Tristan Seth Nettles was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1987 with a severe speech impediment. After his parents divorced when he was eight, Tristan and his siblings lived primarily with their mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Man-O-War Cay, in the Abaco Islands of the Bahamas, and the rest in the Atlanta area, where he fell in with the wrong crowds. After attending five middle schools and seven high schools, Tristan enlisted in the Marine Corps infantry, where he was stationed in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Upon leaving the Marine Corps, following a home invasion and a stint in the brig, Tristan enrolled in a university Biology Program. In 2015, directly after graduating with a B.S. in Biology, a restless spirit took Tristan far beyond U.S. borders—through remote Pacific islands, Himalayan trails, Southeast Asia, and Europe. His travels have left deep cultural imprints, grounding his storytelling in rich, authentic detail. But his path has not been ordinary. Tristan navigated the shadowed intersections of legality—using cryptocurrencies and the internet to import large amount of recreational drugs into Thailand to fund his medical school studies abroad, eventually leading to the arrest and imprisonment of his long time girlfriend, a South African woman named Ashley Oosthuizen. His creative work is not escapism but a reckoning with impulses past and present. His debut novel, The Shepherd: A Bronze Age Tale (Histria Books, 2024), was written to bring awareness to Ashley's cause, along with a seven month stint in Ukraine fighting against Russia. Tristan Nettles writes with true conviction and authenticity—a man molded by real-world adventures, moral complexity, and an unflinching eye for human nature. His stories are as rugged as the Bronze Age, as layered as his own journey, and as unforgettable as the realities he explores.
