DESCENT INTO LIGHT: Mike Allen’s Home Page

I’m pleased to announce that my highly experimental sf short story “Twa Sisters” has sold to John Benson at Not One of Us, scheduled for his April issue.

The story was inspired by this set of artwork shown to me by buddy Patty Templeton. I consider it the “spiritual sequel” to my novelette “Stolen Souls” that just got reprinted in Fantastique Unfettered. But while “Stolen Souls” was an example of how far my imagination could push its limit in the 1990s, “Twa Sisters” is about how far I can push it now. In other words, considerably farther out.

The story contains zany visual formatting (not dissimilar in places from what Kendall Evans, David C. Kopaska-Merkel and I did in our poem “Rattlebox III.”) I’m grateful John’s willing to tackle it, multiple text columns and all.

Posted in Fiction, Short stories, Writing

Some nice recognitions for my poetry over the past few days.

First, the poem that I co-wrote with Sonya Taaffe and Nicole Kornher-Stace, “The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves,” selected by Catherynne M. Valente for publication in Apex Magazine last year, has been nominated for a Rhysling Award. I can’t help but be pleased, as of all the new things I had published in 2011 this piece is hands-down my favorite.

Second, the Fantasy Literature blog has posted a review of Phantasmagorium issue 2, and bless Terry Weyna for once again taking the time to also review the poetry, a duty most reviewers shirk. She writes this about my poem “Budding”:

…about parents troubled by the apparent artistic talent of their baby, who seems to be painting like Francis Bacon while still in her crib. Those parents are proud as can be, but worried – maybe even scared. It’s a successful horror poem with some nice imagery (“sketched houses with screams for doors,” for instance).

Posted in Awards, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

My new poem “Carrington’s Ferry” has just appeared in Strange Horizons, a piece inspired by the life and works of Leonora Carrington. It’s the first installment in my “Disturbing Muses” cycle of poems since “Mondrian’s War” in 2008 (which, interestingly enough, also appeared in Strange Horizons.)

Posted in Poetry, Writing

Tales to Terrify is the new sister podcast to StarShipSofa, focused exclusively on horror.

Madman Tony C. Smith invited me to contribute a monthly column to Tales to Terrify. I just finished recording the first installment. I’m calling it “Tour of the Abattoir.” Said abattoir being my brain, as many of the characters from my stories could attest.

I hope folks enjoy it. I’m also grateful that Tony is a patient madman because (ulp!) it’s two weeks late…

Posted in Appearances, Audio, Signal boosts, Strangeness

My poem “Budding” is now available in Issue 2 of Phantasmagorium, edited by new master of horror Laird Barron. I understand there will be a print edition to come, but as of now the new issue of the zine is available in PDF, .epub and .mobi format. Click here to learn more.

Posted in Poetry, Writing

I’m still pretty giddy from the news that I’ve sold my first short story collection, but I had another sale earlier this week. New Star*Line editor F.J. Bergmann has accepted my poem “The Duelists” for her fall issue. Woo-hoo!

Posted in Poetry, Writing

You might recall this post I made last month about creating an e-book collection of my horror tales?

Well, scratch that plan. Much to my delight, and with immense gratitude to Jason Sizemore: Apex Publications is going to do it. And it will be available in trade paperback too. Official press release here at the Apex blog.

The tentative table of contents (nothing set in stone yet, of course) looks like this (Anita helped me figure it out.)

• The Button Bin
• The Blessed Days
• Humpty
• Her Acres of Pastoral Playground
• An Invitation via E-mail
• The Hiker’s Tale
• The Music of Bremen Farm
• Stone Flowers
• Let There Be Darkness
• The Quiltmaker

That’s a lot of concentrated evil in one book.

I should note, the Papaveria Press special hand-bound hardcover edition of “The Quiltmaker” (the novella-length sequel to “The Button Bin”) is still a go. (And still seeking fabric.)

Posted in Short stories, Writing

Here’s a curious turn for you: I’m once again being asked to teach in a reputable setting.

