DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

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.”

Versification has published a poem-by-poem review of Inscrawl #3 by Amal El-Mohtar. About my contribution, “Surcease,” she writes: Mike Allen’s “Surcease” puts his characteristic horror-spin on things, and very vividly and evocatively describes a plague-ridden man in the last moments of his life. The rhythm

Karen Burnham, who runs the Locus Roundtable at Locus Online, has rounded up a series of speculative poetry-related posts, podcasts and interviews for the month of May, and I got to be first out of the gate. Here’s my guest blog post: “Let us go

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

My dark fantasy short story “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade” just appeared in the newest issue of literary fantasy adventure zine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It was inspired by a nightmare I had while attending the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH in 2010 — though the scene

I have been through many a cringe-inducing conversation in my life wherein someone identifies themselves to me as a fellow published poet, and then reveals that they were published by the National Library of Poetry, one of the most infamous scams in recent publishing history.