Jeff Johnson's Blog: Will Fight Evil 4 Food, page 16
May 13, 2019
Deadbomb Bingo Ray – the audiobook that will light your BBQ for you
Foreword INDIES Finalist
Library Journal Pick of the Month for November 2017
Crime. Vengeance. Love. Physics.
The infamous Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a high level fixer in the City of Brotherly Love. He’s the man you call when you’ve crossed the line into hopeless and there’s no way back to anywhere.
Three years have passed since Ray burned a hedge fund manager on behalf of a pool of retirees, and now the money man is back for revenge. While Ray unravels the plot and orchestrates some payback of his own, he unwittingly steps into the ultimate high stakes game. Falling in love with the beautiful physicist trapped at the edge of the burn was just bad timing.
When the fuse is finally lit, getting killed isn’t high on the list of the worst that could happen in this dark and stylish noir.
“This evil strut of a book is wildly smart, utterly warped and exultant in its own mad glory.”–Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan
“Jeff Johnson writes with a poet’s rhythm, a boxer’s attitude and an artist’s sense of style and flair.”–Norman Green,Shamus Award Winner of The Last Gig
“We lost George V. Higgins too long ago; thank goodness we now have Jeff Johnson. Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a shot of good old 70’s muscle-noir for 2017, written with a bounce and a turn of phrase that elevates it above the pack. If this guy’s under your radar, recalibrate!”
—Sean Doolittle, multiple award winning author of The Cleanupand Rain Dogs
“Hard-boiled, hilarious, and as serious as a straight razor. It has more good ideas, great jokes, and splendid writing on one page than most books have in a full chapter.”—Tim Halinan, author of Simeon Grist, Poke Rafferty, and the Junior Benderseries
“The launch of Johnson’s new series, as inventive and comic as the Darby Holland books (Lucky Supreme, etc.), introduces Philadelphia fixer Dead Bomb Bingo Ray. … Descriptive gems—“the costume brought out the side of him that was dangerous in a next-level way, beyond angry beehive and well into biblical-serpent territory”—make Johnson’s writing a rare treat.” –PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
May 12, 2019
The perfect summer road trip audiobook Lucky Supreme
“Lucky Supreme is one hell of a book. I didn’t know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can.” —Joe R. Lansdale
The night world of Old Town, Portland, Oregon, has gone mad in the grip of gentrification, and at the center of it all is Lucky Supreme, a seedy tattoo parlor, whose proprietor is a street-bred artist with a unique approach to problem solving. Darby Holland has enough on his radar, but when some flash (tattoo artwork) stolen from him resurfaces in California, he can’t help himself. His efforts to reclaim it set him on a dangerous path, dragging along his delightfully eccentric colleagues, including the brains behind his brawn, Delia, a twiggy, vinyl-clad punk genius secretly from the other side of the tracks.
No one knows why the art signed “Roland Norton, Panama, 1955” is worth anything or how it came to hang on the walls of a tattoo shop in Portland. Only the deranged former owner can say – and he’s not talking. Before the wrecking balls swing through Old Town in the name of “progress”, Darby must settle old scores and face new demons to save his reputation, his shop, and his sanity. When cash, lies, crime, and history collide, Darby will need his ramshackle skill set, his wits, and a lot of luck to rise to the top of a human food chain, or be eaten alive.
Lucky Supreme is an intuitive thrill ride from start to finish in the spirit of Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane. It is the first of a trilogy featuring Darby Holland, Delia, and the other unforgettable nocturnal residents of Old Town.
May 11, 2019
Knottspeed, A Love Story
“Through dark, sarcastic humor glazed with cynical insights into the human condition, Johnson turns readers into confused collaborators in the outlandish, death-defying schemes through which Knottspeed drags his broken body. The object of his destructive search through Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles slowly comes to the forefront as he careens from bar to bar: a mysterious woman named Maria. Knottspeed is trying to find her with the aid of a paid friend named Fencepost Beckenshire, a slew of angry cab drivers, and a doctor who has lost his way. Bullets fly, knives are drawn, and death is waiting to join the fray as the characters cuss, fight, and drink their way out of the dull, uneventful lives they had led before Knottspeed arrived. Will they survive the chaos? Will they survive Knottspeed? All roads collide in Johnson’s irreverent, chaotic novel, with an ending that will leave readers stunned.” (Feb.)PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
“Phillip Marlow meets Joe Pitt, Knottspeed is legendary, irreverent and deeply funny, a philosophical love letter to vagabonds and outcasts everywhere.”–Kate Moretti,New York Times Bestselling author of The Vanishing Year
A problem-solver, a finder of lost people and rare things, and an accomplished criminal, Knottspeed is experiencing Big Love for the first time in his life, and his elaborately orchestrated plot to reunite with his beloved will profoundly affect everyone he meets, including a rudderless, alcoholic piano player; a wealthy, dispassionate doctor; and an amiable-but-desperate cab driver. From the bars and graveyards of Portland, Oregon to the taco stands and charity hospitals of East Los Angeles, Knottspeed is the uncompromisingly offbeat story about the momentum of love.
