She Left Me Breathless (39 page)

Authors: Trin Denise

BOOK: She Left Me Breathless

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I would like to thank Author Claire Chilton for doing such a fantastic job on the book cover. She is by far the Queen of cover design and structural editing in my opinion and I love, love, love the cover you made for SLMB!
I would also like to thank Author Eileen Gormley who in my opinion is the Queen of book blurbs!
I would also like to thank Margaret Farrell for all the help she gave me in bringing SLMB to fruition. Without your hard-core critique’s, SLMB wouldn’t be as good as it is. You are the Queen Beta Reader LOL.
Elisa, one of my biggest fans in the Netherlands: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your suggestions and feedback were so fantastic, I had to implement them, and I am so glad I did!

Note from the Author

About
She Left Me Breathless

I’m often asked where I come up with the ideas for my stories. I guess the easy answer would be to say
everywhere
. Well, that answer is the truth. I get ideas from watching the news, reading the newspaper or I may overhear a piece of a conversation and sometimes something personal that happens or has happened in my life sparks the idea.

As with all stories I write, I find songs that inspire me as well. With this novel, the artist just so happens to be Adele. Her songs,
One and Only, Rolling in the Deep, and Set Fire to the Rain
were the songs that I listened to as I wrote this novel.

With
She Left Me Breathless
, this story just so happens to hit a little closer to home and is somewhat personal to me although it is a work of fiction.

When I was twenty-one years old, I fell in love with my best friend, who also happened to be
straight
. At the time, she was married and going through a painful divorce. She was also the mother of a beautiful, seven-year-old little girl. However, twenty-years ago, being an out-of-the-closet lesbian like I was, just was not as acceptable as it is today. The woman that I had fallen in love with couldn’t get past what her mother, society, and the church thought about homosexual relationships. What everyone else thought about us being of the same sex was more important than how much she loved me. The day I walked out of her life was the day she told me that she could not raise her daughter in that kind of an environment, meaning a lesbian relationship. It was as if being in a relationship with me was worse than being a serial killer.

There is a scene in this novel where Sydney loses control and she talks about how some parents, society, and the church would rather see a woman be with a man who physically abused their daughter, than see her with a woman who worshipped the ground she walked on. Twenty years ago, I yelled those exact same words because the woman that I loved was indeed in an abusive marriage and that was more acceptable than being in a relationship with me.

I am so grateful that I no longer have to live under those type of circumstances. I have all of the lesbian and gay men who came before me to thank for fighting for, and giving me those rights, rights that now allow me to openly love whomever I choose regardless of the fact that my lover is a woman. I say to hell with what anyone else thinks about it. You only get one life, so enjoy it :)

After twenty years, me and my old love have reconnected and once again we are friends. We both realize that we can no longer look back at the past with regret and instead, be grateful for the friendship we now share in spite of it.

The only words of advice I can offer is to never ever live your life for someone else :)

Copyright © 2012 Trin Denise
First Edition
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and the United Kingdom Copyright Act of 1956 and 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Print Edition
ISBN-13: 978-1908822-12-3
RAGZ BOOKS
Ebook Edition
ISBN-13:978-1908822-11-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental
Cover Art by Claire Chilton
Editor: Janet Brooks
Ebook Structural Editor: Claire Chilton
Print Edition Structural Editor: Trin Denise