1) Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into writing?

I was born in Russia, and my first writing was in Russian. Maybe that’s why it has some philosophical darkness in its tone with moments of hopelessness, while my Ukrainian roots gave me love toward mystic horror where the dead aren’t dead but alive in a different sense of living. When I moved to America I began writing in English. The language changed but the colors stayed, and the feeling of darkness is still around me, haunting me with the past I thought I left behind with my other life. For me writing is a kind of therapy. I keep rediscovering myself through my writing, and through discovering myself I began seeing the world around me much more clearly.

2) What inspired you to write your book?

I’d like to answer this question about Mythos because Mythos is a personal book. In this book I went deep into my psyche to see what was underneath, in the very darkness of my own. Have you ever seen your own personal bottom feeders that generate these strange fears you have no explanation for? You dig a bit deeper and there they are, crawling all over your subconscious. I was curious how deep I was able to penetrate my personal darkness and why I write the way I write. Inspiration came from looking over my path and threading it into one narrative, and then presenting this narrative to a reader, feeling almost naked under their peering gaze.

3) What theme or message do you hope readers will take away from your book?

That life is much more complicated than it looks. We want to believe in black and white while ignoring the wide spectrum of shades in between. There are no good and bad people. There are just people who gravitate toward the dark through their daily choices, sometimes sinking deep into the wrong ones. I love characters who are complex even in their cruelty, like Chester LaRue. He’s a bad man, but he’s also an intelligent man who’s able to suffer and in some sense bear his cross over his psychotic shoulders. Learning to recognize yourself in the eyes of a monster is the message I try to propagate across all my works.

4) What drew you into this particular genre?

I love human psychology, and now I’ve added artificial intelligence to it as well. AI exploring the human psyche while a character gets deeper into their own world, where the borders of reality blur and they no longer know what is real and what is not. I’m a huge fan of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his ability to create characters who can reason their way from God toward committing an atrocious crime, and then reason their way back. Psychological thrillers are an adventure where everything is possible because the narrative comes from complex human behavior, which is unpredictable in itself.

5) If you could sit down with any character in your book, what would you ask them and why?

Interesting question, because in Mythos I actually had the opportunity to talk to my character Chester LaRue, and it turned out to be a terrifying conversation, though incredibly insightful at the same time. The monster I created is the monster I projected, and you cannot project something that is not a part of you. You’re not afraid of the evilness of others. What mostly terrifies you is your own evilness, the one you spend your entire life hiding from the world. I exposed my monster in Mythos. Whether it was a good thing to do or not is for the reader to decide. For my part, I can only say it was honest.

6) What social media site has been the most helpful in developing your readership?

My own personal blog and podcast, where I write and speak daily about everything that interests me. It’s a tiny corner of the big world that belongs to me, where everybody can find something that might be interesting for them to explore. While doing that I keep learning about myself and the world. And the ones who come and read my posts are often interested in my books, because my books are an extension of my articles and my podcast — a thread I keep weaving into one narrative of my entire life.

7) What advice would you give to aspiring or just starting authors out there?

Read and write. Write and read. Read sophisticated literature that forces you to think, that makes you recognize something within yourself. Read because it helps you understand, not because you have to meet a monthly book quota. Read for intimacy — as if you were building something meaningful with a book, something that would stay with you long after you finish it. Not for a body count, where you read something and forget it an hour later. Because when you read with intimacy, you write with intimacy as well. You expose your inner self to the world and let the world take a good look at something in you that most of us keep secret. But a real writer is the one who has no secrets. All their secrets they have splashed on the pages of their books — they bleed through them, because they cannot be otherwise.

8) What does the future hold in store for you? Any new books/projects on the horizon?

My next book is coming next month. It’s a different kind of work — I wrote it about five years ago and shelved it. Now I’ve decided to publish it. The book is about a corrupt cop in Los Angeles, caught between a family that’s falling apart and a gambling debt he has little time to pay off. He’s not a bad man. He’s just lost and can’t find the way back.

About the Author

Kirill Khrestinin writes dark psychological fiction about people who shouldn’t be understood — and the ones who try anyway. A Russian-American author and filmmaker, his work explores violence, obsession, and the thin line between confession and performance. He studies artificial intelligence and brings that knowledge into his fiction — not as science fiction, but as psychological reality. His books include Down by the Spiral, Dear AI, I Killed Her, and Mythos: A Simulacrum 4.6 Novel.

SOCIAL LINKS

Website: https://kirillkhrestinin.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/real_khrestinin/

X: https://x.com/RealKhrestinin

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Kirill-Khrestinin/100063852527055/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20516986.Kirill_Khrestinin

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kirill-Khrestinin/author/B08C6BZMJR