Spooky Season Redux!

Now that we're officially into Spooky Season once again, you're no doubt searching for something appropriately weird and macabre to read as we hurtle our way toward All Hallows' Eve. Why not try my Rondo Award-nominated novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD? None other than Alan Moore, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN, gave BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD the following endorsement: “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.”

The unabridged Audible Audiobook of BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD is also 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.”

--ALAN MOORE, 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." 

--TERENCE TAYLOR, NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE

"BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD is a remarkably authentic, hypnotizing interpretation of all the glitz and pure talent behind Lugosi’s fame, as well as the hubris that steered his downfall. Guffey depicts how Lugosi’s Dracula transformed horror from a genre of make-believe to one that spreads the notion that monsters lurk among us."

--HALEY NEWLIN, CEMETERY DANCE

Welcome to Spooky Season... and the City Limits of CRYPTOPOLIS!

As Spooky Season and an impending Apocalypse descend upon us like deliciously dark storm clouds from Hell, why not take this opportunity to curl up with a tome that PUBLISHERS WEEKLY describes as "not for the faint of heart"? Yes, why not inoculate yourself against the increasing madness of our times with an even greater amount of unhinged lunacy? That strategy seems perfectly logical to me, and I'm sure it'll seem perfectly logical to you as well after you've imbibed a few of the mind-distorting, poisonous treats hidden between the ominous covers of my debut short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, released by Lethe Press this past January. The peculiar tales in this volume have been compared to the works of Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Anton Wilson! Here's what a pack of raving maniacs have to say about CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES...

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

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"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

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

 

EXPANDING FRONTIERS RESEARCH: "1950s Psychological Warfare, Intel Collection, UFOs and Fascism"

What follows is a brief excerpt from Jack Brewer's recent EXPANDING FRONTIERS RESEARCH article entitled "1950s Psychological Warfare, Intel Collection, UFOs and Fascism":

FBI files responsive to Gordon Gray obtained by Expanding Frontiers Research through the Freedom of Information Act contain reports compiled during the course of security investigations spanning some 25 years of his intelligence career. The Yale-educated attorney held numerous positions of responsibility, advising and leading national security personnel at the highest levels of the mid-20th century United States intelligence apparatus. His positions included Secretary of the Army, directing the CIA Psychological Strategy Board, chairing the Clandestine Collection Committee, sitting on the board of the Economic Development Committee, heading the Office of Defense Mobilization, and numerous additional presidential appointments, including serving as Special Assistant to the President and as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

FBI files not surprisingly demonstrate Gordon Gray was involved with psychological warfare offices, propaganda groups, foundations now known to have acted as covert CIA funding conduits, and secret intelligence-gathering operations ostensibly created as international economic relief organizations. A follow-up FOIA request led to obtaining documentation of a 1982 investigation conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office showing it identified many of those CIA initiatives to be of interest in its search for Nazi war criminals.

Records also show that a Robert M. Hanes, then-president of Wachovia Bank and future Administrator for Germany of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), described himself as knowing Gordon Gray since childhood and admiring him very much when interviewed by the FBI in 1948 (see p43). Notably, Gray's grandfather was a co-founder of Wachovia. The ECA was a precursor to U.S. Aid for International Development, or USAID, and has a recurring presence in records obtained and circumstances explored by EFR.

As previously reported, a 1949 letter from then-DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter to the Economic Cooperation Administration provides documentation of CIA use of the ECA as an asset to collect and furnish the Agency classified “economic intelligence information.” Soon after the date of Hillenkoetter's letter, the ECA contracted a Baltimore public relations firm, Counsel Services, to conduct work abroad. This took place as Counsel Services co-founder Leo McCormick became employed by the ECA as a project manager (see p60). Counsel Services officers Mary Vaughan King, who was another co-founder, and Thomas O'Keefe, a State Department man with experience working overseas and designating personnel for foreign assignment, fascinatingly went on in 1956 to assist T. Townsend Brown with the incorporation of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (see p3).

