CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES on Ravenstar's Witching Hour!

This past Saturday night, Solaris BlueRaven interviewed me on her podcast, Ravenstar's Witching Hour. You can hear the entire show at the bottom of this post. For about two hours, we discuss my Rondo Award-nominated novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, as well as my latest book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES. We do a deep dive into the bizarre and esoteric origins of my short stories "Cryptopolis," "Initiation," "Dr. Apocrypha's Manifesto," "The Sheet," "Adventures in the Head Wound," and "Bring Me the Head of Andre Breton!" We also discuss my latest article, "G-Bomb: Masonic and Hermetic Symbolism in The Incredible Hulk" (published in The Jack Kirby Collector #89). Freemasonry, surrealism, dreams, demons, Yetis, golems, gargoyles, Aleister Crowley, James Shelby Downard, Stanislaw Szukalski, the JFK assassination, and other forms of High Strangeness are put under the Witching Hour microscope. If you're interested in reading CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES after hearing the interview, you can purchase the eBook version from Smashwords for 50% off (for one week only)! The print version is available right HERE.

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS:

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly

 

RAVENSTAR'S WITCHING HOUR (3-2-24):