CRYPTOPOLIS HAS ARRIVED!

Today marks the publication date of my new book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, courtesy of Lethe Press. You can order the book RIGHT HERE!

Last week, did you tell your best friend why the King of Cryptopolis has gone insane and why he ordered his guards to behead him? Do you know the secret of the black magician Aleister Crowley—how he wrote of the moonchild, an ethereal spirit to be placed in a barren womb? Have you ever heard of Arson Hoover and the Worldwide Church of Appliantology? If you answered no to any of these, you're clearly misinformed about the newest collection of dark and fantastical stories by Robert Guffey. How would you even survive Casual Day at work? When the tattoos begin to pile up on your flesh like unlucky cars drawn to an accident on the freeway, don't come crying to me—I am just the back cover of a book, after all--but look for the answers inside me, inside Guffey's head, which I have chopped off and bound in paper.

"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