DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

It’s been in the back of my mind since April Fool’s Day that it might be neat to do a National Poetry Month tribute, even though the course of my writing has veered well away from poetry in recent years. I certainly wasn’t going to

The December issue of Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field is now in stores, and it contains something that’s, from my perspective, very unusual: a 4,600-word interview with me! New York Times-bestselling, multiple-award winning author Seanan McGuire is the headliner, as

So this was a surprise. I’d thought my poem “The Headless Hero” in the October issue of Dreams & Nightmares was going to be my last published poem for a while. But then a poem I had sent to Star*Line came out in the Fall

It feels like Anita and I haven’t had much time to take a breath since we got back from from Finland and Iceland in August. In my editorial for the newest issue of Mythic Delirium, I wrote a bit about how that trip went, and

Back in September, I threw myself full tilt into a long overdue redraft of my fantasy/horror novel Trail of Shadows, after about a year and a half of occasionally pecking at it while dealing with obligations related to Clockwork Phoenix 5. This past Sunday, I

Laird Barron, one of my favorite horror writers of all time and a really generous guy (don’t miss his latest, Swift to Chase), started a series of posts over at his journal simply titled “Authors to Read.” Part I, from late February, highlighted great books

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

Last week I found out that my newest poetry collection, Hungry Constellations, is a Suzette Haden Elgin Award nominee. This is a relatively new award given by the Science Fiction Poetry Association for best poetry collection, chosen by member vote.   I considered Suzette a

My kooky career path has led me to a place where two major aspects of my life have overlapped unexpectedly: speculative poetry and Rammstein fandom. Horror house Raw Dog Screaming Press has published an English translation of Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann’s second poetry collection, On