DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

I’m pleased to report today that Claire aka C.S.E. Cooney’s popular novelette “Braiding the Ghosts” from Clockwork Phoenix 3 has been made available today for your listening pleasure as a “Giant Episode” at Podcastle. Go, click, listen, enjoy!

JoSelle Vanderhooft’s anthology Steam Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, which contains my novelette “Sleepless, Burning Life,” is now available in e-book Nook format at Barnes & Noble. (It was already available in Kindle format on Amazon.) Fantastique Unfettered Issue 3, which contains a lengthy interview with

Today ends up being a double-poem day. My poem “Surviving Wonderland” popped up today at the new issue of Stone Telling, which just went live. It’s a delicious looking issue, focused on myth in storytelling, with contributions by Yoon Ha Lee, Delia Sherman, Amal El-Mohtar,

The third issue of the new zine Fantastique Unfettered has just become available, and it features a long interview with me about all sorts of writing-and-editing related things. Much to my delight, this isn’t the end of my interaction with Fantastique Unfettered. The next issue

My poem “The Shadow Train” has appeared in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine issue 6, which is now available at Amazon.com. It’s a curious place for it to end up, as it’s not particularly Sherlockian — it’s about railroad fatalities and ghosts. On the other hand,

The upcoming fourth issue of Fantastique Unfettered has cover art based on my poem “Binary,” plus a feature devoted to my poetry. There may be other stuff, too, yet to be determined. Plus Scottish novelist and activist Hal Duncan! They shared it on their website,

Monday brings me two new precious things. First, my new poem “La Donna del Lago,” dedicated to Claire (C.S.E.) Cooney, has appeared at Strange Horizons. Fitting, as it’s the last of the “Claire-dare” poems that she inspired (though not the last to appear in print.)

A new website, Versification, chartered by Erzebet YellowBoy Carr, posts reviews of speculative poetry. The site debuted this week, and three of its reviews, all reprints, concern me: there’s Amal El-Mohtar’s review of my last collection, The Journey to Kailash; Deborah J. Brannon’s review of

Bull Spec poetry editor Dan Campbell offers a review of the poems in the upcoming Fantastique Unfettered 3, and makes mention of the interview with me that’s appearing there. …do read it for a hint of how Allen performs his poems and an insight into

Anita and I intend to host a book launch for C.S.E. Cooney’s Jack o’ the Hills and Nicole Kornher-Stace’s The Winter Triptych from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday — it should serve as something of a bridge between the Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories reading and