Alice Takes Back Wonderland 1 & 2 by David D Hammons- reviews & interview

Alice Takes Back Wonderland
by David D Hammons
Genre: adult, fantasy, fairy tale reimagined

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au / Chapters Indigo Paper /

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After ten years of being told she can’t tell the difference between real life and a fairy tale, Alice finally stops believing in Wonderland. Only when the White Rabbit kicks her down the rabbit hole does Alice realize that the magical land she visited as a child is real. But the Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland, and is systematically dismantling all that makes it wonderful. Alice must help the Mad Hatter and all those fighting to keep Wonderland as mad as it’s ever been. To do this, Alice journeys across the stars to unite an army. She discovers that fairy tales are real in the magical world beyond the rabbit hole, but they are not the fairy tales she knows. Alice must overcome the trials of these old stories if she wants to unite the lands against Ace. With the help of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White, and heroes old and new, Alice may have the strength to take back Wonderland.

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REVIEW:As most of you probably know the story of Alice, you know if the take…..

A young girl who falls into a strange world filled with magical beings. 

But in this authors version, Alice is a young girl with a different story to tell, this is what happens after………

When she returned real world she was diagnosed with ADHD and Schizophrenia. She was then forced to believe that the Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and all the other characters she met were all just figments of her imagination. So Alice finally believed them and let wonderland fall into just a memory.

But ten years later the white rabbit reappears and leads Alice back to Wonderland…… But all is not how she remembers  it!! 

The Cheshire Cat is dead and the Ace of Spades is now in charge. (And he’s a tyrant!) Nothing is as Alice remembers it to be. This world resembles the world she just left, it looks far too “normal”! 

The Ace of Spades has decided that the magic/wonder that made this realm special is to be removed. Madness is now forbidden! 

Alice has her work cut out for her, it’s going to take a huge plan to restore this realm back to the Wonderland Alice remembers and loves. 

Alice Takes Back Wonderland is not just a retelling of the Lewis Carrols story.  It’s a lot more, we see the characters from the original book play their part in trying to overthrow the Ace of Spades. 

Bye we also see other characters from fairytales, like Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Snow White. 

It is aimed for a YA reader, but I found it deeply interesting and I couldn’t put it down. 

? Reviewed by Julie B

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ALICE TAKES BACK WONDERLAND
Alice and the Ice Queen
by David D Hammons
Genre: adult, fantasy, fairy tale reimagined
Release Date: November 25, 2022

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au /

Alice has returned, and Wonderland is covered in snow. An icy wind pulls Alice and Peter Pan back into Wonderland through a mirror-like portal, trapping Peter in a frozen palace. After Snow White informs Alice that all of Wonderland is in danger, Alice joins forces with Don Quixote, Hanno of Carthage, Long the Dragon, Snegurochka, and many more legends both new and old to save Peter Pan before Wonderland is lost.

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REVIEW: This is the second book in the series, I’d recommend you read book one before opening book two. 

Alice and Peter are together in the real world, living their best lives. Growing up together, life seems too good to be true…..

This one I felt a little older than the first book. It’s a great read, throughly engaging and plenty of action and adventure. I’ll have to admit I did like the first on a little more. But it’s still a great read. 

I did find Alice a little hard going in places, she can’t commit, she won’t look forward to either a future or even tomorrow. When Peter asks her about what she wants to do, she becomes frustrated, and when Snow White asks her to become Queen of Wonderland to unite the realm, Alice doesn’t really want to do it. I understand that for years she was told what to think and feel. 

After Peter is sucked back into Wonderland, Alice has no choice but to rescue Peter. But how can she rescue him when she’s not sure where she is? It looks like Wonderland, but it’s covered in snow…..

Meeting Don Quixote, they set about trying to figure out in which direction they need to go to free Peter Pan. Along the way, Alice explains why Wonderland might be different from when she left it. Don tells her what happened after they left. 

We catch up with Snow White, who tells her that the Ice Queen now controls Wonderland, but it’s worse than that, NeverLand and Grimm are also in danger, it looks like Alice is going to have to battle a new foe! Her friends want her to be queen! She’s not cut out to lead, she o it wants to rescue Peter ad go home. 

We catch up with a few characters from the previous book, we also meet new adversaries and allies in this book. I love Snow White and her dwarves, they have a few lines that will have you chuckling. Battles come thick and fast, a few twists and turns will keep you reading this book well past your bedtime. 

