Ricardo Cortez Cruz was born in Decatur, Illinois, on August 10, 1964. During high school and college he worked as a sports intern and newsroom clerk for the Decatur Herald and Review and as a sports clerk/writer for the Bloomington Pantagraph. He holds a master's degree in writing from Illinois State University, where he was awarded the 1987-1988 Robert Brome Creative Writing Award, and is currently completing his doctorate there. His fiction has been published in Black Ice magazine, and a story is forthcoming in Fiction International. His hobbies include stereo mixing and basketball. He is currently living large in Bloomington, Illinois, and has finished a second novel, Five Days of Bleeding, that uses the blues, jazz, and mutilation to tell its story.