DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Three months later than I originally planned, I’ve finished converting Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness to e-book format. It’s available now on Amazon for Kindle and will soon be available in EPUB and MOBI format at Weightless Books. Between reacquainting myself

Here’s Paula Friedlander‘s illustration for G.O. Clark‘s “Lost in the Static.” For even more of Paula’s work, here she is at artistrising.com, Cafe Press, and Etsy. This ends the preview for this week. You can see the issue’s complete table of contents here. If you

Here’s Daniel Trout’s illustration for “The Forest King” by Alexandra Seidel. (Intriguingly, this is a case of art begetting art begetting art; Alexa’s poem was in turn inspired by this painting by Anita, also included in the issue in a b&w version.) Don’t want to

Here’s Paula Friedlander‘s illustration for “Tryptich: an Offering of Fruit” by Dan Campbell. Full table of contents viewable here. If you don’t have a subscription and want one, or you need to renew, click here.

The latest of Larry Santoro’s Tales to Terrify podcasts includes my second “Tour of the Abattoir” column, in which I join the voices calling for a change in the World Fantasy Award statuette and give John Langan’s debut collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters

My apocalyptic short story “Let There Be Darkness” has just appeared at Pseudopod, read with prophetic conviction by Christiana Ellis. (Click here to hear how the world will really end.) “Let There Be Darkness” will be included in my horror collection coming out later this

I’m pleased to announce that my highly experimental sf short story “Twa Sisters” has sold to John Benson at Not One of Us, scheduled for his April issue. The story was inspired by this set of artwork shown to me by buddy Patty Templeton. I

Some nice recognitions for my poetry over the past few days. First, the poem that I co-wrote with Sonya Taaffe and Nicole Kornher-Stace, “The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves,” selected by Catherynne M. Valente for publication in Apex Magazine last year, has been

My new poem “Carrington’s Ferry” has just appeared in Strange Horizons, a piece inspired by the life and works of Leonora Carrington. It’s the first installment in my “Disturbing Muses” cycle of poems since “Mondrian’s War” in 2008 (which, interestingly enough, also appeared in Strange

Tales to Terrify is the new sister podcast to StarShipSofa, focused exclusively on horror. Madman Tony C. Smith invited me to contribute a monthly column to Tales to Terrify. I just finished recording the first installment. I’m calling it “Tour of the Abattoir.” Said abattoir