I began 2024 with no notion that my first published novel was going to get a makeover.
Lo, and behold, that day has arrived! My sidearms and sorcery secondary world zombie apocalypse novel The Black Fire Concerto spreads its black fire curse across the world anew.
Jessica Wick, my colleague, friend, and fellow member of the Sinister Quartet, shared this lovely evidence of the presence of The Black Fire Concerto in at least one bookstore.
Photo courtesy Jessica Wick
Should you go to your local bookstore hunting for my novel and not find it, ask for them to order it and Ruadán Books will provide.
Just before Resurrection Day, my horror author buddy L.C. Marino shared the interview he did with me about The Black Fire Concerto on the Spineless ReadsThe Suspense Is Killing Me podcast. I love shooting the breeze with Lucas, he’s great to hang out with.
By the way, in case you missed my first appearance on The Suspense Is Killing Me, in which Lucas interviewed me about my most recent story collection, Slow Burn, here it is for your enjoyment!
Definitely more to come as the week proceeds. But most important, for the moment — where do you go to experience The Black Fire Concerto? Well, see below!
Second chances like this one don’t come around often in the publishing world.
We’re less than three weeks away from the re-release of my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto. Because I’ve not had other novels published in the meantime, it’s still my first novel, although this time, the sequel is queued in the pipeline — The Ghoulmaker’s Aria, which begins mere weeks after Concerto leaves off.
Anita and Book No Further owner Doloris Vest posed me in front of the local authors shelf with Concerto in hand and my story collections over my shoulder.
A still from the unboxing video Anita and I shot on the second floor of Book No Further in Roanoke
So far, I’m making two public appearances in support of The Black Fire Concerto.
I remain amazed that Ruadán Books came to me with this opportunity, and I am delighted that my mold-breaking sidearms-and-sorcery duo, Olyssa and Erzelle, have the opportunity to find new readers, and that the undead horrors they face down have a chance to frighten new audiences.
C.S.E. Cooney, who has stolen Erzelle’s torch right off the book cover…
I’m thrilled that this audio adaptation is going forward!
Ruadán has taken this mission a jaw-dropping step further, commissioning the production of an audiobook edition narrated by C.S.E. Cooney, who is…
Those few and proud who already own the original edition of The Black Fire Concerto have asked me how much it changed in revision. I think that’s a fair question, and the frank answer is that the plot, the characters, the settings, are all the same. It’s the telling of the story that changed, and that telling has vastly improved. I strongly suggest that hearing the rejuvenated story in Cooney’s voice will be a transformative experience.
Another still from the unboxing video we shot at Book No Further. (I’m reading Tanith Lee’s blurb on the back cover.)
I endorse Book No Further’s message that “Books are portable magic.” Sometimes, like the one in my hands, “some very black magic indeed,” as Tanith put it.
I’m going to slip in a little spoiler here: at previous events, when I’ve been face to face with actual prospective readers, the Number One question they’ve asked me about this book is: Does it have a happy ending? People are looking for that in this day and age, more than ever. The honest answer is: absolutely yes, but my heroines have to go through hell to get there. I can testify truthfully that this answer resonates.
As a side note, I’m obligated to mention that if you see any Amazon listings for Concerto sporting the original edition’s cover art (Lauren K. Cannon’s stunning digital painting “Black Bride”) that listing has nothing to do with myself or with Ruadán.
A combination of terrific and not-terrific developments prevented me from posting several overdue items here before now. I’m going to get the absolute most important thing out of the way first:
My novel The Black Fire Concerto has been made available for pre-orders. Here is the ordering page at Ruadán Books. Should you purchase an advance copy through Ruadán, you’ll get an extra-special bonus that you can download right away — a free new short story about my wandering sorceress Olyssa, set many years before the events of the novel, when she was at her ruthless anti-heroine peak.
BLACK FIRE CONCERTO GIVEAWAY RULES
On top of Ruadán’s generosity, I’m offering a special giveaway all my own.
