DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Just a day before the official launch of Unseaming (Though — shhhh! — the trade paperback is available already!) I’m honored to be able to share the kind words that Nathan Ballingrud, author of the superb dark fantasy collection North American Lake Monsters, had for

Justin Steele of Arkham Digest reviewed my about-to-be-released horror collection Unseaming last week, and he liked it a lot. A whole lot:   Mike Allen is mostly known as a poet, and an editor for Mythic Delirium and Clockwork Phoenix, and up until now I

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

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,

Strange Horizons today released an all-poetry issue, complete with an extensive two part podcast, and I’m honored that my new poem “The Paper Boy” — the only new poem I produced last year — gets to be part of it. (You can read it here.)

I’m pleased to report that Strange Horizons is buying my new poem “The Paper Boy,” a grim meditation on a crime’s aftermath. Thanks go to Romie Stott for accepting it and to Dominik Parisien for motivating me to write it. #SFWApro   I’m also pleased

The reviewer behind the Just Book Reading blog just came out with a review of The Black Fire Concerto. Not all reviews are like surprise presents, but this one is.   I listened to the first part of this book when it was featured on

Locus Magazine short fiction review Rich Horton has some really cool things to say about my short story “Still Life With Skull” in his just-published review of Solaris Rising 2.   Mike Allen’s “Still Life With Skull”, set in the same very strange world as

  The snarky redhead behind the Little Red Reviewer blog takes on my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, and has some really kind and downright awesome things to say about it:   Exploding with magic, music, and violence, this short novel has the magical

So a year ago today, more or less, I launched my first Kickstarter, to make Clockwork Phoenix 4. And thanks to amazing support from this community, that ended up going really, really well. Today, my second and much smaller Kickstarter is less than $300 away