I'm reading, "Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith" by Andrew Wilson after going through his Harold Robbins book and so far I'm digging it.

Patricia was a hot goth lez chick from Ft. Worth who is the kinda girl I fall for. Talented, depressed, dark, brilliant, dangerous... Uninterested in me.

Highsmith’s diaries are opened by Wilson who shines a light into her personal life and her thoughts as a writer. Wilson figures out where "Strangers on a Train" and where her most famous character, Ripley, came about.

She has huge infatuations with women in her work and life.

Her lesbian novel, "The Price of Salt" (which I'm reading as soon as I can) was inspired by Kathleen Senn, who walked into the toy department of Bloomingdale’s where Highsmith, 27 at the time was working. It's like a lesbian, "Shopgirl" kinda/not really...

Highsmith was turned on by Senn. Before it was called stalking, she tracked the woman down to her address, and watched her. She writes:

"I felt quite close to murder too, as I went to see the woman who almost made me love her when I saw her a moment in December, 1948. Murder is a kind of making love, a kind of possessing. To arrest her suddenly, my hands upon her throat (which I should really like to kiss) as if I took a photograph, to make her in an instant cool and rigid as a statue."

Kathleen Senn inspired "The Price of Salt," even though Highsmith never had any contact with Senn. Wilson tracks down the woman’s family. Highsmith never knew that the glamorous woman she encountered in Bloomingdale’s that day, went into her garage, started her car, and killed herself never knowing the part she’d played in literary history.

There's a great photograph of Highsmith young and nude taken by one of the few men she was attracted to. You can sense she was trying to be more comfortable with her body and experimented.

I'm only halfway through the book, but I'm so into it!