For the first six readers who:
Send me proof that they have pre-ordered the book from the Ruadán site, via e-mail or DM (please, no need for a public post, unless you want to leave a comment below);
Send me the names of the band and album where the song that inspired the title of my new story can be found;
you will have your pick of a paperback edition of my horror anthology A Sinister Quartet or horror collection Slow Burn. Shipping is on me!
If you happened to be one of the rare readers who already owns both books (bless you!) then we can negotiate a different Mythic Delirium Books (or Mike Allen) title.
I’ll conclude this post by sharing my delight at the attention shining right now on the works of Tanith Lee. (I’ll have a lot more to say about that in my next post.)
Years ago, after reading an older version of The Black Fire Concerto, she shared some very kind words, which I am utterly delighted to reshare, as they still warm my dark heart.
Dear friends of Speculative Fiction, Indie Presses, the Weird, the Wild, and the Wonderous, greetings!
It is the 26th Anniversary of Mythic Delirium Books, a micropress run by Mike and Anita Allen, that specializes in speculative fiction and poetry, with a penchant for writing that’s challenging to classify.
In the past, the imprint provided homes to Mythic Delirium, a digital journal of fiction and poetry, and Clockwork Phoenix, a critically-acclaimed anthology series that showcased stories that don’t easily fit within standard market boundaries.
Please join us! Free tickets available on Eventbrite for our Celebratory Zoom Reading! Free! Virtual! 2 years with an Indie Press specializing in the Beautiful and Strange!
Sign up at our Eventbrite page below to receive reminder emails and the Zoom link!
Guess who’s reading? Nah, JK. You don’t have to guess! I’ll just tell ya!
Mythic Delirium 26th Anniversary Author Bios!
Born and raised in upstate New York, Amy Aderman enjoys fairy tales, research, and tea. Her fantasy short stories have most recently appeared in the “From the Lockdown” contest by Rochester Speculative Literature Association, Mythic Delirium, and the anthology “Ain’t Superstitious.”
Anita Allen is an enigma. She is a small Press publisher, editing books and short stories with her husband for Mythic Delirium books. She has a handful of writing publications. She is also an artist who has had her own shows and sold work internationally as well as done illustrations and cover art for several small press magazines. She is a semi retired competitive costume designer holding the rank of craftsman.
Given her druthers she would prefer to spend her days listened to rain on a tin roof or breezes through the pines, painting, sculpting and creating things with fabric all while living in a stone cottage deep in the woods growing moss, studying philosophy, drinking tea and playing with her pets. Instead, she lives in a tiny house beneath giant oak trees in the heart of the city. Somehow managing all of the aforementioned things while occasionally filling in as an adjunct reader for various writing projects her beloved is working on.
Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.
Marie Brennan is the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, the Onyx Court, other fantasy series, several poems, and over ninety short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s also written the Rook and Rose trilogy. Find her at swantower.com and on Patreon.
Edith Hope Bishop writes fiction, poetry, and music. She grew up in South Florida and spent several years in the Northeast, but her home for more than twenty years now has been the Pacific Northwest. She proudly holds degrees from both Harvard and Columbia Universities. She’s worked as a public school teacher, curriculum developer, and school volunteer. She’s mom to two teens and one schnoodle. With her partner, Edie publishes music as Foulweather Bluff. She loves to make elaborate costumes for her whole family and is fond of photography, beachcombing, gardening, and live theater. When she isn’t making art, volunteering in her community, or spending cherished time with family and friends, she can usually be found on, in, or near a body of salt water. Edie is currently hard at work to launch Songborne & Seabound Press in 2025.
Novelist, poet, and community organizer Leah Bobet works where climate fiction, the counterfactual, and food sovereignty meet. Her latest novel, An Inheritance of Ashes, won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Prix Aurora Awards and was an OLA Best Bets book; her short fiction is anthologized worldwide. Her poetry has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, and Canthius, and has shortlisted for the Prix Aurora Award and the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize. She edited poetry for the Utopia Award-winning 2021 issue of Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice, read for Grist’s Imagine 2200 contest, and is studying food security policy at Toronto Metropolitan University. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds grassroots infrastructure projects, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.
