Mike Allen

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About Mike Allen
Nebula, Shirley Jackson and two-time World Fantasy award finalist Mike Allen wears many hats. As editor and publisher of the Mythic Delirium Books imprint, he helmed MYTHIC DELIRIUM magazine and the five volumes in the CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series. His own short stories have been gathered in three collections: UNSEAMING, THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES and AFTERMATH OF AN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT. He’s won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times, and his most recent collection of verse, HUNGRY CONSTELLATIONS, was a Suzette Haden Elgin Award nominee. A dark fantasy novel, THE BLACK FIRE CONCERTO, appeared in 2013.
More of Mike's stories have popped up in places like BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES, LACKINGTON'S, SPECTRAL REALMS and the anthologies BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR ONE, CTHULHU'S REIGN, SOLARIS RISING 2, TOMORROW'S CTHULHU, PLUTO IN FURS, PHANTASM/CHIMERA, NOWHEREVILLE, TRANSMISSIONS FROM PUNKTOWN and A SINISTER QUARTET.
For more than a decade he’s worked as the arts and culture columnist for the daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va., where he and his wife Anita live with a cat so full of trouble she’s named Pandora. You can follow Mike’s exploits as a writer at descentintolight.com, as an editor at mythicdelirium.com, and all at once on Twitter at @mythicdelirium. You can contact Mike at mythicdelirium[at]gmail[dot]com.
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Author Updates
Books By Mike Allen
The Necronomicon. For centuries, scholars of the occult have sought out the darkly fabled tome, hoping to gain insight into the secret workings of the universe—or unbridled power. Instead, the book rewards their pursuit with madness and devastation.
Under the guidance of Shirley Jackson Award-winning editor Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., The Leaves of a Necronomicon traces the impact of a single copy of the mysterious work on its owners and those around them as it passes from hand to hand across the decades.
The history is told in braided novel form, with chapters contributed by a gathering of outstanding horror and dark fantasy authors, including S. P. Miskowski, Michael Cisco, Damien Angelica Walters, Nick Mamatas, Anna Tambour, and Jeffrey Thomas.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: From Hand to Hand . . . to Hand— by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
- Chapter 1: The Bookmaker by Nate Pedersen
- Chapter 2: The Collector of Rare Editions by Donald Tyson
- Chapter 3: Down to a Sunless Sea by Allyson Bird
- Chapter 4: Dawn Watch by Daniel Mills
- Chapter 5: Liquor City by Nick Mamatas
- Interlude: In Waves by S. P. Miskowski
- Chapter 6: Eyes on Fire by Cody Goodfellow
- Chapter 7: Horrors Worse than Hell by Robert M. Price
- Chapter 8: Laying the Words by Don Webb
- Interlude: Mysteries Don’t Sleep by Anna Tambour
- Chapter 9: The Sun Saw by Mike Allen
- Chapter 10: American Ghost by John Claude Smith
- Chapter 11: Flickering I Roam by E. Catherine Tobler
- Chapter 12: Sewn into Pieces, Stitched into Place by Damien Angelica Walters
- Chapter 13: Too Many Pages by Simon Strantzas
- Chapter 14: 11:00 by Nikki Guerlain
- Chapter 15: Void Kiss by Michael Cisco
- Interlude: Letter Found Sitting atop a Rare Old Handbook of Dark Portent by Anna Tambour
- Chapter 16: And I Watered It in Fears by Sunny Moraine
- Chapter 17: Miles and Kathrine at the Crimson by Michael Griffin
- Chapter 18: Passages for the Dying and the Dead by S. P. Miskowski
- Chapter 19: Ménage à Trois by Ross E. Lockhart
- Chapter 20: The Persuader by Jeffrey Thomas
- Afterword: Over the Moon by Anna Tambour
2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Story Collection
“From heartbreaking character studies to exercises in Grand Guignol excess, from scalpel-sharp poetry to sledgehammers of blood-soaked prose, Mike Allen displays not only his own considerable range, but the range of the horror genre as well. Aftermath of an Industrial Accident will surprise and delight you at every turn.”
—Nathan Ballingrud, author of Monsterland
“Allen overflows the tank with nightmare fuel . . . Readers will be impressed by the variety, intensity, and skilled craftsmanship Allen brings to this collection. These horror shorts are sure to linger in the dark corners of readers’ minds.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
“An incredible read. This collection of horror and dark fantasy poetry and short fiction needs to be on the shelf of any horror reader.”
—Cemetery Dance
“Allen weds the brute visceral punch of early Clive Barker with the demented whimsy of darker Neil Gaiman.”
