Category Archives: literary fiction

Naked Singularity now available as an Audiobook

Cover design by Anthony Freda

VN Alexander’s “gut-wrenching” and “beautifully written”  2003 novel is now available as an audiobook, read by the author.  Listen to a sample on Spotify.

Synopsis: When Hali’s father asks her to  help him end his life to spare his wife the misery of a long illness, she reluctantly agrees. While family and friends in the Bible Belt insists on letting “God’s will” decide such matters, Hali broods upon the idea of predetermination and an afterlife in a way that is both challenging and deeply moving. Ultimately, she is unable to do what her father wishes, and she is forced to accept the help of a manipulative male nurse, adding further complications that result in a slow and painful end.

The audiobook of Naked Singularity is now available on all platforms, including Spotify, Overdrive (for libraries), Apple, Google Play, Kobo, StoryTel (in Sweden), Hoopla, Barnes & Noble and Amazon’s Audible.

Want to review the book?  Get a code to listen free on Spotify. Please leave a comment below.

Reviews for the 2003 hardcover edition:

“Best of 2003: Best Locally Produced Literary Figure” –Dallas Observer

“A painful tale about euthanasia. The emotions are raw at times, but there’s a cool tone of postmodern post-mortem throughout as well, raising hackles and sympathy from first to last.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Alexander takes on a gut-wrenching topic and writes eloquently about the family’s daily emotional pain, leading up to a lurid, macabre ending and a climax that is so true, it is barely believable.” –Publishers Weekly

“At once deeply intellectual and extremely sensual” –Ethical Culture Review

“Beautifully written” –Texas Books in Review

“Alexander takes the reader down an intriguing road loaded with questions and choices, none of them easy…. Naked Singularity is sad, touching and heartfelt, a taut story about love and living, pain and dying.” –Curled up with a Good Book Review

“Woven into Naked Singularity‘s metaphors and narrative is a profound understanding of chaos and complexity. It renders esoteric constructs concrete, and in a setting none of us can escape.” –J. P. Crutchfield, co-author of “Chaos,” Scientific American.

The hardcover edition was originally published by The Permanent Press in 2003. The print versions, hardcover or paperback, is available at any bookstore.

See more press/reviews/interviews about Naked Singularity. Leave a review of the new audiobook on Amazon or Goodreads.

Local readers, If you are a member of Hudson Valley Current, you can order a signed hardcover first-edition for $25 or a $15 signed paperback.

Great 2015 Interview with Kevin Barrett about Locus Amoenus

With the recent release, finally, of the Locus Amoenus audiobook on all listening platforms, it’s time to reacquaint my readers with that 9/11 novel. Among the many interviews I gave in 2015, this remains my favorite. Barrett, a 9/11 truth activist, is also a very well-read academic, whose appreciation for literary works is notable.

“Until now, the only 9/11 themed novel of high literary quality was Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge. Locus Amoenus is the best fictional treatment of 9/11 yet. It’s hilarious, darkly ironic, playful, deeply moving.”  –Kevin Barrett

The audiobook is available on all listening platforms, including Spotify, Nook, Kobo, Libro, StoryTel, Hoopla, and Google Play.

Locus Amoenus audiobook now available

My 2015 novel, Locus Amoenus, is a dark comedy featuring Hamlet as a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  The audiobook is the last great work by Emmy-award winning actor Ben Jorgensen.  It has finally been released on all listening platforms, including Spotify, Nook, Kobo, Libro, StoryTel, Hoopla, and Google Play.  (Not yet on Audible. Soon.)

Want a coupon to listen for free on Spotify?  If you plan to review the novel on Amazon, Goodreads, your own blog or social media page, or any listening platform, make a request for a coupon for free audiobook access via the contact page.

Ben Jorgensen began his acting career as the boy in Calvin Klein’s Obsession commercials directed by Richard Avedon. His credits include feature films, The Break with Martin Sheen and The Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio.  He won Emmy and GLAD awards for his portrayal of the gay teen Kevin Sheffield in All My Children and also had a feature role in As the World Turns. His theater credits include What Will People Think!?, a Strawberry festival finalist, A Season in the Congo at La Mama, Hamlet (as the ghost) and Trial and Treason in the lead role as President in 2015. He also wrote and acted in the original play Manny’s Last Stand, starring Austin Pendleton, which opened the Summer Strawberry festival in 2013.

Ben was suicided by the lockdowns in 2020.

New 9/11 Article on Free The People

Having gone through the Co\/iD-I984 debacle, many people have lost trust in the media and government. And they are wondering if the news wasn’t trustworthy about past emergencies, such as the attack on 9/11.

In the article linked below, which appears on Free the People, a new media organization, I discuss my decision to write Locus Amoenus, a dark satire about 9/11, which was published in 2015.

This week, the audiobook has finally been released on all listening platforms, including Spotify, Nook, Kobo, Libro, StoryTel, Hoopla, and Google Play.  (Not yet on Audible. Soon.)

Intro to my new novel on The Strange Recital podcast

Charlie Besso narrates the opening scenes from my new novel, “C0VID-1984, The Musical.”  It’s not a musical; it’s a novel that satirizes that genre.

The Strange Recital, is a literary podcast featuring fiction “that questions the nature of reality.” On Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram.

 

“Cheek to the cold floor, thick sole on my back, I began to sense my place in this moment in history. I had thought I was playing the hero, arriving just in time to save my mom, when I was put in a chokehold, thrown to the ground and tasered in the groin.”

A young Winston Smith faces a dramatic cultural shift: lockdowns, masks, surveillance, riots. “How did we get here?” he wonders, in a new satirical novel that looks back at the last four years. Can this story end more happily than Orwell’s?

My Off-Guardian article about Locus Amoenus & Co\/id-1984, The Musical goes viral

Just before the anniversary of 9/11 this year, I wrote and article for the Off-Guardian about how literary works can be useful for neutralizing the brainwashing effects of propaganda. Please click over to Off-Guardian to read it and come back when you’re done.

As most of my readers know, my 2015 novel, Locus Amoenus, which was nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize (by the publisher, don’t get too excited), retells the story of Hamlet as a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  It’s a high comedy, written to lure in the Atlantic Monthly subscriber, to trap the Vanity Fair reader with my erudite and clever prose. Once inside the story, I have them.  They cannot unsee the scenes I paint. Continue reading →

Message without a Sender

Once again, the masters of The Strange Recital podcast, Brent Robison and Tom Newton have brought my short stories to life.  In this episode I read two, “The Narrative” and “Signs and Symbols,” from a collection that I’ve been working on called Chance that Mimics choice. Like the other stories in this collection, these are about the art of making/finding meaning.

Why do writers write? Why do readers love to read?  If you’ve ever wondered why people might enjoy fiction so much that they spend the better part of their waking hours engaged in it, listen to this podcast and the interview that follows.  There is no greater pleasure for this writer than being able to sit and chat with other writers, like Brent and Tom, about writing. It’s the only kind of reward I need.

Listen to find out what a “message without a sender” might be.

You can also listen on Spotify.  Just search “The Strange Recital.”

 

Alternative Local Currency: Hudson Valley Currents

I have long been interested in monetary policy in general and local alternative currencies in particular.   In Locus Amoenus (2015) I wrote about an imaginary community in upstate New York that created an alternative economic system.  As I begin to write part 2 of the Locus Amoenus narrative, I note with pleasure how life imitates art: such a community now has started in the Hudson Valley. Continue reading →