Beth Cato is the author of the Chefs of the Five Gods duology with 47North and The Clockwork Dagger series and the Blood of Earth trilogy with Harper Voyager. She was a 2015 Nebula Award finalist in the novella category. Her short stories and poetry can be found in hundreds of publications, including Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, Uncanny Magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Beth hails from Hanford, California, but now resides in beautiful Red Wing, Minnesota, with her husband and two feline overlords. For more information about her writing and to explore hundreds of free, delicious recipes, visit www.bethcato.com.
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. Forthcoming in 2025 is Saint Death’s Herald, second in the Saint Death Series. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, and short fiction for podcasts like Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her music at Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.) Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios Infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”), co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez. Find her website and Substack newsetter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.
Francesca Forrest is the author of the novellas The Inconvenient God and Lagoonfire, both from Annorlunda Books, the novel Pen Pal, and a number of short stories—most recently “Semper Vivens,” from Andromeda Spaceways magazine. For many years she was a copy editor for the Mythic Delirium zine and helped out with proofreading a couple of Mythic Delirium’s Clockwork Phoenix anthologies. She was super honored when Mike asked her to write the intro to Yukimi Ogawa’s short story collection Like Smoke, Like Light, which Mythic Delirium published. Mike, Anita, and Mythic Delirium are the center of a great writing community!
Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the Athena Club trilogy of novels, including The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her other publications include short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, Snow White Learns Witchcraft, and The Collected Enchantments, as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is currently a Master Lecturer in Rhetoric at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.
New York Times best-selling author Carlos Hernandez wrote the critically acclaimed short story collection The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium, 2016), the novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Disney Hyperion, 2019), which won the 2020 Pura Belpré Award, and its sequel, Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe. He’s also written dozens of short stories, poems, and works of drama, usually in the SFF mode. Carlos is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC. His work at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, has led him to work extensively game writing and game design. He has served as lead writer and a game designer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial. Negocios Infernales, a GM-less roleplaying game designed by Hernandez and his wife, author C. S. E. Cooney, will be published by Outland Entertainment later this year. You can find him on socials at @writeteachplay.
John Philip Johnson has published literary and spec poetry in numerous journals and reviews. In 2021 he won a Pushcart Prize for a spec poem he had dedicated to Mike Allen, who had inspired the poem in 2011. His comic book of graphic poetry, The Book of Fly, won an Elgin Award. He’s proud to report he’s still off drugs and out of jail. He hopes to live long enough to see people on Mars and would go there himself if he could, but only if his wife, Sue, went with him.
David C. Kopaska-Merkel, a retired geologist, won the 2006 Rhysling award for best long poem (for a collaboration with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). He has edited Star*line, an issue of Eye To The Telescope, and several Rhysling anthologies, co-edited the 2023 Dwarf Stars anthology, has served as SFPA president, and is an SFPA Grandmaster. His poems have been published in Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and more than 200 other venues. Some Disassembly Required, a recent collection of dark speculative poetry, won the 2023 Elgin award. Unwelcome Guests (2024) is his latest book. Find his blog at https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/
Barbara Krasnoff has had over 40 short stories appear in a variety of publications. Her story “Sabbath Wine,” published in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5, was a Nebula Award finalist, while “Baby Golem,” from the anthology Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora, was a finalist for the 2024 WSFA Small Press Award. She also has a mosaic novel, The History of Soul 2065, published by Mythic Delirium Books. A full list of publications can be found at BrooklynWriter.com. When not writing genre fiction or hanging out with her partner, WBAI radio host Jim Freund, Barbara earns a living as Reviews Editor for The Verge.
Rich Larson was born in Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Canada. He is the author of the novels Annex and Ymir, as well as collections Tomorrow Factory and The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.
