DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

I’m thrilled to announce I’m going to be reading from my forthcoming horror story collection Unseaming at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 1 in the Inquiring Minds bookstore in New Paltz, NY. The Facebook event page for the reading is here.   I have to

Over at The Review Review, a review site for literary magazines, I’ve contributed a “Publishing Tips” article, which the editors titled On Crowdfunding, Paying Writers, and the Shift to Digital: An Editor Tells His Story. I was asked by poet Alicia Cole to talk about

Jaime Lee Moyer (whose latest novel, A Barricade in Hell, just hit the stands) interviewed me for the Online Writing Workshop newsletter. I talk about why the standard approaches to putting together anthologies won’t work for Clockwork Phoenix, among other things. You can read the

Recently I was recruited for back-to-back “MindMelds” at SF Signal, in which assorted panelists of authors are asked to riff on sometimes esoteric topics.   In the first, “Our Favorite Food and Drink From Scifi and Fantasy!” I talk about the cooking and eating of

Anita and I will be on all kinds of panels and workshops at the upcoming MystiCon convention right here in Roanoke. I’ll be reading from my novel The Black Fire Concerto and Anita and I together will be talking about Clockwork Phoenix and anthologies in

Last year this time I was ill and bedridden. This year, I’m simply inconvenienced thanks to a kaput computer. I consider this a step up.   In fact I was so sick at this time in 2012 that my year-end summary didn’t turn up until

The Roanoke launch party for The Black Fire Concerto took place this past Tuesday (Oct. 22) in a cozy space at the Raleigh Court Library. (Technically this is the second launch party for the book; the first one happened in July at ReaderCon.) Since I

There’s a new issue of Goblin Fruit out, which is always reason to celebrate.     I have a special reason beyond the norm to celebrate this particular issue. The Goblin Queens have honored me by publishing “Hungry Constellations,” a light-hearted (for me) meditation on

The Raleigh Court Branch Library is holding the Roanoke launch party for my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, the story of a pair of sorceress-musicians who fight necromancers and ghouls in a post-apocalyptic future. My friend Anne Sampson will provide some beautifully eerie music

My “Tour of the Abattoir” column in the most recent Tales to Terrify podcast discusses the career so far of horror writer Joe Hill, including a lengthy review of his latest novel, NOS4A2. Fiction is by John Dodds. Click here to have a shivery listen.