Dia Calhoun

Yes! The Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada inspired the setting. While I was there I visited a garden by the sea, and that inspired me to create the world of Windward in my first book about that world, Aria of the Sea.

I always loved the tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses when I was a girl. All those princesses! All those dresses! When, in my adult years, I was diagnosed with bipolar two illness, I came to think of the Twelve Dancing princesses as also suffering from bipolar illness. They’re wild dancing all night long seemed to exhibit mania. I wondered how they would be during the day after all that wild dancing, and thought they would be terribly tired and depressed. So the mood swings of the princesses seemed to echo Phoenix’s mood swings.

Oh, yes. I have had many role modles and mentors. One of my favorites was my High School English tutor. She made me love books, poetry, writing, and made me believe in myself.

Yes, writing was my dream. I wrote stories and poems in school and majored in English in college—with lots of creative writing classes. But I didn’t start writing regularly every day until I was about 27 and bought my first computer. It took me five years to write Firegold, working about an hour a day during the week, and more hours on the weekend. Then it took me five years to sell it to a publisher. Then it took two more years for the publisher to turn it into a book. So that’s a total of twelve years from beginning the book until I held it in my hands.

I write for teens because I am interested in the process of transformation. To be a complete adult you have to keep transforming yourself throughout your life, keep remaking yourself. Teenagers are doing this very intensely, and I find that fascinating. I put my stories in fantasy settings because I believe that unicorns and dragons really exist—the unicorns are our higher selves and the dragons are our darker selves.

Yes, it has been very rewarding. I kept my bipolar disorder a secret for many years—until I finished writing The Phoenix Dance. I was afraid of the stigma and prejudice against those who battle mental illness. But when I finished Phoenix I thought how much more good the book would do in the world, if I shared the fact that it was based on my own experience with bipolar disorder.

Yes, I have received lots of feedback about Phoenix. Once, for example, after I spoke about it at a school assembly, a girl came up to me and said she felt inspired now to share a secret she was carrying.

Write it! In a poem, a story, a play, an essay. That is a way to start exploring how you feel about your own situation, and the first step to sharing your understanding of it with others.

Obstacles are put here to test us and make us stronger. All heroes in books are tested by obstacles over and over again; this is part of the journey of life.

You need to get a really good support system of friends, family, and mental health practitioners to help you with this illness. There is no cure for it, so you must learn to live your life along side it. I have found that if I rely on my support system, and take my medicine every day, I manage pretty well. There will always be difficult times with this illness. But as you gain more experience with it, you will remember during the dark times that you fought your way through them before, so you know you can do it again. And on the bright side, many people with bipolar illness are very creative, so that is something to value and honor.