Sandi Leibowitz writes fantasy fiction and poetry, often based on myths and fairy tales. Author of the poetry collections Eurydice Sings, Elgin-nominated The Bone-Joiner, and Ghost-Light, her speculative poems have garnered second- and third-place Dwarf Star awards and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. Her poems and stories for children appear in Cricket, Highlights, Ember, Spellbound, Orbit and other magazines; Her picture book for older children, Magotu and the Leopard, illustrated by Christiane Krömer, has been published by Library for All. A native New Yorker, Sandi also sings classical, folk, and cabaret music. Don’t ask her to dance for you, however, as a recent vigorous cha-cha ended with her breaking her wrist. If you ask nicely, she will say something to you in Gaelic.
Virginia M. Mohlere was born on one solstice, and her sister was born on the other. Her chronic writing disorder stems from early childhood. Other than Mythic Delirium, Virginia has emerged infrequently from her fort built of yarn and fountain pens to publish works in venues such as Jabberwocky, Fireside Fiction, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Cicada, and Through the Gate. She was the 2019 winner of the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story, “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change,” which appeared in Luna Station Quarterly.
Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. She still wonders why it works that way. Her fiction can be found in such places as Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. Her debut collection, Like Smoke, Like Light, was selected as one of Publishers Weekly‘s best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books of 2023.
Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers. Poetry. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, Apex, Bestiary of Blood horror anthology, and Clockwork Phoenix 5!!! Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, came out from Random House in August and his solarpunk noir novelette Ice Like Honey comes out in Lightspeed magazine in early 2025.
S. Brackett Robertson lives near many bodies of water. Brackett’s work has previously appeared in Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Inkscrawl, and Stone Telling. Brackett enjoys museums and math zines and can be found online on BlueSky.
Kenneth Schneyer’s short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Sturgeon awards, found its way into various Years Best anthologies, and been translated into five other languages. His second collection, Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices (featuring an introduction by Mike Allen!) received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal in 2020. His most recent stories are “Tamaza’s Future and Mine” (Asimov’s Science Fiction) and “Winding Sheets” (Lightspeed Magazine). By day, he is a professor of humanities and legal studies, teaching courses as varied as advanced Shakespeare, criminal procedure, and introductory logic. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with his spouse, occasionally his grown children, and something with fangs.
Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages and tells living stories. Her short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing In (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, A Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She lives with one of her husbands and both of her cats in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper Belt object.
Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR.
This is, possibly, the wildest update I will ever post on this site. Not that many people will read it here, but rest assured, I’ll be sharing this information in other places where it will be seen. As widely as possible, in fact.
For starters, the biggest news in my career since my story “The Button Bin” made the Nebula Award shortlist: I’ve signed a two-novel deal with Ruadán Books, a newcomer to the horror and dark fantasy publishing scene that’s set to be a big player in the upcoming year. I didn’t start 2024 with any notion that something like this would happen, and it gets even wilder in the details: Ruadán intends to republish my short novel of “magic, music, and violence,” The Black Fire Concerto, and follow it up with the completed but never-published sequel, The Ghoulmaker’s Aria.
Though the fact that The Black Fire Concerto even made it to print in the first place was something of a freakish miracle, I’ve always felt that Olyssa, Erzelle, Reneer, and their friends and foes never got a fair chance to find their audience. Opportunities for super-charged do-overs are rare in publishing, and I sure as hell never expected I’d have such a chance. I wasn’t even looking for one! My heartfelt thanks to R. B. Wood with Ruadán for opening the unexpected door.
Because of him, I finally have incredible news to share with stalwart few who through the years have kept asking me when the The Black Fire Concerto sequel will come out.
Lasse Paldanius has produced truly stunning cover art for this new edition. Hopefully I’ll get to show and brag soon!
And now the really off the chain part — this two-novel deal is only one (though the biggest) of several announcements.
