The Chase of a Shadow is an epic poem which is to be coming to you in exactly 13 parts, one every three months. Its first book was penned by my great-grandfather, Denis M. Cronin, who was born in 1866 on a farm overlooking Bantry Bay in Kilcrohane, County Cork, Ireland. He penned the first part of his epic poem nearing the eve of his 1888 emigration to New York. The rest he had finished by his 1898 goal, though he didn’t succeed at that time in seeing it published. Was it because the storyline was so similar to Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie? Or were the similarities only due to the fact of our souls being transmigrated to the body of another, and in that case another writer? The answer will be coming in the Book 4 of the series and it will be a very interesting turn in the story. For now back to the history of this series,
I think you all should know that I have been diagnosed, like my great-grandfather Denis Cronin, as being mentally ill. Whether that is true now is not the same question as whether it was true last year or back when I was first diagnosed in 2004. I say it isn’t true now except to say that my diagnosis is incorrect. You see, I am diagnosed as having schizoaffective disorder while I view my own diagnosis to be the same as was my great-grandfather’s, manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder. You see, schizoaffective disorder has with it something which is either a tendency for auditory or visual delusions. In my case I have had only a few instances of visual phenomena, but no delusions. And the voice of GOD I hear every day whenever I want too is not delusion either but rather exactly the voice of GOD. And it is GOD who is dictating the epic poem you are, I hope, still about to read. And if you do read it and are one with not much patience for pure art, skip the first book for only a while until you are hooked in the story. By then you will wonder about my great-grandfather and the first story he wrote which prompted this tale to be continued in the successive twelve books. I would say that by the end of the fourth book you will be so hooked and also will have only by then heard about Denis Cronin enough to understand how he could have written his book, The Chase of a Shadow, which stood on its own as one book for over a century.
What you may want to do is read Book 2 first and then take a stab at Book 1 just to see what I mean by my now saying that the art is in the first book but the story in those that came after. You see, I have summed up the entire storyline of Book 1 in the Introduction, or rather GOD has, with me taking dictation. And even with that one long line it is easy then to understand where the story is starting off in Book 2. Just be sure to read the Introduction or you’ll miss that one sentence. That said, I would now like to ask that you read a bit about my great-grandfather, Denis Malachy Cronin, otherwise also known as Denis Michael Cronin…….Jenny Warsen