DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

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,

“Mike Allen’s ‘She Who Runs’ gives flesh to spells moving faster than time.” — Publishers Weekly No girl had ever lived so long wearing the curse of She Who Runs. Lassamtu was not her name, but the name forced on her by the high priest

Art by Avery Liell-Kok Art by Luis Beltrán

Rich Horton reviewed two of my short stories in the June 2012 issue of Locus, and put one of them, “Twa Sisters,” on the magazine’s monthly Recommended Reading List. That’s the first time that’s happened to me, so needless to say I’m thrilled. Here’s what

This handsome new hardcover short story collection from British puckster (prank-star?) Ian Watson…. …contains the wacky novelette that he and I co-wrote, “Dee-Dee and the Dumpy Dancers,” accurately described by The Guardian as a “bizarre vision … featuring aerial ballet and alien turkeys.”

My new short story at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade,” has garnered a couple of reviews I’m pleased to share. First a review from Tangent Online by Chuck Rothman. He writes: “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade” takes the form of a letter from Daeliya, a woman