CHARLESTON, S.C. - Rebecca Darwin, a Southerner who made her career as a New York magazine publisher, had recently settled into life as the preacher's wife, content that her once-bustling professional life was over.
Then the former publisher of The New Yorker and Mirabella heard the idea for "Garden & Gun," a saucy Southern glossy with a puzzling name. The magazine would focus on the story-rich Southeast _ tales written by renowned authors like Pat Conroy. The magazine would walk the delicate balance between conservation and hunting.
Not too long after she heard the pitch, Darwin was back in the business.
"I plan to be doing this for a while," Darwin said recently from her offices in this coastal city.
The magazine, which has guaranteed advertisers 150,000 copies each issue has published twice so far this year. The magazine plans two more editions this year, then six issues next year and 10 in 2009.
"The first two issues have been very, very well received," said Pierre Manigault, board chairman of Evening Post Publishing Co., which owns the magazine. "I think it's really filling a void that existed."
But what makes Darwin _ or anyone _ think "Garden & Gun" can build and retain readers in a world driven by the Internet?
"I do think there's a niche, there's an audience and a desire for a magazine like that," Darwin said.
The magazine's name comes from a popular Charleston disco in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The "garden" part of the title symbolizes a focus on conservation while the "gun" encompasses the sporting life, she explained.
Rebecca McPheters, who works for a company that tracks advertising values of media brands, said no other U.S. publications are chasing "Garden & Gun's" affluent Southeastern audience. She said in an e-mail that, given time, the magazine could do well with national advertisers, who these days look for publications "where they think ready involvement is higher than for general interest titles."
The magazine has received some strong buzz. Marketing director Sharon Bruner has a folder filled with positive e-mails and letters from those excited about its uniqueness, and Darwin proudly tells about how actress Sandra Bullock invoked the startup in an interview on Forbes.com last month.
"If you don't have a copy, I do," Bullock says in the article.
"We made the big time," Darwin said.
Darwin has already been in the big time. She moved to New York after graduating from the University of North Carolina to attend the Tobe-Coburn School for Fashion Careers. Instead, she got an internship at GQ and her career path was set.
In 1998, she became The New Yorker's first female publisher as part of the Advance Group publishing company owned by the Newhouse family.
Darwin learned a lot from mogul Samuel I. Newhouse Jr. Perhaps the most important, she said, was to think "more from the gut than looking at a bunch of numbers."
So when Manigault asked Darwin to take on the publishing company's foray into major magazines, she jumped.
"Rebecca Darwin is a real pro," McPheters said.
Darwin demurs when asked if her publishing background attracted writers and subjects to the young magazine. "I don't think it hurts," she said with a grin.
The cover of the magazine's debut issue this spring featured a barefoot Pat Conroy standing in a garden pond. The author of "The Lords of Discipline" and "The Prince of Tides" also wrote about his journals and how they fed into his popular novels.
The second issue released this summer profiled "Forrest Gump" author Winston Groom and the late Doug Marlette's story about his day with Southern author Walker Percy. The cover story featured female surfers.
Editor-in-chief John Wilson wrote about visiting Cuba in search of Ernest Hemingway's legacy. His opening note in the inaugural issue said the magazine's vision was "to weave together the colors and flavors of the land and people from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast, and from the line of the Virginia south to Venezuela."
There were profiles of Asheville, N.C., and Mobile, Ala., in the first two issues. Upcoming will be a piece about roads and towns along the Mississippi River from its mouth in the Bayou to Memphis, Tenn.
Neither Darwin or Manigault would say how much money has been invested in the magazine. But Manigault pledged that his company and its flagship paper, The (Charleston) Post and Courier, are in it for the long haul.
"If we were going to do it on a stage this large, we were going to do it right," Manigault said. "Obviously, there's a limit if it's not meeting our expectations. Right now, we're very pleased."
Darwin gave up her home in the Hudson Valley and lofty position at The New Yorker when her husband became a Presbyterian minister and the couple wanted a nice place to raise their daughters, 4-year-old Lily and 2-year-old SaSa.
"I've done a lot of those other things," Darwin said of VIP dinners and executive gatherings. "I'm really, really happy where I am now."