DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Reposted from the latest project update.

WE DID IT! CLOCKWORK PHOENIX WILL PAY PRO RATES. AND NOW OUR NEXT GOAL: A NEW WEBZINE FOR POETRY AND FICTION. TARGET: $10,000.

Thank you all so much! We’re overwhelmed.

The next volume of Clockwork Phoenix will pay 5 cents a word for fiction. Again, thank you.

So, we’re here. Earlier than expected. And I think there’s time to try for something more. I’ve mentioned before that one of our stretch goals could be creating a new webzine for showcasing poetry and fiction. This is something we’ve wanted to do for years but completely lacked the resources.

But now, I think we could make it happen.

If this Kickstarter can reach $10,000, that should leave us with enough to fund 12 issues of a new Internet magazine. Each issue will hold one story (word limit 4,000 at 2 cents a word) and two poems ($5 each.) In essence, it will be a continuation of the MYTHIC anthologies we used to produce (that published stories like Cherie Priest’s “The Immigrant.”)

If we hit that goal, we’ll launch in 2013.

I can’t think of what else to say other than to repeat, again: Thank you!

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Fiction, Kickstarter, Poetry

The Kickstarter for Clockwork Phoenix is less than $450 away from reaching $8,000, at which point the anthology will be able to pay pro rates for stories. We have a week left.

Should we manage to go past $8,000, I have a new stretch goal in mind. I’ve wanted to try creating my own web-only market for poetry and fiction for a long, long time but haven’t had the resources. Now maybe it’s finally possible.

John O’Neill of Black Gate has generously allowed me to make a guest post explaining what drives me to edit Clockwork Phoenix, and why I personally feel it’s worth continuing. Click here to check it out!

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Kickstarter, Signal boosts

Reposted from Update #12 of the Clockwork Phoenix Kickstarter.

Posted in Strangeness

The Interstitial Arts Foundation has posted an interview with me about the Clockwork Phoenix Kickstarter and other things. My thanks to them for lending me a soapbox.

In pursuit of our goal of going pro, we’ve added some new reward levels. Anita and I are offering story critiques at $100 — fair warning, I’m known for brutal honesty when I do these — and we’re also offering a “bag full of books” reward at $125.

And we’ve got another one that’s really special, that I’m really thrilled about. Please forgive me for being long-winded, because it requires a little back story.

Before I edited the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies, I edited another anthology series called MYTHIC. It only had a two-volume run, but wound up being the prototype for what we did with the Clockwork Phoenix books. I had the pleasure of including in the second MYTHIC book a delightfully whimsical little story called “The Immigrant” by a writer named Cherie Priest.

In 2006, when the “The Immigrant” came out, Cherie was in the middle of her Southern Gothic trilogy that begins with Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Three years later she came out with Boneshaker, the book that threw her career wide open, combining the Old West, steampunk and zombies. Cherie was nominated for a Hugo, won a Locus Award and Boneshaker was snatched up for a movie adaptation by Hammer Films.

“The Immigrant” displays the same seamless blend of the historical and the fantastic that marks all Cherie’s work. Here’s how Strange Horizons described the tale’s opening: “An American GI finds a young dragon, injured and alone, in the cellar of a French church during the days following the Normandy invasion.”

I asked Cherie if she’d be willing to let me reprint this story in a special limited, numbered edition just for this Kickstarter and she said yes, and that she’s willing to sign copies too. I then asked regular Mythic Delirium illustrator Paula Friedlander if she’d be willing to create the cover and illustrations, and she’s also on board. Paula works exclusively with paper cutouts; no one’s work in this field looks quite like hers.

So here’s the deal: this special edition signed chapbook of Cherie Priest’s “The Immigrant” brought to life with Paula’s art will be made available only through this Kickstarter. We’ll make as many as we need to fill the orders we receive here and no more. I’ve created a new $45 reward level that adds a pre-order of this book to the pre-order of the paperback edition of the fourth Clockwork Phoenix volume that you get at the $25 pledge level (along with all the accompanying e-books.)

