Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Frank Beddor Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Frank Beddor

Frank Beddor

Frank Beddor Biography

Frank Beddor had already had a couple of intense careers, a professional skier (two-time freestyle world champion) and filmmaker (producer of the 1998 hit There’s Something About Mary) before deciding to become an author (of the New York Times best sellers The Looking Glass Wars, Seeing Redd, and Arch Enemy of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy).

After the global success of There’s Something About Mary, he formed Automatic Pictures, over which he still presides, to develop creative properties. “After ‘Mary’ I put a bunch of projects into development,” he says. “At the same time, though, I was coming to realize that, as a producer, you’re a facilitator for the creative team, but what I really wanted to be was a creator. Of course it’s great to have a hit; it’s great to make money, but the work I was doing was not satisfying me.”

Beddor spent five years writing The Looking Glass Wars, the shocking literary exposé that revealed how Lewis Carroll, author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” had willfully misrepresented the story of seven-year-old Alyss Heart, betraying the exiled princess of Wonderland by turning her painful history into a fairytale, when, in fact, it is a dark and dangerous depiction of familial treachery, thwarted love, and the despotic domination of imagination.

The Looking Glass Warswas rejected by every major publisher in the U.S. When it was released in 2004 by the U.K. publisher Egmont Books, however, it became a sensation (file the outrage of Lewis Carroll purists under “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”). The first book of the trilogy was issued Stateside in 2006 by Penguin (which had passed on the project four times before its triumph in the U.K.). The second volume, Seeing Redd,was released simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. in late 2007.

The first volume was discovered by a devoted legion of readers who span the age spectrum. Beddor says he’s largely measured the success of The Looking Glass Wars by the intensity and curiosity of the fans who reach out to him with comments and questions. Their input led to the creation of Hatter M, a series of graphic novellas depicting the journey of Alyss’ faithful bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, who, for 13 years, searched for his lost princess after becoming separated from her in The Pool of Tears, the portal from Wonderland to our world.

In addition to the Hatter M series, LGW extends to a companion album of original songs; a card game; an online and forthcoming offline multiplayer role-playing video game; an apparel line; a proposed theatrical musical; and even a teaser trailer, the latter representing the first time a state-of-the-art special-effects trailer has been created to promote a book. All of these projects fall under the aegis of Automatic Pictures, for which Beddor has also written screenplays for The Looking Glass Wars, Seeing Redd and the Hatter M parallel comic mini-series.

Frank Beddor's website

This bio was last updated on 07/03/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Frank Beddor at BookBrowse
Arch Enemy jacket Seeing Redd jacket The Looking Glass Wars jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Frank Beddor but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Eoin Colfer

    Eoin Colfer

    Eoin Colfer (pronounced Owen) was born in Wexford on the South-East coast of Ireland in 1965, where he and his four brothers were brought up by his father (an elementary school teacher, historian and artist of note) and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Looking Glass Wars

    Try:
    Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception
    by Eoin Colfer

  • D M. Cornish

    D M. Cornish

    D.M. Cornish studied illustration at the University of South Australia, where he began to compile a series of notebooks, beginning with #1 in 1993. He had read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels, The Iliad, and Paul Gallico's ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Looking Glass Wars

    Try:
    Foundling
    by D M. Cornish

We recommend 7 similar authors

View all 7 Read-Alikes

Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.