Kate
asked
Mark Cain:
I have just started reading your books - onto the third one now, and am loving them so far. How do you come up with the ideas? How much research have you had to put into the various devils and demons? Are you religious yourself? And thank you :)
Mark Cain
Kate, I'm glad you're enjoying the series. I was raised in a fundamentalist household, but by the time I went to college, I'd become an agnostic. Still, my early years in a Bible-centric church, not to mention my undergraduate and graduate work in English, which included studying the Bible as literature, Medieval literature, and Italian Renaissance art, gave me a good grounding in religion, especially from the Catholic perspective. I also spent fifteen years of my first career in Catholic higher education, so I feel very steeped in their view of religion. I've read Dante (I think that shows), etc.
Starting with that background, I constructed a Hell loosely based on Catholic beliefs, both canonical and apocryphal. Devils and demons were pretty easy to come up with. BOOH just popped into my head, because I thought the acronym for his name was so funny. Populating Hell with a bunch of characters out of Greek mythology comes from Charon's appearance in Dante's Inferno. I thought, if Charon can be there, why not Sisyphus or Prometheus or whoever I wanted to use to help the plot along? If I didn't know something, I'd probably have a book around the house to fill in details. And there's always the Internet. Demonology is a popular topic out there. Easy to get ideas.
Beyond that, I have a fairly wacky imagination. :) I'll often pull ridiculous ideas out of thin air, like having Orson as Steve's assistant or Florence as his girlfriend. Once you throw one famous historical figure into the book, it's an easy stretch to throw in some more.
But I think it all works because 1) this is a relateable Hell, using just enough fire and brimstone to conform to conventional thoughts but then making the Underworld not unlike our own, with all the accompanying frustrations, only magnified; 2) the books have a protagonist who you can root for, and who has a personal stake in the outcome; and 3) the characters, from Steve to Orson to Beezy to Satan to little Uphir, etc., are distinct. They speak in their own voices, have their own mannerisms. They are not carbon copies of each other.
An overlong answer, but I hope it answers your questions. The four CIRCLES IN HELL books present a complete story arc, so you could stop with them and feel satisfied, but there's plenty of room for other tales to be told down in my quirky version of Hell. I'm debating right now if I will continue the series. If you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.
Best,
Mark
Starting with that background, I constructed a Hell loosely based on Catholic beliefs, both canonical and apocryphal. Devils and demons were pretty easy to come up with. BOOH just popped into my head, because I thought the acronym for his name was so funny. Populating Hell with a bunch of characters out of Greek mythology comes from Charon's appearance in Dante's Inferno. I thought, if Charon can be there, why not Sisyphus or Prometheus or whoever I wanted to use to help the plot along? If I didn't know something, I'd probably have a book around the house to fill in details. And there's always the Internet. Demonology is a popular topic out there. Easy to get ideas.
Beyond that, I have a fairly wacky imagination. :) I'll often pull ridiculous ideas out of thin air, like having Orson as Steve's assistant or Florence as his girlfriend. Once you throw one famous historical figure into the book, it's an easy stretch to throw in some more.
But I think it all works because 1) this is a relateable Hell, using just enough fire and brimstone to conform to conventional thoughts but then making the Underworld not unlike our own, with all the accompanying frustrations, only magnified; 2) the books have a protagonist who you can root for, and who has a personal stake in the outcome; and 3) the characters, from Steve to Orson to Beezy to Satan to little Uphir, etc., are distinct. They speak in their own voices, have their own mannerisms. They are not carbon copies of each other.
An overlong answer, but I hope it answers your questions. The four CIRCLES IN HELL books present a complete story arc, so you could stop with them and feel satisfied, but there's plenty of room for other tales to be told down in my quirky version of Hell. I'm debating right now if I will continue the series. If you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.
Best,
Mark
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