Writing about the Devil: rafael nicolás, author of ANGELS BEFORE MAN and ANGELS & MAN

rafael nicolás discusses his media influences, his writing process, and his thoughts about writing about Lucifer

Angels Before Man cover art by Hyde Angelus

I’m Morgan, and I write romance, horror, and fantasy. I enjoy gothic lit and vampires. My newest book as of typing, The Saint of Heartbreak, a queer romance in Hell about Judas and the Devil, is available for pre-order. More about my books can be found at morgandante.com. My Patreon can be found here.

I’m excited to share this interview with rafael nicolás, the author of Angels Before Man and Angels & Man, the first two books in a trilogy based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Bible.

Something I love about nicolás’ work is his lush, poetic prose and how he explores questions about religion. In Angels Before Man, I was struck by Lucifer’s sense of shame about his own body and sense of self in a way that reminded me of Adam and Eve realizing they are naked when they defy God and eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I was also struck by the explorations of love and religion that reminded me of Keats’ poetry.

There is also something very queer about the characters’ journeys that I found very relatable. Lucifer’s self-consciousness and shame about his body, as well as his guilt over feeling these things in Paradise, resonate strongly with me as someone who is bisexual and nonbinary trans but also closeted from part of my family and estranged from others. I have lived in the Southern U.S. for my entire life. I was told by my family that “lesbian” and “gay” are the worst insults you can direct toward a Christian.

When I was bullied in middle school and called a lesbian for expressing attraction toward other girls my age, my family was very angry and defensive, but a lot of this was the idea that I was being called something unforgivable; their anger turned toward me if they even suspected the bullying was based on genuine feelings I expressed. I had to lie and reassure them that this wasn’t the case. I remember writing in a journal once, I’m sorry, God, but I think I might be bisexual. I was frightened sick at the age of twelve from the idea that I was walking a line between being loved by God and falling to eternal damnation.

Therefore, among other reasons dealing with both body dysmorphia and body dysphoria, Angel Before Man’s exploration of Lucifer’s sense of needing to literally hide himself and the cost of liberation on himself and others really resonate with me, since he is gay and in love with St. Michael, who is often depicted as his opposite and the heroic angel who defeats him. So, I gravitate toward this trilogy’s themes, and so do a lot of readers!

Angels & Man deals a lot with crafting an intricate story out of the Book of Enoch, a non-canon book of the Bible and one of many aspects of discussing the Bible that can be tricky because of the myriad contradictions and the wildly varying interpretations and translations. I love how these complex story threads weave together and how there are so many rich relationships between complicated and flawed characters. A&M is probably my favorite of the series so far.

I enjoy how these books truly queer both Paradise Lost and the Bible and intensely investigate themes about shame, loss, grief, identity, love, sex, faith, and so on while not shying away from many of the darker and stranger elements of the Bible.

So now, time for angel thoughts!

More about his work can be found here.

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What are some of your media inspirations? It can be books, films, shows, music, etc.

I love books, but I’m a huge movie fan! I was inspired the most for ABM by these films: Fellini Satyricon, Sebastiane, Belladonna of Sadness, Death in Venice, and Funeral Parade of Roses, the last of which is probably my favorite film. Oh and I should probably mention the two absolutely horrific movies that I talk about a lot: Come and See and Martyrs.

For books, I was inspired by Un lugar sin limites by Jose Donoso probably a lot more than I wanted to admit when I wrote ABM, Manuel Puig’s Beso de la mujer araña, as well as Carnivorous Lamb. The work of Italo Calvino and Bruno Schulz is huge for me too. 

What interests you when it comes to writing Lucifer? Is there anything specifically when it comes to the minor role of the Devil in the Bible? What about writers who have written about Lucifer? Angels Before Man is a queer story based on Paradise Lost by John Milton, and William Blake did quite a lot of poetry, art, and essays about Milton’s sympathetic Satan, stating that Milton was “of the Devil's party without knowing it.” How does any of this influence your work?

This is a loaded question! I think my more personal interests in Lucifer are long-winded, so I’ll stick to the more academic reasons. On that note, talking about Lucifer in the strictly theological sense can be annoying — as I’m sure you know — because you’ll instantly get people telling you that Lucifer is more of a cultural invention and that any scriptural evidence for him is minimal. I’d argue, though, that most beliefs in Christian communities are based on cultural inventions with minimal evidence in biblical canon, which I think most people can acknowledge is quite messy anyway. So when I talk about Lucifer, I should preface that I’m interested in what’s traditionally associated with him, without making a judgment on whether the original intention of biblical authors was ever the beautiful, tragic fallen angel that Milton had a great hand in developing.

