I had the pleasure of reading one of the first copies of Flowergirls, A Mirroir by Robin Sneed. This debut novel is a beautiful and intimate mesh of memoir and fiction.
 
"Robin Sneed was born in Los Angeles in 1962. After an eight year career in television as a child, she went on to have a 17-year career in corporate hell. A Physics major, activist, and adventurer, her greatest accomplishment has been to well and truly love another."
 
 
Erotic, brash, and sometimes profane, Flowergirls, A Mirroir, will change the way you think about marriage. The eighteen-year chronicle of two women who fall passionately in love through years of socio-political upheaval and change in Los Angeles, will leave you believing in the intrinsic sanctity of the heart.
 
   

I always want to know the story behind the story. What inspired you to write this book?

The love of my life, Rebecca, inspired me to write Flowergirls. After she died in 2001, I went through a very rough time of it in grief. It was truly devastating. We had talked about me writing a book, and so, I did. Although I have always written, it makes absolute sense that my first novel would be about our lives together. I created a couple of fictional plots in the book so that I could express my grief without writing about her death. I wanted to write a very alive book as a gift for Rebecca. A book with an ending she truly deserved. God, I love that girl. 
 
 
While I was reading, I felt like I was eavesdropping on the lovely relationship between these two women. I think the diary form enabled this closeness between the reader and the main characters. Why did you choose to write it as a diary?
 
I kept a diary early in our relationship, although sadly, I do not have it now. I wanted the very present tense of a diary...while writing Flowergirls, I was working through grief, and by writing the book in largely journal form, I could get 'close to the blood' as I like to say...it was an intense experience working that way...exhausting even...to let myself get into that space and relive those days...it was also very healing. 
 
Flowergirls, A Mirroir is a hot and steamy love story. Were you worried about family members reading it?

I never thought about that. Flowergirls is our story and one we wanted to tell. I have express permission from Rebecca to write of our erotic connection...we wanted to 'throw the doors open' as Beck would say. This is an interesting question because...I think that kind of self editing probably gets in the way of a great many potentially brilliant books making it to the stands. 
 
Someone asked me this question in an interview and I thought it was timely due to the recent incline in self-publishing. Why did you decide to self-publish this book?

Because I don't like asking for permission. When I wrote Flowergirls, I wasn't even thinking about publishing. It took me a couple of years to let go of it. At any rate, I don't like the idea of asking permission to share what I write...most especially with this book. 
 
I seem to always have one or two stories in my head, even as I’m working on a current project. What are you working on now?

I'm working on a second novel, The American Daughter. This book chronicles my life growing up in Los Angeles in the television industry. About knowing I was gay, about my father being in the military. I was a small child during the 'hippie movement' and during a resurgence in feminism. It has a lot to do with being a child who was thrust into the world of entertainment, and there was a dark side to that.  At that time, I desired nothing more than a life in science and philosophy. I think many women felt that  kind of longing growing up, for whatever circumstances they were thrust into. And during all of that, I'm feeling that I'm a boy in a girl's body! The American Daughter is a book about the resilience of dreams and natural inclination; one does not have to win the Nobel Prize nor solve world peace to know intellectual and spiritual fullfilment.