The organization became the largest UFO group ever formed, boasting some 14,000 paid subscribers at the height of its public relations success and assembling a governing board that remained populated with intelligence officers throughout its existence. The implications are intriguing and offer many directions for research, illuminating puzzle pieces about the people who inhabited the murky world of flying saucer tales, even if reliable information on the reported craft themselves remains forever elusive...

To Brewer's entire article, click HERE.

THE PASSION OF DRACULA

If you're looking for the perfect way to kick off the Halloween season, and you find yourself anywhere near Long Beach within the next few weeks, I suggest checking out The Long Beach Playhouse's wonderfully melodramatic production of THE PASSION OF DRACULA directed by David Scaglione. Ben Trotter's portrayal of Dracula combines the ferocity of Christopher Lee with the nobility of Bela Lugosi. Equally standout performances are delivered by James Matthis (as Prof. Van Helsing) and Trevor Hart (as Renfield). Bob Hall and David Richmond's script effectively capture the sadness and loneliness of the undead count as, in Scaglione's words, "an immortal trapped in time, never fulfilled, constantly chained" to his addictive, preternatural compulsions. The show runs until October 19th...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAD MONKEY RUM!

One year ago this month, Planet Bizarro Press published my third novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, which was nominated for a Rondo Award for "Best Classic Monster Fiction" alongside the likes of such luminaries as Tim Lucas (THE BOOK OF RENFIELD) and Craig Russell (THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND)! Why not celebrate this joyous anniversary by purchasing multiple copies of DEAD MONKEY RUM for that hard-to-please Tiki/talking monkey/cryptozoology/Yeti/Stanislaw Szukalski/Easter Island fan in your life? DEAD MONKEY RUM is available for purchase right HERE!!!

(By the way, if you like Joseph Dunn's fabulous tiki-centric cover art for DEAD MONKEY RUM, you should check out his Etsy shop by clicking right HERE.)

PRAISE FOR DEAD MONKEY RUM:

"A remarkable rush of entertainment and thrills."

--Alan Moore (V for Vendetta and Watchmen) 

 

"Robert Guffey's fantastic novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, will at least bring your brain out of a coma, if not get your imagination off the couch. This is a thinly masked tribute/adventure to the late Stanislaw Szukalski and his boundless imagination. This book is a mental gymnasium."

-- Robert Williams (Visual Addiction, Hysteria in Remission, and Through Prehensile Eyes)

 

"A fantastically rich and entertaining piece of work with an original sharp edge."

 -- Jim Woodring (writer/artist of Weathercraft, The Frank Book, and One Beautiful Spring Day)

 

"Stanislaw Szukalski would love DEAD MONKEY RUM. This novel is addictive like a heavy drug. Make space in your calendar to read it all."

-- Irek Dobrowolski (director of the Netflix documentary, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski)

 

 "Yetis, Tiki Gods, Cryptozoology, and rum-filled adventure! Sign me up and tell me when the ship sails! I'm recommending this Robert Guffey novel to all my friends, family, and foes to take their minds completely off whatever they are thinking about. Wonderful."

-- Loren Coleman (Mysterious America, The Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents, The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Curious Encounters, and 40 other books - Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum)

 
"DEAD MONKEY RUM succeeds at being a pursuit thriller, with suspense and tension as the monkey and Stephanie evade their cryptid enemies, and comedy as the two exchange jabs at each other. It is cinematically fast. DEAD MONKEY RUM should be adapted to a [...] Ralph Bakshiesque animated film where both the zaniness of the narrative and the latent satire would really flourish."

-- Exotica Moderne

 

"One of the weirdest romps you'll ever read."

-- Fortean Times

UNBOXING DEAD MONKEY RUM:

Read SPIES & SAUCERS and Learn the Secrets of UFOs!!!

In light of the resurgence of UFOs in popular culture as well as in the halls of Congress, I think it's time to remind everybody that the most mysterious and numinous secrets of UFOs are available in the pages of my second book, SPIES & SAUCERS, a collection of three novellas released by PS Publishing ten years ago this month. 

Madness, murder and mayhem abound in SPIES & SAUCERS, a collection of three sui generis novellas by ROBERT GUFFEY. Each of these tales explores the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, as well as the flying saucer obsession of that era, while straddling the boundaries of seemingly disparate genres: metaphysical science fiction, espionage, satire, and crime noir.

