This is a little bit hard to write because if I say exactly how we met Belinda Carr I’d give away one of the lovely little surprises in Nine Lives.

Suffice it to say that Margaret and I met Belinda while conducting interviews for another character in Nine Lives. Belinda was often there during those interviews, mostly listening, but often chiming in with snippets of her own story. Little by little, Margaret and I began putting the pieces together; Belinda’s story was amazing.

And it turned out to be a good one for Nine Lives because she is a great inside/outside observer of New Orleans culture. She was born and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward, but was never really of the Lower Ninth Ward. She always felt different, saw the world differently, had different aspirations than her friends and cousins had. She doesn’t even like New Orleans’s signature cuisine. Offer her crawfish or oysters or spicy gumbo and she’ll wrinkle her nose and say, “Hmf.” I began thinking that Belinda’s soul had been en route to a woman’s womb in Minnesota when it got diverted accidentally to the Lower Ninth Ward.

She is one of the most wholly attractive women I know. Not only tall and regal and beautiful to look at, but thrillingly smart and incisive and deeply, mordantly, funny. Margaret and I looked forward to hanging out with her. Then, a woman who I’d hoped to make into one of my characters began flaking; she was willing to be interviewed, and was a terrific story-teller, but it began getting hard to get her to make time for it. Eventually, her story petered out, leaving Margaret and me needing a woman to take her place.

One day Margaret woke up and said, “Duh! Belinda!” Not only did she had a wonderful life story to tell -- better in many ways, than the other woman’s -- but she was connected to one of our other eight in a way that would make for an intriguing plot twist. It turns out that while Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything else in New Orleans, it saved Belinda Carr’s marriage.

We turned the full force of our interview machine on Belinda, who filled out her story beautifully. I was a little worried about how she’d react to seeing her story in print; of the nine, she had the coldest feet about the whole enterprise. But I got lucky. Her mother snatched up the copy of Nine Lives that I sent her before Belinda could read it. Her mom read it and loved it, which left Belinda with no choice but to love it, too.

She even came to the book’s launch party in New Orleans, and sat like a queen, signing copies. There’s nobody like Belinda.

If I were casting the movie, Belinda Carr would be played by Angela Bassett.