The haunted dollhouse

It wasn’t my birthday. Yet, a large and very heavy package came in the mail addressed to me. Like most people, I enjoy opening unexpected packages. Like Sarah in this book, I opened my heavy package with anticipation. I found, to my surprise, a familiar kind of nightmare in Sarah’s story.

With Sarah I stepped into another world, sepia colored, a monotone twilight zone that immediately evoked memories of my own childhood when I had dreams of someday possessing the dollhouse of my dreams. Unlike Sarah, no one ever gave me the kind of dollhouse I really wanted. After reading the text, and viewing the stunningly eerie photographs in this book, I am glad that kind of dollhouse was denied me.

When we are young and vulnerable, and subject to the pressures, the whims and the control of those older, stronger and presumably wiser, we construct within our mind a sanctuary.

In times of distress and disappointment we seek to disappear and fade into the perfect environment where we can control our own destinies. We don’t realize when we are young that there is no perfect place, and if there were how then we would entertain ourselves?

In fantasy most of us can only linger a short while before we are forced back to face up to those problems that drove us into fantasy in the first place.

With a strangely haunted feeling, I drifted into the dollhouse with Sarah, enthralled by the déjà vu send of having been there before as perhaps all little girls-and maybe boys, too-have been there before.

Come journey with Sarah into her perfect environment ; the perfect world of yesterday, when all things seemed sweeter, much better-according to those who are older, stronger and presumably wiser. 

Virginia's Article for First Romance

Dubbed "the fastest-selling author in the United States" by The New York Times, V.C. (Virginia Cleo)
Andrews has become one of the publishing industry's most phenomenal success stories.She is
the author of the enormously popular Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns,
and fourth in her series of thrillers, My Sweet Audrina. All shot to the heights of best-seller lists
nationwide, with each boasting in-print figures in the millions. Though not typically an author of the Romance
genre, Virginia has recently become very much intrigued by it. She concedes that one day she may complete a Romance herself-e
especially now that he's got "the feel" having written Love's Savage Desire for Your First Romance

Virginia believes that stories are everywhere to be found in our lives. She keeps her ideas fresh and invigorating
by piecing together bit from her own life and the lives of others and, of course, inventing a little as well. Virginia enjoys
giving her characters free rein to do as they please. She insists on letting them take over their own
stories, at times surprising even her. Virginia suggests new writers keep their characters constantly thwarted, frustrated, and
in trouble through a novel: never let up until the story's end

A first draft, containing some dialogue and description, can be written by Virginia in a little as four hours;
she prefers this technique to an outline. A completed book can take her anywhere from five month to a year, depending on how well she knows her characters. She will not tolerate radio or television
except the news) while working, and when real creativity strikes, she works for long solitary hours without interruption.
Virginia feels that beginning writers must never write the kind of books they themselves would not enjoy reading
Once having decided upon a specific genre she advises them to read as much as possible within it, take notes on story transitions, and
summarize plots. This, she says, will give beginning writers a feel of how a novel is put together.