Mathieu Tallegas
In 2018, a traumatic incident took my memory and my certainty about who I was. After decades building a career in cybersecurity and telecommunications, I couldn’t do the work I knew how to do. What remained was a question I couldn’t stop asking: What are we when the things that defined us disappear?
Fiction became the answer — or at least, a way to live inside the question.
I write quiet, atmospheric psychological thrillers shaped by silence, identity, and the pressure of institutions on people who don’t fit. My stories unfold in the Pacific Northwest, where rain and silence shape everything, and where the past refuses to stay buried.
Sam Janzen — the protagonist at the center of my series — carries questions I couldn’t stop asking myself. About identity. About survival. About what we hide from the people closest to us, and what happens when hiding is no longer possible. I consulted with people in the queer community to make sure her story was told with the honesty it deserved.
I write in the early morning hours. Most of my stories begin with a question rather than a plot.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where the quiet feels watchful.
Mathieu Tallegas 