—Craig Laurance Gidney, author of A Spectral Hue
In these twenty-three stories and poems, two-time World Fantasy Award nominee Mike Allen spins twisted narratives, some wound through the fabric of our world, some set in imagined pasts or futures, all plumbing the depths of human darkness. “The consistency, here, is simply excellence,” writes Bram Stoker Award finalist and Punktown creator Jeffrey Thomas in his introduction. “You are holding in your hands an overflowing cornucopia of monstrous goodness.”
"Mike Allen may be the premier poet of this era of weird horror and surrealist fantasy. His work is completely fearless. He takes no genre boundaries as sacred."
—The Plutonian
"Finely finished tours de force of the storyteller’s art—and representative examples of the state of the modern weird/dark/speculative art . . . This has got to be a shortlist candidate for many Best Collection awards for 2020."
—Ginger Nuts of Horror
"Each tale in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident packs a punch that will keep you willingly pinned to the wall."
—Christina Sng, author of A Collection of Nightmares
"Allen demonstrates again and again his masterful ability to infuse cosmic, existential terror into the most intimate, and mundane aspects of our lives, while never failing to point out the self-made horror already there: from his introductory piece that credits Poe as a conjurer of inescapable, psychic horror and a muse-sinister for Allen, to the title story that force-marches
Contains “The Twice-Drowned Saint” by C.S.E. Cooney, 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best First Novel
“With fiction from C.S.E Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee, and Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium’s excellent new anthology, A Sinister Quartet, provides further evidence that long-form genre fiction is not just alive and well but thriving.”
—Locus, Ian Mond
“Mythic Delirium is one of the smaller presses which sustains our field . . . This is lovely and fascinating . . . Really fine work.”
—Locus, Rich Horton
“Easily one of the best things I’ve read this year . . . ‘The Twice Drowned Saint’ alone is worth five times the cost of the collection.”
—The Little Red Reviewer
—Publishers Weekly
“One of those rare long-term survivors of the small-press landscape . . . contributes mightily to the health of our genre.”
—Locus Online
Assembled from the second year of the digital journal Mythic Delirium and recast in an artfully arranged anthology, this latest offering from editors Mike and Anita Allen will introduce you to harrowing deserts and vengeful waters, to quantum mythology and edible religion, to slipstream explorations of love and identity.
Publisher and editor Mike Allen writers in his introduction, “If you’re on a quest for the weird, lowercase, here is a book where you can find it. And likely The Weird as well.”
This international anthology of beautiful prose and strange verse features Saira Ali, Michele Bannister, Alicia Cole, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gwynne Garfinkle, Brady Golden, Adam Howe, John Philip Johnson, Jamie Killen, Swapna Kishore, Margo Lanagan, Geoffrey A. Landis, Nathaniel Lee, Rose Lemberg, Livia Llewellyn, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, C.S. MacCath, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Lynette Mejía, Virginia M. Mohlere, Sunny Moraine, Kristine Ong Muslim, Dominik Parisien, Jessy Randall, Wendy Rathbone, Sonya Taaffe, Shveta Thakrar, Natalia Theodoridou, Sheree Renée Thomas and Jane Yolen. Cover art by Hugo Award winner Galen Dara.
The very first issue of Mythic Delirium appeared in spring 1998, printed in a teeny apartment on a cheap inkjet printer that wasn’t at all up to the task. Humble origins for a journal that would go on to showcase the likes of Amal El-Mohtar, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, Jane Yolen (and many, many more) and publish five Rhysling Award-winning poems.
This special 20th anniversary issue doubles our usual number of stories. Edith Hope Bishop returns to our pages with “The Sky Watcher,” a gentle fable for our times, while A. T. Greenblatt joins Mythic Delirium for the first time with “Graffiti Guardians,” a fearsome tale of standing up for what you love through art. Kate MacLeod’s “Sword and Tattoo” examines the courage that inspires a reckoning with the past. In “Red as Water, White as Ruin,” Benjanun Sriduangkaew offers a gorgeous blend of science fiction and horror. We’d bet that post-apocalyptic “Mothers, Watch Over Me” by Maria Haskins won’t leave a single dry eye in the house by the time its turn on the stage is finished. “Medved the Hamster” by Janna Layton observes human follies and foibles through an absurd lens.
Virginia M. Mohlere rejoins us with “Cardiad,” a wistful and mythic poem from the heart. “Libitina’s Garden” by Kyla Ward provides a trio of dark sonnets set in ancient Rome. “After Pandora” by Maya Chhabra suggests the true fate of Hope is different from what you might have expected. In “Glut of Norths: A Purgatory,” John Philip Johnson projects a haunting vision of horses and purpose. Peri Fae Blomquist’s stanzas grant us a look into the daily life of “Mother Giant,” and Davian Aw’s “This Is for the Times” finds a moment of peace in a universe of possibilities.
