Jeff Johnson's Blog: Will Fight Evil 4 Food, page 17

The Animals After Midnight audiobook!

My samples just came in the mail and oh man oh man oh man they are excellent. Narrator Keith Szarabajka is incredible. Check out a free sample on Audible and I know you’ll agree.

Writing this book was cathartic. Ever been relentlessly attacked in a darkly psychotic way? This is how Darby Holland deals with it and we can all learn a thing or two from his stellar example. And here in the audiobook, the great Mr. Szarabajka deals it out in a perfectly noirish style. Ears up!

Read more about it at http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com and here below is the full picture I took. Cause its cool.

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Knottspeed, A Love Story- the saga continues in The Sweet Sonifications of Fencepost Beckenshire

Will Fight Evil 4 Food

Wonder what happened to Fencepost, the erstwhile piano player in Knottspeed, A Love Story? Wonder no more! The story of our favorite piano player is headed your way soon. Here’s a snippet-

            “Welcome to the Hemlock. I’m Fencepost Beckenshire. I’ll be your piano rambler every minute of this magnificent happy hour. Says something about the world, right? Three hours long.” He riffed through bullshit jazz, in search of nothing in particular. “An extended happy hour is good for the whales, baby. Builds character in the trees.”

            Fencepost shuffled around in D while he considered. “When you understand the Roman origins of happy hour, why, it gives you a feeling. Like we’ve come a long way and we’re still goin’ somewhere. Remember to tip your bartender.”

I love this book. In many ways its my secret publication and robustly odd because of it. I spent three years working on…

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Darby Holland

The New Thrilling Detective Web Site

Created by Jeff Johnson

Here I go again, slipping a non-P.I. into the deck…

The kick-off to a trilogy, Lucky Supreme (2017), impressed me mightily with its fresh take on the hard-boiled genre, goosing it along in a way that even fedora fetishists won’t mind.

It introduced tattoo artist and slightly dodgy small business owner DARBY HOLLAND, a affable scoundrel with a messy past and a present that’s not so squeaky clean either.

He runs “Lucky Supreme,” a run-down tattoo parlor down in Portland, Oregon’s Old Town neighbourhood, and is surrounded on a daily basis by street people of all stripes: whores, bikers, panhandlers, junkies, working stiffs, strippers, tourists, gang members, cops, punk rockers, outlaws and his own misfit employees, not all of whom are trustworthy.

Like Jason Bling, a former member of the staff who disappeared a couple of years back, along with about $180,000 worth of…

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25 cent Enchilada Sauce

[image error]25 Cent Enchilada Sauce

How does it work! Is this miracle real? It is. Right there is a picture of the nucleus. Pissing rain here in Portland and I find the 25 cent enchilada sauce is sort of like a medical thing. Fast, super cheap, full of wicked micronutrients and sorcery. If you live in Europe (hello Ireland and France, thanks for coming so often! Japan I love you can’t wait to get back! You too Italy!) you can get the dried anchos at Middle Eastern grocery stores. You may have to experiment with the New Mexico chilis. California’s will do. Drop me a line or post a comment if you come up with a solution. For the US, behold-

5 New Mexico chilis

2 Ancho chilis

3 cloves of garlic

1 cup of water and a pinch of salt

Take the seeds out of the dried chilis, simmer all this until soft, about five minutes, blend. Add a little more water if you need it. This is a suuuuuuper basic sauce and easy to fancy up, but if its raining and you’re done for the day, this is the stuff.

