DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Anita has completed the Clockwork Phoenix pins promised as rewards in the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter. Check ’em out! (You can see more pictures at the Facebook page for her craft store, The Fairie Emporium.)

Get ’em while they’re hot.

Friday I launched a promotional giveaway of my three short stories available through Kindle. It continues through Tuesday night. Here’s what’s happened, what it may or may not mean, and what’s meaningless but definitely fun. I have six e-books uploaded to Kindle. Three of them

In honor of the wickedly dubious achievement of the three volumes of Clockwork Phoenix having sold a total of 666 copies in e-book form as of today, I am making my three strange short stories on Kindle (“She Who Runs,” “Sleepless, Burning Life,” “Stolen Souls“)

My tongue-in-cheek anti-Persephone-poem poem “Machine Guns Loaded with Pomegranate Seeds” appeared today at Strange Horizons. My thanks to Sonya Taaffe for giving this piece a home. My thanks also to Amal El-Mohtar for this delightful Twitter review: Only @mythicdelirium could make me burst out laughing

The latest Tales to Terrify podcast contains my newest “Tour of the Abattoir” column, in which I review stories from the first two issue of John Joseph Adams’ new publishing venture Nightmare Magazine, by Jonathan Maberry, Genevieve Valentine, Sarah Langan and Desirina Boskovich.  

The newest issue of Mythic Delirium shipped out yesterday to destinations in all corners of the globe. There’s a darkly romantic theme to its offerings, with a new steampunk sonnet from Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Ken Liu, as well as contributions from

If you want to make sure you get one, here’s how.

The newest issue of the zine, featuring Ken Liu, Theodora Goss, Rachel Swirsky, Shira Lipkin, Sonya Taaffe, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Rose Lemberg and more, has made the transition to a physical object. Tomorrow it will go to the printer for binding. Evidence below:

If you submitted a story to Clockwork Phoenix 4 in October and you haven’t received a response, it’s either because I’m holding your story for further consideration, or it somehow fell through the cracks in my submission system. Either way I encourage you to query.