Tristina Wright Books In Order

Publication Order of The Nightside Saga Books

Tristina Wright is a popular science fiction and fantasy author who writes for young adult readers. She stands out online for her blue hair, her views on bisexuality, and struggles with anxiety. She writes young adult novels with lead characters are queer teens engage in what would be deemed not too conventional behavior. Her husband is a nerd who is an expert computer builder, though his most endearing attribute is his ability to make the sun shine with a simple mile. She has a degree in creative writing though she does not believe that she needs it to be a good writer. For Wright who took the course because it was the one most interesting to her, the most important thing for a writer is having a message to pass across. Tristina was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in early 2015, a psychological tremor, and generalized anxiety disorder that have significantly hampered her writing career. Given the feast and famine nature of a writing career she applied for emergency medical funding from the SFWA to help pay for spiraling expenses. Nonetheless, even with her issues with her health, she has remained determined to make a career for herself as a professional writer. Most days she can be found reclining on her couch writing her novels while sipping coffee and making up stories for her two children.

For Tristina Wright, writing is a distraction from the mundane of everyday life and an outlet for all the stories she has in her head. Since her health is unpredictable, writing is her best career option as she can tailor her schedule according to her pain levels on any given day. Creativity and writing allows her to be productive and show her children that no matter the challenges, she is mentally and physically strong. Nonetheless, even as writing is now an outlet for her opinions, it has not always been so. As a child she was the stereotypical nerd who always had her nose in a book, read everything she could find and ran her library card ragged. In her early years, she would order a ridiculous amount of books in fiction and nonfiction. Some of her favorites included HG Wells, Lord of the Rings, The Narnia Chronicles, A Wrinkle in Time, The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys. Apart from the mythology and detective fiction, she also loved biology and science journals and would often lay on the floor of her parents’ bedroom poring over her father’s numerous titles. Despite making a name for herself in her genre, it has not always been easy for Wright, as she had to face self-doubt and discouragement from her professors. He college professor famously told her that science fiction and fantasy writers are sellouts as the two are copout genres. Another professor bluntly told her that she had no talent for writing, and that she would never be successful as a writer, which led her to quit for about eight years. While the criticism cut deep, she would kick the negative voices to the curb and get back to writing to fulfill her childhood dreams by penning her first novel “27 Hours” in 2017.

Tristina Wright has written several short stories and one novel most of which are science and fantasy fiction novels with themes of representation, race, gender, and diversity. Being an author interested in issues of minorities, the characters in her novels are special persons that find themselves embroiled in something bigger than themselves. These characters are then wrapped up in the desperation of passion with another character that shares the same values and desires, in a fantasy setting that looks out to a hopeful future. The novels and short stories are intimate stories full of descriptive details that slip into myth and legend, rather than telling broad based historical perspectives in the mold of “Lord of the Rings”. The novels for the most part explore the nature of self and difference through characters mixed racial heritage and same sex relationships between characters such as Killian and Neal or Rumor Mora and Jude Welton. The author blends fantasy and science fiction in a manner similar to that of Pern books by Anne McCafferey where the magic of the present is the science of the past. The writing that Tristina describes on her website as “Right now, Young Adult science fiction and fantasy” is exceptional in its innovation and creativity. The descriptions of the settings, characters, and action scenes are highly vivid that it is easy to picture the world that Wright paints as if one were there.

“27 Hours”, the first novel in The Nightside Saga by Tristina Wright is a thrilling and weeping space opera, with a stellar cast of queer teenagers on a quest to save every human on the Sahara and their own homes while running down a clock. Rumor Mora lives in terror of two things failure, and hellhounds that may prove impossible for him to kill. Meanwhile, Jude Welton has two wishes, that he may lose his strange abilities and that humans would put an end to the killing of monsters. Things come to a head when the two boys – one raised to kill monsters and one raised to love them fall in love. Meanwhile, Nyx Llorca is keeping two secrets: she is in love with her best friend Dahlia and she speaks to the moon. For Braeden Tennant, all he wants to do is unlearn Epsilon’s dark secret and get out from under his mother’s control. The only way that the truth will come out is if they both commit treason. If they cannot stop the war between the monsters and the colonies, they may never see the things they desire become reality.

“The Siren Son” is short story about two people from different worlds that fall in love. Part coming to age tale, part fantasy, part legend, and part fable, it is a narrative of crippling loss, identity, love and ultimately hope. With fluid and almost poetic prose, the story tells of the war between humans, dragons, and sirens that will pull at the heartstrings of any science or science fiction buff. Even as it is a short story, it combines great characters and excellent world building to make for an explosive narrative that gives excitement a completely new meaning.