LCW Allingham is an author, editor and artist in the Philadelphia area. Her award winning short fiction is published across various mediums and she is actively putting out more, while she refines several novels. She is the executive editor of Speculation Publications

In 2024 she released MUSE, a horror novella, and LADY, her debut novel.

She is an avid reader and a big fan of interesting rocks. Like, weirdly so.

A lover of faerie tales, fantasy and gothic horror, a thread of the mysterious or unexpected runs through all my work. My dream is to find readers who will gather round and let me tell them stories that will become a part of their life the way they have become a part of mine.

My short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, The Storyteller, A Fly in Amber, New Plains Review, Silly Tree Anthologies, and in the e-zines Les Bonnes Fees, The Devilfish Review, Rose Red Review and The Long Island Literary Journal. My YA novel, Losing Adam, garnered a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected as a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards.

Ef Deal is a new voice in the genre of speculative steampunk with her debut novel, Esprit de Corpse, but she is not new to publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in various magazines and ezines over the years. Her short story “Czesko,” published in the March 2006 F&SF, was given honorable mention in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, which gave both her and Gardner great delight. They laughed and laughed and sipped Scotch (not cognac, alas) over the last line.

Despite her preoccupation with old-school drum and bugle corps ~ playing, composing, arranging, and teaching ~ Ef Deal can usually be found at the keyboard of her computer rather than her piano. She is Assistant Fiction Editor at Abyss & Apex magazine and edits videos for the YouTube channel Strong Women ~ Strange Worlds Quick Reads.

I enjoy writing romances because there's always a happy ending. I got hooked on the steamy novels after reading the Notebook. If I could, I'd travel all the time. Italy is one of my favorite countries to visit. For fun I play tennis and pickle ball. I’m also a huge fan of Zumba. When I'm not editing and writing, you can usually find me watching TV. Game of Thrones, Bridgerton and Outlander have all been favorites. I'm also addicted to the Bravo channel. The Housewives franchise in particular. It's like watching a train wreck.

I began writing humor pieces and essays for newspapers while working as a technical writer. Since turning to fiction, my short stories and poetry have been published in various literary journals including: Philadelphia Stories, The MacGuffin, the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Willow Review, Jewish Writing Project, Damselfly, CERASUS Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal. My stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including: Alternative Truths: Endgame; Shocking Verbs, Lawless Nouns; The Pandemic Project; and Beach Shorts.

My flash fiction piece, “By the Numbers” won Wordhaus’s Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2015.

My short story collection, Finding Her Voice, was published in 2019, and my debut novel, Locked in Silence, will be coming out in February, 2024.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

River Eno

**UPDATE **

Coming July 2025: Vampire Hunters: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts is available for presale!

April 1, 2024: Pay the Piper: The first Spec Pub novella of utter spec: "In the dark days of plague and poverty, when the church rules with an iron fist, and knowledge is punished with fire, an orphaned girl stumbles upon a legacy of magic. Lucie has only ever known..."

November 2024: Evergreen: Tales of Winter Shadows: "When the sun diminishes and darkness begins its reign, we become introspective, and in turn storytellers. Every culture has their own winter tales. Some are..."

October 2024: GRIMM RETOLD a collection of horror retellings of Grimm's fairy tales: "The glossy veneer of happily ever after has fooled readers into believing fairy tales are bright and happy stories;, but if you scratch the surface of any story collected by the Brothers Grimm, it bleeds..."

River Eno is an author and managing copy editor and co-owner of Speculation Publications: a women-owned indie press striving to amplify new and established voices. River writes dark-erotic/urban fantasy novels—The Anastasia Evolution Series—and horror-adjacent short stories, usually with a bend toward paganism or pagan archetypes.

Residing on the east coast with rescue dogs, old turtles and family; River is vegan, a practicing witch, and an herbalism enthusiast with polyglottal aspirations.