They are both extremely damaged people but I always felt like I understood them.

It’s written in third person but stays very close to Alice, and the only other character that is with her throughout the book is Hatcher. I never struggled with the plot or characters the way I have with other books. TQ: Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?Ĭhristina: This was actually a book that was easy to write from start to finish. I wanted Alice to be inspired by the original but to also be its own unique work. I reread the original Carroll stories, but after that I didn’t do any more research. TQ: What sort of research did you do for Alice?Ĭhristina: I confess to being a bad (or possibly lazy) researcher, which is one reason why I decided to place Alice in its own unique world. That led to a key scene in a brothel that became the driving force behind the whole book. Then I woke up one morning thinking about a girl under glass. There is a kind of quality of myth about Alice and Wonderland that lends itself to interpretation. Who is Hatcher? And will he turn on Alice?Ĭhristina: I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to write a story inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Hatcher doesn’t really remember what he did to end up in there, and there is a tension throughout the story because of that. TQ: Tell us something about Alice that is not found in the book description.Ĭhristina: Alice’s companion throughout the book is Hatcher, a murderer who is in the room next to hers in the asylum. TQ: Describe Alice in 140 characters or less. It was so different from anything I’d written before and I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. I wrote Alice partially because I wanted to be a better writer. This was obviously different from the Black Wings series because that series was set in contemporary Chicago, and I felt I had to maintain the Chicago I live in. In making up my own place I was able to create my own geography and my own language and my own rules for the world. Alice is not set in a specific time period or in a real place. Interestingly, the book I was writing during that last interview was not Alice. Was writing Alice a fun challenge? How much of a departure is Alice from your Black Wings series?Ĭhristina: It is a tremendous departure. Alice, your newest novel, is a dark historical fantasy based on the works of Lewis Carroll. But when writing a historical you have to think about so many details, down to whether or not certain terms were in use during the time period in which you are writing. Since the BLACK WINGS novels take place in a contemporary period I don’t have to worry about language that I use or the geography of the city, since I live here and know it very well. I’ve started writing a historical mystery. I would love to write a historical novel.

Looking glass by christina henry