Article - A Vision of Hell in the Her Angel Series

I’m sure everyone has a vision of what Hell is like and rather than try to go against what our minds conjure up when someone mentions the underworld to us, I decided to go with the flow when writing about this realm in the Her Angel romance series but to also create something vivid that a reader could really picture in their mind as they read the series.

In my Her Angel series, we’ve visited Hell a few times. In fact, the first book in the series, Her Dark Angel, has its opening scene set there. There’s an area in Hell where angels are grudgingly welcome and demons can’t do much about it. This area is a plateau of scraggly basalt that sits beneath a cavernous black dome and is the only entrance into Hell that an angel can safely use. Beneath the plateau, down a sheer drop of several hundred feet, is the pit. The pit is the place where the Devil himself resides, and it glows fiercely from the lakes of magma and the fires that scorch the land down there. We haven’t visited the pit yet in the series, but I have a vision of it in my mind as a sort of boiling flame-filled world with little solid ground to move between and a high risk of losing your life if you’re not fire-proof. Since the Devil is trapped in Hell against his will due to losing his last battle against the mighty angel Apollyon, the great destroyer and the hero in Her Dark Angel, it has to be one of the most dangerous places in Hell and not one that anyone, even a demon, would walk into willingly if they know the Devil is there. While the Devil can’t leave the pit to go to the plateau, he often casts his dark voice upwards in an attempt to ensnare the angels there and it takes a strong heart to ignore the temptation that the Devil offers.

I have a clear vision of the many different areas of Hell in my mind, a world of black sharp rocks and volcanic ash, rivers of fire and magma, and endless ebony plains punctuated only by spews of lava and billowing acrid smoke. Massive fractured black cliffs that rise up from valleys to form towers that soar into the darkness and appear like a fortress with a moat of fire. We touched on Hell in Her Dark Angel, Her Warrior Angel, and Her Guardian Angel, but it was Her Demonic Angel and Her Wicked Angel where we ventured deeper into the realm. A large part of the stories were set in the underworld and we discovered just how terrifying and horrific it can be. Hell in this series is always a dark place, very open but very claustrophobic feeling because of the endless darkness that surrounds people on all sides. Everything is black in Hell except the fire and magma, or the sulphuric smoke that chokes those unused to it. I can imagine that a mortal entering Hell would find it terrifying, and that’s what I’m aiming for whenever I write about that realm. The great thing about writing is conjuring up these worlds and spending time crafting them and honing them, and intensifying them until they leap off the page and pull the reader into that world as they read the story.

That’s why I think it’s very important to push the boundary on places that we’re familiar with in life and Hell is no exception. The version of Hell in my series is dangerous, soulless and terrifying, a world fraught with perils for anyone other than a demon, and even some demons too, and a place where you’re lucky if you come out of it with your life. Angels know how dangerous it is and that’s why it’s a brave decision by any of them, even if they’re fallen, to head into the wilderness of Hell and leave the relative safety of the small area close to the pit that Heaven rules. To discover more about this dark and dangerous realm, and its occupants, check out Her Demonic Angel and Her Wicked Angel in the series.