Bethany Willcock is a Christian South African homeschool-grad who loves cats, coffee, historical mysteries, and all things vintage. She lives in a small coastal town in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa’s “garden province”, although she grew up in the Midlands near the beautiful Drakensberg (Dragon Mountain) range. She is extremely grateful that her parents made the decision to homeschool her and her sister Lydia from start to finish, and wholeheartedly shares Beatrix Potter’s view – “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”  

In 2019 Bethany launched her cover design website, then after obtaining three diplomas and a master’s certificate in professional cake decoration she started her home bakery business and called it BakerStreat, after her love for the classic Sherlock Holmes books. The same year she began participating in online writing camps and met fellow writers who motivated her to take her writing seriously. Although she had dabbled in fiction and nonfiction for several years, it was only in 2023 that she had the first two What Came After stories – Edwardian era mysteries set in London with connections to Sherlock Holmes – published in two anthologies hosted by the King’s Daughter’s Writing Camp, with a third soon to follow. Mystery and historical fiction have always been her favourite genres and she spends her time finding ways to combine the two into new stories with God-honouring themes.

Her parents made sure that good reading was an important part of her childhood, so unsurprisingly Bethany often draws inspiration for her own writing from the wonderful books she grew up on — The Secret Garden, Heidi, Twenty and Ten, Alice in Wonderland, the Little House books, The Famous Five, Tintin, The Lone Pine series, and of course, Jane Austen, Dickens, and Sherlock Holmes, to name just a few! She is also passionate about classical music and art. She’s been playing the piano since she was twelve and painting/sketching for as long as she can remember, and she’s constantly trying to improve herself in all three. Bethany loves anything retro and otherwise 40’s-related, and since moving into a cottage on her parents’ property has been trying to make it as aesthetically vintage as possible!  A lot of her historical mysteries are set during the 40’s and 50’s, both during and after the War. When not baking, writing, or obsessively doing research, Bethany spends her free time with her family, friends, and pets: two dogs, Lady and Rhodesia; leopard tortoise, Charlie; cat, Nightingale; and Holmes the budgie.