Mike ‘The Onyxhawke’ Kabongo is a fan, and a literary agent, who actually likes science fiction and fantasy and not just money (feel free to give him money, though it matches his eyes.). He got into agenting because of a bet that involved either counter-biblical sensual knowledge or being an agent. His family thinks he made the wrong choice. Rumor has it he’s also a large black man. His insanity can be most easily traced to www.onyxhawke.com and onyxhawke.livejournal.com among other places.
Category Archives: Editing/Publishing/Agent
Friend-Ish, Barbara
Writer, publisher, slave of cats: Barbara Friend Ish is Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and Wild-Eyed Visionary for Mercury Retrograde Press: a small press dedicated to unconventional authors and works that might undeservedly slip through the cracks at bigger houses. Books edited by Barbara have been covered by Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, and print and electronic outlets worldwide. She has been featured in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Library Journal and has appeared at SF/F conventions across the southeast, mid-Atlantic, and mountain states.
Barbara’s debut novel, The Shadow of the Sun, appeared in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Locus and has been nominated for the 2012 Compton Crook Award. Information on this and other Mercury Retrograde Press books is available at www.MercuryRetrogradePress.com.
Barbara lives in a place called Lost Forest, in a purple house that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Current projects include The Heart of the Darkness and The Lord of the Abyss, the next two novels in the Way of the Gods series; the electronic version of Fortunes, a Tarot-based game for The Way of the Gods; an ongoing competition with her husband to determine who is a bigger geek; and a search for the perfect bottle of champagne.
Allen, Mike
Mike Allen works weekdays as the arts columnist for The Roanoke Times. In his spare time he wears a number of wacky hats. With help from his wife Anita, he edits the anthology series Clockwork Phoenix and publishes the long-running poetry journal Mythic Delirium. Stories and poems from those projects have been reprinted in various “Year’s Best” anthologies, and nominated for and even won a variety of sf, fantasy and horror-related awards. On his own, Mike’s won the Rhysling Award three times for his poetry and his horror tale “The Button Bin” was a Nebula Award finalist in 2009. More than 200 poems and more than 30 stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Best Horror of the Year Vol. One, Nebula Awards Showcase,Cthulhu’s Reign, and many other places. He’s also acted in local theater productions, recorded narrations for the Hugo Award-winning podcast siteStarShipSofa and provides a regular column, “Tour of the Abattoir,” for its sister podcast Tales to Terrify. Apex Publications will publish his first collection of short stories, The Button Bin and Other Horrors, in early fall of this year.
Allen, Anita
Anita Allen is a woman of many talents, perhaps best known for her work as a craftsman level costume designer and as an assistant publisher for Mythic Delirium and assistant editor for the anthology series Clockwork Phoenix, both of which she does with her amazing hubbie Mike Allen. Art in some form or another has always been a part of her life and plays into her professional training as a horticulturist. She views landscape design as “Crayola coloring for big kids” as the plant arrangements require visualizing at every life stage and season to create a living, changing, three-dimensional work of art. Her experiences in this field have led to her involvement in drawing botanical illustrations of fantasy plants for Catherynne M. Valente’s Mythopoeic Award-winning duology The Orphan’s Tales. She also created the “Honey Corset,” made from the pages of a special edition of Nebula Award-nominee Amal El-Mohtar’s critically-acclaimed collection The Honey Month. The “Honey Corset” has since been featured on the Interstitial Arts Foundation website. Suffice to say, Anita is always creating something, whether a new painting, landscape or costume. The best part is she loves showing others how to do the same.
