by Andrew Reise
The man nodded. “Yeah, I saw the retraction printed about your cafe in the paper this morning and thought I’d come give it a shot. Could I get a cup of coffee please?”
Alan nodded out of habit, but then hesitated. That was an actual question. Could he still make a cup of coffee?
The man noticed Alan hadn’t moved. “Is there a problem?”
Alan shook his head. “Just a moment.” Alan went back to the kitchen.
He looked at the coffee beans, the familiar machines. He thought through the process he used to engage in to make coffee. He went through the once familiar routine haltingly and unsure.
Finally he poured the fresh brewed coffee into a cup.
He stared at it unsure. Then he went out to the front of the cafe and handed it to the customer.
“Here you go.”
The man nodded, took his cup and went to sit down in one of the leather armchairs.
Alan looked at the man as he drank but didn’t notice any reaction.
The man was new to the cafe, so Alan couldn’t really rely on him to be a baseline to see if the coffee had changed.
He went back into the kitchen and prepared another cup.
Then he brought it out to the cafe and set it on the counter by the register. He stared at it. He knew he should drink it, should find out if he could still deliver the same quality as before. But he was scared.
He was scared he might not be able to, that he would suddenly be left without the thing that had turned his life around.
Summoning his courage, he lifted the cup and took a sip.
The bell on the door rang as another customer walked in.
Alan set down the cup, looked up, and said, with a small smile on his face, “Welcome to Lux Cafe. What can I get for you?”
A note from the author
Thank you all for reading my novel, Luxury Cafe Owner. When I initially conceived this novel I had a very specific goal in mind, to poke fun at the “system” trope that is so common among LitRPG web novels, and the somewhat standardized progression that such novels follow. I do not typically write in the LitRPG genre, but I have read several novels from the genre online, and found them to be much like junk food: enjoyable, but not satisfying. Then I noticed one particular site had labeled system novels as Magical Realism, which always bugged me. Thus, I had an idea: why not make a “system” novel that actually fits under the genre of magical realism?
Working under that concept, I’ve found writing this novel to be a unique challenge. First, I had to turn the system concept into something that could be explained as a hallucination in the end. That turned out to be more difficult than expected as the system had to appear to be able to do incredible things like in other novels, but at the same time I couldn’t have it tangibly affect reality as it was a hallucination and nothing more.
Second, I had to drop hints as to what was going on as the story progressed so it didn’t just pop up out of no where. If you read back, from the very first chapter, I’ve been hinting towards this ending, from the head injury, to the headaches, the nosebleed, the lethargy and confusion, culminating in the aphasia (the moment when he speaks weirdly) and loss of consciousness. I even had the “system” directly tell him he was brain damaged at one point in the guise of a joke.
Third, and most difficult of all, I had to avoid the novel becoming the very thing it sought to parody. I’m not entirely sure I was successful. However, I have done my best. I tried to take something derivative and make it my own while making fun of the stereotypes as they appeared. From a ridiculous system with no real explanations given as to where it came from to unreasonable antagonists to cookie cutter plots, settings, and characters, I have tried to give this novel all the things people love and hate about system novels in a way that left you feeling refreshed after finishing it rather than dissatisfied.
I’ll leave it to you to judge if I succeeded.
About the author
Andrew Reise is a Juris Doctor with experience in criminal law and public interest law. After graduating from law school, he decided to pursue a career in writing.
Despite the YA/Humor genre of Luxury Café Owner, Andrew primarily writes within the Fantasy genre. His current work in progress, See No Evil, is an Urban Fantasy novel.
If you want to know when Andrew’s next book comes out, please follow his Twitter at https://twitter.com/AndrewReise to receive announcements.
To contact Andrew, you can email him at [email protected].
