DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Sci-fi author/humorist/activist/Hollywood consultant John Scalzi generously lent me his celebrated “Big Idea” platform for the day to talk about Unseaming. But this presented a challenge: how to explain the “big idea” behind a collection of short stories published over an interval of nearly 20 years?

Behold, the book trailer for Unseaming! My thanks once again to artist Danielle Tunstall and her model Alexandra Johnson, and the wonderful, prefers-to-stay-anonymous animator!     AND: My book is live today! Finally! Unequivocally!   And here’s all the places you can get it:  

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

I find myself in a bit of a fix this week, albeit a good one, I suppose — stuff is coming together faster than I can keep up with it (at least in terms of signal boosting on social media.) This particular thing I wanted

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

A whole lot of cool things happened last week, and thanks to that wonderful combination of too busy and too tired, I didn’t get to do much more about them then chirp enthusiastically on Twitter. Thus this week will bring a series of blog posts

My thanks to my friend Anne Sampson for snapping photos from my reading in Roanoke this past Friday, and thus providing evidence that it actually happened, hee, and that there were even people there! I read a couple short bits from Unseaming, as well as

I’m grateful to be able to announce yet another preview reading of my forthcoming collection of horror stories, Unseaming, this time in my home city of Roanoke, at 6 p.m. this Friday, Sept. 5. The invitation came from The Roanoke Readings, a series run by

Circumstances conspired so that I ended up giving an unplanned-for preview reading of my forthcoming story collection Unseaming at Inquiring Minds bookstore in New Paltz, NY, a couple weeks ago. It ended up being a cozy gathering of friends, which was fine and dandy. Unseaming

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