Category Archives: literary fiction

Locus Amoenus in the Woodstock Times

Alexander in a treehouse like the one that appears in her novel.

Upstate Novelist, Victoria N. Alexander, To Give Reading at the Golden Notebook
by Gary Alexander

Have you spent too much time trying to convince your girlfriend that ‘Decadent’ is not a flavor? Or are you ticked off that some nutritional idealist wants your school cafeteria to use coconut oil on something your kid might eat for lunch? (Not here! We don’t have coconut trees along the Hudson River!) The most stark divisions in America may spring not from political, ethnic or racial backgrounds but from informational sources and a currently prevailing chasm between American cultural lifestyles.

This is a theme explored in the darkly humorous novel, “Locus Amoenus” by Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D. (my new bride-just joking; she’s no relation), who will be reading at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock at 6 PM on Saturday, August 1st. Continue reading →

No Lies Radio: Locus Amoenus, a retelling of Hamlet, featuring a NIST bureaucrat as Claudius

9/11 Free Fall Radio
July 16, 2015

Interview starts at 9:55. Here’s a snippet:

AS: “What do you want people to get from this book?”

VNA: “Well, in the passage I just read where Hamlet [a conspiracy theorist] makes his big revelation. He makes some very logical points and asks some very good questions. But what’s the response to that? Evasion. Nobody really takes the point [chuckle]. Nobody really gets what he’s getting at. The whole thing is kind of ineffective, really [chuckle].

“One of the things I wanted to do for people, who have tried to talk to friends about some evidence they’ve read, is to give them a story that they can relate to. We’ve all gone through this. We all know what it’s like to bring up this conversation at dinner and have very good our friends treat us very coldly.

“And I wanted to give the conspiracy theorist a place in literature. He is a very important character, as was [Shakespeare’s] Hamlet, for really defining who the modern man is. Continue reading →

Millerton News: Literary Tea to host local authors July 18

Millerton News
July 16, 2015
By Gregory Camillone

The NorthEast-Millerton Library will host a Literary Tea on Saturday, July 18, at 1PM with authors Victoria Alexander and Kristen Panzer there to discuss their novels.

Alexander got the voice of Hamlet from David Tennant, who played Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Production. “He is like Doctor Who,” Alexander said. “Clever, witty, a little bit crazy. He’s like an alien. Hamlet feels like an alien coming from the city and having different values from the people around him.”

literarytea

“The Library Tea event is an opportunity for local writers to meet, talk and share their successes,” said Director of NorthEast-Millerton Library Rhiannon Leo-Jameson. “It’s a way for them to bond.”

Everyone is welcomed to attend. The event will be located in the library and is free. Tea will be served along with other refreshments and snacks. Continue reading →

Main Street Magazine

On Saturday, July 18th I’ll be at the NorthEast-Millerton Library at 1PM. Pick up a copy of Locus Amoenus at Oblong Books to bring with you to have signed. Here’s a piece from the June issue of Main Street Magazine.

Continue reading →

Likely Stories Book Review on KWBU “Heart of Texas Public Radio”

Victoria N. Alexander has constructed a clever and engaging novel loosely based on Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet. This dark comedy revolves around the tragedy of 9/11. Alexander has several novels to her credit, as well as a work of non-fiction, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature, & Nature. She is also working on a comedy screenplay about a high security dystopia.

Hamlet’s father has apparently died in the collapse of the twin towers, and Hamlet and his mother Gertrude move to a rural village, Amenia where the residents are suspicious of strangers. The town suffers from an epidemic of obesity, because of a local connection to big agriculture farms producing only high fructose corn syrup. When Gertrude tries to sway the school board to a healthier diet for the students, she and Hamlet are isolated from the rest of the town. Hamlet’s former science teacher shows up and convinces Hamlet his father was killed on 9/11 as a result of a conspiracy to justify the Iraq War. Claudius, who has just married Gertrude, is an engineer, who worked on part of the official report of the events of 9/11. Continue reading →

Oblong Books in Millerton, NY

Pleased to see my novel in the window at Oblong Books in Millerton.

