Experimenting with book cover ideas.

In April 2026, V. N. Alexander’ long-awaited tale about feminine sexuality will be published, fittingly, by Heresy Press. The story is set in the 1990s, when various “waves of feminism” crashed and receded, leaving different kinds of social damage in their wakes.

The narrator Pixie insists that before the ignominious end of The Girlie Playhouse– the cabaret where she dances–it was a veritable pastoral paradise where innocent sexuality flourished. But soon enough, Shame announces, “et in Arcadia ego,” and all the ladies, who looked so young and sweet, are replaced by women more suited for the circus.

Just as the cabaret begins to descend into infamy, Max falls in love with Pixie’s friend, Trixie, who, cold at first, warms up. Once he has won Trixie, Max betrays her with disastrous consequences.

The story may be seen within the traditional “lover’s complaint pastoral” frame, of which Nabokov’s Lolita is, these days, the most famous. Think also about the thwarted love of Theocritus’ Polyphemus and Galatea, Virgil’s Corydon and Alexis, and Marvel’s Damon and Juliana. Given that pastoral conventions coincidentally have much in common with the techniques of parody—exaggeration of style, self-referentiality, and incongruously mixing of the high and low—all pastorals tend to have anti-pastorals contained within their own forms (they are always already “too much”).

Thus, a darkly comic end is inevitable. 

My mom, Tricia, inspired Trixie’s story.