Sunday, January 11, 2009

News article Published Jan. 11, 2009

From a local newspaper near Alexandria, La.

By: CARISSA HEBERT Managing Editor

Dianne Dee of Alexandria has published "Fatal Friendship" through Publish America.

Dee is following a dream of hers to be a published writer. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa over 15 years ago. After residing in Texas for 23 years, she recently moved back to her home state of Louisiana.

When asked if it was difficult to follow her dream to be a published writer, Dee said, "As an individual with a visual disability it was difficult to overcome facing the rest of my life knowing I had to live with blindness. I just made up my mind that I had to live a normal life and accept it so that is what I am doing. I have worked as an advocate for others with disabilities and taught computers to the blind and visually impaired for four

Years. I also belong to a chapter of Affiliated Blind of Louisiana, which is very rewarding to me, along with my writing."

Dee said her book, "Fatal Friendship," is purely fictional. If she was going to encourage someone to read it, she would tell them "it's about Louisiana and about people in Louisiana." Being a native of the state she has lots of experiences to draw from.

She was born to French-speaking parents and grandparents. Her parents are the late Edison and Mary Fontenot, who once resided in the Beaver Creek community in Evangeline Parish between Ville Platte and Oakdale.

Dee is happy to be living once again near family members and old friends. When she is not writing, you can find her teaching the blind to use computers. She is not totally blind; she said she still has lots of vision. To cope with the handicap of her disease, she uses a Computer with a program known as JAWS. (JAWS works with software applications and the Internet using an internal speech synthesizer and the computes sound card to read information

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