DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

I’m delighted to announce this morning that Nicole Kornher-Stace’s weird mystical steampunk tale “To Seek Her Fortune” from Clockwork Phoenix 3 is available now as a podcast at the Hugo Award-winning StarShipSofa. Go, listen, enjoy!

I’m pleased to announce that Erzebet Yellowboy Carr of Papaveria Press plans next year to create a limited (18-copy) special edition of “The Quiltmaker,” my novella that’s a direct sequel to my Nebula Award-nominated horror story “The Button Bin.” And she’ll be working with my

Tonight I’m going to read three brief short stories as part of a Studio Roanoke event called “The Big Idea.” I adore how they’ve billed me: Featuring Death Newman, Chris Shepard, Illusions by Nelson Oliver, and creepiness from Mike Allen! Sat. Oct. 29th, 8PM, $5.00

As well as some delightfully pulpy artwork. Cthulhu fhtagn! The podcast also contains an interview with me afterward, full of awkward pauses, strange skips, and giggle fits. I reveal, among other things, that the inspiration for “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” owes more to John

I learned something today that leaves me especially tickled. As a part of the “Mike Allen feature” in issue 4 of Fantastique Unfettered, the zine is reprinting my science fiction novelette “Stolen Souls.” Whatever flaws it may have, this piece holds a lot of sentimental

Google shows me this blog review of my short story “An Invitation via Email,” which appeared in the July/Aug. 2008 issue of Weird Tales (#350), edited by Ann VanderMeer. I think the review is longer than the story! Again, I include it for grins. …

Twitter revealed to me David Hebblethwaite’s review of Apex Magazine 23, which contains a passage about my “Button Bin”: The first of the issue’s two reprints, Mike Allen’s “The Button Bin” (reproduced from a 2007 issue of Helix), is disquieting in both its style and content. Searching

T.J. McIntyre’s Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction — all proceeds from which go to the Red Cross to help with tornado relief in the South — is out now on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle, with stories and poems from a cutting edge and up-and-coming roster including

Sam Tomaino at SF Revu tackles the stories in Apex Magazine 23 and makes mention of my “Button Bin“: “The Button Bin” by Mike Allen (originally appeared in Helix: Speculative Fiction Quarterly, 2007) is quite the horror story. Our narrator is after a man named

When I saw that T.J. McIntyre decided to resurrect his zine Southern Fried Weirdness as a Kindle anthology with all proceeds to go to tornado relief, I realized I might have something that would fit in with that project right well. And as it turns