Category Archives: literary fiction

Painter Tarryl Gabel and Locus Amœnus

The cover for Locus Amœnus, my new novel which will be out this spring, will feature the painting Silo Ridge by Tarryl Gabel. Gabel is an award-winning local painter, inspired by the Hudson River School, who continues to paint landscapes of this beautiful valley. Silo Ridge is the name of the old farmland (now a golf course) that is the town of Amenia’s claim to fame. It is one of the most, if not the most, beautiful views in the whole area. When my husband and I were looking for land to purchase, we drove all over the Catskills and Harlem Valley. When we went round the hill and were presented with this scene, we knew we wanted to make this area our home.

Click on the image for a larger view.

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Cover for Locus Amœnus

Here is the final cover design for Locus Amœnus, which will be released at the end of April. The novel is a dark comedy/tragedy, a revision of Hamlet set in rural upstate New York in 2009. I requested a graffiti font for the tile to add a bit of irreverence to contrast the pastoral scene. The designer chose to use a bullet-holes-and-blood font to make it look like a thriller. The story does involve an old murder, two accidental deaths, some bloody noses and an allusion to Shakespeare’s heap of bodies at the end of his play, but no one actually gets a mob-style hit in Locus Amœnus.

You can pre-order from Permanent or from Amazon at a 14% discount.

New scientific study reveals that GMOs are safe

The Central Organization for Regulating Unilateral Protection Today (CORUPT)* released its findings of ten-year study on the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMO) on human health.

A survey, conducted from 2004-2014 of 134,567 U.S. households, found that 98% of the people reported no ill-health effects due to GMO food consumption during the ten-year period. The survey contained ten multiple-choice questions asking participants to report any side-effects experienced directly after consuming any of the five different GMO foods included in the survey. The survey was conducted by land-line telephones between 9AM and 5PM. The households included in the survey were chosen at random from local white pages in Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

A biased detractor, Harland Loveland, from the Organic Small Farmers Association, cast doubt on the findings, noting that the participants were probably not informed on the issue.

Richard Peters, head of the Central Organization, notes “although most of the people surveyed claimed they had no knowledge of whether or not GMOs were contained in the food they were eating, since most foods do contain GMOs, it’s safe to say that they were consuming nothing but GMO foods. So our findings, that GMO food consumption results in no ill-effects as per the survey findings, remains unchallenged.”

Peters opposes legislation requiring food manufacturers to label GMO products. He maintains that consumers may be “frightened” and “confused” by the information. “We don’t want that to happen,” Peters stated.

James Weasal, head of Marketing for the Industrial Foods Association, optimistically notes that the GMO issue “is just a marketing problem. If this unnecessary and potentially harmful legislation is allowed to go through, we will address the problem head on. We are already developing an exciting campaign with fun and eye-catching labels that say, “GMO Proud,” and “100% pure American GMO,” or “33-percent more GMO, Free” to stress the positivity of GMO foods. As long as consumers see GMO foods in a positive light, we can safely avoid any problems this unnecessary and potentially dangerous legislation could cause.”

-VNA, author of Locus Amoenus

*funded by Wall Street Democrats for Obama (WSDO).

Vegetable Oil: a DiY solution to fossil fuel pollution

The fossil fuel industry has an enormous impact on politics, the economy, and our health. This pollution Goliath is just too powerful to fight with government regulations. Take matters into your own hands and put vegetable oil in your fuel tank.

Electric cars will also be a good green choice some day. Unfortunately 44 percent of electricity is generated at coal-burning plants. The new construction of wind farms and run-of-the-river hydroelectric dams to power our super high-efficiency electric cars should be part of our long-term green energy strategy, but such projects require huge start-up funds and massive political support. People who want to help fight environmental pollution and disentangle our politics from the Middle East now — with the technology that is currently available — can run their diesel vehicles on vegetable oil.

