DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

So I drop in a heap at the end of 2015 feeling like I’ve packed several years’ worth of creative living into one. This ain’t the first time for that, but even judged my often hyper-busy standard this has been a barnstormer of a year,

I have been deep, deep, deep in the wilderness of Kickstarter campaign/submission reading land as bits and bobs related to my own writings have popped up over the last couple of months. This is my attempt to assemble them in a more tangible form than

Recently Best Horror of the Year editor Ellen Datlow posted her annual recommended reading list, and I was pleased to see that four of my stories from 2014 made the bloody cut.   On the honorable mention roll call: “The Quiltmaker,” my novella-length sequel to

In honor of Danielle Tunstall‘s Chesley Award nomination for best paperback cover, the ebook edition of Unseaming will be on sale for 99 cents through Thursday night.   The Chesley Awards, given by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, will be announced Thursday

Readercon was great, but as I’m in the midst of reading Clockwork Phoenix 5 submissions and starting on a novel revision, I’m not going to be able to provide any kind of detailed report.     I did not win the Shirley Jackson Award, though

Editor Rhonda Parrish has shared the lovely and eerie cover for her forthcoming anthology Corvidae, which contains a new weird tale from yours truly, “The Cruelest Team Will Win.” (It’s a sequel, of sorts, to “The Hiker’s Tale” in Unseaming. The corvidae family, of course,

So I have my final Readercon schedule and it’s pretty awesome (I am going to be one busy, busy tiger) though it doesn’t cover things like the dual-book party Anita and I will throw to celebrate the launch of Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney and

I’ve got two promotions going on simultaneously to tell all y’all about:   Promotion one: My Shirley Jackson Award-nominated horror story collection Unseaming is the featured book today at Kindle Books and Tips. Coinciding with this, the ebook is available on Kindle, discounted from $5.99

Even before the release of Unseaming last October, folks were expressing to me their enthusiasm for (or terror of, or repulsion by, or some combination thereof) horror photographer Danielle Tunstall’s arresting cover image. The buzz only grew once the book came out.   (Fact is,

Erzebet YellowBoy Carr of Papaveria Press has taken my most relentless horror story and shaped it into something beautiful. The Quiltmaker is available now in a very limited edition, a hand-bound hardcover with stunning cover art from Paula Arwen Owen.     I’ve long admired