Our cover art, Hjalmar Wåhlin’s wistful “Heaven at Last,” has a moving story behind it, as it portrays the artist’s imagining of a reunion with his father, who died of cancer. For us it represents a joyful leave-taking, an embrace of the next phase of the journey.
In “When the Bough Breaks,” Jaymee Goh shows us how terrible it can be to see the warning signs, supernatural and not, when those with power won’t heed them. A heartbreaking injustice burns at the core of Jennifer R. Donohue’s “A Thing with Feathers,” while evil calls coyly to evil in Tiffany Trent’s “The Papyrotomist.”
As for poetry, Beth Cato returns with a darksome narrative of sibling vengeance, as well as the moving work that inspired our cover artist, Ruth Sanderson. Christina Sng chronicles a growing nightmare, while Donald Raymond hints at hungry myths. Cassandra Rose Clarke also provides two poems, visions of eerie magic and sensuous death.
Our cover image is “This Body Made” by Ruth Sanderson, based on the poem of the same name by Beth Cato.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• “When the Bough Breaks” by Jaymee Goh
• “Summer Rain” by Cassandra Rose Clarke
• “Legends of Coyote Creek, Part 1: The Wall of Monsters” by Donald Raymond
• “A Thing with Feathers” by Jennifer R. Donohue
• “This Body Made” by Beth Cato
• “After Her Brother Ripped the Heads from Her Paper Dolls” by Beth Cato
• “The Papyrotomist” by Tiffany Trent
• “Born of Blood and Tears” by Christina Sng
• “Porphyria’s Other Lover” by Cassandra Rose Clarke
We’re pleased to welcome “Dispo and the Crow” author Rich Larson to our pages. Having previously appeared in our our sister publication, Clockwork Phoenix, Larson is an author who has been generating a lot of buzz. The end-of-the-world theme in his story carries over into up-and-coming writer Sandra Odell’s even quirkier “Resistance on a Park Bench, with Stale Bread and Ducks.” This is Odell’s first appearance in our pages, and we’re delighted to welcome her.
The motifs of art, apocalypse, and resistance resonate with “Sunrise with Sea Monsters,” our concluding story. David Sandner is a veteran of Clockwork Phoenix and of the print version of Mythic Delirium. This is his first time appearing in the digital incarnation.
Our poets this time out, Jennifer Crow, Mari Ness, Sonya Taaffe, and Jane Yolen, all have long histories with the magazine. Their verses tell of gods and marriages, tragedies and descents, and contemplate the mysteries of the heavens.
Frequent contributor Paula Arwen Owen returns with this issue’s cover art, “Warrior of the Night Feather Tribe,” inspired by Larson’s “Dispo and the Crow,” but taken in a direction of her own wonderful invention.
Table of Contents
“Dispo and the Crow” by Rich Larson
“Marrying the Bear” by Jane Yolen
“Hunter” by Mari Ness
“Resistance on a Park Bench, with Stale Bread and Ducks” by Sandra M. Odell
“Other People’s Tragedies” by Jennifer Crow
“On the Day When Dumuzi Comes Up” by Sonya Taaffe
“Sunrise with Sea Monsters” by David Sandner
“Masques and Mayhem” by Jennifer Crow
“Night Does Not” by Jane Yolen
Damien Angelica Walters digs to expose undercurrents of magic that guide a family through a funeral in “On Grief and the Language of Flowers: Selected Arrangements.” In Shveta Thakrar’s “Ghost Notes,” a hunger to steal the stories of others drives a sinister seduction. Barbara Krasnoff details a moving encounter between the living and the dead in “The Ladder-Back Chair.”
Poems from Jane Yolen, Adele Gardner, Sara Cleto, Jessica P. Wick, and Sonya Taaffe continue the interactions of mourning and magic, by way of goddesses and gardens, ghosts and prophecy, homunculi and witches, ancient languages and graves.
Our cover art, “Prick,” comes from Susan Jamison, who paints in egg tempera. Her works often convey mysterious women communing with animals who could be spirit guides or familiars. This painting, which, shall we say, leaves a mark, complements this issue perfectly.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Morris Tanafon shows us a horrifying way to prevent a haunting in “Interred with Their Bones,” while Darcie Little Badger’s “The Famine King” conjures a zombie apocalypse so subtle you may wonder if it’s really there. Patricia Russo contemplates trees, enigmatic rituals and the afterlife, in “Observations on the Trees of Peace, the Chirping Lizards, and the Sea at the End of the World.”
Our poetry in this issue, from Beth Cato, Lynn Hardaker, Olchar E. Lindsann, Sonya Taaffe, and Jane Yolen, instructs in the catching of unicorns and release of familiars, the preferences of Baba Yaga and the battling of monsters, the mysteries of Carcosa and the depictions of dinosaurs.
These thought-provoking diversions will give you fuel to navigate the season, whatever the temperature might be in your part of the world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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