Interview: Mathilda Zeller discusses family, location, and combining horrors for her debut novel It Looks Like You in the Dark
Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood was released in August, offering a second round of horror stories from indigenous voices that began with 2023’s first installment of the series. One of the talented voices from that first collection, Mathilda Zeller, is back with her own blood for her debut novel It Looks Like You in the Dark.
Releasing October 12, the description from Tor reads;
Tapeesa is newly out of high school and working in a fish processing plant in the Inupiat village, Chukchi, where she’s lived her whole life. Maybe that’s why people tend to assume she isn’t that bright—or maybe her mama is right and she does have bad blood. Either way, she knows the legend, and she knows the history. Her Ahna told her that the hungry creature—the kushtuka—appears to us in the form of someone we love. It will try to get us to follow it. Follow it where? Those who have gone no longer have throats to tell us.The Kobuk River Valley of remote Alaska draws greedy white men time and time again. But whenever they come, death comes too. This time the white men are here for the long term, to create an open pit, a rare earths mine just north of the village. When her sister Esther goes missing, Tapeesa will do anything to get her back. Seeking justice, Tapeesa must track down the kidnapper in the darkening Arctic. What awaits beyond the warmth of her village is more horrible than she could imagine and closer to her than she knows.IT LOOKS LIKE YOU IN THE DARK is a fast-paced, grab-you-by-the-throat story about love, loyalty, and all the fearsome monsters that emerge when we turn our backs on the land and each other.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mathilda about her upcoming publication, as well as her experiences and inspirations that went into her debut novel.
This interview was edited slightly for clarity.
The Horror Lounge: Tradition and lore clearly influence your work, but what inspired the humanistic story in It Looks Like You in the Dark and characters like Tapeesa?
Mathilda: The humanistic story was very heavily influenced by five generations of my family, including mine. I like to tell people there’s very little I made up (which gives them pause, because there is definitely a supernatural monster in this book) but it’s true. My mother told me that reading my book triggered memories she hadn’t thought of in years, but they were things she talked about when I was a kid, and have never forgotten. This book is a fictional tribute to Real Family history things.
Tapeesa, specifically, was actually inspired by someone I don’t even know. When I sat down
to write “Kushtuka,” the short story seed to this novel, I was double checking folklore I
remembered from my grandpa; by that time, he had been dead for ten years and I was afraid
of getting things wrong. One of the first hits on the internet search was an article published
by a man named Jim Vandergriff in The Heritage of Kansas. He very casually mentioned
that he extracted the story of the Kushtuka from an Inupiaq high school girl who he was
driving around in his truck at midnight in a rainstorm. The framing of his account was so
disturbing, I wanted to find a way to somehow reclaim the story on behalf of the girl.
The Horror Lounge: How, if at all, has your writing been affected since the release of Never Whistle at Night?
Mathilda: The release of Never Whistle at Night has been unreservedly life changing for me. Since then, I have received unsolicited offers of literary representation, a two-book deal sold in a 7-way auction, and other things I can’t really talk about yet. All of this has created opportunities that have made it easier for me to write more; writing residencies the opportunity to align my day job with my writing life. I’ve come into community with some remarkable writers and industry professionals and am so delighted to know them and learn from them. I’m very grateful for Shane Hawk and Ted Van Alst’s advocacy of my work, but, modest as they are, tend to smile and shrug it off when I tell them so.
The Horror Lounge: From both “Kushtuka” and what I’ve so far read in It Looks Like You in the Dark, the physical snowy climate is so prominent it’s almost like a character itself. Is that a conscious effort or more of a byproduct of the story?
Mathilda: The climate is important to the story because this is inevitable when writing about the Arctic, I think. Whoever you are, if you live north of the Arctic circle, the environment and its idiosyncrasies shape basically every aspect of your life. I was in Kotzebue for over two weeks this summer, and during that time, I saw nothing remotely resembling a sunset. The last sunset of the season happened when I was there, but I was never able to stay awake for long enough to see the sun go down when it was going down. What happens in that brief period of darkness north of the Arctic circle is absolutely none of my business.
The Horror Lounge: You’ve seen a lot of the world—two continents, three countries—how have your experiences and encounters influenced your writing?
Mathilda: Having twenty cities, I have two options when people ask where I’m from. I can say I’m from nowhere, or I can say I’m from everywhere. There are some very cloistered
communities that would balk at me claiming them after only having lived there for a
few years, and there are places like Kotzebue, Alaska, where, when I visit, I have
been warmly welcomed home by people who have never met me, but know exactly
who I am because they know exactly who my family is. This has made me think a lot
about what it means to belong, and what it means to create belonging, which shows
up in my work.
Spending time in a wide array of places has forced the realization that none of us are
as unique as we’d like to think. Humans will be human in every condition. I like to
write about humans being human. We’re fascinating little twerps.
The Horror Lounge: How, in your opinion, do you effectively balance supernatural horror with real life horror such as murder and colonization?
Mathilda: I think the two run together in very natural ways. Supernatural horror is, on many
levels, the perfect metaphor and distillation for real life horrors. I love their
juxtaposition, the source (real life horror) and its outgrowth and consequence
(supernatural horror), because in tying them together, it can be easier to process and
make sense of the senseless, the unthinkable, and the horrific in our life. We like to
navigate our real-life horrors by a supernatural proxy, and I think the next natural step
is to draw connections between the two and let them augment one another.
It Looks Like You in the Dark will be released by Tor on October 12, 2026.
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