Mike Allen

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING GUIDE TO BRILLIANT COMMUNICATION"If getting your message across matters to you, this is the way to do it." - Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, ThriveBrevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritize essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in a concise and visual format. Now, the co-founders of Axios have created an essential guide for communicating effectively and efficiently using Smart Brevity.In SMART BREVITY: The Power of Saying More with Less, Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz show you how to say more with less in virtually any format. They also share communications lessons learned from their decades of experience in media, business and communications.SEE WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING ABOUT SMART BREVITY:????? "This book is soooo good" ????? "Love this book, short, punchy, deep, simple and easy to implement" ????? "Genius wrapped in generosity: it shows you how to care about your audience's time"

The big idea: If you want to get heard in the information age, you need to change the way you write. Now. Smart Brevity will teach you how. Brevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritize essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in a concise and visual format. Now, the co-founders of Axios have created an essential guide for communicating effectively and efficiently using Smart Brevity — think Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the digital age. In SMART BREVITY: Write Less. Say More. Be Heard, Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz teach readers how to say more with less in virtually any format. They also share communications lessons learned from their decades of experience in media, business and communications.

Behind the walls of an invulnerable city ruled by angels, old movies provide balm for the soul and a plan to escape risks grisly retribution. A princess discovers a passage to a nightmarish world of deception and blood-sealed enchantment. A woman who has lost everything meets a man of great wealth and ominous secrets. In a town haunted by tragedy, malevolent supernatural entities converge, and the conflict that ensues unleashes chaos.A Sinister Quartet gathers original long-form wonders and horrors composed in unusual keys, with a short novel by World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney and a new novella from two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen joined by debut novellas from rising talents Amanda J. McGee and Jessica P. Wick. All four offer immersions into strange, beautiful and frightening milieus.

Analysts today routinely look toward the media and popular culture as a way of understanding global security. Although only a decade ago, such a focus would have seemed out of place, the proliferation of digital technologies in the twenty-first century has transformed our knowledge of near and distant events so that it has become impossible to separate the politics of war, suffering, terrorism, and security from the practices and processes of the media.This book brings together ten path-breaking essays that explore the ways our notions of fear, insecurity, and danger are fostered by intermediary sources such as television, radio, film, satellite imaging, and the Internet. The contributors, from a wide range of disciplines, show how both fictional and fact-based threats to global security have helped to create and sustain a culture that is deeply distrustful. Topics range from the Patriot Act, to the censorship of media personalities, to the role that television programming plays as an interpretative frame for current events.Designed to promote strategic thinking about the relationships between media, popular culture, and global security, this book is essential reading for scholars of international relations, technology, and media studies.

This book focuses on safer sex discussion and practice in close, personal relationships, emphasizing research on individuals in personal relationship types that are experiencing a rise in HIV infection and AIDS. Moving beyond studies of gay adult males and IV drug-users, this work paints a clear picture of the very real risk that exists for these less-studied, more general populations, so individuals may better personalize the risk and engage in more preventative measures. Authors Tara M. Emmers-Sommer and Mike Allen examine issues surrounding safer sex, utilizing research that focuses on how individuals struggle with personalizing the HIV and AIDS risk and how they cope with safer sex issues.Safer Sex in Personal Relationships takes readers on a journey through a variety of close relationship types. It begins by highlighting awareness to the global enormity of HIV and AIDS and providing a link between the global and personal, and the need to make HIV and AIDS awareness part of everyday talk and personal relationship structure. It then focuses on:*safer sex in close relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual;*marital relationships and the importance of safe sex discussion and awareness in marriages;*HIV and AIDS from a multicultural perspective;*HIV and AIDS in aged populations; and*increasing awareness, understanding, and compassion of those living with HIV and AIDS.This book will appeal to scholars and students concerned with HIV and AIDS in personal relationships. It will be an invaluable text for courses on interpersonal communication and relationships; family, marital, human sexuality, sex and gender, gay and lesbian relationships, and sexual education; and relational conflict across communication, psychology, and sociology disciplines.

A century after the state's foundation, Ireland faces an acute homelessness crisis with families and children increasingly affected. This book uncovers how decades of housing policy, financial decisions and social factors have shaped today’s housing insecurity. It is the first to take a historical approach, tracing the roots of homelessness back to key policy decisions taken over the past century. By understanding how we got here, it offers crucial insights into breaking the cycle. Essential reading for policy makers, scholars and anyone concerned about Ireland’s housing future, with lessons for other jurisdictions, this book reveals why solving homelessness requires rethinking how we build and fund housing.

A century after the state's foundation, Ireland faces an acute homelessness crisis with families and children increasingly affected. This book uncovers how decades of housing policy, financial decisions and social factors have shaped today’s housing insecurity. It is the first to take a historical approach, tracing the roots of homelessness back to key policy decisions taken over the past century. By understanding how we got here, it offers crucial insights into breaking the cycle. Essential reading for policy makers, scholars and anyone concerned about Ireland’s housing future, with lessons for other jurisdictions, this book reveals why solving homelessness requires rethinking how we build and fund housing.

