Tag Archives: 9/11

Kirkus Reviews Locus Amoenus

Alexander’s newest novel Locus Amoenus (Permanent Press, 192 pages) finds Hamlet taking place in rural America against the backdrop of 9/11 and the Iraq War. “Something is rotten in the United States of America.” So says Alexander’s narrator, a young man named Hamlet. After his father dies on 9/11, Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude, move to upstate New York, where they maintain a farm. After several years, Gertrude meets Claudius, a bureaucrat and scientist who contributed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s World Trade Center report. Yes, this is Hamlet reimagined as a truther, and in this retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the protagonist isn’t just feigning madness—he’s genuinely losing his mind.

Locus Amœnus is now available on Amazon.

Ben Jörgensen to narrate Locus Amoenus audiobook

Award-winning actor Ben Jorgensen will be reading the audiobook version of Victoria N. Alexander’s new novel Locus Amœnus, which is due to be released in hardcover at the end of April. The story is told by Hamlet, whose mother, a 9/11 widow, has recently married a corrupt bureaucrat named Claudius.

Beginning his acting career as the boy in Calvin Klein’s Obsession commercials directed by Richard Avedon, Ben Jorgensen’s 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 most recent 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. He also wrote and acted in the original play Manny’s Last Stand, starring Austin Pendleton, which was chosen to open the Summer Strawberry festival in 2013. He is currently working on his own version of Hamlet as a blues Opera.

The audiobook will be available late summer. Order a hard cover edition of Locus Amœnus from Amazon at a 13% discount for a limited time. (Next week the discount will be 12% then 11%…)

Galley proofs for Locus Amoenus are in

The galleys (review copies) of Locus Amœnus came out today. Permanent, the publisher, will be sending them to Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly and various other trade review publications.

Locus Amœnus will be out very, very soon. You can pre-order from Permanent or from Amazon at a 15% discount.

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.

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 →

Atheists sue over WTC cross

Statues of mythological and/or fictional characters and themes can be found in state and federal parks all over the country, like this statue of Neptune at a city park in Virginia Beach. As far as I know atheists don’t try to get these removed. The American Atheist Organization is suing to remove a cross from the WTC memorial. The “cross” is actually a section of welded I-beam that was found sticking up from the rubble after 9/11. Witnesses found the coincidental resemblance to Christ’s cross significant. While I don’t agree that such coincidences are supernaturally caused, I think they are interesting. Significant coincidences are at the heart of all “chance” phenomena which lead to the emergence of life, language, and art. (That’s my natural philosophy in a nutshell.) I could no more reject public tributes to Christianity than I could to any great work of fiction. Somehow it just doesn’t piss me off. I understand it as art. It doesn’t bother me that others take it differently. (I even have a portrait of a black Madonna hanging in my home. It’s a really cool painting that my great-grandmother brought over from Poland.) That’s why I think there is something up with AAO’s president David Silverman who isn’t able to detach himself emotionally from the power of religious symbolism. He released this statement about the WTC cross Continue reading →