THE EVERGREEN REVIEW has just published the final chapter of my four-part series, "If
You’re Into Eating Children’s Brains, You’ve Got a Four-Year Free Ride: A
QAnon Bedtime Story." In this installment, which begins on January 12th
and ends on April 20th (appropriately enough, Hitler's 132nd birthday), the leaders of the QAnon movement double--and triple--down on their commitment to pure madness in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. Once again, the wonderfully ominous illustrations of Ken Weaver establish the proper mood....
Part Three is here!!! Earlier this morning, THE EVERGREEN REVIEW unleashed the latest chapter of my four-part article entitled "If You’re Into Eating Children’s Brains, You’ve Got a Four-Year Free Ride: A QAnon Bedtime Story." This installment, which begins on December 22nd and ends on January 10th, walks you through the deeply twisted thought processes of Q's acolytes during the lead-up to the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Along the way, you'll be accosted by the apocalyptic illustrations of Ken Weaver (you can see one of them directly below)....
Ken Weaver - Eventually, Everything Is At Stake, And If You Live Long Enough, You Too Will Be Touched By The Very Atrocities That Always Seem To Touch Those Less Fortunate oil pastel on paper, 22 x30 inches, 2012
THE EVERGREEN REVIEW has just published Part Two of my four-part series, "If You’re Into Eating Children’s Brains, You’ve Got a Four-Year Free Ride: A QAnon Bedtime Story." Brace yourself for even more extreme rightwing lunacy as the countdown to the January 6th insurrection hurtles towards its weird and exciting conclusion. Along the way, be sure to check out all nine of Geoff Chadsey's wonderfully bizarre paintings, which the editors at THE EVERGREEN REVIEW wisely chose to illustrate the piece. You'll see one of my favorites below....
Last November, the editors of THE EVERGREEN REVIEW commissioned me to write an article about how the followers of QAnon are dealing with the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The result is an epic, four-part article entitled "If You’re Into Eating Children’s Brains, You’ve Got a Four-Year Free Ride: A QAnon Bedtime Story." Earlier today, THE EVERGREEN REVIEW published Part One. If you value sanity and rationality, I recommend gearing up for the onset of a high-tension migraine buzz as we delve deeply into the unique pathology that is QAnon (a belief system that's still not well understood, even after the madness of the January 6th insurrection). A little over a month ago, the NEW YORK TIMES published an article entitled "QAnon Now as Popular in U.S. as Some Major Religions, Poll Suggest." If only for that reason alone, I think this new EVERGREEN REVIEW series is well worth your time.
Be sure to slow down long enough to dig the amazing, phantasmagorical Ken Weaver illustrations that accompany the piece. You can see one of them below....
So if you're feeling brave enough to read "If You’re Into Eating Children’s Brains, You’ve Got a Four-Year Free Ride: A QAnon Bedtime Story," then feel free to click HERE!
Ken Weaver - Ah Pook the Destroyer (Now That We Know Fear Are We More Exalted Than Gods) 68 x 86 inches, oil on canvas, 2019
The unabridged Audible Audiobook of my latest novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD, is now available! It's brilliantly read by the talented SAMUEL E. HOKE. Hoke was so dedicated to nailing the audio version that he contacted me before he began narrating the novel to make sure the accent of a particular character was exactly correct. He also went out of his way to research some of the films and documentaries about the real people and events upon which the novel is based. If you're interested, you can listen to a sample of the audiobook right HERE!
PRAISE FOR BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD:
“Blending
intertextual rampage through the horror-movie canon with engrossing
noir mystery and a backdrop of Hollywood esoterica, Robert Guffey serves
up an intoxicating pulp cocktail that will leave you wanting more. A
crepuscular treasure from a fascinating author.”
--ALANMOORE, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN
“In
Robert Guffey's latest and greatest novel, dreams of old movies and
nightmares of classic horror rack into sharp focus through the lens of a
brave film historian, one determined to squint clearly at fleeting
grains of film through the shifting sands of time. Never has the truth
of Hollywood been so well revealed through fiction. As a result, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD delightfully and definitively proves that Bela Lugosi isn't dead.”
--GARY D. RHODES, author of LUGOSI and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA
"[H]orror
fans will delight in how Guffey cleverly immerses movie monsters in the
real world. Film buffs and monster enthusiasts will relish the
supernatural characters brought to life in this atmospheric celebration
of monster mayhem."
