Tristan Zelden

I had always wanted to be a writer. I wrote some short stories as a kid, like in elementary school to middle school. I dropped off but started to think about it when I got into my twenties. I had numerous ideas that were exciting for me to dive into. Reading certainly helped influence that. It took motivation to get my butt into gear, but during college, I started writing what would become my first book, The Huntress and the Trickster.

On the other side of it, I started writing as a hobby and a job when I started community college. I started a blog to write about video games, music, and movies. I had friends encourage me to do so because they always liked my opinions on entertainment. I am a very opinionated guy, especially on my favorite shows, movies, or games. It was fitting for me to finally do that. That opened the door to start a job as a journalist. I did the whole journalism thing from 2019 to this year. Although I am ending that part of my career, I am a writer, so whatever's next, I will be writing for what will hopefully be a living wage.

When I was in journalism, the balance was pretty easy. I never quite got to a full-time position due to schooling. I graduated in the spring of 2023, and I continued journalism in a part-time position. It was less about the balance of a job and my aspirations to be an author. It was more about finding the time and motivation and time. When writing a manuscript, I do my best to write every day. That does not happen, but at least it is the ambition. You just have to find what works for you.

Journalism never influenced my writing as a novelist. Entertainment plays a big part in it, as I find inspiration in the movies and shows I watch, the games I play, and the books I read. Some of that may overlap with what I would cover in journalism, but the two careers were always separate.

As I said, I started covering the entertainment industry in about 2019 at a now-defunct website that you can't find anywhere on the internet. It was not paid and purely for the experience. The people were nice, but looking back, it was not great. Nobody should be working for experience. We work for money and benefits! It opened the door to work at Keen Gamer, an entertainment outlet that was my first paid gig in journalism. The pay was abysmal, but I made lots of friends and gained great experience. I was a writer, focusing on gaming news, then became an editor there and a podcast host and producer. From there, I hopped around to different sites while trying to get my Bachelor's degree in journalism. It was not until some time after I graduated from community college with an Associate's in communications that I started writing manuscripts for books.

I love this question. Now, brace yourself for something surprising, but I am not a fantasy guy. Sure, I like some fantasy, but for genre, I am more of a horror and sci-fi fan. Huntress was one of those things that came to be because of an idea that popped up in my head. It was about 2021 when God of War 2018 received an update on the PS5. It gave it a boost in performance and its visuals. That was the motivation I needed to replay one of my favorite games. Around that time, I got the itch for watching Keanu Reeves destroying people for two-plus hours. At the time, we only had three John Wick movies. So, in the span of a few days, I rewatched them. My mom actually got jealous that I did this without her, so I rewatched all three (at the time) John Wick movies twice in the span of a week or two. My brain just started cooking without me trying because this buffet of entertainment popped up this idea of John Wick versus a Norse God. Then, from there, I came up with the story, characters, and world and got to writing my debut novel.

I have a firm belief that if you tell a story, you should focus on entertaining yourself. Embrace your taste in things, and an audience with a similar interest will follow along. As I said, I am not the biggest fantasy fan. I do have a fascination with Norse mythology and anything from that region. This is why I read books by Scandinavian authors and listen to a lot of metal from that region.

My approach was to tell a grounded story that slowly evolved into something more fantastical. I want to believe in this world. If I believe in it, then the readers will, too. So, the book starts a little slow when it comes to the story. You spend a lot of time in this world with Abigail, the protagonist. Once readers have their feet soaking wet, then slowly the fantasy starts to come in. The book explains much of the Norse mythology, but it is basically another world. You are essentially going to live in your own world in this book, then have your reality shaken to its core when magic and Norse gods start to get involved.

Of course, this is an assassin novel. I had to develop action sequences for it. Some of those are naturally a part of the world. This is a world in which assassins are legalized workers, so there is a level of chaos in there. The other half of it is that some action comes from the story. Without spoilers, the confrontation between Abigail and her target leads to some serious bloodshed.

Horror is in my blood. I like to think that I don't have a heart, but I have a chainsaw revving up in my chest to keep me alive. I think I always carry it with me, even when I am working in another genre. For Huntress, I think horror influences it in two ways.

For one, there is the violence. This book is brutal. Nobody dies in a way that will result in an open casket if you know what I mean. For readers who haven't checked it out, expect lots of blood and serious amounts of gore. Not all of my favorite horror books and movies are brutal, but many are. For movies, I just love The Thing, Evil Dead Rise, Train to Busan, and the first few Saw movies. For books, I am a big fan of Tastes Like Candy by Ivy Tholen and anything Stephen Graham Jones does.

The other influence comes from a single scene. Somewhere toward the final act, there is a nightmare scene. This is partially to show some emotional turmoil that Abigail is in. The other is to tap into those horror influences that I have flowing through me. There are so many great scenes in which characters have deeply terrifying nightmares that reflect what is happening inside their head. Hereditary, An American Werewolf in London, Aliens, and obviously, A Nightmare of Elm Street are all major influences for that scene in The Huntress.

I always examine what I like or dislike in something and how I can use it to my benefit as a writer. While she is not a horror writer, I am a big fan of Kali Wallace's Dead Space and Salvation Day. Her writing is so mean and captivating, which I think helped me with tone in some of those meaner moments. Gillian Flynn, another non-horror author who still writes dark stuff, has an incredible talent at crafting flawed characters. I love a good flawed character to challenge readers on their empathy for that character.

Okay, to properly answer you. The Lost Village by Camilla Sten is the scariest book I have read. It is a great balance of thought-provoking themes and thrills, which I try to deliver with my own writing. She also wrote fascinating characters with dynamic chemistry. Stephen Graham Jones, specifically his Indian Lake Trilogy, is great at injecting some humor into his horrific and brutal work. I think when you have characters who are in good standing with one another like they are friends, then you will have naturally humorous moments together. That helped me bring some levity to The Huntress and the Trickster without diluting the overall seriousness.

If I can get more books published, which will all be horror in the future, I hope to deliver something familiar enough but with a twist. I recognize what other storytellers have done and think of a way to tinker with it. You don't have to make a big swing, just a big enough one. I have a religious horror manuscript I am pitching right now, which I hope someone will love enough to help me get it out into the world. For that manuscript, I wrote something that takes its influences and puts them in a blender, similar to what I did with John Wick and God of War for The Huntress and the Trickster.

I will always bring my voice with my writing. It is only natural. I will obviously refine my skills to improve that voice and prose. When I get these horror manuscripts published, my voice to bring characters to life and see how they react in these awful situations that I devised will separate my work from others. I don't think it will be completely game-changing, as I think that it is a bit pretentious of me to think that way. It will be constructive to push the genre forward instead of telling the same stories and doing the same arcs as others. I do know that the voice and premise of these novels will speak for themselves.

It is hard to say too much without a horror novel that is out that I can pull an example from. That said, my approach is basically the same as The Huntress and the Trickster. I come up with the key characters and work my way down. It is always about the story, so who are they, and how does that play in the story? How would they react if X thing happened? As I develop a roster of characters, I play with their relationships to find a natural, believable chemistry between everyone. It is important for me to make it all as realistic as possible despite any fantastical or supernatural elements coming into play.

I remember this fascinating video essay about why Stephen King is so good at what he does. Basically, the thesis was that King takes these believable, natural characters who already have their own lives and tosses them into a situation to see how they react. It is like a sadistic game we writers of dark stories, whether it be horror or other genres, play. That's how I see what I am doing with these characters while maintaining my truth to the story, themes, and characters.

Maybe I haven't spoken to enough writers, but I feel like my process is weird. I start with the idea, which brews in my head for months or years before I sit down to write. Well, before actually writing, I go into research and note-taking. I don't do an outline, per se. I do make a document that has the characters, some key parts of them, world-building notes about the setting or the rules of this world, etc. I do extensive research on various topics to prepare for a novel. For Huntress, I read a lot about guns, gun laws, Norse mythology, and San Francisco, which is the main setting for the novel.

