This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates. Said gentleman-scholar has re-upped his donation, so keep pitching me, academics longing for freedom. I am an unabashed reader of romances, watcher of romantic comedies, and lover of happy endings, so it’s unsurprising that I’ve always loved the…

This is a love letter to the inner city. This is a love letter to a concept of Chicago that is constantly under attack. This is a love letter to the people in the hood who raised me, sustained me, and supported me. I've been trying to write about Chicago violence for a good two months now. The facts are easy to obtain from any major news source, though the way in which those facts…