Writing Angels with Alex Smith

I never get my ideas in a sudden stroke of sheer brilliance. I mean that would be nice, but I don’t. Ideas are always this vague feeling in the back of my mind that just grow over time.

I was 13 when I got my idea for “Calling For Angels”. There was this insurance advert on TV with an angel in it and as I was watching, I remember thinking “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a guardian angel?” So it built up from there.

There’s always been this thought in the back of my mind, which I’m sure most people have also had. When you’re going through a bad time and you just think “wouldn’t it be nice to have a guardian angel right now?” I mean its kind of one of those “what ifs?” What if you had a guardian angel? Would all your problems be solved? Or would you just end up in even more trouble than you’re already in? And what would the guardian angel be thinking? Would they even like being your guardian angel, or would they rather be doing something else?  I love thinking up “what ifs?” because that’s when you get a whole range of possibilities.

To tell you the truth, I did originally intend Kai to be your bog-standard-average-kind-of guardian angel. But since I seem to have absolutely no control over my characters, he just evolved into the person you read about. I did do a bit of research on angels though, not much, but just enough to know about archangels and guardian angels, then I moulded it to suit the story. So, Uriel is actually a man (well, all the archangels are) but I made her a woman in “Calling For Angels” instead, because somehow that seemed to fit the story line better.

But in all honesty I just sat down with this vague idea in my head of someone having a guardian angel and a very raw and rough version of “Calling For Angels” just flowed from there.