There’s more food related grooviness in the Free Short Story Of The Month section on my website http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com

The Hard Winter of Late Night Mexican Sorcery

We’re surrounded by storytellers. I am, anyway. If you’re listening I bet you are too. But let’s face it, some of them are better than others. Musicians tend to be good storytellers. Chefs. Bus drivers. The guys and gals you meet on the beach in some remote part of Alaska, or the weirdoes you find yourself chatting with in a shithole bar in Rotterdam. But some of the stories I remember best are the ones that took weeks or even months to tell. This is rare. The set up has to be perfect. The ambiance, the mood, the people involved- it all has to come together in just such a way. Someone asked me for an example of this the other day and a great one leapt to mind. I call it The Hard Winter of Late Night Mexican Sorcery. Here goes-

     It was cold that winter, and the house I lived in was a drafty two story place off of Belmont, back when Belmont was the pitiful cousin of trendy Hawthorn (Hawthorn’s original name is Asylum Way, named after the madhouse once situated at its peak). I lived in that icy shithole with the bass player in my band Mike Martinez and his wife at the time Beth. We were poor and we were young and that place was magical because of it. At one point I got a job working nights at a restaurant in NW Portland and Mike and I usually got back to our side of town around the same time. We’d be beat by the time we got home, especially that winter, but it was nice. Both of us stole food from the upscale places we worked, so we’d sit around and smoke weed and eat a super late 2 am dinner and try not to wake up Beth.
One night, maybe a week into that new routine, I turned on the old black and white tv. There was never anything on that late but I was baked so I drifted through the lower dial and hit on a static torn Mexican soap opera. Machine gun Spanish- a distraught young beauty was mixing it up with some mustachioed hard ass, and I was just about to cruise onward when Mike stopped me.
     “Hold up dude. Vampires.”
     “What?” I mean, no way.
     “Yeah man. These people are freakin’ the fuck out.”
      I turned back to the tv. ”Do tell. What’s she sayin?”
     “Aw man.” Mike rubbed his weird green Mohawk patch. “See, dude there is the local pd. He thinks she’s full of shit but she’s on to something. Her mother got all bit up. Went crazy and got ahold of their cat.”
     “No shit. Man.”
     “Oh yeah. Whoa. Sheriff dude is a wizard. Mexican sorcery. He’s got a plan but he wants something. Poon maybe.”
     “Cops are the same everywhere.”
      We watched and Mike translated. I couldn’t believe the epic bipolar shit these people were up to but it was positively captivating. The next night we did the same thing. Then the next. The next. Over the course of that winter we watched the wizard cop fuck with the undead and get some greasy action on the side for his troubles, and man I felt bad for that poor debutant and her chewed ass mother. The cat too. And then one night it was over. My schedule changed and the weather broke and we started a different pattern. Beth got pregnant and they moved into a better place. I migrated over to a different dump and life went on. A few years later I was at a party and in the swirl of people I found myself talking to Beth. We reminisced fondly about the old place on Belmont and that bitter winter, the coldest we’d had before or since, and I told her for the first time about the long nights after work when we’d been trying to keep quiet downstairs. I told her about the Mexican soap opera and how Mike had translated and entire season. I told her about the sheriff wizard, the old lady vampire, the hidden monkeys, all of it.  She looked confused.
     “Mike doesn’t speak Spanish.”

      Well, blow my mind.

Lucky Supreme audiobook in Italian! And narrator Riccardo Burbi rules!

In una Portland plumbea e in balìa di una selvaggia gentrificazione, Lucky Supreme, lo squallido negozio di tatuaggi, resta un’istituzione. Il locale vanta decenni di storia ed è ormai un’enorme croce nera sulla mappa mentale della brulicante vita notturna della Città Vecchia. Ma per quanto tempo ancora riuscirà a sopravvivere? Al suo interno, Darby Holland, quarantenne tormentato da demoni del passato pronti a condurlo sull’orlo della pazzia, nasconde preziosi bozzetti e segreti inconfessabili.

E se finora Lucky Supreme si è rivelato il luogo ideale per tenerli al sicuro, quando uno dei suoi disegni gli viene rubato e riappare in California, Darby è costretto a utilizzare ogni mezzo, lecito e non, per difendere il suo locale, la sua reputazione e, non ultima, la sua salute mentale. Ciò che ancora non sa, però, è di avere a che fare con gente con la quale è meglio non scherzare.

In un mondo popolato da indimenticabili abitanti della notte, in cui denaro, bugie e crimine la fanno da padroni, Darby dovrà contare su tutte le proprie abilità e su una buona dose di fortuna per poter rimanere in vita… Un noir di pura adrenalina, una corsa contro il tempo dalla prima all’ultima pagina.

