DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

A couple of bits of news from opposite ends of the literary spectrum this week.   My poem “A Curtain of Stars” is being reprinted in Artemis Journal, a beautiful Southwest Virginia literary magazine that’s being revived after more than a decade of dormancy. Like

This is actually old news, but it’s taken me quite a while to get around to making a note of it, so please forgive. The Ian Whates-edited anthology Solaris Rising 2: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction, which contains my far future sf story

My brief, strange short story “The Lead Between the Panes” has just appeared at the new online fiction and poetry zine Lakeside Circus. My story falls somewhere between an M.R. James pastiche, a dark meditation on life’s cruelties, and a tone poem. (EDIT LONG AFTER

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

This notice is mainly for those associate and active SFWA members who have access to the private forums. I’ve made all of the following available there for those looking for material for Nebula consideration. #SFWApro     The Black Fire Concerto (novel, by me!) PDF,

Today, for the sake of the Halloween season, The Roanoke Times (my employer!) published my new ghost story “The Helping Hand.” This was an unexpected boon! I’m honored that my colleagues in the Features Department gave me a chance to exercise my fiction-writing chops for

Locus Magazine short fiction review Rich Horton has some really cool things to say about my short story “Still Life With Skull” in his just-published review of Solaris Rising 2.   Mike Allen’s “Still Life With Skull”, set in the same very strange world as

I’m pleased to announce that my strange somewhat science fictional poem “Dearly Beloved” has just sold to Canadian anthology series Postscripts to Darkness.   I’m especially tickled because “Dearly Beloved” is part of a series — it’s set in the same far future world as

Ellen Datlow has posted her annual “long list” of honorable mentions (Part 1) (Part 2) selected from the material she read for this year’s edition of The Best Horror of the Year.   I was pleased to discover I earned four this year for stuff

I’m proud to able to announce the sale of my short story “The Lead Between the Panes” to Lakeside Circus, publisher, editor and writer Carrie Cuinn’s new online zine. (By the way, she’s still looking for submissions for the first issue.)   “The Lead Between