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The
sensation [of reading BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD] is like being led deep
underground while your flashlight grows dimmer and dimmer, until you’re
left in total darkness. That’s when the lights of a subterranean crypt
flash on to reveal that you’re not where you expected to be, and where
you are is far worse than you could have imagined. The result is an
ending that left me chilled and took me a few days to fully process. As
shocking as it was, everything was set up from the beginning. I know, I
went back and checked, and have to give Guffey credit for pulling off a
literary sleight of hand that caught me by surprise. I won’t spoil it
with more, except to say that like the frog in water that’s warmed so
slowly it doesn’t realize it’s coming to a lethal boil, Guffey’s readers
face an equally stunning conclusion."
What follow are relevant excerpts from Emma Brown, Aaron C. Davis, Jon Swaine and Josh Dawsey's 5-9-21 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "The Making of a Myth":
ADDISON, Tex. — Key elements of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump took shape in an airplane hangar here two years earlier, promoted by a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream.
At meetings beginning late in 2018, as Republicans were smarting from midterm losses in Texas and across the country, Russell J. Ramsland Jr. and his associates delivered alarming presentations on electronic voting to a procession of conservative lawmakers, activists and donors.
Briefings in the hangar had a clandestine air. Guests were asked to leave their cellphones outside before assembling in a windowless room. A member of Ramsland’s team purporting to be a “white-hat hacker” identified himself only by a code name.
Ramsland, a failed congressional candidate with a Harvard MBA, pitched a claim that seemed rooted in evidence: Voting-machine audit logs — lines of codes and time stamps that document the machines’ activities — contained indications of vote manipulation. In the retrofitted hangar that served as his company’s offices at the edge of a municipal airstrip outside Dallas, Ramsland attempted to persuade failed Republican candidates to challenge their election results and force the release of additional data that might prove manipulation.
“We had to find the right candidate,” said Laura Pressley, a former Ramsland ally whose own claim that audit logs showed fraud had been rejected in court two years earlier. “We had to find one who knew they won" [...].
No candidate agreed to bring a challenge, and the idea of widespread vote manipulation remained on the political fringe — until 2020, when Ramsland’s assertions were seized upon by influential allies of Trump. The president himself accelerated the spread of those claims into the GOP mainstream as he latched onto an array of baseless ideas to explain his loss in November.
The enduring myth that the 2020 election was rigged was not one claim by one person. It was many claims stacked one atop the other, repeated by a phalanx of Trump allies. This is the previously unreported origin story of a core set of those claims, ideas that were advanced not by renowned experts or by insiders who had knowledge of flawed voting systems but by Ramsland and fellow conservative activists as they pushed a fledgling company, Allied Security Operations Group, into a quixotic attempt to find evidence of widespread fraud where none existed [...].
Many people and organizations claimed after the election to have evidence casting doubt on Biden’s victory. But Ramsland and ASOG’s role was unique, said Matt Masterson, a former senior U.S. cybersecurity official who led a team tracking the integrity of the 2020 election for DHS.
Repeatedly and at key moments, Masterson said, ASOG was the source of morsels of inaccurate information that shaped public perception. Some of the ideas it pushed had circulated previously, he said, but they were supercharged by the influence and connections of Ramsland and the people around him — and by the air of authority the company provided [...].
Allied Special Operations Group, as the firm was first named, was initially envisioned as a one-stop shop for government and corporate clients seeking cybersecurity, physical protection and sophisticated open-source intelligence services, Ramsland and former employees told The Post.
The company was formed in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kraft was the company’s chief executive, and it was based out of his house in a subdivision north of Fort Worth. Kraft declined to comment for this report.
An early promotional video described ASOG as “a group of highly trained professionals who have seen it all,” and it stressed the intelligence backgrounds of some team members. “When someone says, ‘I know a guy,’ he’s talking about ASOG,” said the narrator, who said that ASOG personnel had taken part in the types of missions “that many of us only see in the movies.”
I learned yesterday that Timothy Green Beckley, UFOlogist Extraordinaire, has passed away. KCOR Digital Radio Network posted the following message on Facebook yesterday afternoon:
It is with a very heavy heart I have to post this...Tim Beckley...MR. UFO and host of Exploring the Bizarre passed away last night. Not only was he one of the first people to take a chance on me and the Network back in 2015, he was a staple of knowledge within the UFO Field for years. Not just as a host, but as an author and publisher. As of now there will be no Exploring the Bizarre this week and the fate of the show will be put on hold as we all deal with this tragic news. Our hearts go out to his family and friends as it truly is a huge lost to the ufology world! From all of us Tim I hope you enjoy your ride on the mothership on your way home.
Below is a photo of me holding my very first Timothy Green Beckley book (THE UFO SILENCERS, with an introduction by John A. Keel), purchased from The Psychic Eye Bookstore in Torrance roundabout 1990. The smell of incense is still embedded in its pages....
