POINT IT AND PUNCH IT: AN INTERVIEW WITH LOUISE URE

Louise Ure's first novel, Forcing Amaryllis, won the Shamus Award for best first novel.  It was published in hardcover by Mysterious Press in 2005 and came out in paperback this spring.  It tells the story of Tucson jury consultant Calla Gentry, who is assigned to a man who might be called the client from hell. 

Louise's next two books will be published by St. Martin's Press. The first of those two, The Fault Tree, also takes place in Arizona and is the story of a young blind woman who is the only witness to a murder.

James Calder interviewed Louise at her house in San Francisco on a rainy night in November 2006.

Tell us about the path you took to becoming a published writer.

Louise Ure: I had a shorter road than many.  I admire the folks who have toiled for years and years and have seven manuscripts under the bed and they get better with each one.  After 9/11 I was sitting here with a girlfriend of mine who paints watercolors.  She said, "If time is short, if the world's going to blow up, what will you wish you had always done?" I had a painting of hers above the mantle, a picture of a rather stylized horse.  I said, "I'd like to write a book, but I have no story that hasn't already been told." She said, "You think nobody's ever painted a horse before?" It was great, because nobody could have painted the horse the way she did.  

I took Judy Greber's eight-week writing class at Book Passage.  Judy set up a writer's group after that eight weeks.  I wrote the book in five months and then it took another five to go back and totally rework it and do the research.  From the day I expressed the desire to start writing, it was probably eleven months to finishing the book.  I seem to work well by deadlines.  That's why the writer's group was so important.

Have you lived in Tucson?

I'm fourth generation.  There are 400 people I'm related to in Tucson.  Only two of us ever left town.  I think the rest of them have cars that are fixed like those grocery carts that won't let you take them past the yellow line or the wheels will stop.  I hope the book is still true to what Tucson is all about, but much of what I write is the nostalgia of what I miss.

How much research did you do for the book? Obviously you already knew the setting.

Yes. I wrote the setting of that book from the heart.  The research came after the first draft.  I wanted Calla to be close enough to the legal system that she could talk to the detectives, lawyers, and criminals, but I don't know enough about the law or police work to write about that.  I got this notion of Calla being a jury consultant, which is rather like what I did in advertising: develop a strategy and try to find a way to convince people to buy your product, whether your product is an alibi or dancing California raisins.  Judy Greber, once again, was my inspiration.  She put me in touch with a couple of jury consultants, two women who have an office in downtown San Francisco.  I took them out to lunch and we started telling stories.

My second main piece of research comes out of the fact that my husband and I race Shelby Mustangs as a hobby.  One of the old pros of vintage racing decided he wanted to become a fingerprint expert and work for the Department of Justice.  I visited him in Fresno for two days.  He marshaled the entire office for me.  He had the DNA expert, the bullet expert, the tire tread expert—every possible forensic solution. 

I also got legal help from a defense attorney in Globe, Arizona.  This woman, Tina Ortiz, not only is a terrific defense attorney, but she loves listening to crime fiction audio books while she does her housework.  She's become a really good friend.

Did you go back to Tucson to do a lot of fact-checking?

I did in a couple of cases—like Sabino Canyon, which had changed a lot since I used to go climb rocks there.  But in most cases I would telephone my mother down there.  She's 90 years old and still lives in Tucson. She has a drawer in the kitchen where she's put whatever is interesting to her in the last 50 or 60 years—a recipe, a newspaper article, a phone number.  Every now and again she'll pull something out of that drawer and mail it to me.  They always seem to arrive just when I need that idea, or that fact, or that piece of information.  There's a scene in the book about the feast day for San Juan Bautista.  She sent me a clipping from a 1951 newspaper article to remind me of that ceremony.  And it arrived just when I was writing that scene in the book. 

Is there any of you in Calla Gentry?

I'm probably more Aunt Giulia than I am Calla, truth be told.  The woman who smokes like a chimney and loves crossword puzzles.  But there are certain things I share with Calla.  We share an Italian heritage.  We have a love of all things Mexican and the Mexican culture.  We both think that there are not enough chairs in nature and that exercise is something to be disdained. 

The nature of the crimes in the book is pretty horrific.  How much of writing about this kind of crime was for dramatic purposes and how much of it had to do with a subject you wanted to address?

I think everybody has a coterie of people around them who have been rape victims or victims of sexual assault—whether it's a cousin or a next-door neighbor or sister or mother, or a brother for that matter.  So this is not one person's story, it's everybody's. And each character I wrote about is an amalgamation of several rape stories I'd heard.  Each of those women who was raped in the story, whom Calla talks to, evinces a separate way of how they dealt with it: whether they turned to religion, or they froze up with a guard dog behind a chain link fence, or they denied it, or they just went out sleeping around with anybody they could find.  I think we all have known one of those people someplace along the line.  More than anything, I wanted  to communicate that rape is not a sex crime.  It's a crime of violence and control. 

You make the point really well. I didn't feel any proselytizing going on. 

When I first wrote the book, it started with a 16-page rape scene.  I don't remember now—because there were five versions of it—if I'd written it from a first-person point of view or if we were there in the room with Amy as this was happening.  It was quite graphic and quite gory, and I wrote it all in one day.  I realized after I had the whole book done that I didn't need those 16 pages at the beginning.  It was important that the reader knew no more than Calla did.  She discovered the horror rather than it all being there on the page. 

What kind of effect did it have on you the day you wrote that scene?

I required a whole bottle of red wine.

What are your aspirations as a writer?  Do you mostly want to entertain, tell a good crime story, or are there other things you also want to accomplish?

First I want to keep myself entertained and amused.  That entails a good story.  I think I'll stay in this genre, because I love the structure of it, even if it's a loose structure.  I don't write light novels.  The work I've done since Forcing Amaryllis continues to be dark, maybe even darker than that book.  In some ways I wish I could write something more flippant or cheery, but I don't think I have it in me.

There are some nice light moments in the novel. I immediately liked Calla because of the sense humor she has about herself.  Yet at the same time you have a pretty dark story going on.

That was one thing I did set out to do.  I'm so tired of reading about heroines with flowing locks and beautiful bodies and superior skills and every eye in the room turns to them when they come in.  I knew my protagonist wasn't going to be like that. 

Crossword puzzles play a role in your book, and you've mentioned that you love them.  Were there any crossword-type clues encoded in the story?

I do love crossword puzzles.  I used to make some money creating them.  My biggest sale was an $1100 sale to the New York Times.  I don't want to give anything away, but you could say one of the character's names has a special meaning. 

You race cars.  Tell us a little about that.

My husband Bruce is deeply into racing.  I realized, after I'd moved back from working in Sydney and Singapore for five years, that if I wanted to see him, it'd be down at the race track.  I bought a '66 Shelby Mustang, one of the original cars that Hertz rented out.  We race eight or ten times a year, at Thunder Hill in Willows, or at Infineon in Sonoma, or Laguna Seca in Monterey. 

How fast do you drive?

We mostly look at RPM instead of speed, but I'd say  probably 140-160 on the straightaways.  The straightaways are pretty short, though, so if taking a corner somewhere between 70 and 90 mph is appealing to you, that's what we do.  We have a lot of slogans in racing.  "Point it and punch" is a good one.  I use that for my writing, too.  You don't think about it, just point it and punch it, just go, just write it. 

Visit Louise Ure's web site at www.louiseure.com.