Shortly after I finished the Harm City books, one of my readers' favorite violent people, Tattoo Rick, owner of the Café Tattoo in Northeast Baltimore, retired to Florida. For four years I used Rick's bar to interview subjects of my violence study. Among the readers of The Logic of Steel and The Logic of Force Rick became a favorite; on one occasion, in the story At The Edge of the Herd, delivering the most articulate narration of a gratuitous stomping in human history.

It might also interest my fiction readers that Rick provided 40% of the inspiration for the headline character in the irreverent novelette Buzz Bunny, the balance of the nefarious rabbit's personality and dialogue coming courtesy of a 21 year-old friend named Zach.

In September 2010 Rick called me and discussed the novel he had just begun. Back in April of this year he sent me the finished work. Since then I have been assisting him with the editing and proofing. The novel is titled The Plates, and follows a Jewish engraver and his friend through World War Two Germany and Postwar Europe. It is a griping narrative about two men trying to provide for their families through the worst of times and into a radically changing world.

When the final edit is done we should have a dust cover and sample on our fiction page. Look for it here in 2014.