May 10, 2019
Everything Under The Moon by Jeff Johnson – available now in bookstores
“This is the werewolf as you haven’t seen it before: talking like a Richard Kadrey novel, walking through Charlie Huston’s dark streets, and snarling like a Jim Harrison creature.” –Steven Graham Jones, author of Mongrels
“In Jeff Johnson’s world, the volume is always cranked up to eleven, the violence is cranked up to the max, and it’s just one damned thing after another. The pace is fast, the plot is racing and restraint has been kicked into the gutter. … And it’s got werewolves. What more do you want?”–Simon R. Green, New York Times Bestselling Author of Tales from the Nightside
Born in Missouri more than a century ago and raised in a Pentecostal orphanage, the creature now calling himself Gelson Verber has changed his name countless times. He’s part-werewolf, and makes his living hunting certain kinds of bad men—criminals, rapists, thugs—in an often grotesque parody of the natural order. Verber is clearly suffering from the kinds of things a werewolf would be uniquely vulnerable to in the modern world: the horror of war, drug abuse, and isolation in the rain-drenched environment of Portland, Oregon. He has PTSD, but in a unique way, often flashing back to his time with a regiment in World War II.
His smooth life as a serial killer takes a turn when he falls into the crosshairs of Salt Street, a development corporation running pirated criminology software and Big Data sieves to identify werewolf hybrids, who are then forced into servitude. As he falls deeper into the trap that has been set for him, his introduction to its evil architect triggers within Verber a string of recollections, conversations with the late werewolf-hybrid, John Jack Bridger. Salt Street’s trap is masterful, but it does have one terrible flaw: you cannot cage someone—or some thing—like Gelson Verber.
May 5, 2019
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo commemorates the First Battle of Puebla, a big dust up between the Mexicans and the French in 1862. The French arm was bigger. They had better shit. The Mexicans beat the fuck out of them anyway.
This has nothing to do with American college kids whooping it up, tacos, tequila, margaritas, salsa Buffalo Wings, or even nachos. Here in the US Cinco de Mayo is actually a weirdly secretive celebration of the badass nature of our groovy neighbors.
A celebration of badassery should be wild, so we need to turn up the heat on this one. These are the times, dear reader, when we need most to consider just how valuable that really is. We have big problems of own these days. Banks, the rigged political system, the media. Bla bla bla. I could go on but you already know. Your inner badass is your best tool.
Cinco de Mayo. I’m glad we have such cool neighbors. I can look back on this strange holiday they generously tossed our way and smile at my various interpretations of this gift over the years. Once, more than 25 years ago now, I took a shitload of LSD and climbed the radio tower at the top of the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico with my pal Tom. Hot as fuck down in Albuquerque but way the hell up there it was cooooold! Still, what a view. We watched the sunset and then, idiots, we had to climb down in the dark. Total blast. I married a Canadian lesbian on Cinco de Mayo one time. She ripped me off for every last penny but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I spent one Cinco de Mayo in Alaska, living in a tent on the beach on the Kenai Peninsula, and still another one in North Africa. I’m pretty sure I got wasted one Cinco de Mayo on the roof of a hotel outside of Bangkok.
This time I’m going to make lamb chops. Rosemary, minced garlic, olive oil and sea salt, 200 in the oven for a while and finish on the hibachi out back. Tomato salad and a seeded flute. Might monkey around with the new book or wander over to the tattoo shop and tinker with a machine I’m rebuilding. It’s nice here today in scenic Portland Oregon, so maybe I’ll take my beautiful gal Sylvia to Jake’s, shrimp cocktails and etouffee at a sidewalk table and some people watching. But the whole time I’m going to be thinking about the odds. And badassery in general.