I’m also thrilled to announce that my new novelette, “Lewisburg,” will appear in December in Ruadán Books’ Winter in the City anthology, which is available for preorder now. (In fact, it was while Anita and I were visiting Lewisburg, West Virginia, on a research trip for this very story, that R. B. first reached out to me with a query that led directly to our two-novel deal! Talk about serendipity.
Winter in the City, which will serve as Ruadán’s christening launch, holds tales of wintry horror and dark fantasy set in cities all over the world. My contribution, a novelette of alternate dimensions and homicidal ghosts, is named “Lewisburg” after the city where it happens.
I wrote the first version of this story, original title “Last Legs,” soon after my knee surgery last year. I submitted that version to a themed anthology that bounced it with a form rejection (and I get it, it wasn’t ready yet, though I was too pain killer-addled to notice). But as sometimes happens when luck breaks in a writer’s favor, after R. B. asked me to contribute to WITC, I saw ways to use his book’s theme to shape the draft I had on hand into something bigger, better, and stranger. I’m so, so thrilled the results worked for R. B.!
“Lewisburg” also expands the “MikeCU,” tying into stories found in my collection Aftermath of an Industrial Accident — specifically, the character of Kori, first encountered fighting a phantasmagorical shape-shifting monster in my novelette “Follow the Wounded One,” reappearing for a cameo in “The Cruelest Team Will Win.”
And speaking of forthcoming things I can’t wait to share:
Newly revamped podcast series The Weird Library will record an audio adaptation of my newest published horror tale, “Machine Learning,” available in the June issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly and in my latest collection of horror tales, Slow Burn.
I’ve previously described the elevator pitch for “Machine Learning” as “What if Nyarlathotep controlled SkyNet?” and I’ll stick by those guns. It’s another “MikeCU” story, featuring the Virginia town of Grandy Springs and the character of Vanissa Carter, who made her first public appearance last year in my short story “Slow Burn.”
Right now you can (and should!) listen to the Weird Library adaptation of Samantha Henderson’s “Maybe the Stars.”
And also:
Fred Coppersmith, editor of Kaleidotrope, has let me know that my horror tale “Service Sector” will appear in the next issue, scheduled for October. Again, so excited that I’ll at last get to share! This is a tale rooted in real-life horrible on-the-job experiences, though names, and locations, and many other significant details have been changed. It’s also a story that, I’m proud to say, is spectacularly gross. Surely all of you will love it.
And also:
Yes, there’s even more, but now we’re in the territory of things that I’m not yet cleared to publicize. How refreshing it is, though, to be filled to bursting with good news.
There’s been a lot of moving and shaking in my world, much of which has been mentioned or at least hinted at on my Facebook and Instagram pages, where I am posting most of my immediate updates in this post-Twitter environment.
The biggest news looming on my horizon (that I can publicly discuss) would be the July 16 release of my third collection of horror and dark fantasy tales and poems, Slow Burn. The book includes my novella “The Comforter” and short story “The Feather Stitch,” the conclusion and the prequel, respectively, to my horror sequence that starts with “The Button Bin” and “The Quiltmaker.” The title story, “Slow Burn,” brings to an end of sorts the sequence that begins with my Lovecraftian yarn “The Sun Saw.” There are ten more stories besides and a host of poems, many previously uncollected, that serve as thematic transitions between the longer works, hand-picked by Anita to work just so.
The cover art by Lasse Paldanius and interior illustrations by Paula Arwen Owen are all dynamite. Three-time Bram Stoker Award winner (and my dear friend ) Christina Sng was kind enough to write the introduction.
