DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

Man, have I got a lot of stuff going on. Anita and I will be there starting Thursday, July 12.

Friday July 13

Posted in Appearances, Signal boosts

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, edited by Angela Chairman Craig. The book is available at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and at the publisher’s website, Elektrik Milk Bath Press.

“Strange Wisdoms” first appeared in 2006 in the late lamented H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and was also (at the publisher’s insistence) the title story of my poetry and prose collection that came out that same year. The collection, and the story, received a nice nod from The Philadephia Inquirer:

As in a really good etching, Allen’s landscape may be gray, but the gray scale has a remarkably wide gradation of shades. Touches of humor are like flecks of light in the gloom … there’s the moment when Starkey, the protagonist of the title piece—a prose fiction that concludes the book—comes upon a ghostly navigator on the corpse-laden ship Starkey is supposed to be taking out to sea to set afire:

““You’re using our known course and speed to chart our position?” Starkey asked.

“Yes,” the man answered.

“I believe we call that ‘dead’ reckoning,” Starkey said, grinning.

Posted in Fiction, Short stories, Signal boosts, Writing

“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 in the temple where she’d been enslaved since her mother’s murder. Nor had she asked for the suicidal task thrust upon her, to hurl an enchanted spear into the eye of Abzu, the Serpent that strove to crush the Egg of the World. The priest doomed her to the curse of She Who Runs, a spell that forces her to run at inhuman speed with no control over her destination. It won’t release her until she strikes Abzu blind.

But Lassamtu will discover that all she’s ever learned about the creation of her world amounts to lies and deception. Her tormentors will learn she’s nowhere near as helpless as they thought. And that’s only the start of this sinister yarn.

Part mythical fiction, part science fiction, part horror tale, “She Who Runs” first appeared in the anthology SKY WHALES AND OTHER WONDERS (ed. Vera Nazarian, Norilana Books, 2009.)

Art by Luis Beltrán

Posted in Fiction, Short stories, Writing

I’m pleased to be able to announced the official table of contents of Mythic Delirium 27.

• Carve Me by Alex Dally MacFarlane
• Sonnet 20: From Nikola Tesla’s Clockwork Assistant to Thomas Edison’s Automaton by Ken Liu
• What Would You Think by Theodora Goss
• She Fell in Love with Winter by S. Brackett Robertson
• Vivian to Merlin by Theodora Goss
• The Tears of Sigrune by Anna Sykora
• The Gardener by Sandi Leibowitz
• The Architecture of Grief by Rachel Swirsky
• Kalligeneia 2012 by Sonya Taaffe
• The Bones of the Girl Musicians by Sandi Leibowitz
• More by Sofía Rhei (translated into English by Lawrence Schimel)
• The Oracle Never Dances by Shira Lipkin
• The Magic Window by Sofía Rhei (translated into English by Lawrence Schimel)
• The Light of Dreams by Alexandra Seidel
• The Pied Piper vs. the Sirens by Gwynne Garfinkle
• Ereshkigal’s Proposal to Hades by Shira Lipkin
• Plucked from the Horo by Rose Lemberg
• My Grandson Never Dreams of Dragons by Lida Broadhurst

If you don’t want to miss this issue, getcher subscriptions here.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

Art by Avery Liell-Kok

Art by Luis Beltrán

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Fiction, Short stories, Signal boosts, Writing

As far as I know, I’ve sent everyone who sent in work for the March-Arpil submission window a response at this point. If you submitted poetry for this issue and you haven’t heard from me, please query.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

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 Rich had to say:

In the second April issue [of Beneath Ceaseless Skies] I enjoyed Mike Allen’s “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade”, another very dark story, about a girl orphaned when her parents are murdered for rebelling against a cruel Lord, who escapes her orphanage only to come to the sinister Manse Lohmar, where she encounters great kindness, but a horrible secret as well. The only weakness is a deliberately off-center telling — a letter from the protagonist to a lover we never meet, long after the central action — I think I see where Allen is going with this strategy, but in the end I think it frustrates the reader more than needed.

Mike Allen is good again in Not One of Us for April, with a very odd SF story, “Twa Sisters”, set in a city controlled by the Hierophant, and beginning with a deliberately retro painter encountering a person half tree/half woman and just getting stranger from there.

Posted in Fiction, Reviews, Short stories, Writing

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.”

Posted in Fiction, Short stories, Signal boosts, Strangeness

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 and pace of it are extremely well-wrought, and I both wrinkled my nose and shuddered a bit at the last line, so well done Allen, well done.

Posted in Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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 then, you and I: an introduction to speculative poetry”

And here’s a podcast I did with Karen and Star*Line editor F.J. Bergmann.

In both I’ve taken the names in vain of a number of poets and poetry publications.

Posted in Appearances, Audio, Interviews, Poetry, Signal boosts