Although burning vegetable oil does release carbon into the air, this carbon is already part of a natural cycle of plants taking in CO2 from the air and releasing oxygen. When plants decay, the stored carbon is released back into the environment. Burning vegetable oil does not add more carbon into the atmosphere than is already part of the available carbon constantly being recycled. In contrast, the carbon in fossil fuels is brought up from deep below the surface and added to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Continue reading →

Homeschooling: A DiY Alternative to Public Education

Top universities actively recruit homeschooled applicants. On average, they test 37 percent above public and private school students and tend to be better prepared for life, career and college. Is it time to rethink our educational system?

When public education was established in the U.S. back in the 19th century, cost efficiency was undoubtedly a primary concern and a main motivating factor. A dozen children could be educated by a single well-qualified teacher for far less than the cost of hiring a private tutor for each family. Today the average cost of education in U.S. public schools is about $12,300 per student per school year. Private school can cost anywhere from $6,000-$50,000 per student per school year. Much of this money goes toward overhead, administration, transportation, insurance, and fringe benefits, not toward teachers’ salaries. In 2014, over 50 percent of families with children in public school were classified as “low income,” e.g. under $37,000 for family of four, under $24,000 for family of two. If the average U.S. family has two children, the cost of educating these children is more than half the family’s entire income. Continue reading →

Permanent announces 2015 titles

The Permanent Press, which will be publishing my novel Locus Amœnus, announced its 2015 titles today. I am pleased to find myself among some very talented writers. I am also happy to discover that several of the sixteen novels on the list have anti-war themes; one takes on drone warfare, another economic disparity; a couple of them are pretty quirky; one even invokes Hamlet, as mine does.

I like the company.

From the catalogue:

LOCUS AMŒNUS by Victoria N. Alexander Continue reading →

Permanent to publish Locus Amœnus!

Great News! My new novel, Locus Amœnus, will be published by Permanent, the same press that did my first and third novels, Smoking Hopes 1996 and Naked Singularity 2003. Help me make this novel a success by going to Amazon.com and posting quick 20-word reviews of my other books and boost my ratings. I am really happy to be working again with Permanent Press editor and publisher, Judy and Marty Shepard, and their new partner Chris Knopf, who have built their small press into an impressive, independent not-quite-so-small press, which, as the New York Times says, publishes some “literary gems” on a “shoestring” budget. I signed the contract today, and they expect the hardcover to be in bookstores early 2015. Advance review copies available soon. I’m looking for blurb writers and reviewers too. Let me know if you want a free e-copy now.

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Locus Amœnus on “No Lies Radio”

I just sent my manuscript off to the publisher a week ago, and, as luck would have it, I got a call from Andrew Steele, host of No Lies Radio, asking me to do an interview on the theme of the book.

The program will air Thursday, January 23, 2014

Here’s a summary of the story: In this dark comedy, a 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, have retreated from Brooklyn to the idyllic rural countryside upstate, where for nearly eight years they have run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately their outrageously obese neighbors, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, shun their elitist ways (recycling, eating healthy, reading). Hamlet, who is now 18, is beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America, when health, happiness and freedom are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Zoloft, endless war, core curriculum, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the very day of the 8th anniversary of his father’s death, his mother marries a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius. Things get even more depressing for Hamlet when his friend Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, claims Claudius is a fraud. The deceptions, spying, corruption, will ultimately lead, as in Shakespeare’s play, to tragedy.
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Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award 2013

Why cheap POD books are great for Literary Fiction authors

Unaware, perhaps, that they no are no longer reaping rewards for their creator, used hard copies of my novels find their ways into online used bookstores and resell and resell. I am all for recycling, in theory, but not in this particular. Neither publisher nor author gets a cut of used book sales. What an author can do is buy up all the used copies, which are sometimes priced as low as a penny, and resell them at a higher price. I have tried my hand at this, but I make a lousy bookseller. I refuse to bubblewrap, doublebox or otherwise over-package books the way Amazon does (they seem to think books are potentially able to explode if jostled in the post), and I don’t get orders in the mail very quickly. Although it might be of some benefit, I’m not too keen on spending a lot of energy learning how to be a bookseller as well as a writer. Gone are the days when some publishing-house intern with nothing better to do took care of things for the pampered writer. These days most authors, be they with small or large publishers, have to do a lot of their own PR, dealing personally with book stores and reading groups. I don’t want the added responsibility of resale management. Continue reading →