DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Recently Best Horror of the Year editor Ellen Datlow posted her annual recommended reading list, and I was pleased to see that four of my stories from 2014 made the bloody cut.   On the honorable mention roll call: “The Quiltmaker,” my novella-length sequel to

Readercon was great, but as I’m in the midst of reading Clockwork Phoenix 5 submissions and starting on a novel revision, I’m not going to be able to provide any kind of detailed report.     I did not win the Shirley Jackson Award, though

Editor Rhonda Parrish has shared the lovely and eerie cover for her forthcoming anthology Corvidae, which contains a new weird tale from yours truly, “The Cruelest Team Will Win.” (It’s a sequel, of sorts, to “The Hiker’s Tale” in Unseaming. The corvidae family, of course,

My kooky career path has led me to a place where two major aspects of my life have overlapped unexpectedly: speculative poetry and Rammstein fandom. Horror house Raw Dog Screaming Press has published an English translation of Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann’s second poetry collection, On

So I have my final Readercon schedule and it’s pretty awesome (I am going to be one busy, busy tiger) though it doesn’t cover things like the dual-book party Anita and I will throw to celebrate the launch of Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney and

A nice surprise at the end of an arduous if triumphant May: my Shirley Jackson Award-nominated horror story collection Unseaming earned some kind words in the latest issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction from reviewer Paul di Filippo:   “Representing sixteen years of prose output from

  #SFWApro  

It’s only fitting that Halloween was a busy week for me, beyond reading submissions for Mythic Delirium and all the little things I’m doing to promote Unseaming.   My editor at The Roanoke Times once again asked me to write an original ghost story for

So it turns out the rejuvenated Roanoke main library has a room that’s the perfect size for a reading. The first official launch reading for Unseaming turned out to be quite cozy. My thanks to Roanoke librarian Shalon Hurlbert (my good friend, whom the book

Anita and I are gonna be at the World Fantasy Convention in D.C. in two weeks, and I have my schedule in hand. Both of my scheduled events are Friday, Nov. 7:   Poetry in Fantasy: Yesterday and Today Time: 11am-12pm, Nov. 7, Regency F