The first part of SPIES & SAUCERS, “The Fallen Nun,” takes place in 1959. Our protagonist, Kyle Black, wakes up one morning to discover a dead nun lying facedown in the marijuana garden in his backyard. Attempting to solve the mystery of how the nun ended up in his garden leads Kyle to strange encounters with an Irish Cyclops named Finn mac Cumhall, a Devil Bat grown to enormous proportions by a dead mad scientist, two homicidal tabloid journalists, and a sickly extraterrestrial abducted by a time traveling mother superior…

In “Communist Town, U.S.A.,” a young FBI agent named Philip Trowbridge is sent to Wisconsin in 1955 with orders to infiltrate a small town, reportedly a hotbed of underground Communist activity, in which several previous FBI agents have disappeared without a trace…

“Spies and Saucers” is set three years earlier in 1952 and involves a blacklisted, left-wing Hollywood screenwriter named Curt Adamson. Down on his luck after having been dumped by every studio on the West Coast, Adamson is recruited by a covert spy agency to write a screenplay for an unknown reason—unknown only to Adamson, that is. Adamson’s superiors are well aware of the screenplay’s purpose. Though consistently told he doesn’t have a “need to know,” Adamson insists on discovering the truth behind the tale he himself is weaving, uncovering a plot far more outlandish and ominous than the cheap horror and science fiction B-movies on which he’s built his tarnished reputation…

 

PRAISE FOR SPIES AND SAUCERS:

 

"Robert Guffey’s book Spies and Saucers presents three novellas about UFOs, Men in Black, strange creatures and even stranger occurrences. These tales are set in the '50s, but they sound as fresh as any modern story of UFOs and strange creatures. Reading in bed or right before bed is not recommended for the faint of heart."

 

--Tessa B. Dick, author of Philip K. Dick: Remembering Firebright and My Life on the Edge of Reality

 

"Robert Guffey’s Spies and Saucers is an unforgettable experience. In this book, the three tales are distinct and yet also have clear thematic relationships to one another, all evoking an insightful view of the wonders and the fears of America in the '50s. They also draw upon a rich array of pop culture, ranging from B-horror movies like The Devil Bat (1940) with Bela Lugosi to Irish folklore and the golden age of science fiction novels.

 

"These allusions enriched both occasions I’ve read Spies and Saucers (thankfully I have a hardback, as I’ll be returning to it again in the near future). At the same time, I don’t believe knowledge of the various films and books to which Guffey refers is necessary, no more so than it is for reading and loving Thomas Pynchon.

 

"Spies and Saucers is thoughtful--at times dark, at times darkly humorous--but always enjoyable.

 

"Along with Cormac McCarthy, Guffey is my favorite modern fiction writer. Spies and Saucers provides ample proof as to why I feel that way.”

 

--Gary D. Rhodes, author of The Perils of Moviegoing in America

 

 

"Guffey's extraordinary fictional narrative is an extension of his interest in conspiracy theories and the wild suppositions and events these curious belief systems declare as truth [...]. Spies and Saucers resonates as a reconstruction of that mid-century media and those exceptional, nearly mystical experiences when flying saucers hovered above us and communists, hidden in doorways, watched us with subversive intent. Guffey's novel seems spontaneously generated from the troposphere of fear hanging above us at the beginning of a new, byte-infused century, a literary tulpa expressing the nexus of propaganda, false narratives, and outright lies we experience every day."

 

--The Mailer Review

 

The Day Trump Invaded Earth!

 If you're completely baffled as to why the Harris-Trump race appears to be so razor-thin close, I suggest reading my 2022 book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP, which pulls the curtain back on the covert arsenal of PsyOp dirty tricks that have been deployed against the American people by the Trump Propaganda Machine for the past eight years.

You can buy a copy of OPERATION MINDFUCK right HERE!!!

By the way, back in 2022 I wrote the script for an OPERATION MINDFUCK radio commercial, which aired almost every night throughout the summer on NIGHT DREAMS TALK RADIO. You can listen to the entire commercial directly below...