A Word on Words; 0904; Mary Higgins Clark

A word on words, a program delving into the world of books and their authors. Tonight, Mary Higgins Clark talks about love's music, loves to dance. Your host, Faroe Werdon, words Mr. John Segan-Thawler, publisher of the Tennessean, and editorial director of USA Today. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, once again welcome to word on words. This evening we have as our guest one of the best known and best red mystery writers, suspense writers in all the world. Mary Higgins Clark, welcome to word on words.

Thank you, it's lovely to be here John. And this book loves music, loves to dance. Just out, sores to the top of the bestseller list. Big shock, not to me. Always a delight though. Always a delight. You know I forward with it, believe me. I'm not surprised first of all because your record as a writer makes it no surprise. Secondly, there is nothing like a suspense thriller to grab the attention of the readers of books in this country. And this is some story you've written. Thank you sir. I'm interested quite frequently in entertaining authors on this program. Maybe some of them are not always entertained, but I'm interested in where ideas for fiction stories come from. And where authors find inspiration to create the themes and how those themes work.

In this case, you have taken something that I read every day, personal ads in the newspapers. And you have turned that little idea into a major bestseller novel. Where does idea come from? Well, this particular one. A couple of years ago, I was chairman of the International Crime Riders Congress. We had it in New York and it was five days and 21 seminars and panels and whatever. And you know when you're chairman of something like that, you're bobbing in and out of all the panels to make sure everything is going okay. And we had an FBI investigator. He was talking about serial killers. And he had a picture of seven sweet young things, slides of them. With their hands tied and their mouths taped and their eyes terrified.

Just before they were shot over a period of three years. And the common denominator was they had all answered the same personal ad. And right away it walked through my head, John. Loves music, loves to dance. And I was on my way. Loves music, loves to dance. I mean that's bound to put you into a personal ad if you love music and you love to dance. Well, is it something like that always, that triggers an idea? Yeah, I go to a lot of trials, always. And you can pick up something. For example, I never take a case and put another hat on it. A couple of different names. But I take something that happened in the case and use it. The last book, for example, I was at a case where a woman had been murdered by her son. He was on drugs and her husband who was his stepfather. And he had done everything right.

He had packed their luggage because they were planning to go away for the weekend. He had packed the medicine. Everyone knew they were going away for the weekend. On Sunday night he started to phone around and ask as anybody heard from them. He called the police and he reports of accidents because, you know, I'm really getting concerned. And he made one fatal mistake. He left on a March night or they theoretically did. And a snowy night and mother had three winter coats and they were all in the closet. And his sister picked that up the minute she walked in the house. And I used that my last book. I didn't write about them at all. But in while my pretty one sleeps, the young woman who owns the boutique sees that there are five coats in the closet and says Ethel doesn't buy from anyone except me. Yes. So that's the kind of way it's done. And in this case, everybody is answering personal ads. People who would swear, oh, I wouldn't do that or my daughter wouldn't do it. A lot of them are doing it now because it has gotten to be the new way to meet people. And I know a lot of happy endings.

This book is not about don't do it girls. It's about be careful everybody. It's also a book with a happy ending though. Oh, that's me. You know. I'm an optimist. The cup is always helpful. Well, I mean, there's a lot of depth in there. And we lose a beautiful earring. But it is a book with a scary ending. Scary. I want to tell you, I invite you on the loop to loop or the scenic railway when you buy one of my books. You sure do. And when I was a kid, I always wanted to get in the first row. You know, that's scary. And you know how it chugs up and you know that you're going to start to swoop down. And then the second drop. And then the hairpin turn where it feels as though you're upside down. And then you know that final drop where you're screeching and screeching. But then the break comes and you go back to the starting point and torture your mother for another quarter. I get it's about $2 now. But I used to love to do that.

And that's what I invite you to do when I ask you to read one of my books. Well, I mean, you put me on that roller coaster and I did the loop to loop. Okay, so there. Now, in this book, you use the device of creating about four or five suspects for the reader. You make me think that it's a con man jewel dealer slash thief. You make me think it's an itinerant street person. You make me think that it's a young businessman, unhappy at home, arrogant. I mean, I was following him down every alley and path. You took me and over every loop, every, every hill you took me. I was convinced he was the person. Well, we're not going to give away whether or not you would ride. No, well, I, I will tell you this.

