MM Rook is two initials and a surname, and he intends to keep it that way. He learned chess at eight, across a kitchen table, from a grandfather who believed the pieces taught everything worth knowing — patience, sacrifice, the difference between attacking a man and reaching him. He writes about men who want slowly. He lives near a chess café he will not name, in a city you would recognize, and plays the black pieces by preference — because Black gets to respond, and response is the more intimate half of any game. Asked what the initials stand for, he says: whatever you need them to.