Tor is publishing debut novels by the rapper, actor, and Law & Order star Tracy Marrow, better known as “Ice-T,” and his wife, actor and model Nicole “Coco” Marrow. It’s a little early for fall tour details, but the celebrity couple is expected to do some events together in Los Angeles, New York, and New Jersey (where they live). “I think the main thing that we do is, we support each other,” says Ice-T. “We motivate each other.” Adds Coco: “You don’t need a lot of people, you just need that one person to push you along in life.”
In Kings of Vice, Ice-T brings his street knowledge into his first foray into long-form fiction. “I was considered one of the better storied rhymers,” he says. “In that case, you are taking a story and you’re putting it into the rhyme.” He likes to take real details and put them into a fictional setting. In Kings of Vice, Marcus “Crush” Casey heads out of Attica after serving 20 years, determined to be part of the solution, but first he has to take back his gang from the backstabbing lieutenant who handed him over to the Feds. Ice-T says it is a story he’s always had in his head.
Coco’s debut is a paranormal romance titled Angel of the Hudson, in which a beautiful woman awakens to discover the plane she is on is about to crash into the Hudson
River. After the crash, she remembers nothing of her past. “When I was a kid I had a dream about a woman who could shape-shift and could read minds,” Coco says about the origins of the story. She often told people the story and when her husband heard it, he told her right away it would make a great book.
Marrow took his stage name from Iceberg Slim, aka the urban novelist Robert Beck. Describing himself as a lifelong reader, Ice-T says he is always drawn to writers who write in the “voice of the street,” like he does in his books. Aside from this novel, Ice-T published Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption from South Central to Holly wood (Ballantine/One World) earlier this year and The Ice Opinion, which St. Martin’s released in 1994.
Coco says Sylvia Browne is by far her favorite writer, a passion she shares with her mother and sister. “Her books really inspire me to be the woman I am—they motivate me to take on the world,” says Coco.
When it comes to reading format preferences, the Marrows prefer tree to bits and bytes. “I’m about having the book in your hand and turning the page,” Ice-T confirms. “It’s kind of like downloading a record versus buying the album.”