Book excerpt: Description 'There is fire in your eyes, and it frightens me.' At the age of twelve, Luci cannot possibly comprehend what her mother means by those words - and her mother's suicide just hours later means she cannot ask. But the words will come to haunt Luci in the years to come as she battles with the highs and lows of undiagnosed manic-depression. The tragic death of her twin brother at the age of seventeen marks the beginning of a rollercoaster ride of intense emotion that pushes Luci to the very limits of her endurance. Her manic recklessness has far-reaching consequences, for both Luci and her extended family, and the accompanying episodes of depression leave Luci teetering on the thin line between life and death. When Luci meets Ben, she actually dares to hope that he might be the one person who can keep her on an almost even keel. But when tragedy steals Ben from her just weeks before their wedding day, Luci is left despairing of ever being happy as her tempestuous moods spiral once again out of control. Luci's hopes of happiness are rekindled when she finds love in an unexpected quarter, but as the rollercoaster ride becomes ever more extreme, an episode of psychotic mania threatens everything Luci holds dear, culminating in her hospitalisation and diagnosis with bipolar affective disorder (manic depression). By turns funny and tragic, The Fire in Your Eyes thrusts the reader deep into the tumult that is untreated manic-depression, a real rollercoaster of a ride. About the Author Martine Lara Daniel was born in York in 1981. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be a writer, and whilst at secondary school she would often be caught scribbling stories in the back of exercise books during lessons. Her dreams of seeing her name in print never dimmed, despite her life being turned upside down by episodes of mania, depression and brief psychosis during her late teens and early twenties. In 2003 the pressures of a stressful job brought on an episode of psychotic mania, which led to the breakdown that ended her hopes of a career in bookselling, following which Martine was finally forced into contact with local mental health services. With the help of medication and the support of her family, she began to pick up the pieces of her life and started work on The Fire in Your Eyes, juggling work on the novel with her studies with The Open University. She hopes to graduate with a BA (Hons) in Humanities with English Language in 2010.