Sorry I disappeared for awhile - My issues with Google took much longer to resolve than I could have imagined, but Google's bots are finally indexing vjournal pages quite readily now.   Google never responded to any of my pleas for help.  But Greg Bear at Bear Ideas suggested I take down the sitemap that I had posted within Google's Webmaster Tools to see if this would force the bots to re-index the site from scratch.  This appears to have worked though it took nearly a month for the pages to be indexed.   Now I can focus on building relevant content.  Without Google being willing to index Vjournal articles I was diverted into thinking I had to come up with a new name and buy a clean domain so hadn't done much else with the site. 

Even though I've done no marketing I'm getting a small steady flow of direct traffic, which tells me that people are telling others about the site's existence.  With the Google issues behind me I'm working on some articles that I expect will be relevant to business women in this economic downturn which will help give me an idea of the site's viral potential.