"Unsettling, perceptive, always surprising, always absorbing-Slow Burn is a collection of gems." -Premee Mohamed, Nebula Award-winning author of Beneath the Rising"Consuming horror that is not for the squeamish " -Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award(R)-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories"At turns dripping with Cronenberg body horror, infused with Barker misanthropy, and crawling with the darkest fantasy, the stories and poems in Slow Burn are beautifully crafted to lure you in, but their beauty won't let you go easily. There are too many strange limbs for that." -Michael Wehunt, author of The InconsolablesThe search for a missing grandson unearths a pit of unholy hunger. A war between flesh-stealing supernatural entities will subject an entire city to devastating mayhem. In a harrowing future world, a slave is charged by his terrifying master with building a creature in its likeness. The voyage of a plague ship won't end at mere death. Parasites are partners and lovers, and the immortal soul is but a single stage in the complex life cycle of a symbiote.Slow Burn gathers fourteen stories of horror and thirteen macabre poems by two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated collections Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident. Allen's works are "exquisite and vivid, his worlds rich with brilliant detail," says three-time Bram Stoker Award(R) winner Christina Sng in her introduction. "The images he paints with words are terrifying and mesmerizing, keeping you enthralled, unable to look away."These tales and verses, set in worlds of fantasy and sorcery, in twisted, surreal futures, and in hard-boiled modern milieus . . . all find ways to explore the abyssal darkness of the human heart."Diabolically inventive and varied . . . You'll laugh, shudder, cry, and throw up a little in your mouth. Mike Allen's range can outstretch any fleshy hell-tendril, darting from experimental poetry to cheeky Clive Barker satire to whip-sharp supernatural thrillers . . . achingly human characters and heaping, writhing helpings of body horror." -Rich Larson, author of Ymir and Tomorrow Factory"By turns gorgeous, horrifying, gruesome, furious, darkly erotic, wickedly funny, and frequently all of those things at once, this extraordinary collection never shies away from pushing the reader's boundaries. Allen masterfully succeeds in being transgressive in all the best and most beautiful ways. I adore this book." -Sunny Moraine, author of Your Shadow Half Remains"Within, you will find tales of messy lives stitched together, twisted obsessions, violence, dark magic, and body horror from multiple perspectives. Truly a slow burn readers will crave to simmer in." -Ai Jiang, Nebula finalist and author of Linghun and I Am AI"Don't let the title fool you, Slow Burn is an artistic flame that blazes like an inferno from start to finish " -Vaughn A. Jackson, author of Touched by Shadows

Alistair Jones is a ex-Pinkerton agent roaming the West in search of work. Amy Dunston is an angry widow searching for answers. Who knows what those men with matching mustaches and bowler hats are searching for, but Alistair and Amy would both like to know why there are so many of them, why they all look alike, and why they're impervious to bullets - at least until they met the business end of Alistair's .52-caliber 1874-pattern Sharps rifle. It could take down a buffalo with one shot, and it worked on those Bowlers, too.But Alistair's gun and Amy's quick thinking might not be enough. Scientist Hiram Wilson's newfangled solar-and-steam-powered airship has brought an army of those bowler-wearing varmints out of the woodwork, and destroying Hiram's invention is just the beginning of their terrifying plan for our planet.A vintage Western meets an alien invasion straight out of the golden age of science fiction and adds a chaser of steampunk in The Sky-Riders, a new novelette from Southwest Virginia authors Paul Dellinger (Mr. Lazarus) and Mike Allen (Unseaming).Paul's stories have appeared in Fantastic Stories, Fantasy & Science Fiction and numerous DAW anthologies. Mike is a Nebula, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy award finalist. The two have been friends for decades, but this is their first collaboration.Cover by Orion Zangara and Derek L. Chase.

A small isolated mountain town is plagued by a wicked forest-dwelling monster.Only one thing stands in its way. A brave little child, armed with wit, a warm heart and fierce determination. A must read for all scary tale book lovers. Ghoul is about a little girl named Violet, who lives in a small mountain town on the edge of a misty forest. The town has recently been hit with a mysterious plague. Many vulnerable people have fallen ill, and are in desperate need ofmedicine. The mayor has forbidden all the townspeople from travelling through the misty forest, because all who venture near the borders are never seen again. It takes one week to safely travel around the misty forest, but Violet only hasthree days to deliver the medicine to her sick great aunt. In desperation and against all odds, brave Violet takes the forbidden shortcut path through the terrifying misty forest, to save her sick great aunt. She must use all her wits to survive this perilous journey, and will learn a few valuable lessonsalong the way. It is known that the misty forest is riddled with ghosts and monsters, and parents often tell the scary tale of the misty forest to warn children about the dangers. However, all is not quite what it seems... Beyond the barren meadow, over the mountain pass, brave warriors fear to venture there, beware if you're a child. The howling screams, the screeching bats, that shiver goes down to your knees, the misty swamp and icy winds, crick... crinkling through the trees. At midnight, in the darkest hour, the monsters come out to feast, those fearsome beasts of vicious dreams, howling and gnashing their teeth. But an evil monster more terrifying exists, foul, deceptive and cruel, the wickedest creature of them all, beware the two-faced Ghoul. Suitable for ages 7+

