Go to Hell is a story of love, death, friendship, betrayal, fate, and board games. It centers around the misadventures of Ryan Harper, and the twists and turns his life takes after it ends.
Showing off on the football field for a man he thinks is a college scout, Ryan is injured a little more seriously than he had intended. Fatally injured, in fact. As his body is being hauled away, Ryan is handed the scout's business card, which reads "Go to Hell, go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.00"
Once he arrives in Hell, or at least its entry lobby on Dante Avenue, Ryan is given the job offer of an afterlifetime. It turns out that what he was being scouted for was a new venture being explored by Hell to compete with the whole "guardian angel" business. He's given a new body, transferred to a new school, and an assignment: his new schoolmate Amanda. All he has to do is get close to her.
Unfortunately for Ryan, he also gets a chance to find out what life is like on the other end of the hazing and bullying he had subjected other kids to in his previous lifetime. He also discovers that getting romantically involved with his new assignment can have far reaching consequences.
Along with a group of outcast kids who stumble upon his secret, Ryan gets revenge, gets the girl, and gets respect.
And that's when things really go wrong.
The first draft of the novel was written in a marathon 21-day writing frenzy in February of 2009, but the story itself goes back further than that. The first rumblings of a "guardian devil" story came during writing sessions for Pab's sketch comedy group in college back in 1990, but the concept never got past the idea stage. Over the decades Pab looked for an opportunity to develop the concept into something further, with many false starts.
While trying to sell a comedic manuscript about an attempted school shooting, Pab had a long chat with an editor about the topic of bullying. Somewhere along the line, the idea of a young adult novel aimed at boys centered around a reformed bully was raised, and Pab realized how well that concept could tie in with his guardian demon idea. Three weeks later he had the main structure of Go to Hell in place.
Now, two years after that marathon, the final product is here.
As someone who had been on both sides of the bullying equation over the years, Pab sought to delve deep into the effects that it can have not only on its victims but the bullies themselves. "The people who do the bullying don't realize that they're hurting themselves as much as they are the kids they pick on. It numbs them to violence, especially when there are no consequences for their actions or when schools treat perpetrators and victims equally. I wanted, just once, for there to be a story where a bully got to experience first hand what it's like to get a dose of his own medicine.
"When I created the character of Ryan, I wanted a character that a variety of readers could identify with. Popular athletic kids who don't often find books with protagonists like them nowadays can identify with who Ryan starts out as and appreciate what he goes through. Bookish, nerdy teen boys (like I was) will enjoy the revenge fantasy of what Ryan is reduced to and what he does to the bullies who pick on him. And I hope girls will appreciate the romance storyline and realize just how much Ryan loves Amanda, and what that leads him to by the book's climax. Everyone either knows, or is, someone like Ryan at one point or another in this story."
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