Mike Allen lives in Roanoke, Va. with his wife Anita, a demonic cat and a comical dog. Things are looking large for him this year, with a poem reprinted in Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 and a short story just published in Weird Tales, as well as a dark fantasy novelette called “Follow the Wounded One” released as a limited edition chapbook. Norilana Books has brought out a new poetry collection, The Journey to Kailash, and a new anthology, Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, which Publishers Weekly praises for its “strong and delicious taste of weird.” By day, he’s a newspaper reporter; he has twice interviewed the inventor of The World’s Only Ass-Kicking Machine, and written an in-depth profile of the late great SFWA Author Emeritus
Nelson Bond, whom he counted as a friend. Mike hopes some publisher with impeccable taste will listen to his ideas for assembling a Best of Nelson Bond collection.

Photo by Theodore Allen

Stories:

“The Button Bin” (October 2007)