In the back corner booth at a diner in Los Feliz, writer Luke Goebel is shaking off last night\u2019s drive down from San Francisco. \u201cI will just have to warn you I drove like 100 miles an hour through Big Sur,\u201d he says, leaning in over the Formica table. \u201cOK, 90 miles an hour through Big Sur last night, just blasting \u2018Dark Star,\u2019\u201d referring to the Grateful Dead song known for its galactic endlessness in live versions. He took the famous California coastal route the 1 back to his home in L.A. He\u2019s preparing to launch his second novel, \u201cKill Dick\u201d<\/a>, which is also a winding Californian golden road with lots of sharp twists. He has been long inspired by the \u201960s Californian counterculture that spawned the Grateful Dead, talking about how he called up \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest\u201d writer (and Merry Prankster) Ken Kesey on the phone when he was 12.<\/p>\n Ten years in the making, \u201cKill Dick\u201d takes a big swing at the great American novel in a time when both taking big swings and the idea of the great American novel are in a free fall of decline. To promote the novel, his Instagram recently showcased KILLDICK.COM stencil art being spray-painted across multiple squares of cement in various L.A. locales with the tag line \u201cNot AI. Analogue. LA\u201d set to a new wave song soundtrack. \u201cKill Dick\u201d fliers are plastered all over the city. He also has posted a glut of social media sizzles of book-inspired photo shoots. \u201cIt\u2019s something I believe in,\u201d says Goebel. \u201cI\u2019m driving a $4,000 car, and I\u2019m putting my money into what I love, and I\u2019m learning from it.\u201d<\/p>\n What is \u201cKill Dick\u201d about? He describes the book as \u201ca humorous, dark satire, emphasis on dark and humorous, about a privileged girl who wants to be an artist who becomes the female Luigi Mangione,\u201d adding \u201cand it\u2019s set in 2016 with a backdrop of Los Angeles during a string of serial killings and amidst the opioid crisis.\u201d The fictional events and themes of \u201cKill Dick\u201d feel very timely \u2014 a wild plan to disrupt a big Hollywood awards show, a scheme to assassinate a medical business mogul who has made money off pain and addiction, and the ever widening gap between the ultra wealthy and the destitute. The novel careens between the highs and lows of L.A.\u2019s vast architectural vernacular, traveling from green-lawned Brentwood mansions to Skid Row encampments, up into the hills for art and entertainment world excess, all the way back down to crappy motels with beautiful neon signs.<\/p>\n Affable and tall with an owlish face, Goebel found inspiration for \u201cKill Dick\u201d in the \u201csunshine noir\u201d of writers like Bret Easton Ellis, Nathanael West and Joan Didion. But his main motivation was to fictionally avenge the death of his real-life brother from the painkiller Oxycontin. \u201cIt was a way of grieving the loss of my brother and processing the rage and sorrow that I felt at his overdose on Oxy,\u201d he reveals. The book\u2019s title concerns an opioid mogul named \u201cRichard \u2018Dick\u2019 Sickler,\u201d but when asked if he was inspired by any particular similarly named dynasty of pill-pushers Goebel politely pleads the fifth. He has been in Los Angeles for 12 years, after a childhood spent in small-town Ohio followed by Portland, Ore., where he fell into the ravages of addiction firsthand after being prescribed pills for a broken femur. \u201cI became a morphine addict, a pill addict, an alcoholic drug addict, from basically that day on. I didn\u2019t understand it, and I come from generations of addicts,\u201d he recounts. \u201cBut I was like, as soon as the pills ran out, I was like, I want to burn to death.\u201d After a string of harrowing experiences that left him living in his car, he got sober, got fired from a tenure-track job in East Texas, and moved to the high desert, telling his little sister \u201cwe\u2019re gonna find utopia.\u201d<\/p>\n He was living in the desert, teaching English at UC Riverside and writing a since abandoned book he calls \u201cthe quintessential bad male novel\u201d when the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a> asked if he wanted to interview fellow writer Ottessa Moshfegh<\/a>. They had mutual friends and he was a fan of hers, but when they met it felt like kismet. \u201cShe had already had a meeting with her Vedic astrologer who told her that she could move to a cabin in the darkest woods and the love of her life, her husband, was going to show up at her door,\u201d he recounts. \u201cShe was like \u2018I don\u2019t want a husband, and I don\u2019t want anyone coming to my door.\u2019 But long story short, I showed up for the interview, and the minute she saw me and I saw her, it was like we never stopped. The interview went on for 10 years.\u201d After spending a month-plus straight together, he went home for Christmas and asked his grandmother for a ring, which he used to propose. He also hesitates to talk about their relationship any further, saying \u201cAll I can say is, like, I\u2019ve learned so much from Ottessa. She\u2019s offered me a world that I never imagined in every way possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Goebel toiled on \u201cKill Dick\u201d for the better part of the last decade, and without spoiling it there is a time frame reveal in the book that evinces a hearty, bitter laugh. He sent the book out to the \u201cBig Five\u201d publishing companies and was rejected, eventually deciding to publish it with the Pasadena small press Red Hen after they expressed fervent interest in acquiring it. <\/p>\n Kate Gale, co-founder and managing editor of Red Hen, <\/a>says Goebel\u2019s agent sent her the book, but when he decided to go elsewhere she kept after him. \u201cI wanted a big stomping Los Angeles novel in the tradition of Carolyn See and Nathanael West,\u201d Gale says. \u201cThis dark thriller of a novel is it.\u201d<\/p>\n Luke Goebel.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n At the time Goebel was recovering from stomach surgery and ironically taking painkillers again for it. \u201cAlthough I refuse to take Oxy,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never taken Oxy in my life. I don\u2019t know if you can tell, I have a little grudge against that drug.\u201d<\/p>\n His grassroots approach to promoting \u201cKill Dick\u201d befits his indie publisher while the crumbling \u201cBig Five\u201d book publishing industry increasingly looks for sure bets on stuff like fan fiction with the IP scrubbed off or TikTok-viral \u201cspicy\u201d romance novels. While he\u2019s being tactical about courting attention and publicity, he hopes the book will find its audience based on good old word of mouth once people get to read it. He\u2019s also at work with a few others reviving New York avant-garde small publisher Tyrant Press<\/a>. His L.A. novelist friend Matthew Specktor<\/a> has watched all of this hustle with awe. \u201cHe\u2019s got certain virtues writers maybe aren\u2019t supposed to have \u2014 dude is handsome, socially adroit. But he\u2019s also insanely insightful and genuine.\u201d <\/p>\n Goebel mentions the Beatniks as another major inspiration. He aims for \u201cKill Dick\u201d to connect with an audience starved for art that is not apathetic about the insanity of the world we live in now. \u201cWhy else write a book?\u201d he says, \u201cYou\u2019re not gonna get rich \u2026 like, there\u2019s people to feed and gardens to grow and things to do. I mean, the truth is, we all probably should be finding a way to find a place to hide out for the next four years and exist outside of a nuclear fallout range, where we have water and food and we can work together, and we probably ought to have some weapons. So if you\u2019re not doing that, you better write a g\u2014 good book or movie or song, or fall in love profoundly. Do something! You know?\u201d<\/p>\n![\""Kill](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775674330_783_.jpeg\")
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