DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Ravencon, Richmond’s long-running science fiction convention, established an award in 2018 to honor the memory of (Roanoke-born!) author, bookseller, essayist, and sf fan extraordinaire Bud Webster. Its full name is the Clarence Howard “Bud” Webster Award for Best Virginian Author, and as you might surmise,

This blog went silent after September of this year, but it ain’t because nothin’ wuz happening. Rather the opposite, in fact. Thus this final entry of 2025 ends up being a bit of a rushed recap, and there’s a lot to recap. Since a lot

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this post, mainly because I struggled to figure out where to start. I suppose I could begin with the obvious: on Oct. 7, Broken Eye Books will release my horror novel Trail of Shadows. This

Better late than never for me to “start spreading the news!” As of today I’m setting out on my first-ever mini-book tour in support of my newly-re-released novel The Black Fire Concerto!” I’ll be making a handful of stops in the great urban northeast over

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,

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