Cole Coonce is an author and photojournalist. Cole started shooting pictures and writing for automotive and drag racing magazines in the 1990s, with a series of "new journalism" -type features published by Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, Popular Hot Rodding, Hot Rod Magazine and Wired.
The publication of "Infinity Over Zero" solidified Coonce's reputation as hot-rodding's definitive gonzo journalist, as evidenced by the book review in AutoWeek asking the reader to "imagine Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now writing a history of the Land Speed Record." In 2001, The Goodguys Rod & Custom Association honored him for "Outstanding Journalistic Vision", and in 2004, he won the Los Angeles Press Club's Best Sport Feature Award.
Cole also covers and critiques the fields of pop culture and rock music. His second feature length book, "Come Down from the Hills and Make My Baby," is billed as "a book to curl up on someone's sofa with a warm crack pipe and enjoy." In 2009 Kerosene Bomb Publishing released an anthology of his drag strip writings and photography, “Top Fuel Wormhole.” This was followed by his collection of pop culture musings, “Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments.”
A series of Deep-South road trips researching the American Civil War resulted in “The Devil’s Own Day,” a historical novel that wires in the connection between Erwin Rommel, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Age of Enlightenment and
Mississippi delta blues. Cole is currently “versioning” Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels into a series of modern-noir novels, the first of which re-purposes
