Louise Ure writes:
Forcing Amaryllis is the first attempt at fiction writing that I’ve ever done, if you don’t count a couple of particularly imaginative IRS submissions at tax time.
I was a would-be writer. That means I would-be doing just about anything but actually sitting down to try it. The catalyst that changed all that was September 11. Like the rest of America I was so rocked by the tragedy – so unmoored – that it made me rethink my priorities and my goals. I was having a drink with a good friend – a watercolorist – that Thanksgiving, and we talked about what we always wanted to do with our lives but had never done. I told her that I wanted to write a book, but was unwilling to even try because I might not have anything new and remarkable to say. She gestured to a painting of hers that hangs over my mantle and said, “Oh, and you think nobody’s ever painted a horse before?”
Forcing Amaryllis was written in five months, with another five months spent on getting it right. And it may be just another painting of a horse, but it’s MY horse, and nobody else has ever painted it quite this way before.
Louise Ure is a fourth generation Arizonan who now lives in San Francisco. Her first book, Forcing Amaryllis, will be published this June.