May 3, 2019
Nothing Really Happens – A blistering sci-fi flick by high plains drifter Justin Petty
I can’t say enough good shit about this movie. It’s early summer here in scenic Portland Oregon and earlier this evening I took a stroll through Amazon, looking for something to do. I just finished a Robert Craise book (The Promise, 5 stars) and I didn’t want to crack a new novel right away so into the graveyard of Amazon I went, prepared for cave dirt and duck billed botox chick horror, brain damaged Harry Bosch and assorted supremely lame shit, none of which I was going to actually watch. The reason TV sucks, and movies in general as well, is bad writing. Those screenwriters rioting right now over money? Firing their agents, BMW payments be damned? Those apes can go fuck themselves. Turn of your TV and tell me you don’t agree with me. The true blue stone cold real is that the good shit, in movies and television, is made by warriors. Tarantino may seem like a dweeb, but dudeboy is a visionary first, a writer/director second, and third an absolute badass with a hammer in one hand and a tomahawk in the other. It takes superior nads to whip out the real groove and then muscle it all the way across the finish line without a parade of wads turning your vision into a toilet bowl full of super cute beeping baby toads. So get on Amazon! RED ALERT! There’s actually a good movie on! Named Best Feature at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival. I have a feeling Justin Petty is going to rock the mighty for years to come. Dudeboy has vision, he’s got chops, and he’s packing heat.
May 2, 2019
Lucky Supreme now available in paperback!
“The bastard lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler, Lucky Supreme is a novel so good you’ll want to ink it into your skin.”—Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries
“Lucky Supreme is one hell of a book. I didn’t know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can.” —Joe R. Lansdale, ten time Bram Stoker Award winner and Edgar Award winning author of The Bottoms
“As hip and cool as the neon rain-slicked streets of Portland. Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mold of Sam Spade and Marlowe only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots. A funny and very gritty book with cool folks, cool music, and wonderful sense of place.” –Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of The Innocents and Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
“What wonderful Northwest noir. LUCKY SUPREME cruises through Portland’s underworld…
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April 30, 2019
I Shop At Laney’s- free short story of the month for May
Many years ago now my buddy Chico and I went on a road trip from Portland to Roswell New Mexico. Way out in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of The Valley of Fires, we met a strange old cowboy at this place that sold rocks and fossils. He didn’t like us and he was paranoid, pulled his gun, and it was just another day on that crazy trip. That patch of desert is unforgettable and I always wanted to write something that takes place there. And I always wanted to use that old piece of shit cowboy too. I Shop At Laney’s is it.
I Shop At Laney’s by Jeff Johnson
The grasslands shortly gave way to wind-sculpted piñon and then larger pines after Laney turned off I 70 on to the dusty two lane 37 headed for Carrizozo. The southern spine of the White Mountains collected enough water from the upper atmosphere to make a ski resort in winter. He passed through Ruidoso and then dropped into the abrupt desolation of the desert ahead to the west, into a landscape filled with Saguaro cactus and lava fields, snakes and night owls. Laney cracked the window, easy behind the wheel. Doobie Brothers on the tape deck, slow beer between his legs, two tacos in a bag one the passenger seat, it was easy to be breezy.
Laney super liked his job out there at The Rock Shack. It was a ramshackle mineral and fossil display room grafted onto an old prospector’s cabin, situated in what amounted to the middle of nowhere. The little place was just off the side of the highway in the wide desert just outside the Valley of Fires, in the spectacular alien landscape of ancient lava flows and cacti and sweet smelling scrub brush. An entire week might pass without a visitor, and most of the time the people who did stop by were weirdo 50’s style Evangelical tourists from Iowa or Michigan looking to use the outdoor toilet or inspect the rusted tractor in the side lot. Laney’s job was simple. He did a little digging in the surrounding fields in the morning hunting for new stock, in the window of time between when the stars went out and the late morning sun grew fierce, and after that a little coffee and maybe a few pancakes. Then he’d put out the sun bleached open sign and watch the cash register, which meant reading a paperback and listening to Johnny Cash or Steely Dan. They both worked. At night he’d watch old movies on the black and white TV, a thematic marvel he savored. It was better than shoveling horse shit in Ruidoso, but not as good as his old produce job at the hippy grocery store in Santa Fe. Two weeks on, two weeks off. That’s the way it worked.
