Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
My name is Ethan Sabatella. My first story was published in 2018 but I had been writing for myself for a few years before then. I went to college for creative writing but found myself deviating from the normal mainstream works of fiction that most of my peers and I would have grown up with. Even before that my dad taught me how to be a Dungeon Master so designing adventures and fantasy settings has been something that's been part of my life for a while.

What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
Ancient literature is where I get a lot of ideas for sword & sorcery and horror stories. The more obscure it is, the better I find since I can get away with mining more ideas from it. That's probably one of the aspects I like the most about Celtic history and literature; there's so much untapped potential to have it be the main focus of stories rather than a peripheral to a Norse or Roman setting I figure I may as well try to be one of the first to capitalize off it. Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft are some of the big names when it comes to who specifically influences my writing. Michael Moorcock is also a more recent one, though he's a lot more concise than I am. However, James Macpherson, the "collector" of The Poems of Ossian is also a huge influence in terms of themes and setting with my work, although my stuff tends to be pulpier than his prose. To avoid being derivative or an outright plagiarist, I try to take ancient stories and spin them in a way where readers can engage with a "hidden past" of the world through characters I invented and with the trappings of archaic writing styles without getting too obscure. Usually it involves having less symbolism and more action.

Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
Since I'm still relatively "green" when it comes to making a name for myself in writing, I haven't had much of a chance to market or network with other writers. My usual tactic at this moment is try to reach as many people as I know in every social media platform I'm on which is fairly limited. Although I don't normally bring it up in public, people are usually enthusiastic if I mention I've been published.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
I try not to let how other people may hypothetically react influence what I feel I'm able to write. I like to try new styles of stories or plots especially when I come across some new genre of medieval literature that I think would be neat for an adventure story. Usually I get mixed receptions from critics who are used to newer works when I'm in the workshopping phase but it comes with the territory.

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
18thWall Productions released an anthology that combines Arthurian legends with the Cthulhu Mythos and it features my story "Of the Green Knight's Struggle Against the Black Goat" where Bertilak the Green Knight teams up with Sir Gawain to save Bertilak's wife from a Cult of Shub-Niggurath. Broadswords and Blasters will also be including my story "Vengeance of the Silvern Hand", a tale with space vikings and cyborg elves, in their upcoming one-off sword & planet anthology Futures that Never Were. I'm hoping to work on something for Eerie River Publishing's Cosmic Horror collection but progress on that has been slow, however it does involve a tomb, dead wizards, and connections with some of my other works. (I seem to recall a story by Mr. Sabatella appeared in the recently released Samhain Sorceries as well—DMR)

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
The newest book I've read was actually the first volume of the Berserk manga which I believe was published in the '90s, the artwork and brutality is really amazing in it. I'm also currently working my way through the Tigers of the Sea collection about Robert E. Howard's Cormac Mac Art character.

Any final words?
For any aspiring writers out there, look for cool things in the old stuff as far back as Beowulf, the Tain and others. There are some really wild and cool things in there that's being missed out on. And be sure to do your homework; even to unfamiliar eyes the effort shows.