Clay Allen lives with his wife Elizabeth, their son Otis and their menagerie of animals in an A-frame perched on the edge of an east Los Angelean canyon.
He began his career as a writer and editor for the famed East Village bar rag The New York Hangover. They published some wild stuff, what would definitely qualify as Allen's "early work." They *might* still even have a site up here.
He went on to work at the NY Press in the listings department, where he included himself in the line up of several caberet acts.Allen took his swings in the screenwriting game and came up 0-5, with a flyout to right (Sony), a hard chopper to short (also Sony), a botched bunt-single (various telelvision production companies) a foul-out (Comedy Central) and a caught looking (an internet company that doesn't exist anymore). These were feature projects and television projects. That consumed four years. Jealous?
Since that time, Allen has turned his attention to the all-forgiving and easy-to-break-into prose market. He published his essay The Bad Call along side Colson Whitehead's and Neal Pollack's work in The Customer is Always Wrong available from Soft Skull Press. He has also been published in Pregnancy magazine. For real.
He is currently working on "this thing that's part novel, part Wiki experience. And it's set in 1820s Missouri. And it's really dirty. Like sex dirty. But funny. But sad." He sweats frantically when he starts talking about it, and is ever fearful someone is going to steal his great idea. Someone...like you?