DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Today Clockwork Phoenix 4 opens to submissions. Today is also the final day you can submit to Mythic Delirium 28. Did I mention today is also when the edits to my novel The Black Fire Concerto are due in to Black Gate? Bring it on.

So last night and this morning I got the go-ahead to share two very exciting bits of news that came to fruition in the month following the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter. First, I’m pleased to announce the sale of my novel, tentatively titled The Black

† This coming Wednesday at The Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, I’ll be giving a presentation, “How to Run a Successful Kickstarter,” as part of PechaKucha Night Volume 3. The music starts at 6 p.m., the show at 7 p.m., space and tickets are limited. (The

I’m pleased to report that my truly strange short story “Monster” that combines serial killers and fractals has sold to the new horror journal [Nameless] Magazine, and is currently scheduled for a Spring 2013 release. I’ve got a number of other behind-the-scenes things going on

Reposted from the latest project update. WE DID IT! CLOCKWORK PHOENIX WILL PAY PRO RATES. AND NOW OUR NEXT GOAL: A NEW WEBZINE FOR POETRY AND FICTION. TARGET: $10,000. Thank you all so much! We’re overwhelmed. The next volume of Clockwork Phoenix will pay 5

Today the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter reached the halfway point, with 15 days done and 15 days to go. I’m amazed at the progress we’ve made, but we’re still chasing that elusive $8,000 goal so that for the first time the series can pay pro

If anyone had told me that I would wake up on the twelfth day of our Kickstarter campaign and discover that WE ARE ALREADY FULLY FUNDED I am not sure what I would have said to them. But I can tell you what I have

In which I discuss horror stories that have unnerved me over the years, share a very short story of my own, “Six Waking Nightmares that Poe Gave Me in Third Grade,” and review Chesya Burke’s short story collection Let’s Play White. There’s also a short

As long promised: with a lovely illustration by Avery Liell-Kok and a gracious introduction by Shira Lipkin. “Mike Allen’s ‘Sleepless, Burning Life‘ is a very Moorcockian trip through cosmic clockwork, in search of ‘the dark-eyed dancer who made the cosmos turn.’ The worldbuilding is beautiful,

Update: There’s a Goodreads giveaway of Ocean Stories open for entries through June 25. Continuing the curious wave of reprints I’ve had this year, my short story “Strange Wisdoms of the Dead,” co-written with Charles M. Saplak, has just (re)appeared in the anthology Ocean Stories,