Over on Kathe Koja's Facebook page, she asked for people's reactions from when they read the original edition of THE CIPHER. Now these are some blurbs!
"To read The Cipher is to drink from the river Styx."
"There was never a book like it, a complete mindfuck."
"This wasn't a story with something horrible thrown in. It was real life with a poison in it. Amazing stuff."
"To say The Cipher changed my view of horror fiction might, in fact, be understating the case."
"Entirely original, unlike anything I had read before...The Cipher introduced a new sort of dread.""I read it...as if instead of a book it was a magic spell that had me caught fast in the weird cold iridescent syrup of its nightmarish world. It remains my most favorite horror novel, the one I judge all others by, a perfect work of utterly original, wildly delicious horrifying menace."
And that's twenty-one years later.
Which brings me to my rejected copy line for the new edition: "What fresh hole is this?" C'mon, it's got a ring to it...
"To read The Cipher is to drink from the river Styx."
"There was never a book like it, a complete mindfuck."
"This wasn't a story with something horrible thrown in. It was real life with a poison in it. Amazing stuff."
"To say The Cipher changed my view of horror fiction might, in fact, be understating the case."
"Entirely original, unlike anything I had read before...The Cipher introduced a new sort of dread.""I read it...as if instead of a book it was a magic spell that had me caught fast in the weird cold iridescent syrup of its nightmarish world. It remains my most favorite horror novel, the one I judge all others by, a perfect work of utterly original, wildly delicious horrifying menace."
And that's twenty-one years later.
Which brings me to my rejected copy line for the new edition: "What fresh hole is this?" C'mon, it's got a ring to it...