So, Milton. I’ve talked about this before in response to an ask on Tumblr, but one of the things about Paradise Lost’s Lucifer is that, though he’s framed as a tragic figure, Milton still intends to make Satan the villain; you can see how the descriptions around him change — go from this more heroic, even tender, wording to later describing him crouching animalistically and whispering evilly in Eve’s ear. I’ve heard some people say Milton was ambiguous about Satan/Lucifer’s ultimate morality by the end, but I think that’s pure revisionism, and Blake says it straight: Milton did not want to justify Lucifer. However, the characteristics of Milton’s Satan felt much more sympathetic, and even relatable, in Blake’s time (of revolutions, middle Enlightenment, and so on). It’s interesting how a character remains the same but the people around them change so much. As I put it in that same Tumblr post, one of my big fascinations with Lucifer as a figure, in Western literature at least, is how he’s really a vehicle for our feelings on authority, independence, rebellion, family.

The traditional story of Lucifer as a rebellious son who will one day see that his Father was right all along doesn’t feel the way it used to. In recent years, we’ve seen even children’s movies — take Encanto, for example — move in the direction of depicting parental figures as being wrong, stuck in their old times, caught perpetuating generational trauma. You’ll notice, too, the connotation that “enforcing parental authority” has now; you’ll notice how “traditional family values” is the backbone of homophobic, transphobic, and anti-women laws. I should add that we live in a time where the stories of queer people who’ve run away from home are everywhere, folks whose parents were never right in the end. I’m closeted, for example. My family will never be right in the end. I won’t wake up from this “rebellion” one day and see that my father was right all along, and even if things go bad for me — say I burn in hell — my father won’t be right about who I am and who I love. I won’t be wrong even if I’m damned for it.

All this to say that I never thought to myself, “We need a contemporary Satan story.” I was focused on the queer-ing of Lucifer, which is a whole other very long discussion, but I’ll stay on topic and just make a mention that Milton’s Satan was fairly queer too: the angels are mentioned to be fluid in their sex — though they all use he/him pronouns — are explicitly stated by angel Raphael to have sex with each other, and the language used around Lucifer is occasionally feminine. When I speak of “queer-ifying” Lucifer, then, I mostly mean making the story of the fall about his sexuality, which again, I’ll try to control myself from talking too much about right now. Ultimately, the queerification and the modernization of Lucifer happened in tandem.

It’s like Milton and Blake. Lucifer’s story has hardly changed, but the world is so different now than the one that started the whispers about that rebellious, beautiful angel. I wouldn’t say we’re all devil worshippers these days, as some people would like to fear monger you about, but Satan-sympathy has become very easy. (Even more so as Christian doctrine throughout history falls under critical eyes, critical hindsight). The development of Lucifer’s story into that of a runaway gay child and their abusive parent felt incredibly natural. Obvious, even. I’m confused why it’s not a more popular outlook.

I don’t think Milton would have liked ABM — though he might see that I’m responding to the discourse between God and Adam in Paradise Lost’s book 8 regarding God’s contentment (?) regarding his loneliness for all of eternity — but I think Blake might’ve been amused by it. 

While Angels Before Man is based on Paradise Lost and Satan’s fall, Angels & Man is based on the Flood and the Book of Enoch, a non-canon book of the Bible that most people are aware of because of the existence of Nephilim, the offspring of angels and humans. What made you want to use Enoch specifically as inspiration for the sequel?

One of the things that fascinated me the most about the Lucifer story was that it was an apocalypse. An entire world ended, all the perfect days before Satan’s supposed invention of evil came to a grinding halt. In most Lucifer stories I found, I felt that the enormous destruction and loss of innocence that would come with the birth of evil in Heaven was sort of downplayed. I mean, it would essentially be the end times for the angels and wouldn’t it be much worse for angels, who were all entirely good and innocent before this happened — as opposed to the human apocalypse in which we’ve all been sinners from birth? Even Milton, in my opinion, didn’t delve into the angel apocalypse enough, but no one really does because the Bible and our mythology around it is, frankly, about us, about humans. In the same vein, popular Christian thought, popularized by Milton as well, is that Lucifer fell because he was jealous of God creating humanity, but there’s no scriptural evidence for this, and it was mostly ripped from Iblis in Islam.