Lucky Supreme Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Jeff Johnson (Author), Riccardo Burbi (Narrator), Audible Studios (Publisher)

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 with a raunchy grace and an unfailing sense of black humor. I loved it.” –New York Times bestselling & 3-time Edgar Award-winning author T. Jefferson Parker

“Jeff Johnson is the real deal. His work is fast and funny, down and dirty—one moment as smooth as 18-year-old bourbon and the next as rough as a country road. A great talent, a pleasure to read.”–Brad Smith, Dashiell Hammett Prize-nominee

“Johnson launches the first of a noir trilogy with this highly original caper novel. Darby Holland is the proprietor of the Lucky Supreme, a tattoo parlor in the Old Town neighborhood of Portland, Ore., where he and his artists, a gang of societal misfits, have created their own niche within this gentrifying community. Johnson, a veteran tattoo artist, captures the conflict between the two cultures perfectly without any false sentiment . . . The inventive, unorthodox Darby effectively marshals his forces against thugs, officials, and even federal agents in this amusing crime tale.” —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY Starred Review

“Lucky Supreme by Jeff Johnson. Don’t be surprised if you pull an all-nighter to finish Lucky Supreme which starts off with a theft in a tattoo parlor in Portland, Oregon and launches the protagonist on a dark, thrilling adventure full of deception, freaks, and surreal situations.” Top 25 novels of 2017 —MEDIUM

“Johnson wields the lurid pen of twentieth century crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and stands with contemporaries like Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley to grace the grit of dark streets.”—THE EUGENE WEEKLY

“Quick, thrilling, this is a novel filled with many crimes and is just the beginning of what looks to be a very interesting trilogy.”—SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

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, Oregon. 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. He has secrets of his own, and a tattoo shop in Old Town was a perfect place to hide, but when cash, lies, crime, and history collide, Darby Holland 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. Jeff Johnson is a hugely entertaining new voice in noir.

Audiobook is kill fuckin’ bill man! Check it out!

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In Italian!

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Optioned for television by The Harris Company’s Oscar winning Mark Harris!

Hit up a bookstore in your hood!

Emmet Atworth Holliday, White Flower Tree Painting

Walking down the street this morning I stopped in front of a blooming pear tree and admired the little cups of white and the knobby branches that looked like they’d just been painted into existence by an old man with a reality wand, and it dawned on me that like this tree, season after season, year after year, changed in a random way, with one part Mandelbrot, a little design Fibonacci, then some wind and time and gravity and entropy. I decided right then to change my name to Emmet Atworth Holliday. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll be Tim Ray Todd. Or Bartholomew Beesley.

Names don’t mean anything to the tree, so it seems fitting that the pear tree have many names. Right now it’s White Flower Tree Painting more than a pear tree. Next it will be Big, Dusty and Faintly Sticky Tree. Then the recognizable pear tree. Then, gloriously, Gnarled Winter Skeleton Responsible For The Jam In The Kitchen Cupboard. The tree has long names in the morning world, and more than one.

My name is Jeff Johnson. The Johnsons I came from are gone and I won’t see a familial Johnson again in this life. As a last name, Johnson always had a little of the Old West gunfighter about it to me in the best light, but really there’s more of an orthodontist ring to it, or pot bellied line foreman at a trucking company. Jeff always struck me as the name of a cartoon animal or a San Diego mini mart clerk with a beach cruiser. So why not afford myself the freedom the cosmos afforded the White Flower Tree Painting?

It’s spring, and today I will be Emmet Atworth Holliday.

