Interview with Christina Henry & a Giveaway!

Hey all! Did you know that Red Queen by Christina Henry came out yesterday and concludes The Chronicles of Alice Duology? It's a pretty wicked series! I mean we're talking about an adult version of an Alice in Wonderland retelling! It's pretty awesome! I asked Christina a few questions regarding writing and the series and am going to share the questions here! Plus a giveaway at the end!

Q. What was your inspiration for this story? What came to you to write this new and delightfully twisted version of Alice in Wonderland?

A. I was originally thinking of writing an Alice steampunk adventure. I don’t outline and I write chronologically, but I had a vision of a scene in the book (the scene that eventually took place in Butterflies) that was very dark and dangerous – a girl under glass, trapped.  I kept that scene in my head while I was writing and it informed everything that came before and after it. 

ALICE became a story about surviving trauma. RED QUEEN follows that by asking what happens after survival. How do you put yourself back together again? ALICE is about Alice finding out what happened to her; RED QUEEN is about Alice finding out who she is now.

Q. What are/were your favorite fairy tales?

A. I always loved The Princess and the Frog, especially since one of my favorite authors, Robin McKinley, re-told this story with her own twist in the collection THE DOOR IN THE HEDGE.  The way that McKinley wrote it is so lyrical and memorable.

I’m also partial to Angela Carter’s fairy tale interpretations in The Bloody Chamber. Most of the Grimm tales that we’re familiar with are very brief, so there is so much room for other authors to interpret and re-interpret in their own way.

Q. Would you consider writing more twisted/re-told fairy tales?

A. Yes, I’m writing one right now! My next book will be LOSTBOY, which is an origin story of Captain Hook from PETER PAN. I wanted to write this book because I always wanted to know why Captain Hook stays in Neverland harassing these kids instead of moving on and pirating like good pirates do. I decided there had to be a history between him and Peter Pan, and that perhaps they were friends once but no more.

Q. How do you overcome writer's block?

A. I don’t get writer’s block. I kind of have the opposite problem – too many ideas and not enough time to write them all!

OH HOW I ENVY YOU! LOL!

Q. What's your next project about, if you can say?

A. I’m nearly finished writing LOSTBOY. It will be released by Ace books in July 2017. After that I’ll be starting work on HIS MERMAID, a tale of magic, myth and P.T. Barnum.

Q. What do you like to do in your downtime?

A. I like to run long distances (yes, I know that’s weird) and I read a lot. I’ll read pretty much anything, really, but lately I’ve been reading a lot of mysteries set in exotic (to me) settings, like Colin Cotterill’s Siri Palboun series and the Inspector Kubu series by Michael Stanley.

I’m a big movie-watcher. I watch a lot more movies than television.  I especially love films by Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock, and my favorite film of all time is JAWS, which I have watched approximately 2000 times. I also love all the Godzilla movies – yes, all of them.

I like to camp and hike with my family – we’re planning on visiting Hawaii in the fall and right now we’re hiking a lot so we can hike in Waimea Canyon on Kauai.

OH I KNEW I LIKED YOU!! ;) JAWS IS MY FAVORITE MOVIE AS WELL AND I'VE LIKELY SEEN IT 2000 TIMES AS WELL!  

And now for that giveaway!! The publisher has offered up one copy of Red Queen to a US reader! So in order to enter, just leave a comment on this interview and leave me your email address! Bonus point if you comment on my review of Red Queen as well. Just leave a note saying you commented on it as well and that'll be an extra entry for you! the contest will run until the end of the week and I'll choose a winner on Sunday and contact you via the email address you leave.