I’ve always been in the camp that Satan’s fall would’ve had nothing to do with us, that angels had a time of paradise before humans, that their paradise was a long one, that it all came to a violent end, and that they had a final judgment. And, in that sense, they had their apocalypse.

This was what really spawned the idea of Angels Before Man, down to the title. It also had me thinking about angels and apocalypses, in general. It brought me to the other apocalypses in the Bible — the Flood and Revelation. I noticed angels play such a big part in those. So, 3 apocalypses. A trilogy. Trinity.

One issue was that I’ve been pretty set on keeping my story close to the canonical Bible rather than stepping too far into mystic, Gnostic, non-canonical, grimoire territory, and for a reason — I’m responding to the Mexican Catholicism I was raised in. I wanted to write a series my family could hypothetically pick up and read without getting confused about the religious aspect. That said, the canon Bible quite famously does make mention of the Watchers from the Book of Enoch: the “sons of God” and “Nephilim” lines in Genesis, though it doesn’t explain them. So, even though Enoch is considered uncanonical — for good reason, in my humble opinion — there’s sort of a big gap in understanding what caused the Flood if we don’t use the Book of Enoch as a guide. I decided to just use it. I used Enoch as a guide, along with the Book of Giants, but I didn’t make it a direct retelling.

Oh and beyond the apocalypse factor, the Flood story was a good continuation of what I framed Satan’s fall to be about — loving an equal freely and, of course, sex. 

Based on the previous complications, what are complications that come with using the Bible as inspiration?

The Bible has plot holes, has inconsistencies, has entire mythologies built on translation errors. Lucifer himself is a mistranslation, in more ways than one. Jesus has different final dying words depending on the Gospel. To me, though, this is all part of the story. I think the Bible itself invites speculation at times, and it makes it very fun to play with. 

I think you’d be shocked at how many connections you can make if you’re not afraid to draw your own conclusions and have a little fun.

What was a surprise to you while writing the first two books in the Angels trilogy? A plot point you thought of that wasn’t in the first draft? A character you became surprisingly fond of?

The actual result of my writing is always baffling to me. Reading ABM and A&M is baffling. I'm surprised by how emotional they are. People get the impression that I'm a sadist, but I’m actually very soft. For example, I’m incredibly sensitive about animal death, and the animal abuse in the books is deeply upsetting for me.

For more specific things, Rosier is definitely a character that I never would have anticipated loving as much as I do now. I almost redid his whole character during the initial drafting of ABM since I’d had other plans for him, but something about him felt pretty special, and I’m happy I stuck with him when he showed me who he is. It’s so interesting to explore a character like him — a character who is kind but not perfect. I have a soft spot for characters that are good people but not naive.

Oh and A&M’s Kokabiel was an invention during the draft. He was there from the start, but his plotline was going to be different, and his personality was very very tame. This Kokabiel is much better, and I adore him.

Something that is very engaging about ABM and especially A&M is how they juggle an ensemble cast. What are your organization methods when it comes to writing so many characters?

Anyone who heard from me while drafting A&M will know that it was extremely difficult, but a lot of it came down to understanding the plot lines in the book. The story feels less complicated, and the cast feels less massive, if you break up the plot into separate threads and attach characters to each thread. Instead of thinking of juggling 10 characters, think of jugging 3 characters who are involved in plotline A, 4 involved in plotline B, and 3 involved in plotline C. That's for the initial organizing before I start with what I really consider character work, which is polishing backstory, plot relevance/effect, emotional arc, and purpose. All things in a book, for me, have to have a purpose. What does this character represent? Why are they here? How do they serve the narrative?

Phanuel, for example, can come off as very minor, but he serves a purpose. He’s the angel of forgiveness, tortured by the literal devil (someone who doesn’t want forgiveness), loved by St. Michael (someone desperate for forgiveness). 

One word of advice is to not neglect platonic relationships, deep friendships, and familial bonds. Managing a big cast with a web of connections to each other, beyond romantic, can really enrich the story.

Is there anything about the third book you’re comfortable with sharing? Anything you’re excited about?

I feel like there’s a lot of things that I've been secretly talking about through allusions, metaphors, in ABM and A&M, but the third book doesn’t allow me that safety blanket. It’s like pulling off a mask, tearing down the curtains, showing you what the crazy gay Satan and St. Michael story was always really about. 

It’s a book that’s difficult to write for me, emotionally, and I think it’ll be hard to read as well, but bear with me, I’m begging. It’s like religion. You’ll find meaning in the end. I hope.