Hello, I'm Elizabeth Hayes: a Soul Food Cafe patron helping to keep the pages of Heather's Writing Notebook turning while she's away.

Heather has always ensured that The Soul Food Cafe provides fresh creative fare on a regular basis for its readers. And she has done this with a dedication and a committment not seen often in other writing websites. By arranging the continuation of the Writing Notebook, Heather is reinforcing her avid conviction: that writing must go on, whatever is happening.

So I hope you will drop by to read the offerings of the new notebook contributors, because in doing so you'll not only be supporting our efforts but also ensure that Soul Food Cafe's hearth is stoked and warm for Heather's return.

It would seem that the only thing that I can be certain of is change. Patrons at Soul Food will be aware that I am taking the trip of a lifetime and will be in the United Kingdom and Europe for six months. After battling cancer for the last nine months Darryl and I have decided to pull up stumps and experience life in the Northern Hemisphere.

While I am out of Australia I will maintain contact through my blogs and newsletters but I am delighted to have some of my longstanding Patrons join me in maintaining this notebook while I am away. Apart from letting you know what is happening in their writing lives, they will guide you and introduce you to writing sites and resources on the web. So, do not be surprised to find new voices drifting through Cyber Space.

I am very grateful to these folks because they will help to keep a light in the window while I go in search of my muse. You will be able to follow my journey in a new blog that I will create before leaving. I sense my writing life is about to change dramatically and I am hoping that I return to Australia refreshed and invigorated.

Over the last eighteen months, since my debute in this exciting cyber world, my life has taken significant turns. In turn my writing and the fantasy world that I created to flee from the chaos is also subject to change.

The word conjuncture, which speaks of that combination of events, seems to help me to explain the twists and turns that keep happening to me. The twists are a result of that combination, the state of my affairs seems to be at mercy of the sequencing of things - many of which are totally out of my control.

As I write I am preparing for fresh change and thinking about how I can sustain my work here and remain true to my basic philosophy -the philosophy which was the foundation stone upon which this site was built.

The Soul Food Cafe will never be a corporate site. It will always be inclusive and defy those who would suggest that to be a real writer you need to have climbed the writing mountain and written a book. It will always be a resource for people who just want to write, to bear witness to their lives or to tell a story that needs to be heard. It is here to record my own observations as I work in the field of writing.

My struggle is to find the format that best suits - that permits me to keep the door open, by remote control if need be. I want to be accessible but need to be able to disappear and know that it will all continue. I want to sustain the resource but fuel my own creativity and find out what it is that I must write.

Activating this blogger and writing here is a first step - for when I write here I do not need to have my own computer or my own design programs. I just need access to the internet.