Before I started the
Sandman Slim series I wrote
Butcher Bird, a book that also told the story of a trip to Hell and a meeting with Lucifer. I started building a library of books on mythology, folktales, Christianity, Kabbalah, and outré science. Some of these ideas ended up in
Butcher Bird. They've
all ended up in
Devil Said Bang and the other Sandman Slim books. For anyone interested in where I get some of the information that ends up in the novels, here is a list of 12 books from my library. The list is by no means exhaustive, but the books are easy-to-find titles, and they're all places to start for anyone interested in the ideas in the Sandman Slim universe.
One quick note: while I've studied the ideas in these books, I've never once hesitated to throw out accepted canon or mythology and substitute my own if I thought it would make my books better.
- The Devil: A Biography by Peter Stanford
- Fallen Angels by Bernard J. Bamberger
- From the Ashes of Angels by Andrew Collins
- The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
- The History of Hell by Alice K. Turner
- Encyclopedia of Heaven by Miriam Van Scott
- The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
- Kabbalah for Beginners by Rav Michael Laitman
- String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones
- The Oxford Companion to World Mythology by David Leeming
- The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi
- Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant