A career in technical systems
Tristan has more than a decade of experience across IT, software development, and cybersecurity. His work has also crossed startups, consulting, product engineering, technical leadership, and digital operations.
Author · Technologist · Builder
Tristan McGowan
An Illinois-based author and systems thinker writing fiction about technology, power, privacy, and the people expected to live with the consequences.
About the author
Code, people, business—and the messy space between them
Systems are human stories
The memorable work rarely comes with clean requirements. It happens around fragile systems, impossible deadlines, practical fixes, late deploys, and teams that somehow become both coworkers and family.
Privacy needs agency
His writing returns to a practical question from real technical work: does a system merely record a decision, or can the person affected still understand, challenge, and change it?
Career to fiction
How real work shaped the books
Shadows and Bytes grew from Tristan's love of technology, distrust of easy answers, and years watching code, incentives, deadlines, and human judgment collide. The workplace anxiety, technical humor, team dynamics, and ethical pressure draw their texture from that career.
Some names and personality textures echo people he grew up with or worked alongside. That influence is a tribute to the curiosity, humor, and standards of real friendships—not a claim that the novel retells their lives.
A clear boundary
Inspired by experience, written as fiction
The characters are fictionalized composites. SearchGlass, Echelon Reset, the #CleverGirl crew's events, and the novel's conflicts are fictional. The book is not a biography, a true-story adaptation, a corporate exposé, or a claim about a real employer.
The career is part of the weather behind the story. The plot belongs to the imagination.
Published work
Book 1: Shadows and Bytes
Adult near-future technological thriller
Shadows and Bytes: Chronicles of the #CleverGirl Crew
“Access is not trust.”
An adult near-future technological thriller about an intern, a digital-rights crew, and a privacy system that remembers consent while putting real agency out of reach.
Read the Book 1 overviewQuestions readers ask
Who is Tristan McGowan?
Tristan McGowan is an Illinois author, technologist, software builder, and systems thinker with more than a decade across IT, software development, and cybersecurity.
What has Tristan McGowan written?
He is the author of Shadows and Bytes: Chronicles of the #CleverGirl Crew, Book 1 in the Shadows and Bytes series.
Is Shadows and Bytes based on a true story?
No. Career experiences inform its texture and questions, but its characters, companies, systems, events, and conflicts are fictionalized.
Where can readers follow the author?
The verified public professional profile is on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab). Book information remains available on this site.