Rosie's Travels

This is a special post in honour of a new writer, Patry Francis. She's just published a book, The Liar's Diary.

Her story is here, while this is the LitPark post I came across via Neil Gaiman's blog, explaining how the online community established this carnival in her honour.

I haven't read her book yet. I don't know the woman personally. But I'm deeply touched by her 25 years of waitressing while dreaming of this book, writing in her spare time, and believing that she had more to offer than just the day job she happened to do. So many times when I've been working one of my random things-I've-done-merely-to-make-money positions - all of which I try to do as well as I can - I've been typing away, or building walls, or trimming fish, or stuffing envelopes, or picking grapes but in my imagination I've been stringing together sentences, crafting turns of phrase, imagining paint and fabric and drawing and collage coming together, mentally stepping through a dance routine, thinking about what spices I might add to the next batch of biscuits, plotting the next leg of my journey, knowing that I am more than just what my hands are doing at this moment.

We all have imagination, and dreams, and grand plans. I even had to create a blog tag for "grand plans", they seem to come up so often. Patry Francis followed her dream, and although she's going through a personal time of great trouble, I salute her courage and her determination. Best wishes to her, and to everyone involved in the Carnival!

Labels: Carnival, grand plans, Inspiration, Patry Francis, Web 2.0