A highly recommended read. 

? Reviewed by Julie B

Copies Supplied for review

TRC:  Hi David and welcome to The Reading Café. Congratulations on the release of ALICE TAKES BACK WONDERLAND 2: ALICE AND THE ICE QUEEN.

David D Hammons: Thank you!

TRC:  We would like to start with some background information. Would you please tell us something about yourself?

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David D Hammons: I’m an avid world-traveller and always like to incorporate stories and visuals from the places I’ve been, especially under-appreciated places. For instance, a major character in this book is from a Carthaginian folk tale. We owe so much of our culture to Carthage and the Phoenicians, and they’re almost never talked about. I love bringing to light these previously under-appreciated elements of our shared past.

TRC:  Who or what influenced your career in writing?

David D Hammons: I saw a documentary about Hemmingway and essentially wanted to emulate a lot of what he did, save the last part of his life. I wrote a few stories for a creative writing club at school and people laughed (which was a good thing because they were funny stories). I got hooked on the reaction and the thrill of writing and have been clogging away at it ever since.

TRC:  What challenges or difficulties did you encounter writing and publishing this story? This series?

David D Hammons: Writing this story was a whirlwind. I wrote the first book in 2013, and thought I’d never write a sequel, so it took me back to a lot of emotions. I’d actually written the first few pages around 2015 because my publisher wanted to see them, and I ended up using it. Publishing it was more complicated, though, because the original publisher sold me a lot of lies on what they were going to do and tried to steal from me. The first book was successful, and they even sold the audio rights to it, but never told me about it so I had to fight them to get my portion of the advance they received. I eventually got the rights back after that company essentially went bankrupt, and I decided to take more control of my writing career and stop trying to please these publishers and just write something fun. I essentially hit the reset button on my career by going back to Wonderland.

TRC:  Would you please tell us something about the premise of ALICE TAKES BACK WONDERLAND 1 & 2?

David D Hammons: It started out as a gag, if I’m being honest. I had this idea of parodying all the dark and gritty fairy tale remakes by putting Alice on a poster with a pair of crossed Uzis. But the more I fiddled with it, the more fun the premise became, and so I dropped the parody angle and just did it for real. The original concept was to literally throw every single fairy tale I could into a single story. The problem with the sequel is that left no new fairy tales to pick from, save the ice queen. So rather than use lesser-known European fairy tales, I went with non-European fairy tales that may or may not be popular, but aren’t widely known in the US.

TRC:  What types of research/plotting did you do, and how long did you spend researching /plotting before beginning ALICE TAKES BACK WONDERLAND 1 & 2?

David D Hammons: I might say that I spent about seven years brainstorming it, because my publisher was always asking about a sequel and I never really gave up the idea. I had this premise, and I didn’t really tinker with it much but it never went away. I got my MA in History recently, and that inspired a lot of the stories I used, so I essentially copied my own homework and used that as research.

TRC: How many books do you have planned for the series?

David D Hammons: I have at least one more. I love a good trilogy, and the third one’s gonna knock your socks off!

TRC: Who or what triggered your re-imagination of Alice in Wonderland?

David D Hammons: When I was in elementary school, I was diagnosed as ADHD. I was given pills to ‘control’ it. The result was that instead of acting out in class, I shut down. All my thoughts were forced inward, and I felt zombified while screaming internally at the same time. After a few years of this, I told my parents I would no longer take the pills, and I rediscovered how beautiful life and the silliness of childhood was. This was the metaphor that inspired me. Wonderland has often been used as a metaphor for mental challenges, so I wanted to turn that on its head and say that Wonderland was a good thing, and that taming it was bad. Wonderland was this silly, limitless space of potential, and an outside force came in to sterilize it. For the sequel, I went with a modified version where childhood can’t be used as a crux for some sort of arrested development, and Wonderland faced new internal challenges rather than outside dangers.

TRC: Other than Alice, do any of the original cast of characters join the journey?

David D Hammons: The original cast shows up in the beginning, and Cheshire Cat shows up throughout, because they’re probably my favorite character to write. But most of the journey Alice goes on is taken with brand new characters taken from lesser-known folk tales.

TRC: Believability is an important factor in writing story lines especially stories with a paranormal / fantasy premise-readers like to think ‘what if?’. How do you keep the story line believable? Where do you think some author’s fail?

