DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Who reads blogs anymore anyway? The purpose of this post, basically, is to play a sheepish game of catch-up. My work-life balance got completely tipped over in 2021 — though for an arguably GOOD reason, a promotion — and because of that I let posts

In case you missed it last week — though, if you follow me on social media, you likely didn’t, I’ve been shouting it from the rooftops — A Sinister Quartet, the new anthology featuring C. S. E. Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee and

The COVID-19 crisis has required us to get creative as we promote our forthcoming anthology A Sinister Quartet, as live events remain out of the question for the moment and review venues deal with disruptions in schedule and income. We’ve had some good breaks to

This week I launched a Patreon to support my writing. For now, I’m starting small. I actually have a grandiose plan for how I could use this page but I’m nowhere near ready to set that in motion — the announcement that Patreon intends to

The past few weeks I’ve been occupied with getting Latchkey by Nicole Kornher-Stace ready for the book’s premiere at Readercon in July. (I couldn’t be prouder that Nicole’s novel received a starred review for Kirkus Reviews — the first time a Mythic Delirium Book has

The December issue of Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field is now in stores, and it contains something that’s, from my perspective, very unusual: a 4,600-word interview with me! New York Times-bestselling, multiple-award winning author Seanan McGuire is the headliner, as

A.C. Wise was kind enough to conduct an interview with me today about my forthcoming collection of short stories, The Spider Tapestries, that coincides with a giveaway of 10 paperback ARCs that launched today on Goodreads. You can read the interview here.   Details of

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

My friend Michael M. Jones interviewed me for an impressive roundup article about how crowdfunding is changing the sf/f/h publishing landscape. The article, “Defying the Traditional Model: Crowdfunding in science fiction and fantasy,” appeared last week at Publishers Weekly, and contains quotes from a number