DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Anita and I are gonna be at the World Fantasy Convention in D.C. in two weeks, and I have my schedule in hand. Both of my scheduled events are Friday, Nov. 7:   Poetry in Fantasy: Yesterday and Today Time: 11am-12pm, Nov. 7, Regency F

Michael M. Jones of Schrödinger’s Bookshelf has posted a new review of my novel The Black Fire Concerto, and gamely posted it to Amazon and Goodreads, too. It’s thorough, honest, and quite a lot of fun:   His traveling duo, the seemingly ageless Olyssa and

Sharing some of the entertaining consequences of my big ole Goodreads/Kindle giveaway (details here):    

My slugline there isn’t hyberbole if you understand that I’ve comparing this one to all the other giveaways I’ve personally done.   There’s five more days to go in the Goodreads giveaway for my upcoming short story collection Unseaming: twenty paperback advance reading copies are

Recently I was recruited for back-to-back “MindMelds” at SF Signal, in which assorted panelists of authors are asked to riff on sometimes esoteric topics.   In the first, “Our Favorite Food and Drink From Scifi and Fantasy!” I talk about the cooking and eating of

The Tales to Terrify horror fiction podcast has returned after a two week hiatus (while host Larry Santoro took care of some pressing deadlines.) The new episode contains my first “Tour of the Abattoir” audio column of 2014, in which I talk about horror music,

Last year this time I was ill and bedridden. This year, I’m simply inconvenienced thanks to a kaput computer. I consider this a step up.   In fact I was so sick at this time in 2012 that my year-end summary didn’t turn up until

The week before Christmas, a power surge took out my computer and our stove. The night of Christmas Eve, I learned that once again the excerpt from my novel The Black Fire Concerto was the most read story at Black Gate Magazine — Olyssa and

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was delighted and pleasantly surprised to learn that the excerpt from my novel The Black Fire Concerto was October’s most read story at Black Gate Magazine.   Black Gate overlord John O’Neill told me the excerpt not only won the

It’s different from writer to writer and from novel to novel. The Bull Spec blog has a series called the “The Hardest Part” in which writers confess what was most difficult about scribbling out their books. Samuel Montgomery-Blinn generously invited me to share what made