Locus Amoenus by Victoria N Alexander

In this dark comedy, 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, move to Amenia to run an organic farm. Unfortunately, their neighbors prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, and Hamlet, who is now eighteen, suspects that something is rotten in the United States of America, where health and happiness are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, standard curriculum, fossil fuel pollution, and endless war.
Victoria N. Alexander, PhD, is also the author of Smoking Hopes (Washington Prize for Fiction), Naked Singularity (Dallas Observer‘s “Best of 2003”), and The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature.

Middletown’s Book Bower to host dark-comedy author before fireworks

Prior to the city’s grand fireworks show Friday night, author Victoria Alexander will visit the Book Bower nearby to sign copies of her novel, “Locus Amoenus.”

Her fifth novel, this speculative fiction brings Shakespeare into the post-9/11 world, weaving “an emotionally powerful geopolitical drama,” according to reviews online.

Leading character, Hamlet, 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, Paxil, endless war, standard curriculum, and environmental degradation,” according to one book review. Continue reading →

Book Signing in Middletown, CT July 3, 5PM

Main Street Market, 386 Main St.
Middletown, CT 860.704.8222 www.bookbower.com

Victoria N Alexander will be signing copies of Locus Amoenus at the Book Bower on Friday in the midst of the Middletown Fireworks Festival, which will take place 4-10PM, near the main street market. Come out to express your inner patriot and pick up copy of Alexander’s scathing satire on runaway American consumerism and political corruption.

In this dark comedy, a 9/11 widow, Gertrude, and her son, Hamlet, move from Brooklyn to the pastoral countryside to start a sustainable farm. Unfortunately, they don’t really get along all that well with the outrageously obese locals, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture. Hamlet has just turned 18, and he’s beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America: health, happiness and freedom are traded for Walmart, endless war, Zoloft, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the 8th anniversary of his father’s death, Gertrude marries, a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius, who works for NIST. Then, Hamlet learns from Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, that Claudius is a fraud. The tricks, spying, corruption, and uncertainty end, as Shakespeare’s play does, in tragedy

Listen live WBAI 99.5 FM today 3PM EST NYC

Victoria N. Alexander on post 9/11 novel Locus Amoenus http://wbai.org/playernew.html

now archived online http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/2015/06/27/show-535-developing-a-progressive-narrative/

Locus Amoenus Interview on NYC 99.5 FM Sat 3PM

NYC: Listen Saturday, June 27th 3:00-4:00 PM EST Now archived online http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/2015/06/27/show-535-developing-a-progressive-narrative/

WBAI 99.5 FM with host Barry Seidman

Developing a Progressive Narrative

As many may already know, science fiction and speculative fiction in general can investigate and articulate the state of our nation and/or world in very direct but also metaphorical ways. We have talked about Star Trek, for instance, on Equal Time and how Gene Roddenberry was able to discuss humanism and naturalism via the small and large screen. And there have been many novels and short stories since at least the late 19th Century which have done the same.

Victoria N Alexander and Adrienne Maree Brown are two authors who have relatively new speculative fiction books out. Victoria, who has a PhD in English and philosophy of science, is also a novelist and the founder of Dactyl, a foundation that fosters dialogue between artists and scientists. She is the author of several novels including the topic of today’s discussion, Locus Amoenus. The novel brings Shakespeare into the post-9/11 world we currently experience and sows an emotionally powerful geopolitical drama.

Adrienne Maree Brown is an author, a life/love work coach, a singer (including wedding singer), events facilitator and a scholar on the late Science Fiction novelist Octavia Butler. In Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne has co-edited a collection of both speculative and science fiction stories founded on the spirit and creativity of the late author.

Tune in, pay if forward, and question everything
http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/