DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

A whole lot of cool things happened last week, and thanks to that wonderful combination of too busy and too tired, I didn’t get to do much more about them then chirp enthusiastically on Twitter. Thus this week will bring a series of blog posts

My thanks to my friend Anne Sampson for snapping photos from my reading in Roanoke this past Friday, and thus providing evidence that it actually happened, hee, and that there were even people there! I read a couple short bits from Unseaming, as well as

I’m grateful to be able to announce yet another preview reading of my forthcoming collection of horror stories, Unseaming, this time in my home city of Roanoke, at 6 p.m. this Friday, Sept. 5. The invitation came from The Roanoke Readings, a series run by

Circumstances conspired so that I ended up giving an unplanned-for preview reading of my forthcoming story collection Unseaming at Inquiring Minds bookstore in New Paltz, NY, a couple weeks ago. It ended up being a cozy gathering of friends, which was fine and dandy. Unseaming

Michael M. Jones of Schrödinger’s Bookshelf has posted a new review of my novel The Black Fire Concerto, and gamely posted it to Amazon and Goodreads, too. It’s thorough, honest, and quite a lot of fun:   His traveling duo, the seemingly ageless Olyssa and

Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., author of the collection Portraits of Ruin and editor of anthologies A Season in Carcosa and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning The Grimscribe’s Puppets, has provided me with a delightful new blurb for my forthcoming collection of short stories, Unseaming:   “After

There’s a new interview with me posted at the Interstitial Arts Foundation blog. (You can tell it was conducted before the latest issue of Mythic Delirium came out, but that’s okay.) In said interview, I talk about what crowdfunding can mean for hard-to-classify art projects:

Not only did I get a starred review of my new horror collection from Publishers Weekly this past weekend, but I received a new blurb for the book from the incredibly talented Livia Llewellyn, which I’m honored to be able to share here:   “Mike

The newest issue of Postscripts to Darkness was just released, featuring my surreal far future sci-fi poem “Dearly Beloved.” This poem is set in the same universe as my short stories “Twa Sisters” and “Still Life with Skull,” and like them it’s heavily inspired by

Forgive me for punctuating the slug of this post with an explanation point, but I’m beside myself. The first official review of Unseaming has appeared, from Publishers Weekly no less, and it’s a starred review. Anita and I have just come back from a wonderful,