I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.)

I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.)

You don't see Los Angeles erecting a museum dedicated to the birth place of the Crips and the Bloods and the Mexican Mafia, with a special guided bus tour highlighting the rise of the crack trade, yet you can hop on a bus in Chicago tomorrow to see the famous locales of murders. I have to imagine there's some wonderful academic book on the sociology of this out there.

The fact is, though, what I think we really like is Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and James Gandolfini. We like what the media has created of the mob bosses in movies and TV and books, because it's something the average person never comes into contact with, it's almost as outwardly outlandish as a sexy vampire, and so we can romanticize it, it's non-threatening.

I found myself thinking a lot about my own spirituality. What it means to be Jewish, what it means to forgive, what it means to sacrifice, but mostly what it means to be alive, how to be a better person, how not to make the mistakes my parents had made. I guess that's what one might typically call a midlife crisis.

So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs.

I'm really fascinated by how the mob ethos permeates places like Las Vegas and Chicago. I have the book set in Las Vegas and Chicago for pretty specific reasons, some of which are that in both cases the mob history has become a tourist attraction - I'm actually doing a book signing in Las Vegas at The Mob Museum, which I am positively giddy about! - and I find that especially unusual. If you don't call these people "the Mafia" they're just a band of psychopaths killing people for profoundly dumb reasons.