Goodreads asked Ellyn Bache:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ellyn Bache Remember when millions of women waited for the new issues of magazines like McCall’s and Good Housekeeping not just for the recipes and decorating tips but for the short stories that appeared each month? Like lots of other readers, I loved them. They were the first stories I ever published. Then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, women's magazines stopped using fiction -- and in some cases, stopped publishing altogether.

I didn't realize until years later how nostalgic many women were for those days. Time after time at book events, they'd begin reminiscing with real fondness about how much those stories had meant to them, how nice it had been that they were short enough to finish even with their busy lives, and how much they still missed them.

Those conversations were the germ of my collection, "Kaleidoscope: 20 Stories Celebrating Women's Magazine Fiction," which includes my stories published over a 22-year period during the heyday of women's magazine fiction -- stories that give a good sense of that much-loved genre -- sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, and (to my surprise when I went back to them) with a remarkably contemporary feel. This project has been a lot of fun to put together -- and so far, rewarding for those coming to this type of fiction for the first time as well as for fans of women's magazine fiction back in the day.

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