David D Hammons: I think Wonderland provides a cheat code for this. The reader knows that Wonderland is inherently fantastical, so they just take it for granted that fantastical things happen. Where I had to struggle was tying Wonderland to the real world. That required some clever world building using semi-scientific foundations. I essentially use an ‘if-then’ test, where I tell myself if something I’ve established is true, then what else does that imply? For instance, if these stories are real, then why do we tell them? What about stories that are no longer told? Testing my setting for logical validity is one of the things I enjoy playing with in world-building, and I think too many authors fail at this. For instance, my wife tells me I’m not allowed to do with this with the world of Harry Potter, because apparently the implication that NASA could use magic to settle Mars makes the setting less fun.

TRC: Do you believe the cover image plays a deciding factor for many readers in the process of selecting a book or new series to read?

David D Hammons: I hate to say it, but yes, the cover matters a great deal. Fantasy is a bit watered down with a lot of bad books. I’ve gotten very picky about the fantasy that I read, because you have to be, so anything an author can do to prove that their book isn’t another crummy machismo sword-and-sorcery the better, and this includes solid cover art.

TRC: When writing a storyline, do the characters direct the writing or do you direct the characters?

David D Hammons: I’d say the best writing comes when there’s a symbiosis. You know what the characters would logically do, so when you hit them with external motivations, they go along the path you want. Crafting both creates those great story results.

TRC: The mark of a good writer is to pull the reader into the storyline so that they experience the emotions along with the characters. What do you believe a writer must do to make this happen? Where do you believe writer’s fail in this endeavor?

David D Hammons: My agent is always telling me that what matters are the stakes. What happens if the character fails, succeeds, does nothing? Why is that good/bad? Why should the reader care? These basic things sound sterile, but they’re required to get a reader to become invested in a character’s story. Forgetting that every character has the option to do nothing is an easy trap, but a reader can always sense that. A good character does things with intent, even nothing, and every action they choose has consequences. The knowledge of the potential for both good and bad consequences creates that emotional connection.

TRC: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, does the style of music influence the storyline direction? Characters?

David D Hammons: I love listening to fantasy movies scores while I write. Lord of the Rings is always a go-to, but I love the score to How to Train Your Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean. I avoid music with lyrics, because they’re a bit distracting, and try to play music with an emotional cue that fits the scene I’m writing. I don’t do this too much, because that would be very distracting, and oftentimes if I just cue up my Lord of the Rings station on Pandora, I’ll get the right mix to keep me focused.

TRC: What do you believe is the biggest misconception people have about authors?

David D Hammons: That we don’t like bad reviews. I love feedback, good or bad, and have incorporated some feedback from the first book with the second. For instance, one reader didn’t like how the first book used a lot of guns. I saw it as a unique challenge for Alice to now refuse to use a gun, and that provided some really neat drama and emotionality. An author loves, loves, loves a basic review, even just some stars on Amazon, so if you read this, please rate and review and I might just incorporate your feedback into the third book!

TRC: What is something that few, if anyone, know about you?

David D Hammons: I’ve always wanted a ferret. I don’t care if they’re stinky, I think they’re amazing.

TRC: Who or what influenced your path towards writing?

David D Hammons: It’s a weird thing to say, but cartoons. I loved shows like Ed, Edd, n Eddy and Powerpuff Girls and the like, even the new My Little Pony, which was made by the same people as those two shows. They made me want to create funny, engaging stories like that.

TRC: On what are you currently working?

David D Hammons: I’m currently working on a fantastical version of an epic in my Sevens Prophets universe. If you want to see the early draft material, you can read it on Royal Road!

TRC: Would you like to add anything else?

David D Hammons: I’m going to Egypt this January, as well as Istanbul, and I can’t wait to see what sort of inspiration I’ll get while I’m there for book number 3!

LIGHTNING ROUND

Favorite Food
Lasagne

Favorite Dessert
Chocolate torte

Favorite TV Show
Ed, Edd, n Eddy

Last Movie You Saw
The Creeping Flesh (my wife loves old horror movies)

Dark or Milk Chocolate
Dark

Secret Celebrity Crush
Emma Watson

Last Vacation Destination
Hermann, MO

Do you have any pets?
Dante, our Jack-Russell mix.

Last book you read
The God of Forgotten Things by Cameron Johnston

TRC: Thank you David for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on the release of ALICE TAKES BACK WONDERLAND: ALICE AND THE ICE QUEEN. We wish you all the best.

David D Hammons: Thank you so much!!!