I’m also thrilled by the many kind words the book has received from reviewers and blurbers in the months leading up to publication. Just a sample below:
“Nerve-racking anticipation and dread . . . An assemblage of horror tales and somber verses that frighten and fascinate.” —Kirkus Reviews (read full review here)
“Will appeal to horror fans seeking something fresh.” —Publishers Weekly (read full review here)
“Mythical, chilling, and visceral . . . a slow burn readers will crave to simmer in.” —Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker and Nebula award-winning author of Linghun
“Slow Burn is a multifaceted, multifarious feast for the horror-hungry.” —Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination and Where Night Cowers
“By turns gorgeous, horrifying, gruesome, furious, darkly erotic, wickedly funny, and frequently all of those things at once, this extraordinary collection never shies away from pushing the reader’s boundaries. Allen masterfully succeeds in being transgressive in all the best and most beautiful ways. I adore this book.” —Sunny Moraine, author of Your Shadow Half Remains
The debonair L.C. Marino invited me onto his podcast, The Suspense is Killing Me, to talk about Slow Burn and a host of other topics:
Anita and I are planning to come to Readercon in Boston and, for the first time, Necronomicon in Providence to help raise awareness that Slow Burn exists, and there are more events in the works or at least in discussion, cross fingers.
You can pre-order the book through the links below:
Another story connected to the “Sun Saw/Slow Burn” sequence, called “Machine Learning,” just came out in the newest issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly. I love, love, love this creepy yet cute cover art.
However, my story ain’t got no cat in it, just for the record. An elevator pitch for it would sound something like, “What if Skynet served Nyarlathotep?” The inspiration came in part from the close proximity my day job work has placed me in with regard to pioneering research in artificial intelligence, and the societal issues that arise from it — and also from a pair of unconnected nightmares that are now forever fused in the setting where our heroines meet their fates.
I have even more exciting news to share, but I can’t yet because the publishers involved haven’t launched their official announcements, and I can’t get more specific in public until they do. What I can say that recently my career has taken a wild turn, and I’ve both sold a new novelette with ties to yet another of my dark fiction sequences (“The Hiker’s Tale/Follow the Wounded One/The Cruelest Team Will Win”) and received the first half of an advance for an even bigger deal. I can’t wait to share what this deal is — but alas, I have to.
2023 has been a spectacular, extraordinarily special and extremely stressful year. A whole lot happened during the past five months, with events moving faster than the speed of a blog.
First, it’s high time I shared Ye Olde Annual Award Eligibility Post, both for the books and stories produced by Mythic Delirium Books (aka Anita ’n’ me) during our 25th anniversary year — and also for the short stories I had published during this 31st year of me being around as some sort of journeyman writer.
“Good to the Last Drop” by Mike and Anita Allen, Sudden Fictions Podcast #21, May 26, 2023
Anyone interested in looking any of these over for award consideration is welcome to contact me at mythicdelirium[at]gmail[dot]com or use the contact link in the right sidebar of this website.
Other stuff that’s happened since StokerCon in June:
Reconstruction surgery of my right knee, and multiple complications since, including a three night hospitalization because of cellulitis, ulp! Here at the end of November, I am not yet out of the woods, but trending in the right direction, at least. Needless to say Anita’s support has been absolutely vital throughout every step of this. Love you, sweetie!
________________________
Three video podcast interviews: two episodes of “Read All Over Show” with Toi Thomas that you can view here and here, and one “Skull Session” episode with Dan Henk that you can view here. I’m grateful to Toi and Dan for reminding me who I am and who I want to be during this at-times harsh recovery process.
An interview that Mason Adams of West Virginia Public Radio’s “Inside Appalachia”conducted with me and with Anita that aired just in time for Halloween. I read a passage from my long-time horror standby “The Button Bin” and talked about things that made me what I am now and name-dropped several other writers with Roanoke and Appalachian connections.
R.S. Belcher, yours truly and Amanda J. McGee at Book No Further’s “Dark Tales from the Star City” reading and signing.
Two Halloween-adjacent book signing and selling events, the first at Roanoke’s independent store Book No Further, during which I joined forces with fellow Roanoke supernatural yarn spinners R. S. Belcher and Amanda J. McGee to give a street-side reading titled Dark Tales from the Star City. For the second event, Anita and I returned to the Libbie Place Barnes & Noble in Richmond for Halloween Hangover II, where so many horror authors turned up that it was practically a StokerCon reunion. Highlights included catching up with Lucas Marino, whom we first met at StokerCon, and reconnecting with Krishna Knott, our longtime buddy from No Shame Theatre’s downtown Roanoke heyday.