When those notes are written, and I feel confident in diving into writing the book, I dive straight in. I usually write at night before bed, but if I have downtime, I take that advantage. To get me in the zone, I listen to music. I have always heard classical or instrumental music, which is what you should listen to when writing. I won't get into a tangent about how that is accurate but it misses a few key details regarding the science of how music affects our brains. I have done plenty of reading on it and have serious opinions on it. For me, I listen to whatever I like. I have a Spotify playlist of a plethora of songs I love. I put it on shuffle and listen to whatever plays while I write. It could range to all kinds of stuff, like The Black Dahlia Murder for death metal, Lights for pop, or Denzel Curry for some rap.

The challenges were prose, length, and telling of the story. It is why I feel so much stronger about the manuscript I am pitching because I have refined all of that. But for this novel, I just had to work through it to find something that felt right for me. Nobody is a bigger critic than a writer critiquing their own work. There is not much I can say about the prose or length, which I have plenty of positive and negative thoughts on as I am overly critical of myself. For telling the story, I did have roadblocks. I knew where I wanted Abigail to go, but the immediate scene to follow could be hazy. Or the logistics of the logic or the arc of the story got complicated. The best thing to do is step away, and it will come. I got many big answers from going to bed and having to wake up to take notes so I wouldn't forget some vital parts of the story.

Obviously, the story is king, and the characters follow right behind that. But, for me, themes or messages or whatever you want to call it is right there. I always think about the central theme(s) of what I am trying to convey. It might be a message, but it is usually trying to give some food for thought to readers to let them decide on their own about the themes. I want my work to be exercises in critical thinking and empathy.

Looking at Huntress and the manuscripts I have either written, am currently writing, or are in my head, there is no consistent theme that I always go back to. I have a lot to say about a variety of subjects. If I were to say there is any connecting thread, then it is about exploitation and abuse. Huntress shows how workers are used for profit. It also goes into gun violence, which is apparent. But, when I look ahead to stories I want to tell, there will be several about powerful people using people below them for their gain.

I am passionate about social issues. That's the core of it. If I get more books out into the world, regardless of how different the themes become, they will be about society and how people are treated. Hopefully, it will spark some empathy from people or a new way to look at the world around them.

World-building is so much fun. For The Huntress and the Trickster, it was the most fun part of writing it, along with the action scenes.

One side of the world-building was the grounded, assassin part of this universe. I thought greatly about what it would actually be like if you could become an assassin for work, and it was totally legal. What kind of people would kill others for money? What would these offices be like for these corporations? What would the laws be like? These are all things I tackled in the book to make it believable. That was the core of it all to make it realistic, even if it got into implausible territory. I went into great depth throughout the book to show how it all works to make it understandable. Some of that includes exposition, but some of it is just seeing what characters do or say for readers to get how this world operates. I also thought about how the world looks. I love seeing characters in John Wick who are heavily tattooed, like the women handling the contracts. Between that and my love for tattoos, I have a good amount myself; I embedded my love for that art form in this novel as most of the characters are heavily tattooed people.

The fantasy elements needed to be just as realistic for me. How can you make magic and Norse gods real? By explaining it and showing how it operates. My approach to both sides of this world was the same. I don't want to give away too much, but I asked similar questions regarding how the fantasy of this universe works. There are rules, but like how humans have their beliefs and lore, the gods have their own way of having science, magic, and folklore.

For now, I am pitching this horror manuscript. It is eerie, ethereal, and just nightmarishly scary. It is very different in every way from Huntress, but you can make connections in my writing style there; it is just astronomically better as I have grown greatly as a writer. If you or anyone reading this knows of literary agents, hit me up. I want to be represented as that is the best way to open the door for better publishing deals.

I am also writing another horror manuscript. I am about thirty or forty thousand words into that. It is by far the most compelling thing I have written, and I am only through a chunk of a first draft.

So far, I like AllAuthor. There are great tools on the site. I have only dabbled with it. I find it difficult to navigate everything about being an author beyond writing books. You guys have a good, accessible site. I will take anything that is fairly easy to help build my brand and promote my work.