Mary Higgins Clark deserves her title as the queen of suspense. Her addictive thrillers have made her today's most widely read female mystery writer. Not long ago her five-book deal brought her a $64 million advance. Not shabby. PT visited Clark, at her Saddle River estate in New Jersey.
Why do you often write about psychopaths?
It's much more compelling fiction when someone has a psychological problem. I'm writing one now that involves a high school reunion—Nighttime Is My Time.
The serial killer had been totally rejected in high school. It all comes down to motivation. Why does a person cross the line and take a human life?
How did you learn to tell a story?
It was the single talent that's always been there.
You told stories when you were a kid.
Yes. And oddly enough, they were scary stories.
What's your creative process?
Don't think the Holy Spirit sits on my shoulder. It's writing and rewriting and rewriting. In the first pages [of writing a book] I think, "Who are these people? Do I believe this? Do I understand them?"
I drag them through the first 50 or 70 pages. But then, because they're grounded, a character will suddenly put his hat on and leave the scene. I say, "Wait a minute, you have to stay here." And they say, "No, no, give the line to her." That's when they're dancing for me. I'm just along for the ride.
Can anyone learn to write?
No. You have to have the ability to tell a story; you have to have the talent and the desire and the compulsion to write—you write on the bus, when the kids are asleep, in the morning, at night. Writers are not very comfortable if they're not working. People say to me, "I'm going to write a book as soon as I quit my job…as soon as the kids grow up…as soon as the dog dies." These are perfectly valid excuses, but there will always be a new set of excuses.
When your first husband died, you had to raise five young kids…
And I wasn't sure whether I was pregnant when [he] died. When I realized I wasn't, I was almost disappointed. I could have handled six.
But you wrote fiction at five in the morning and then went off to work as a radio scriptwriter. What motivated you?
When you have children, you don't have the right to stop. Children deserve a happy life. If they've lost a father they loved, they can't lose the mother, as well.
You remarried at 68. Do you believe people can find love at any age?
Absolutely. You only have to meet one. [My daughter] Patti said, "Have I got a hunk for you." John lived only four miles away.
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