Launch: LCW Allingham’s Lady

INTERVIEW BY NANCY TABER

LCW Allingham is a Philadelphia-area author, artist, and editor. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications and her debut horror novella, Muse, came out in spring, 2024. She is the co-founder and executive editor of the indie press, Speculation Publications, and the author of the historical fiction novel, Lady.

How would you describe this book and its themes in a couple of sentences?

When the lord of the castle can’t be roused, and the walls can’t protect the people within, it’s up to the lady of the house to drive away the enemy and take the first steps to becoming who she truly is.

What attracted you to writing a novel about a gender non-conforming baroness during the War of the Roses?

Being someone who didn’t always fit into where I was supposed to myself, I’ve often wondered how I would survive in another time period. Rosalynde is very different from me, but I always find pieces of myself in my characters so when she showed up in my psyche, I was anxious to figure her out.

Setting her in War of the Roses era England was a specific choice. It put her in the midst of action where turmoil was intense, and the possibility of conflict was likely. It also put Rosalynde in a world where women were bursting out of their prescribed roles. The Hundred Years’ War had just ended and stories of Joan of Arc were prevalent. Margaret of Anjou had been ruling England and fighting the Yorks under Henry’s name.

In times of such upheaval, you often find the stories of unlikely heroes and heroines who manage to slip into recorded history. It seemed like a place where Rosalynde’s story wouldn’t just be possible, but maybe even likely.

How did you go about conducting your research for the novel? What’s your strategy for fictionalizing the lives of real people?

I tend to let the story compel me forward and then fill in the missing pieces and repair the anachronisms when I’ve figured out what the story is about. It’s very much an intuitive process initially. After the first draft is done and I identify what I don’t know, I go back and submerge myself in as much information about the time as possible.

I find that submerging myself in the research can be as much fun as writing the book.

A friend lent me a volume of A History of Private Life, which helped in nailing down day-to-day life. I joined sites and groups dedicated to medieval cooking, such as the Medieval & Renaissance Cooking and Recipes Facebook page, where there is a wealth of information from experts, scholars and enthusiasts. There’s an amazing docuseries with historian Ruth Goldman that really gave a sense of the daily living, the foods, the struggles and the entertainments of the Middle Ages in England.

In Lady, the main characters are all fictional, based on people who could have been, but I used real figures of the time in cameos, especially at the end. After I’ve been soaking in this research for a while, I find I have a sense of who I think these real people were and how they would react to these characters I created.

In your first scene, your main character is presented with a dramatic choice: give in or fight. It’s not a spoiler to say she chooses to fight, as that’s the premise of the novel, but the way she chooses to fight is daring, brave, and foolhardy all at the same time. What was your thought process as you created that scene?

I think most women have been in a situation, not necessarily of their own making, where all the options are bad, but it’s up to them to choose which bad option to act on.

There are famous accounts of Cecily Neville in her castle while the Lancastrians sacked it around her. This surrender looks submissive from the outside and yet it must have taken considerable bravery. Cecily looked at all her bad options and chose the best one. For Cecily it was to stay behind with her young children while the men fled, and to allow her home to be ransacked.

In my novel, Rosalynde’s choice to take action is not made for herself but to give the people she cares about the best chance. She’s useless sitting in the castle waiting. The best thing she can do is pretend to be her husband, ready to fight back the attackers at the wall.

The cover for Lady is dramatic and arresting! Can you explain the creative inspiration behind it?  

Isn’t it great? I met author and cover artist Kaytalin Platt at an author event and I loved the covers she had for her Equitas Series. When she told me she did them herself, I asked my publisher if we could work with her on the cover. She had a really good system for getting a sense of the essence of the book that involved images I felt conveyed the themes of the story and the colors that set the tone. 

What advice would you give to aspiring historical writers whose interests cross-genres, as yours do, with horror, fantasy, historical, and speculative fiction?

I think my advice is always just to be true to yourself. Some authors belong firmly in one genre and they’re really good at it. If that’s you, awesome, but you have to give yourself space to find out what you write about and allow yourself to be there, rather than fighting to stay within trends and boxes.

Tell me about your indie press, Speculation Publications. What do you like most about being an executive editor?

Speculation Publications evolved out of a group project. We’ve been official for three years and we focus mostly on anthologies of folklore and legend-based speculative fiction, fantasy and horror. On September 24, we’re releasing our biggest anthology yet, Grimm Retold, a horror collection of Grimm fairy tale retellings, with a reprint from the legendary fantasy author, Tanith Lee, amongst other amazing stories.

I love working with other authors, figuring out how the pieces fit together to make a book, refining the stories to help them be the best version of what the author envisioned, and watching new authors grow into their voices. It is as rewarding as seeing my own stories come together and go out into the world.

What is the last great book you read? What did you love about it?

Recently, I really enjoyed Hild, which is the first book in Nicola Griffith’s Hild Sequence series about the life of early British saint Hilda of Whitby. I love how Griffith opens up the complexities of character while revealing the nuances and strangeness of these historical settings. She grounds the reader in the familiar unchanging humanity while showing just how much the world has changed. I picked up the book after listening to an interview with Griffith where she said, “People have always found a way to be people,” meaning that no society really squashes the gorgeous diversity of humanity, and I have been quoting her on that ever since.

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