod to the fact that have filed stories from across the globe, with the hands of clock bearing all kinds of exotic configurations.

Midnight Deadline Coffee, a brew for people whose day never ends.

I liked the sound of that.

It might not make me rich, but my site would now feature a new magical mission.

As amazing as it might seem, johnglionna.com would be monetizing.

I got to work.

Owen made some labels featuring a picture on my website home page. His girlfriend snapped our photo standing before some bales of coffee beans. 

The image, illustrating our new new partnership, would run on the back of each one-pound bag.

Then he asked me: “How much do you want to charge?”

Owen’s price was $12 for each sack. I had to build in my own profit margin.

“What do you suggest? I asked.

“Sixteen bucks,” he said.

So that was it, my coffee would be a pricey indulgence I could peddle to friends, family and suckers, I mean patrons.

Now I needed to bring a bit of myself to the advertising.

I wrote an essay to prompt website readers to click on the buy icon. It involved an exhausting assignment from my days with the LA Times. 

I was dead asleep inside a Manila hotel bed when the call came from an editor in the states telling me that a military coup had just been launched in Thailand and it was my job to cover it.

I was still half drunk and jet-lagged from the day before, but I rolled out of bed, ordered a pot of hotel coffee and made my deadline.

My essay began: 

“Thanks for trying my Midnight Deadline brew. 

Now let me tell you a little story about how coffee helped launch my career as a foreign correspondent.”

Then I related the tale.

The pitch ended with me filing two stories in just a few hours: 

“The editor never complimented me, mind you,” I wrote. “But I can’t help but think that, during those early-morning hours in that Manila hotel room, I’d passed a journalistic initiation of sorts.

And I owe it all to the brew, of course.

It’s staying power took me by the hand and assured me that it would everything be OK.

I hope this coffee does the same for you.”

Not bad, I thought.

Now I needed to put my stamp on the bags of coffee themselves.

I searched the Internet for catchy coffee sayings — one for each bag.

A few of my favorites:

“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.” —Dave Barry

“Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said. "No work would be possible without coffee." They pondered the importance of coffee in silence. — Henning Mankell, “One Step Behind”

“Want coffee?" I asked, as I headed that way. "It's three thirty in the morning." "Okay. Want coffee? — Darynda Jones, “Third Grave Dead Ahead.”

“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day. — Haruki Murakami

“Only two kinds of people drink their coffee black: cops and serial killers.” —Ilona Andrews, “Magic Binds.”

“I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.” —Raymond Chandler, “The Long Goodbye.”

“He looked down at my cup and his little, bony fingers started crawling towards it. I snatched it in front of him, pulling it closer to me. “Never. Touch. My. Coffee.” —Tia Artemis, “The Death’s Daughter.”

Finally, there was just one more thing to do: Write my own little coffee quote for the back of the bag. I finally settled on this:

“I used to paint houses in college, and I always said that I’d rather forget my brushes than my radio. The same goes for coffee. 

Writers write, and coffee is their muse. 

I hope you enjoy my Midnight Deadline brew. There’s a story in every cup.

What’s yours?”

I was finally ready to hit the market.

Then Owen stopped taking my calls.

The red flags of my business failure, of course, had reared their heads long before that.

When I told friends of my new venture, some would listen patronizingly.

Sure, they’d buy a bag, they promised.

Then one day, as I waited to get my car fixed, I paced a nearby street with cell phone in hand, just killing time.

I was telling my friend Brad about this newest coffee brand about to hit the market.

Brad and I have known each other for 40 years.

We call each other on our bullshit.

I was walking and talking, telling him about the craziness of the entire idea. I evoked Seinfeld, laughing that I saw myself as some Kramer character, sitting in his New York apartment with all this coffee he can’t sell.

Brad did me one better.

He barked at me like the Soup Nazi.

“Glionna, do you know who many bags of that coffee you’re going to sell on your website?” he said. None, that’s how many!”

And he was right.

Owen never called me back.

He left me hanging like a coffee drinker without a waitress.

I never sold one bag of my Midnight Deadline blend, have never made a dime from my website. The word monetize continues to elude me.

But I’m still here, posting my little stories and blog items, content in the fact that somebody, anybody, still reads me.