Behind the table but in front of the DVDs at Halloween Hangover II in Richmond.
A surprise invitation to be Author Guest of Honor at next year’s CrashCityCon in Roanoke!
________________________
On the Mythic Delirium front, C. S. E. Cooney’s 2022 collection Dark Breakers was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award! And though Dark Breakers didn’t win Best Collection, Claire did win Best Novel for Saint Death’s Daughter, much to our delight! (We sold copies of that bright pink paperback (rendered blood red in the photo, haha) at our Boskone table in February, and sold out of what we had, doncha know!)
And further congratulations are in order to Yukimi Ogawa, whose collection Like Smoke, Like Light was listed by Publishers Weekly as one of seven Best SF/Fantasy/Horror Books of 2023! Watch for a promotion built around this delightful honor in the (hopefully) near future.
Perhaps next year I’ll have it together enough to return to blogging about cool things before they happen . . . but I’m not planning to hold my breath, hahaha!
The process of recovering from my knee reconstruction surgery has placed me woefully behind in sharing the cool and amazing things that have been happening on the Mythic Delirium Books front. I’m going to try to make up for that now. I’ve not been doing enough, I think, to remind folks that, teeny tiny as we are, we still manage to make a lot of cool stuff happen.
Most recent and most wonderful: Dark Breakers by C. S. E. Cooney (our sole 2022 release as we emerged from the first years of the pandemic) made the shortlist for the World Fantasy Awards in the collection category. Congrats to Claire! As the publishers of Cooney’s World Fantasy Award-winning debut Bone Swans, this endorsement of her follow-up collection by the WFA judges means the world to us.
The April issue of Locus Magazine contained a beautiful review of The Collected Enchantments by Theodora Goss (one of our three exciting 25th anniversary year showpieces!). Gary K. Wolfe wrote that the release of Enchantments continues “a banner year for retrospective short story collections.”
And the August issue of Locus Magazine held a glowing review of Like Smoke, Like Light, the debut collection of short fiction from Yukimi Ogawa (and another pillar of our little company’s 25th anniversary trifecta.) Reviewer Ian Mond seconds introduction author Francesca Forrest’s assertion that Ogawa’s a ‘‘remarkable light in the science fiction and fantasy firmament.’’
Locus has already showered praise multiple times on C.S.E. Cooney’s audacious novel The Twice-Drowned Saint (our third 25th anniversary title!) that dates back to when it first appeared in slightly different form in our anthology A Sinister Quartet. I plucked this quote from Ian Mond’s review of current World Fantasy Award candidate Dark Breakers. (With an addition from Southern Bookseller Review.)
BONUS: In an absolute first for Mythic Delirium, Lasse Paldanius’ cover and illustrations for The Twice-Drowned Saint were the basis for an amazing solo exhibition in Finland. (We do want to note for completeness sake that many pieces Paula Arwen Owen has created for us have been subsequently shown in galleries or even repurposed for installations!) Check out these stills from Lasse’s show, shared with his permission!
Prior to this post, you’ll notice a proliferation of double posts that were simultaneously shared on both the Mythic Delirium site and this one. That’s because my home blog here had a functional “simulpost to Twitter” feature, which doesn’t work anymore because of Elon Musk-driven changes to Twitter. Alas, so it goes.
(You’ll notice a lot of the graphics I produce now are square. That’s to make them compatible with my new-ish Instagram account, which maybe some year I will get the hang of using….)
