Dragon Soul Press received an opportunity to interview Bethany van Sterling, an author featured in Honor and Magick and Mystery!

---

1) Introduce yourself!

Hello! I go by the pen name Bethany van Sterling, which I adopted in 2013 as a romance writer.
Keeping the name, I’ve since branched out to historical, horror, fantasy and other speculative
genres. I grew up in the United States but have spent most of my adult life in Europe, where my
stories typically take place. I currently divide my year between Spain and Iceland.

2) What prompted you to begin writing?

I’ve loved writing and illustrating for as far back as I can remember. My parents were avid
readers and had a whole room dedicated to books, mostly classics, so I grew up exploring
works by Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Voltaire, the Romantic poets, and others. I remember
my mom reading and explaining Poe’s “The Black Cat” to me when I was 10 years old (the
syntax was too complicated for me to understand on my own) and I was disturbed and horrified
by it. So I guess Poe was one of my earliest inspirations. As a teen, I used to write poetry and
fiction as escapism from the boring life in the Midwestern suburbs. I was 18 when I first got a
short story published in Michael Pendragon’s Songs of Innocence, a beautifully illustrated
chapbook, which were popular in the 1990s-early 2000s.

3) Do you have a favorite story or poem you’ve written? What’s it about?

Like most writers, every time I finish something, I feel like I’ve written my “best ever” piece.
Maybe it’s normal, in that writers are constantly honing their craft and experimenting with new
formats, but what gets published or appreciated by readers might suggest differently. I’d have to
say that my novelette “Manuela” (in Dragon Soul Press’s Magick & Mystery) is most
representative of what I can and want to do as a writer. It took me a year to research and write,
learning about Napoleonic military weapons, uniforms, and soldier conditions, and even looking
up the exact timeline of the events during Madrid’s Dos de Mayo uprising against the French
occupation. Besides the historical research, I integrated a lot of details that have personal
meaning to me – it’s consciously a version of Frankenstein (my favorite classic novel), and my
grandmother (like Aunt Francisca in the story) taught me how to sew. The story oscillates
between two parallel eras, present and historical, which I carefully outlined to ensure its flow.
I’ve badly wanted to give a copy of “Manuela” to Guillermo del Toro, one of my favorite directors
and who has drawn from Spanish history in his films. (Hint, hint, if he or his management ever
read this interview…)

4) How many projects do you have planned over the next few years? Tell us about one.

Besides a writer, I’m also a performing artist, so that is my current creative focus these days.
But as a poet, I often read at open mics like Madrid Poets & Writers and Reykjavik Poetics.
There’s one short story – poetry in prose you might say – that I’ve been hoping to publish for
years, drawing from Icelandic folklore. It’s been a hard sell and may get shelved until I have my
own short story collection, which I’d like to compile sometime in the future. As well as a poetry
collection or two.

5) Where do you draw inspiration from?

Since I studied anthropology and travel a lot, I’m often inspired by cultures, mythologies, and
folklores. Sometimes writing is therapy during a difficult moment, and other times it feels like a
medium for history to come alive – most often a combination of the two. My inspiration has
shifted dramatically over the decades, growing up with classic Western literature but later
studying Middle Eastern and North African literature, and now exploring some vastly different
things, Icelandic folklore and Nordic noir. “Escape the Pyre” (in Dragon Soul Press’s Honor)
originates from my long-standing fascination with Central Asian nomadic tribes and their
influence in Europe. It’s a historical topic I would like to write more about, as it’s rarely explored
in English language fiction.

6) What is one goal you have for your writing future?

I’d love to write a film or theater script, just to see writing come to life through a different
medium. My partner is a visual effects compositor and has deepened my appreciation for
cinema. A remarkable amount of films are based on books and even short stories. It’s
fascinating to see how literature gets reinterpreted on the screen – movies are often perceived
as inferior to the original work but that’s not always the case.

7) What do you hope readers enjoy most from your work?

I hope to transport readers to another world, another era, in the same way I feel transported
while writing these pieces. And hopefully to inspire readers to feel something – whatever that
might be.

8) Where can readers learn more about you?

On my website, X, Amazon and Bluesky.