Angela St. Clair-- paranormal, fantasy, romance author: Introducing: Veronica Cronin!

BIO:

Veronica Cronin received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Full Sail University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Florida Atlantic University. While writing into the wee hours of the night as a wife and mother, Veronica found success with the publications of her short story, “Bean Talk” in Second Chicken Soup for a Woman’s Soul, her poetry, and her photography. She taught high school writing, wrote the light-hearted “Forty-Something Relationships” as a columnist for theexaminer.com, and worked for The Walt Disney Company before writing her dramatic screenplay about a woman with bipolar illness, All My By Self, which earned her the Advanced Achievement Award in her graduate program. While pursuing writing, she’s hoping some of the pixie dust from being a Fairy-Godmother-in-Training at the Magic Kingdom’s castle hasn’t worn off.

She’s So Bipolar, Non-Fiction

That’s me! I decided to write She’s So Bipolar, because I could never find practical information on how to handle the illness. There are chapter titles such as, “Telling Your Children,” and “I’m Manic Now, An Experiment in Writing.” Most of my feedback has been very good, as people are learning. That was my main goal, to enlighten people about what it feels like to have it and how a person can handle it.

Putting a book out there about your own illness is scary and risky. I did it for my daughter. I wish there had been a book like mine at the time I was diagnosed in 1998. There wasn’t. I had Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, and the medical book for Bipolar, the main source for doctors! It was a difficult read, but I read it anyway. Mine is easy-to-follow, straight forward, and honest. It’s real.

I had to write the truth of the illness to make it believable. I utilized my own photography, taking pictures of myself in different moods, as I was studying for my Master’s degree, and used them to show, not simply tell what the illness is like. Some of the pictures may be shocking to see, if you know me, but I had to include them. The book wouldn’t be the same without them. It makes more of an impact with my words.

There are a lot of bipolar books on the market, but I had it in me to write this one and I had to do it. There are non-fiction and fiction books. There are movies and television shows. However, any attention to the plight of those with mental illness in a positive light should be written or filmed. There is entirely too much stigma surrounding bipolar illness. I had a student ask me once, who did not know of my illness, “Aren’t bipolar people murderers?” I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write what I know, and what I know is that there are millions of us out there that are hiding their illness because of that very reason.