DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

First, an excerpt from the “Acknowledgements” essay I wrote for the new edition of my novel The Black Fire Concerto. The Black Fire Concerto began its life as a novelette called “The Reed Player.” This story combined two elements that did not obviously belong together:

I began 2024 with no notion that my first published novel was going to get a makeover. Lo, and behold, that day has arrived! My sidearms and sorcery secondary world zombie apocalypse novel The Black Fire Concerto spreads its black fire curse across the world

Second chances like this one don’t come around often in the publishing world. We’re less than three weeks away from the re-release of my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto. Because I’ve not had other novels published in the meantime, it’s still my first novel,

A combination of terrific and not-terrific developments prevented me from posting several overdue items here before now. I’m going to get the absolute most important thing out of the way first: My novel The Black Fire Concerto has been made available for pre-orders. Here is

This is, possibly, the wildest update I will ever post on this site. Not that many people will read it here, but rest assured, I’ll be sharing this information in other places where it will be seen. As widely as possible, in fact. For starters,

There’s been a lot of moving and shaking in my world, much of which has been mentioned or at least hinted at on my Facebook and Instagram pages, where I am posting most of my immediate updates in this post-Twitter environment. The biggest news looming

2023 has been a spectacular, extraordinarily special and extremely stressful year. A whole lot happened during the past five months, with events moving faster than the speed of a blog. First, it’s high time I shared Ye Olde Annual Award Eligibility Post, both for the

Prior to this post, you’ll notice a proliferation of double posts that were simultaneously shared on both the Mythic Delirium site and this one. That’s because my home blog here had a functional “simulpost to Twitter” feature, which doesn’t work anymore because of Elon Musk-driven

The dual launch for The Twice-Drowned Saint by C.S.E. Cooney and The Collected Enchantments went really well for Anita and I, despite not having a lot of time to get ready for Boskone thanks to accumulated real-world obligations. It was great to revisit our friends

With everything I’ve had going on — starting a new career, readying a celebration of my little publishing company’s 25th anniversary, it’s nice to be reminded that I’m a writer, as well. In that spirit, I’m pleased to announce two new short story sales (that