High-stakes gamble pays off

One of the hardest gigs, though, turned out to be writing a memoir, Lay the Favorite, which has now been turned into a movie starring Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Directed by Stephen Frears, British helmer of The Queen and My Beautiful Laundrette, Lay the Favorite is an all-American tale of fortunes won and lost, a girl, a guy and a four-stone Chow Chow named Otis.

Having read the book, I already have a mental picture of Raymer as a kind of Stephanie Plum, the kooky but fiercely smart bounty hunter heroine of Janet Evanovich's novels, so it's pleasing confirmation to hear her giggling down the telephone line from West Palm Beach in Florida. How's Otis doing, I ask.

"Awww," she laughs. "He's right here, snoring."

Raymer, now 35, lived the fantasy of every new writer when she sold her book on the strength of a 25-page pitch. The film rights were bought two weeks later, before the book was completed. As soon as a chapter was finished, off it went to the screenwriter.

In the film, Raymer is played by the British actress Rebecca Hall (The Town, The Awakening). The two met when Hall was cast and spent time together. When she saw the film she realised how closely Hall had been studying her.

"There are moments when she really behaves a lot like me in her mannerisms. Her quirks really come out.

"My friends have said: 'Wow, I really recognised some of you in her'. Rebecca is very instinctive. That's her gift as an actress."

Willis plays Dink, the professional gambler who gave Raymer her start.

Like every other job she had up to that point, including being a home stripper for a firm called Night Moves, Raymer seems to have stumbled into being a gambling clerk through curiosity and boredom.

Willis was a lot of fun to have around on set, says Raymer, providing much-needed levity during long days shooting in the New Orleans heat. Raymer was called upon when a set had to be approved for authenticity. The gambling office, complete with phones ringing constantly with punters wanting to place bets, TVs blaring and clerks yelling odds to and fro, sounds like a very modern madhouse.

Now that it's all over and she's a fully fledged lady writer with her second book, a coming of age novel, on the way, she harbours no regrets about those years on the wild side. What about the stripping?

"I'm glad I did it. It was a lot of fun to write about. Living it was a little difficult, and of course I get embarrassed when people ask me about it. It was embarrassing to have my parents read that part of the book. But it's a big part of being a writer. When you commit to writing a memoir and someone has purchased it, you want to write the best, most entertaining, most dramatic book you can, and a lot of dramatic things happened when I was working at Night Moves. I would have never left that out."

With all its talk of odds and percentages, Lay the Favorite – the term for backing the likely winner – reads like the zippiest maths textbook you'll ever encounter.

The ability to understand numbers is just one of many skills the good gambler requires, says Raymer. You also need a good memory, lots of confidence, the ability to act quickly and to be at ease betting other people's money.

"It's stressful, but I had a great mentor. I made mistakes and Dink would show me how to correct them."

She was never tempted to gamble her own wages, which were based on a percentage of whatever the office brought in overall. If the punters lost, the office won. It was too much of a risk, she says.

"My livelihood was a gamble. There were certainly weeks when I would make thousands of dollars, then a week when I wouldn't make anything. It was so difficult as a young single woman to budget my money anyway with such an inconsistent pay cheque. The last thing I wanted to do was gamble it when I did get it."

With her parents separated, there is a sense in the book that Raymer wasn't just looking for a job when she met Dink and his wife Tulip (played by Zeta Jones), but a family to join as well.

"I did feel part of something. As wild as the business was it did have some structure, it did have a foundation. Everyone in that world was so nice to me. They really took me under their wing. It was like I did have people I could count on. They were very accepting of me, who I was, where I was coming from."

All of which made it tough at times to write the memoir: "It was difficult for me to expose things about my other characters' past. For me, I felt comfortable. The stripping was kind of seedy but, whatever, I did it, I'll own it."

Writing about Tulip and Dink was something else, even though she knew it was crucial to the story. However, both turned out to be cool with her take on their lives.

"Dink loved the book, he really did. I think it was shocking for him to read it at first, and of course then Tulip read it. They came around really quickly."

Her four years in Vegas and in an offshore betting office have given her a special insight into gambling and gamblers. One of the main conclusions she came to was that films and literature tend to get them wrong – professional gamblers anyway.

"I did see some degenerate gambling going on, but I think what made my bosses and my experience so unique and interesting was that these weren't people who were scavenging for pennies on the ground to make bets with.

"These were people who made their living off gambling and they were exceptionally good at it and they did it in the most responsible way. I've never seen that portrayed before."

At one point in the book she ponders going to film school. Having seen how the business works, is she tempted now to make her own movie? More giggles.

"The publishing world is a lot more gentle. I'm not so much a team player, and to be in the film world you have to [be]. Everyone's giving you notes, everyone has an opinion about what you are doing and who you have to cast.

"I don't like that. I want to write a book, I want my vision to be on the page and I want it out in the world. I don't want people telling me what to do."

She may have retired from gambling, but Raymer, rightly, is still trying to shape the odds in her favour.

Lay the Favorite opens on June 22. The book is published by Yellow Jersey.