King Crow came from a concrete incident and a concrete image. Regarding CAFE ASSASSIN I have a friend, who I’ve not seen for a while, also called Nick. At the time the story was forming in my head, I was seeing quite a bit of him. He was in a very dark place. He was seething with anger. The energy of his hate had a purity that I found attractive on one level and I started to think about writing about a character whose primary motivation was hate. It all came out of that question, why was he so full of hate and the answer in CAFE ASSASSIN is that Nick was betrayed by his best friend and spent 22 years in prison for something he didn’t do. When he gets out he wants revenge. He wants his best friend’s life. He wants everything he has, his wife, his children and his house. It is about betrayal and revenge and sating that hate.