"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 Wounds"Allen overflows the tank with nightmare fuel in this collection of 23 stories and poems that showcase his ability to find the monstrous in almost any setting . . . the collection dances through hauntings, carnage, body horror, and psychological chills . . . 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"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"Each tale in Aftermath of an Industrial Accidentpacks a punch that will keep you willingly pinned to the wall." --Christina Sng, author of A Collection of Nightmares"Mike Allen habitually upends Lovecraftian tropes with his own brand of cosmic horror." --Laird Barron, author of Swift to ChaseA Korean War veteran must rely on wits, improvised weapons, and words from the dread Necronomicon to escape the lair of a deranged cult. A ghost cannot communicate how she died, no matter how desperately she tries, while an unconventional ghost hunter incurs the venomous wrath of the Queen of Night. Murderous conspiracies reveal themselves in online video clips, a saint blasphemes as a serial killer prays for mercy, and corrupt families in ancient kingdoms trade blood and souls for leverage over foes. Enduring nightmares for a living can lead to a fate worse than burnout. A gruesome invasion from outside space and time tests courage--and corporate loyalty--past all rational limits.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.""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 the reader through rising terror, like a tea kettle screaming, for which there is no escape, no sanctuary, even within your own mind." --R. S. Belcher, author of The Brotherhood of the Wheel"Allen deftly imbues each world visited with its own own special kind of dread." --A .C. Wise, author of Catfish LullabyCover art by Danielle Tunstall

Homelessness is on the increase in most European states and remains at stubbornly high levels across developed nations. This is despite increased policy attention, economic provision and the implementation of strategies that have promised to stop homelessness in its tracks, rather than simply manage the crisis. Providing an in-depth exploration of the experiences of Ireland, Denmark and Finland in their various initiatives designed to end homelessness, this book presents an authoritative comparative account of policies and strategies that have worked, along with an exposition of those that have not. Making an invaluable and timely contribution to the current debate, it provides essential policy lessons for the multiple jurisdictions seeking to successfully bring homelessness to an end.

A Philadaphia Inquirer Editor's Choice selection. Allen's is poetry for goths of all ages . . . There is a long tradition of poetry dealing with the uncanny - think Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' or Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' - and it's nice to see someone putting it to such use again. Allen's poems . . . do a fine job of making the human scary and the scary human. -The Philadephia Inquirer The literary equivalent of a Caravaggio painting, where light is bright and casts all the more shadow for its brilliance . . . Fantastical places like the REM Sleep Factory, the belly of the enigmatic Time Shark, the Gates of Hell, and even the Apocalypse itself; these and others are not dark places but places where light and darkness intermingle to cast long, clawed shadows. - The Pedestal Magazine A comprehensive Mike Allen anthology covering ten years, compiling not just his poems but his fiction and collaborations as well . . . Strange Wisdoms of the Dead features some of his more daring and experimental work and so you might want to check this out for that. This is a splendid collection. -Fantasy Literature Mythic Delirium Books edition

This book focuses on safer sex discussion and practice in close, personal relationships, emphasizing research on individuals in personal relationship types that are experiencing a rise in HIV infection and AIDS. Moving beyond studies of gay adult males and IV drug-users, this work paints a clear picture of the very real risk that exists for these less-studied, more general populations, so individuals may better personalize the risk and engage in more preventative measures. Authors Tara M. Emmers-Sommer and Mike Allen examine issues surrounding safer sex, utilizing research that focuses on how individuals struggle with personalizing the HIV and AIDS risk and how they cope with safer sex issues.Safer Sex in Personal Relationships takes readers on a journey through a variety of close relationship types. It begins by highlighting awareness to the global enormity of HIV and AIDS and providing a link between the global and personal, and the need to make HIV and AIDS awareness part of everyday talk and personal relationship structure. It then focuses on:*safer sex in close relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual;*marital relationships and the importance of safe sex discussion and awareness in marriages;*HIV and AIDS from a multicultural perspective;*HIV and AIDS in aged populations; and*increasing awareness, understanding, and compassion of those living with HIV and AIDS.This book will appeal to scholars and students concerned with HIV and AIDS in personal relationships. It will be an invaluable text for courses on interpersonal communication and relationships; family, marital, human sexuality, sex and gender, gay and lesbian relationships, and sexual education; and relational conflict across communication, psychology, and sociology disciplines.