As
the sun set in front of him, Laney’s thoughts turned as they always did to
Ralston Oney, the jumbo horsefly in the ointment when it came to his peaceful
gig at The Rock Shack. The disgusting old chaw squirting bowlegged red-neck
left the place a mess after his two weeks- a smelly, horrific biohazard
disaster that took a whole day to scrub out. The Rock Shack had an employee
supply list that was supposed to be maintained with weekly runs into Carrizozo,
mainly beans, ground beef, coffee, and bread or tortillas. Canned green beans
and popsicles. Oney rarely left anything, which meant Laney had to make the
forty-mile round trip after work on the first day and make his purchases at the
gas station. The grocery store closed at 7:00, and the gas station food
selection was terrible and expensive. This time he was prepared. The box in the
back of his truck had enough beer and good food to get him through the next two
weeks. He’d also brought cleaning supplies from the Dollar General and worn
sheets and a comforter from the Goodwill.
Out along 380, twenty miles east of Bingham, The Rock Shack finally came into view and Laney’s heart sank into his jeans. Oney’s piece of shit Ford half ton was parked askew on the small front lava rock bed. The open sign was still out on the side of the road even though it was officially after dusk. The lights were off in the long addition housing the rocks and the fossils, and the windows of the small house flickered gray and off white- Oney was inside watching TV.
Laney
slid to a halt in a cloud of dust behind Oney’s battered pick-up. They’d
threatened each other more than once, and by unspoken agreement their time
never overlapped. Oney was supposed to be on his way to whatever cave he slept
in during his off time. Laney slammed the door on the rusted Ford to give Oney
some warning. The last time they’d see each other, Laney had thrown a cup of
coffee at him and Oney had come after him with a flyswatter. Laney was tall and
slightly chubby, wearing a pearl buttoned v-backed western shirt, faded jeans
and worn cowboy boots. He drew himself up and psychically tried to emanate
danger. There was no mistaking the expression on his wide, sun-burnt face as he
dragged the open sign in and closed the gate, then marched up the house. Without
stopping, Laney kicked open the front door and stopped, utterly stunned, his
mouth suddenly sticky-dry as a cave dirt.
Ralston
Oney sat on the sofa facing the TV, which flickered on a dead station. He was
wearing threadbare underpants, a gun belt with a .45 in the holster and a
single cowboy boot. The toenails on his free foot were gnarly. His big belly,
normally self-consciously tucked in, hung low and wide in his lap and there
were heavy black bags under his empty eyes. A half empty one-gallon plastic
bottle of cheap bourbon sat on the stand next to him beside a can of beans with
a spoon sticking out.
What
froze Laney in his tracks was the huge thing
on the floor in between them. For some reason, Oney had dragged a giant piece of
rusted machinery into the center of the tiny living room. The door was
scratched and the floor carved with the deep groves of its passage.
“Oney!”
Laney yelled. This was too much. He narrowed his eyes as Oney fixed him with a
queer, vacant gaze. “Get up and get your shit together! What the hell is this?”
Oney
stared at him and hiccoughed once, signifying nothing.
“Out!”
Laney bellowed. He could feel his pulse pounding in his head. “Get your pants
on! Jesus!”
Slowly,
his blood-shot eyes gradually widening, Oney raised one trembling arm and
pointed at the piece of machinery he’d dragged in. Laney glared down at it for
the span of a heartbeat and lurched back.
The piece of metal on the floor between them, pitted and blackened by time almost to the point of disintegration and still partially encrusted with sand, was an enormous belt-buckle.
Read the rest at http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com
April 25, 2019
The Five Greatest Cheeseburgers On Earth
Oh that American classic. If you go somewhere far away, far enough that you get homesick, the cheeseburger is one of the things you begin to dream about. What makes a great one? Ingredients, and one of the key ingredients is ambience. The what of an extraordinary cheeseburger is, in the end, equally as important as the where.
The Trailer Burger at Bebop in Idaho
It was mid winter. I was driving an Alfa Romeo 151 Milano, a supremely shitty choice for a cross country venture in January, but I got the car for a song from my Armenian neighbor, so the Alfa it was. The heat didn’t work very well, but it had seat warmers, so strange when you think about it. Road salt had formed a ghostly rime on the windshield and I would wipe at it now and then with one of my socks, which I’d…
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April 23, 2019
Will Fight Evil 4 Food
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