Victoria Magazine rebirths.

It's back. Remember the beautiful Hearst-published VICTORIA magazine? The one that folded in 2004 (for reasons still unknown) created by Nancy Lindemeyer, who wowed us for a decade with her visionary pictures and stories and called the romantic in every one of us to dream a little more.

As a writer, this magazine kept me writing with its interviews and excerpts of Joanna Trollope, Madeleine L'Engle, Susan Minot, and Nora Ephron. The pictures of shops, homes, museums, gardens, and everything else answered the call I had to have a beautiful home, to enjoy my home, and to live, to really live in my home.

I have a very solid collection of back issues stored here that start in the 1980s (I inherited my grandmother's collection when she passed on) and I added to it month after month. I've considered selling them, but I can't. Todd's late grandmother gave me her issues too (during one of my last visits to her grandma cottage in California). Between my collection and my mom's collection, I think we have every issue.

The first re-issue came out October 30 of this year and I thought I subscribed via the web site, but I guess not (no one ever billed me nor did I receive the first issue in October), so I am hunting it down online and in bookstores this week. Anyone seen it anywhere? Please leave a message!

Writing, reading, revising began last evening in earnest. My revision of Let Them Eat Cake begins with a serious look at Max Perkins' stout, but even-handed edits for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (the greatest American novel in history, I believe).

There's also a MG/YA series that I'm starting to play with because of the recent huge sale by another YA author of a similar series. The market is HOT! I have a three-book series titled and semi-plotted, so I'm going to work on that.

Plus, a new epic novel idea is forming in my head that is very similar to The Great Gatsby (that era, story turned inside out) about a poor, naive girl falling for a selfish, myopic rich boy. It's an age-old story, but I have a few twists planned.

The first hint from my revision book is what F. Scott Fitzgerald did. Character notebooks (first half: character history, second half: character voice) and the Moleskin Cahier Notebook is the perfect tool for this. Slim, lined books that let you apply labels to the front cover and are slim enough to handle one character in each. I'm off to Borders to buy all they have!

So some major progress last night. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald developed the novel as a result of an earlier short story that summarized the events that happened before the novel. That is such good fiction! It's not so much what happens in the present, but what's going on under the surface and how the characters react to what happened already off-stage, but which is still firmly imbedded in their conscious thought. Fabulous stuff!

Happy writing!

Currently reading: Squashed (Joan Bauer)
Currently listening to: Sawdust (The Killers)