 

Ghostmeat In The Grass – an excerpt

Mister Spoon had first become aware of the construction of personal fiction’s ongoing, permanent momentum while watching a cat. It was his first spring at the hotel, and he was mastering the tempering of the ovens in the main kitchen. This involved many trips back and forth to the to the wood pile beyond the south garden. The Concierge kept cats, a small breed of querulous little villains, as pest controllers. Spoon had seen them hunt, their singular focus, and he’d witnessed their courtship behavior, which was loud and angry. But the first time he’d ever seen a cat watching the clouds he’d known, deep in the core of his bifurcated ghostmeat, that people were making up their identities as they moved forward through time. Adding, adding to negate sometimes, but always adding. A cat looking at the clouds was a houseplant. A person looking at the same thing was searching for shapes somehow associated with themselves, a face they might recognize, or familiar genitalia. Something they might want to eat or avoid entirely. A sign. An omen. A warning. But always for themselves.

read more about Ghostmeat, cats and houseplants at http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com

Building The Ravinini Box

Early preproduction on short film number two, The Ravinini Box, is officially underway. I’ll be heading down to LA again at the end of the month to wrap up discussions and I’ll be using all that I learned on The Kinjiku. Some of the most important things? Back to those parallels that make things easy to get a grip on. In many ways, this is like opening a restaurant. A really fuckin’ good one. To that end-

The importance of interviews. Producers hire and coordinate crew, but my early instincts proved to be true. I need to be more closely involved and this time I will be. Casting as well, right down to the extras. I wasn’t exactly sure what level of control I’d have the first time but now that I’m clear on it I’ll act very differently. Some good advice I got- in every project you’ll find a handful of people who went above and beyond, a handful that dialed it in and did a competent job, and one or two people you should avoid working with again. Keep the best and bring them with you, again and again, and by the time the budget lands you at the high stakes table you’ll have a crew you work well with who also work well with each other. This is just like a restaurant! Holy shit!

Understanding the scope of effects and the possibilities in editing. No class or book can accurately describe a field that is advancing by the day. You have to get in there and see it for yourself and then dream out loud with the masters of these Kung Fu schools. This is super important for The Ravinini Box. Totally exciting. There’s so much more, but I’m about to go off on a tangent here. It’s strange what you learn when you make just about anything. Seems like all of it can be used in some ways for just about anything. When I think about it, I sort of did this kind of thing in my personal life. Part of the reason I’m where I am in spacetime.

It’s hard to imagine making anything without learning at the same time. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible. The observable spectrum here is immense. I know an artist, for instance, who though while not especially good when compared to the great artist of any age learns, or undergoes, with every act a kind of refinement. Joy becomes clearer. The simple pleasure of making becomes cleaner and clearer. I have seen in this guy’s face this thrilling, soaring joy and I recognize it with the muscles in my own face, just as you would. In some ways, this might be the highest achievable end. On the other end of this spectrum, I also know a few people who have real problems making anything but feel as though they have to, and the result is a form of shy torture with predictable results. This is quite obviously not good. It both cases the momentum is unstoppable. We should probably applaud both and hope for the best.

For many other creatives and I, the middle ground is the providence of self-discovery. There is so much I don’t know. It appears, for instance, that the universe we live in may be infinite.  Our universe. For all anyone presently knows, this universe could extend forever in every direction, or it could also be a single neutrino in a much, much larger universe. And in the opposite direction, small and getting smaller, heading to ‘smallest’? There may be no such thing in that direction either, as in there is no smallest. Shit man. So much of everything makes no sense, and this is just the beginning. So, self-discovery through making it is. Look at what I made for clues as to the nature of the ‘self’ construct I’ve been building.

Intriguing idea, right? Maybe it’s impossible to be good at such a thing, and plasticity being what it is, maybe all the clues are out of date by the time of examination. Maybe change, the change that comes from learning and growing from making anything, shit, maybe I’d just be examining the design ancestry of a stranger.

It rained today. There were bulbs of moss on a cherry tree I passed on the way to work. Work, where I draw and think about the luxurious black hair of moon faced Chinese women, the wings of birds I don’t know the names of, the leaves of trees that exist nowhere in nature. I like so much of the questions-without-answers reality, so progress, or momentum, maybe even the leading edge of a wave front collapsing into a sweet Hendrix tune… Maybe none of it will ever make any sense, in the best possible way. Everyone loves a good mystery.