This past week, Publishers Weekly reviewed my new short story collection, The Spider Tapestries, and I feel like one lucky author, because whoever wrote the review seems to have understood my super-strange little book on every level.   The gist of the review:   “Elegant language and surrealistic themes defy genre and moral expectations in the weird and transgressive stories found in this collection . . . Allen’s pairing of individualistic suffering and cosmic hugeness evokes a lyrical friction between

Hey, everybody, mark your calendars for Clockwork Phoenix 5 launch reading, one the books to take place April 5 at 7 p.m. in The Brooklyn Commons Cafe at 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction/Hour of the Wolf Reading series.   I’ll be there with bells on, and so will seven of the book’s 21 contributors: Rob Cameron, C. S. E. Cooney, Barbara Krasnoff, Carlos Hernandez, Sonya Taaffe, Shveta Thakrar, and

Anita and I want to extend our proud congratulations to Swapna Kishore, whose short story “The Absence of Words” from our January-March 2015 issue is going to be reprinted in Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2016, forthcoming from Prime Books.   We’re really happy for Swapna, and pleased that her haunting story will get a chance to reach a new audience.   We’re also delighted for reasons of enlightened self-interest. The Clockwork Phoenix books have had

I’m a bit behind everyone else in posting something like this, to which I apologize to the authors, who all deserve as much attention as possible for their terrific work. I have a reasonable excuse, though, as for the past three and a half months I’ve been preoccupied with finalizing all the e-book and paperback editions of books that I owed the backers of the Clockwork Phoenix 5 Kickstarter. There’s still plenty more to be done, but I’ve reached a

Hello, everyone! I hope the new year has been good to you so far.   Here at Mythic Delirium Books, we have a lot going on in the first half of 2016, not least of which is the release of our first Mythic Delirium issue of the year.   In our January-March 2016 issue, Sheila Finch, Janna Layton, and Jeannette Ng provide fantasy tales that have embedded within them thoughtful takes on Christian themes, in the best traditions of Stephen

Posted first here at the Clockwork Phoenix 5 Kickstarter campaign site:   Hello, Clockwork Phoenix 5 backers. I hope the winter is being kind to you.   I wanted to use this lull between Christmas and New Year’s to give all of you a more thorough update as to where things stand with the project and your rewards. We’ve spent a lot of time making books and other rewards, and very little time talking about exactly what it is we’ve

I’m proud as punch, or pleased as all get-out, to announce that the second year of Mythic Delirium magazine has assumed its ultimate form, a lovely paperback, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Though for those futureshockers who prefer e-readers now, there’s an e-book version, too.) Anita and I have taken the stories and poems published in what I call “Mythic Delirium Year One” — because the first year of the rebooted zine was “Year Zero” — and we’ve

Here’s a notice to those in driving or train-riding distance of New York City this coming Wednesday: C.S.E. Cooney will be reading from her short story collection Bone Swans as part of the monthly Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series that takes place inside Manhattan’s KGB Bar. She’s paired with YA punk fairy tale author Sarah McCarry (aka The Rejectionist). The reading starts at 7 p.m.; Cooney’s a terrific reader, you really don’t want to miss this.   Bone Swans

I’m proud to at last officially announce the table of contents for Clockwork Phoenix 5, the latest installment in the Mythic Delirium Books anthology series devoted to genre-blurring beautiful and strange stories. With twenty tales by twenty-one authors, Clockwork Phoenix 5 is the largest volume in the series to date. The generosity of the genre community breathed life into this latest incarnation, crowdfunding the project through a successful $12,000 Kickstarter campaign.   Here are the stories, in the order selected

The last featured story and featured poems from the October-December issue of Mythic Delirium have now gone live.   We finish the year with a cosmic trinity. Vanessa Fogg weaves a modern lunar fable in “Moon Story”; Shveta Thakrar spins a wistful reverie of heavenly angling in “Star Fishing”; J.C. Runolfson puts a gas giant in his place in “Jupiter Dis(mis)sed.”   The first issue of 2016 is coming together nicely (despite the demands of holidays and Kickstarter obligations) with