But another reason for this has been because 2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the existence of Mythic Delirium, and I’ve spend the first half of the year focused most on the three projects I took on that were intended to coincide with the anniversary celebration: The Twice-Drowned Saint by C. S. E. Cooney, The Collected Enchantments by Theodora Goss, and Like Smoke, Like Light by Yukimi Ogawa. I still have a lot to do to promote these projects, but the labor involved in making them exist — executed in the time left over from starting a whole new career — has largely been completed. It seems to have become the norm that we no longer assume an understanding on the part of the reader that creators automatically, implicitly, enthusiastically endorse their own projects just by talking about them, SO, let me make an explicit endorsement: all three of this books are absolutely amazing and you need to buy copies ASAP.
That’s what I’ve been up to as a publisher. As a writer, I have also been up to things, lots of things, and as has become my standard, devoting time to doing the things keeps me from documenting them here, until a window opens up, as it has today.
Therefore, a whirlwind of roundups:
StokerCon
Anita and I will make our first ever appearances at a StokerCon this month. My simple but elegant schedule includes a short reading, participation in a mass signing, and speaking on a high-powered panel about the horror industry, which Anita will moderate! Find details in the graphic below.
Worth noting: Claire Cooney will also be present at StokerCon, a first for her as well. Mythic Delirium will not bring our full dog-and-pony show to this new turf, but our friends at Raw Dog Screaming Press have graciously agreed to carry The Twice-Drowned Saint and Yukimi’s Like Smoke, Like Light at their dealers room table, so we’ll at least have a (severed) toehold.
At the signing, I expect to have copies of Unseaming, Aftermath of an Industrial Accident — the first time these Shirley Jackson Award-nominated books of mine have ever appeared at a horror convention*, if you can believe it — my novel The Black Fire Concerto, and perhaps some surprises.
For the reading, I plan to read two flash pieces: first, the story/poem/essay that opens Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, “Six Waking Nightmares Poe Gave Me in Third Grade”; second, Anita and I together will recite “Good to the Last Drop” (see below for what that is).
*Unseaming has been sold at the Outer Dark Symposium, but they eschew the label “horror.”
New fiction
My newest published stories turn out to be a couple of motion picture homages, who would have thought?
Good to the Last Drop
Not long after the release of Hulu’s Hellraiser, a movie Anita and I enjoyed a lot despite its flaws, she suggested a hilarious idea for a tribute/parody that captured my imagination. The result was “Good to the Last Drop.” Anita and I have worked on many creative projects together, including anthologies and poems, but in my 31 years of writing and our 31 years of marriage, this is our first short story composed as a couple.
Scott Dwyer’s Plutonian Press has certainly earned my gratitude; this intriguing, edgy micropress has proven to be a major supporter of my short fiction in recent years; I have a story in every anthology Plutonian has published, including the latest, The Pinworm Factory, assembled as a tribute to David Lynch’s near-unclassifiable debut Eraserhead.
My story, “The Green Silence,” riffs on some of that film’s visual themes; it’s as surreal and nasty as the anthology’s title. (Rather on the opposite end of the spectrum from the gentle (by comparison) story Anita and I wrote together.)
As we begin the fourth month of Mythic Delirium’s25th anniversary year, I’m thrilled to share that the third of the three new books promised for this occasion is now available for pre-order: Like Smoke, Like Light, the debut collection of short fiction by Yukimi Ogawa.
I’m also thrilled to once again be working with paper artist Paula Arwen Owen, who has been a part of our extended family since the days when Mythic Delirium was a biannual poetry zine and a sister publication to Weird Tales. Beyond these brilliant covers and deft reflections of Ogawa’s blurring of genre boundaries, this art will reward those who can heft the book in their hands and savor every hidden detail.
“Her work is unexpected, often horrific, and always enthralling. Weaving Japanese folklore in with the new, the weird, and science fiction horror elements, Ogawa’s body of work is prolific and evergreen.” —Thea James, Tor.com
The book official comes out June 20, but you can purchase it now — any links shared here that are not active yet soon will be.
The book features an insightful introduction by author Francesca Forrest, another longtime member of our extended Mythic Delirium family. And Paula has contributed not only a wraparound cover, but interior illustrations as well.
