At the outset of the story, Tris is a young Neanderthal man navigating an environment as inhospitable as the Ice Age itself. To counter a sense of “otherness” that readers may attribute to a Neanderthal character, I have purposely chosen the first-person viewpoint so readers might more easily connect with Tris’s personality and share his experiences.

The journey began for me in early 2015 when I started drafting the first installment of what would grow into an eight-book saga. Since then, the fields of paleoanthropology and genetics have transformed our understanding of Neanderthals. Back then, popular science painted them as red-haired, freckled, green-eyed folk—a concept that struck me as curious but plausible. I thought, “Well, orangutans are gingers; why not a population of humans too?” So, Tris and his family were envisioned as fiery-haired individuals. Only later did genetic studies reveal that Neanderthals likely had a range of coloring similar to modern Europeans. As a result, the new characters introduced outside of Tris’s clan reflect this update.

And then, there are the dreams. Each book in the Dreamer series opens with a dream that lays the foundation for the story’s events and closes with another that hints at what’s yet to come. According to the plot lore, Dreamers are part of their culture, with a new Dreamer born every few generations.  Yet, Tris himself is a skeptic. Are these visions meaningful? Or simply the byproduct of an overactive mind? His doubts mirror the mysteries dreams likely held for our distant ancestors, an enigma as perplexing to them as it is to us today.

Over the years, I’ve been humbled by messages from readers sharing their thoughts on Tris and his journey. Men often tell me they see themselves in Tris—his struggles to protect and provide for his family strike a familiar chord. Some have expressed gratitude for a male character who feels real: not “toxic,” but flawed and thoughtful. (I didn’t set out to write a statement on masculinity, but hearing how much this resonated is deeply gratifying.) Women, on the other hand, frequently say they love Tris—a sentiment that never fails to make me smile.

Tris, at his core, is an “everyman”—resourceful, reflective, and imperfect, trying his best in a challenging world. Spending nearly a decade immersed in his life and times has been an adventure I’ll never forget, and knowing that at least some of my readers have been entertained by his story is the greatest reward of all.