Hell's Eyes

Foreword

F or those of you familiar with my Heirs of Tenebris trilogy and the two introductions to the world and setting of my novels, you may remember a passing reference to a fictional novella called Hell’s Eyes by Tenebrese nobleman Sir Elliot Thomason from the “Cerbertes” section of Tenebris: An Introduction (the first and second editions). But perhaps this is your first foray into Tenebris, and so you may be wondering: who is Sir Elliot Thomason? What is Hell’s Eyes, and how does this connect to the young adult fantasy trilogy I’ve written? Well…it’s a bit of a long story! When I wrote the first edition of Tenebris: An Introduction , I was attempting to flesh out more about Tenebris, its history, its culture, its people, and immortalize all these little references and ideas blossoming in my head the more I thought of Fire & Flight and realized I had a sequel or two to write. The more I asked myself about these facets of universe creation and began building this entire world, the more things started to connect and strike a chord within me. And then the cerbertes was born. This is a creature that Xander has a history with, and I wanted to know more of its backstory, particularly how it came to have the common nickname of “hellhound” like we see in the Heirs of Tenebris trilogy proper. That’s when I got this idea of popular media influencing

iii