Author uses her past for book

Ruth Ruhlman is hoping to become the next John Grisham

Be careful what you say around Patricia Ruhlman. She just might use it in a book. And when she writes, it's murder.

Ruhlman worked in law and spent the last 10 years scribbling notes. If she came across a legal case whose aspects struck her as interesting, she jotted it down. If she overheard a clever phrase or someone's quick comeback, she made note of it. All those scraps of paper added up to fodder for books and Ruhlman has just published her first one, "Death of the Pretty Piranha."

On Saturday, she will have a book signing at Borders Books, 2323 S. Decatur Blvd., on the northeast corner of Sahara Avenue. Call 258-0999 for the time.

All her friends clamored to be in the book, giving her carte blanche to twist their personalities anyway she wanted.

When Ruhlman writes a novel, she sees it in movie terms. Her characters become so well developed she mentally casts famous actors in the parts.

One might be best played by Nick Nolte, she said. Another turned into John Goodman.

"It's true that characters wake you up in the middle of the night and say, 'I don't want to say that' or 'I have to do this,' " she said. "So you get up and go to your computer. Writing takes over your life. Your characters become very real."

Saying she hopes to be the next John Grisham, Ruhlman used her law degree to give factual realism to her story. She chose to approach it from a murder mystery premise to keep the reader's interest.

Her main character is a female attorney who, with two detectives, ferrets out the shady past of a murder victim. Red herrings abound and those who have read the book don't see the final twist coming.

"It's an ending that catches you off guard," she said. "So far, no one has figured out who the murderer is."

An avid reader, she counts Sue Grafton among her favorite authors.

Although Ruhlman, 71, always knew she would someday be a writer, her life took a few twists of its own. She grew up in Chicago and married an Air Force officer. They moved 16 times in their 22 years of marriage.

After being an at-home mother with three sons, she joined the workforce and wrote copy for a public relations firm, put together a newsletter and was a ghostwriter.

Ruhlman went back to school at 46 and earned her juris doctorate degree. She never practiced law but worked in bar association management, where she came into contact with many attorneys and saw the office politics of the legal world. Much of it was woven into the book.

After moving to Las Vegas for a fresh start, she was hired by the Tropicana as its Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator. Later, she investigated accident claims for the hotel.

She actually started writing the book three years ago and, even though she knew to begin with a complete outline and her characters solidly built, rewriting kept her occupied much of the time. The hardest part, she said, was getting it onto a disk and making sure she caught all editing errors like double words and other things spellcheck couldn't sniff out. At presstime, a copy was not available.

A literary agent could not secure her a contract with a publishing house, so she opted to go with a print-on-demand service, Infinity.com. She's approaching film studios and offering them movie rights.

Ruhlman has already begun work on her next novel. Like "Death of the Pretty Piranha," it's a murder mystery. And this one, too, began with nothing but a few notes jotted on scraps of paper.


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