Richard Marinick held many jobs—short order cook, junior civil engineer, automobile painter, nightclube bouncer and admin assistant to a District Attorney and even as a State Police trooper—before deciding that he had enough of the "slow-lane, no-money life of a citizen." He was on a roll for years, "reveling in money, using way too much cocaine." But in 1986, at age 35 he was convicted of an armored-car robbery and sentenced to eighteen-to-twenty years in state prison. While incarcinerated, he earned his master's degree in liberal arts from Boston University. After prison, Marinick wrote Boyos during breaks on his job as tunnel worker on Boston's Big Dig. He's now working on his second novel, a private eye mystery. Marinick lives in South Boston, Massachusetts.