Furthermore, if someone has backed us or wants to back us at one of the reward levels ranging from $50 to $100 and also wants to add “The Immigrant” to their swag, increase your pledge by $20 and it will be yours — I’ll track who does this (or you can e-mail me at mythicdelirium@gmail.com and let me know) and follow up once the Kickstarter closes. If you pledge at one of the levels that gets you listed as a supporter in all our future publications ($125 and up) this chapbook will automatically be included in your bounty.

My heartfelt thanks to Cherie and to Paula for their willingness to make this happen, and a hat tip to Rose Lemberg, who sparked this idea. And thanks again to all the rest of you who’ve backed the project so far, for presenting me with the wonderful problem of how to come with ways to make an already successful Kickstarter even more so.

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Interviews, Kickstarter, Signal boosts

Today the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter reached the halfway point, with 15 days done and 15 days to go. I’m amazed at the progress we’ve made, but we’re still chasing that elusive $8,000 goal so that for the first time the series can pay pro rates for fiction. So many have pitched in already for which I’m sublimely grateful; any more help we can get spreading the word will still make a difference.

Speaking of spreading the word, I’ve been interviewed (a second time!) over at Marshall’s Super-Sekrit Clubhouse, about how it came to be that I could take charge as publisher as well as editor of Clockwork Phoenix 4, and other things, such as balancing poetry and fiction, and the other projects I have in the works. Click the banner below to take a look.

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Fiction, Interviews, Kickstarter, Poetry, Signal boosts, Writing

John DeNardo of SF Signal graciously allowed me to go on at length about why I turned to Kickstarter to fund Clockwork Phoenix 4.

But, just as with Mythic Delirium all those years ago, my parent company hit hard times, no one else is going to take its place, and if I want to keep going I have to go it alone. And I think Clockwork Phoenix has more to offer, that we bringing something to the table that the writing and reading community needs, that no one else brings.

Except, I’m not really going it alone.

That’s what I love about the concept of Kickstarter. It allows me to stand before the Internet community and say: I want to do this. Will you help me?

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Interviews, Kickstarter, Signal boosts

If anyone had told me that I would wake up on the twelfth day of our Kickstarter campaign and discover that WE ARE ALREADY FULLY FUNDED I am not sure what I would have said to them.

But I can tell you what I have said this morning: many, many iterations of, “OH MY GOD WE DID IT!”

Thank you, all of you, so much!

Reaching $5,000 means that this book will happen. We’ve reached the minimum Anita and I need to make it work.

But I’d probably best repeat what I said yesterday: we hope to do better than the minimum. Both with this new book and with our future endeavors to come.

Our first stretch goals are simple. At $6,500, I can guarantee paying 4 cents a word to the contributors to the fourth CLOCKWORK PHOENIX volume. At $8,000, we’ll be able to pay 5 cents a word, which is considered professional rate.

This is what our sights are set on next. All the rewards we have listed are still available (except for the Clockwork Phoenix pins available at $60, which sold out; they remain available at $125) and we’re probably going to add a couple more things before it’s over.

Feel free to spread the news, and to let folks know about our next phase. A phase that all of you made possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Fiction, Kickstarter, Signal boosts

For poetry lovers, this is always great news.

Posted in Poetry, Signal boosts

One of the surprise delights of ReaderCon this past weekend was learning via word of mouth that my buddy Shira Lipkin had won the 2012 Rhysling Award for short poem with her surreal prose piece “The Library, After,” which I published in Mythic Delirium 24. Shira ended up giving a reading of the poem during my Sunday morning workshop.

She describes how this poem came to be on her website. Excerpts below:

I originally wrote “The Library, After” at the very end of 2008 … I started reading it at conventions – I tend to prefer to read flash and poetry, because it keeps a reading moving, switching gears. It built a small following. … I had such affection for this story that, when I attended the Meet the Pros(e) party at Readercon 2009 (writers get one line from their work printed up on stickers and share it with people, creating a sort of absurdist poetry as you collect other people’s lines), I used a line from it: “Awakened, the library went feral.” I bounced up to Mythic Delirium editor Mike Allen and traded lines with him, and he said “Where is this from?” and then, “Has it been published?”