Saturday, January 28 at 9 a.m. on the Hollins University campus, I’ll give a presentation called “The Last Redoubt: Writing Short Stories for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Markets” as part of the weekend-long Roanoke Regional Writers Conference (click here for details). My presentation is followed at 10 a.m. in the same room by fellow Roanoke writer Rod Belcher’s “Selling the Sense of Wonder: Writing, Marketing and Surviving Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror.” (Rod has a novel on its way from Tor.) I chose the title “The Last Redoubt” based on the idea that speculative fiction is the last commercial genre where the short story scene remains important.

Now, to figure out what I’m actually going to say….

Posted in Appearances, Signal boosts

I’m pleased to be able to announce the official table of contents of the next issue of Mythic Delirium.

Myths and Delusions • Editorial • 2
Plutoid • John Philip Johnson • 3
Lost In the Static • G.O. Clark • 5
Grant Proposal • Lyn C.A. Gardner • 6
The Dark Flow • Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel • 7
The Sisters • April Grant • 8
Kin • S. Brackett Robertson • 10
The Journeymaker in Kestai • Rose Lemberg • 11
The Daughter of Lir • Sandi Leibowitz • 12
Home • Lyn C.A. Gardner • 14
Desert Stories • Larry Hammer • 15
The Forest King • Alexandra Seidel • 17
Under the Ashpodel • Erik Amundsen • 19
She Knocks • Amal El-Mohtar • 20
Tryptich: an Offering of Fruit • Dan Campbell • 22
Barbara Newhall Follett welcomes home • J.C. Runolfson • 24
Time to Grow Up Where There’s No Time At All • Jason Sturner • 25
Scythe-Walk • Sonya Taaffe • 26
Sleeping Furies • C.S.E. Cooney • 27
A Different Scheherazade • Alexandra Seidel • 28
The Woman Who Lived by the Ocean Was Lonely and Tried to Make Herself a Husband • Carma Lynn Park • 29
Mrs. Grendel • Noel Sloboda • 30
This Illusion of Flesh • Virginia M. Mohlere • 32

 

Interior art by Paula Friedlander, 4, 13, 23;
Don Eaves and Terrence Mollendor, 9;
Daniel Trout, 16; Anita Allen, 18 

Cover art and design by Tim Mullins

 

If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe to the paper version here at MythicDelirium.com or the electronic version here at Weightless Books.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium, Signal boosts

Earlier this week I was contacted out of the blue by Denmark denizen Knud Larn, the editor of an old school sf fanzine called Fandom Forever, distributed by the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. “There is too little poetry in fanzines nowadays,” he said, made a nice offer and asked if I would contribute a new poem and four reprints. And so, I’m pleased to report that my poem “A Prayer,” a part of the “Claire-dare” series from 2010, will be appearing in Larn’s next issue, due out Feb. 1 (my birthday!) He’s also reprinting my sf-tinged poems “Strange Cargo,” “retrovirus,” “Tithonus on the Shore of Ocean” and “Charon Finds a Woman on the Gridshore,” specifically the “preferred text” versions from my 2008 collection The Journey to Kailash.

I’ve had another long term “surprise sale” recently come to a conclusion just this past Monday. Back in May I read my poem “Sisyphus Crawls” (another Claire-dare piece, now available in the latest issue of Fantastique Unfettered) aloud to the audience at No Shame Theatre here in Roanoke. Afterward a fellow named Luke Davis approached me and told me he liked the poem so much he’d happily pay me for a hand-written, framed version of it.

It took me a long time to get around to doing this. Part of it was all the work I was doing rewriting my first novel. Part of it was that, though I have a vestigial visual arts background — I started college as an art major, didn’t figure out writing was what really interested me more than anything else until my senior year — creating this piece was something now so far outside my usual paradigm that I couldn’t quite get my mind around it.

But I finally made it happen:

Posted in Poetry, Strangeness, Writing