It was a typical "boy meets girl" story, only the boy was a convicted murderer, and the girl was a fiction writer who liked to volunteer at her local soup kitchen.
Diane Schoemperlen says there was no single moment when she decided to date the man she calls "Shane," whom she met while the two were serving hot meals together at a soup kitchen in Kingston, Ont. She was there by choice, while he was there on escorted leave from a minimum-security prison.
They'd known each other for about a year before they became romantically involved, and, as Schoemperlen put it, it was "complicated" right from the start – in part because he was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder.
"It was not something that I leapt into," Schoemperlen told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday. "I realized that it was an unusual choice."
Schoemperlen documents her tumultuous relationship with "Shane" in her memoir, "This Is Not My Life." Schoemperlen's book covers her six-year relationship with Shane, including the difficulties of navigating his violent past, and the challenges they faced in dealing with the Canadian prison system.
"It's safe to say that never once in my life had I dreamed of being in bed with a convicted killer, let alone one with his teeth in a margarine container in the kitchen, his mother in the next room, and the word 'hi' tattooed on a private part," she writes in her book.
Schoemperlen lived with Shane for a period of time after his release, but their relationship didn't work out. She says she went for "general therapy" afterward, to help her deal with the complicated emotions about the experience.
"I had never been for therapy in my life," she said, adding that she learned "a lot" about herself in the process.
Schoemperlen, who has won a Governor General's Award for her fiction, says it was "much harder" to write from her own experience for the memoir.
Her book is in stores now.