I sent him the story. And proceeded to forget that I’d ever done so. It was too short for his Clockwork Phoenix anthology series, and Mythic Delirium is a poetry magazine, so I was expecting nothing except that hopefully he’d enjoy it. But he ended up e-mailing me and asking if he could buy it for Mythic Delirium.

But – it’s not a poem, I said.

It’s poetic, he said.

Okay.

Illustration for "The Library, After" by Paula Friedlander

I’m pleased to add that this is now the fifth poem from Mythic Delirium to land a Rhysling Award. Here’s the complete list (with links):

• “Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks,” Theodora Goss, 2004

• “Eating Light,” F.J. Bergmann, 2008

• “Song for an Ancient City,” Amal El-Mohtar, 2009

• “In the Astronaut Asylum,” Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, 2010

• “The Library, After,” Shira Lipkin, 2012

Posted in Awards, Editing, Mythic Delirium

NOTE: This is taken from my most recent update posted on the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter page. I hope to have time for something like an actual con report later today or this week; Kickstarters apparently eat one’s life whole.

Anita and I have just gotten back from our extended trip to Boston and New York, which included all four days of ReaderCon. (Which was wonderful, by the way — but I’m really exhausted, so I’m sorry if this comes out discombobulated.)

My seat-of-the-pants plan had been to launch the Kickstarter just before the convention, and then tout it heavily once I was there in hopes of getting it rolling. (I am proud to report a public relations coup of sorts, as Eric Van, host of ReaderCon’s tongue-in-cheek Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition, in which I was a contestant, got the entire 400-strong audience to repeat after him, “Mike Allen has a Kickstarter for Clockwork Phoenix 4, an original anthology.” You had to be there, but if you were you were hopefully laughing your head off.)

Frankly, I had thought I might be getting my first donations by now, NOT that I would already be over halfway there. I am amazed and delighted by those who’ve chosen to back the project and those who’ve signal boosted and those who’ve done both — people I know from many different walks of my life and people I’ve never met before (though I’m happy to make your acquaintance.) I’m astonished that we’re 58% funded in eight days. [This morning it’s 62% funded.] Heck, at least for the moment, we’ve even made the “Popular This Week” page for fiction.

Mind you, this experience has been much more of a roller coaster ride than a smooth rocket launch. During that first giddy 48 hours, when we made it past $2000 with startling speed, I started thinking I’d better break out those stretch goals now, because at this rate securing $8,000 to pay pro rates for all the stories would take no time at all, and of course I’d love for this book to be the best yet in the series in all possible ways…

And then we had a couple days where no new backers pledged, which had me sweating bullets. As I’m sure all of you know, Kickstarter is all or nothing, and if this campaign fails there won’t be a Clockwork Phoenix 4.

But that trend didn’t last either, and here we are almost at $3,000, with 22 days still to go. This is wonderful. Thank you all. Thank you.

Please forgive my first-time jitters. Of course, I’d love to see this campaign cross the $5,000 threshold with time to spare, so that I can be certain that this book will be something you can hold in your hands (where in a perfect-bound paper back or within an iPad, Nook or Kindle). And also so that I have time to work toward goals that will take this project beyond the bare minimum. I want this book to be the best I’ve ever assembled.

But for now, it’s clear I need to concentrate on shortening the long march to fully-funded. Anything you can to to further signal boost and get the word out to more people will make a difference. (I know it will, because I’ve been watching it happen!) I’ll be doing a lot of promoting in the next couple weeks (I already have some guest blog posts lined up in various places) but I certainly can’t do it alone.

By the way, if any of you have suggests for things I ought to try, I’m all ears.

Anita, for her part, has already begun making Clockwork Phoenix pins for those who’ve pledged at those levels. More on these anon. With pictures.

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Kickstarter, Signal boosts