DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

With everything I’ve had going on — starting a new career, readying a celebration of my little publishing company’s 25th anniversary, it’s nice to be reminded that I’m a writer, as well. In that spirit, I’m pleased to announce two new short story sales (that

By far the biggest change to my career as a writer this past year was my departure from The Roanoke Times after 24 years, to start a new career at Virginia Tech as a media relations officer working in the university’s central communications and marketing

The time of year has once again come around to remind folks of the original publications produced by Mythic Delirium Books, and in 2022 that’s a simple task. (It’s also, you know, a great excuse to remind people to check out a terrific, thought-provoking read,

Six dark fantasy and horror titlesdiscounted to 99¢for an early Halloween start See a map of how my stories and upcoming novel connect Read the beginning of my 30th anniversary interview Read the second part of the interview Read part three Reflecting on your published

Six dark fantasy and horror titlesdiscounted to 99¢for an early Halloween start See a map of how my stories and upcoming novel connect Read the beginning of my 30th anniversary interview Read the second part of the interview How did you rise to become the

Six dark fantasy and horror titlesdiscounted to 99¢for an early Halloween start See a map of how my stories and upcoming novel connect Read the beginning of my 30th anniversary interview How do you feel about the way your poetry was distributed versus your prose?

We live in an era of time distortion. Mostly it’s a bloody distressing state, but occasionally there’s a boon — such as this wonderful and unexpected opportunity to congratulate A Sinister Quartet contributor Jessica P. Wick, whose debut novella “An Unkindness” has been selected for

In 2021, with the exception of a handful of poems (and more on that below) I was pretty dormant as a writer of published fiction (all the action was on the journalism side of my life, subject matter that I don’t discuss here — that’s

Who reads blogs anymore anyway? The purpose of this post, basically, is to play a sheepish game of catch-up. My work-life balance got completely tipped over in 2021 — though for an arguably GOOD reason, a promotion — and because of that I let posts

Howdy again, folks! I’ve had a fair number of cool things happen here in 2021 that I have yet to record here. Rather than continue to wait for a block of time to open up, I decided I’d better go ahead and launch these bottle