I want to thank Susan L. Daniels of Susan Daniels Poetry for nominating HIGHER HELL for the Seven Things About Me Award. If you haven’t yet discovered Susan’s wonderful poetry, please take a moment to pay her blog a visit. You’ll be glad you did!
Instead of seven things about myself (which I’ve done on other award posts), I figured since there is only one chapter of HIGHER HELL: The New Trinity left to post, this would be a good opportunity to tell seven unknown facts about the story. So here they are…
1. I didn’t come up with the idea for The Second Coming and The New Trinity until I was nearly finished with the original HIGHER HELL story. I was having so much fun writing it, and I loved the characters of Casmiel and Gabby so much I didn’t want the story to end. So I racked my brains for a while as I edited the first book and came up with a way to continue the story.
2. In the first few discarded chapters of The Second Coming, Gabby had a friend and room mate named Amber “Tips” McGuinness. Tips was a very funny character who was sort of a female version of Rash. But I just wasn’t happy with the way the story flowed with Tips in it, and it really didn’t need another Rash, so I cut her out of the story.
3. When I was looking up names of demons and angels to use for characters, my first thought when I discovered Leonard was the name of a demon was “That’s gotta be one nerdy demon”. But when I came up with the idea of the legendary Jersey Devil being a friendly demon I decided Leonard was the perfect name for that character. And so, the nerdy little demon always annoying Casmiel was renamed Nybbas.
4. Speaking of Leonard…I made him a country music loving, cowboy hat wearing farmer specifically so he would be the opposite of the other characters I had already created. I love punk and goth music and fashion, so I’d made most of the characters in that mold. When it came to Leonard, I decided to go in the completely opposite direction. I don’t like country music for the most part, but I still created him with the few old time country singers that I do like in mind (Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Hank Williams Sr.).
5. The character of Vassago was originally going to be very, very different. Vassago was going to be the real life hunchback of Notre Dame! When Cas and the gang went to Paris, they were going to find Vassago- a lonely, sad, shy, deformed demon- living in the shadowy corners of the cathedral. The image of Vassago as a handsome, mischievous, sarcastic demon with a complicated past came to me while listening to a Scarlatti harpsichord sonata on my local classical radio station in my car one afternoon.
6. After the chapter in which Nathanael and his army destroy the Gates of Hell so that no one can go in or out, there was to be a chapter titled “Ghosts on the Loose” (named after an old Bowery Boys movie, if anyone remembers them). Ghosts were going to be flooding the Human World because souls who were supposed to go to Hell could not get in to it. But I decided this sub-plot was too much of a distraction from the real story and I never wrote it down.
7. When God appears after the final battle with Nathanael and resurrects Rash, I wasn’t going to give him any lines. I figured his silence would reinforce how powerless he had become. But I just couldn’t resist having God drop the “F-bomb” in his one and only line of dialog. I thought it was hilarious! (Hopefully you did too!)
And here’s a bonus fact!
The character of Dimitar, the young Bulgarian friend of Vassago at the Thirteen 13′s, is named after one of my favorite footballers- Dimitar Berbatov, former striker for Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur who currently plays for Fulham.
And now for my nominations!
Corseted Dreams by Jenna Leanne Grabey
Inkless by Jennifer Bresnick
and as a bonus one, I have to nominate Pushblog. Push, aka Christopher Dawes, is the author of Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail, which as I’ve mentioned before in other posts, was a major influence on HIGHER HELL. If you’ve enjoyed reading my story, then I’m sure you will LOVE ”Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail”. So go and read it right away! 
Thank you once again to everyone who has supported HIGHER HELL and The Noise of Silence!
Wow! Thanks David! I shall get my own back ~ rofl
heh-heh … go to: http://journalread.wordpress.com/awards/ii/more-lovely-awards/
Dear David,
As always i’m honored by your appreciation, thanks a lot: it’s amazing how the passion for writings and poetry keeps people from different Country – and language – in touch.
Have a nice day,
Gina.
Thanks again David for nominating me, it came as a lovely surprise/shock! I have found out now more about the award so I will be writing that up tomorrow.
I love all that about Leonard! That is such a hilarious thought in my mind.
Thank you for the award David! Much appreciated! I don’t do award posts on my blog, but I’ll find a way to thank you properly! Happy days!
How’s life with you David? Are things going well with Higher Hell?
Nothing much new here, Polly. I am working on some ideas for new posts I can put here to keep this blog fresh and entertaining now that all the chapters of Higher Hell have already been posted. Maybe even a sneak peak or two at the spin off book I’m working on about Vassago
That would be awesome ~ he’s quite a character. Have you got any further with publishing Higher Hell?
Nothing yet.
We have nominated you for the Reality Awards
Thank you very much!