I really think that the suspense is so great that the best thing we should do for our audiences to let them find out by reading it because. Because it's not only who done it. It's Will, she, she is being Darcy, drawing into the web. You as the reader, I try to write on two levels. Sometimes I say right up front as in cradle. Right. The cradle will fall. The doctor does it. That's the way it is kids. But sometimes I will do it where you don't know. But it's not really a hood on it. You are watching and she, Darcy has already been targeted as the next victim. He's waiting for her. Well, I mean, you tell me that right up front. Right up front. And I know you say these two are next. Old Charlie is working on my mind. And Charlie wants me to go after these two. Aaron. Aaron and Darcy. Right. Yeah.

So even if you guessed along the way, I don't think or hope that that doesn't mean the book is over. Well, as I told you privately, when I began to get suspicious, I went back to the beginning and read that first introduction for a clue. Uh-huh. And I think I found one there. And as it turned out, I did find one there. But again, I mean, you don't have to read it to find out. You don't have to get it. You're used to reading. No, you used to. Well, I just wonder though, you wanted me to think. You wanted, you gave me more clues on one suspect than on the others. Well, you see, you can do that two ways. You can make someone the more obvious one and then do a twist. Or you can have everyone saying because he's obvious, he's not it. Yeah. And send you on other paths. Right. And then turn it around and say, I told you kids. Well, and you could have done that too.

Well, let me ask about this because the characters in this book are fascinating people. Who injected about halfway, maybe third of the way in, the element of romance, first of all? I'm a romantic. What can I say? I think everybody likes a little bit of romance. I do, yeah. Well, let me just say, is that pretty accurately describes it? Compared to many writers who rely on explicit depiction, you give us a little bit of romance. Well, I was raised in the generation where they gazed at each other. The fire leapt up. A cloud passed over the moon. And she read no more that night. And I'm having his plan doing that. I think the sexiest words written in this century were, and gone with the wind, where red testers call it, you'll not shut me out of your bedroom tonight, my dear. Now, to me, that's sexier.

More enticing, more exciting than some of the touchy feeling. I mean, I don't criticize it right, which you will, my darling, who must all do our thing. But I know there's a marvelous story of a French marquee who was over here in the round 1910. And he was being interviewed, and he raved and raved about everything to the point that as a newspaper man, there was no story. And finally, the poor reporter said in desperation, surely there's something you don't like about our country or about us. And he said, well, perhaps if I may be so bold, you Americans are too familiar with each other. There is no romance. For example, I would never dream of approaching my wife until I sent my valet to ask her maid if she was ready to receive it. How'd you love it? Yeah. I do, you know, none of the puns, cold screams are the hot roll. Well, that is, you are romantic. Yes. And there is some romance here.

The FBI agent, the two romance is here. There are three romance is here. Now that I think about it, there are three. And I got pretty, I was using that to help guide me towards the suspect. So the alter ego of Charlie. Well, you know, it was funny in my last book. Well, my pretty one sleeps. I have the widowed father, who had been a police commissioner and his daughter. And that has a romance as well. And the father finds a romance in a doctor being many years of widower. And some young girl said to me, where do I find Jack Campbell? Who was the editor? The young interest. And her mother said, forget him, where's Miles? Well, I'm saying Miles for myself, I'm looking for him, forget it. Well, you know, in this book, you have a psychiatrist who has a housekeeper who really wants him to fall in love with Darcy. Yeah.

And you use that to pull me into that relationship. Well, because I think that housekeepers, if they've been with someone for many years, are the same as mothers. You want to meet a nice girl, you know, you should have someone now. So I think they can have a normal maternal relationship if they've been there for many years. Well, you and I know how it comes out. And I don't want to sound too coy for our viewers. But I'm fascinated as to whether you knew when you started how it was going to come out. Oh, yes. It's funny, you know, suspense writers will have arguments, not arguments, but discussions on this. PD James and I were on a show once and we both said, we have got to know who did it. Because even if you start out with five people, four people, whatever, one person has to have the most compelling reason to take that final step of taking a life. People may have reasons to, may want to, may think it, but only one would do it.

Now, Tony Hilliman, who's a marvelous writer, he does the Navajo Indians and he's a good friend of mine. Tony says, when I start out, I'm not really sure. I give everybody a reason and then let's see what happens. So there we are. A few weeks back, I had, that's right. And that was another question, the next question. A few weeks back, a successful mystery writer, the creator of the Cajun Investigator RoboShow, was here. And he said, when he begins, he has an idea, but that sometimes RoboShow gets away from him. And that he's writing and suddenly the character has a life of his own. That's exactly it. That's what it is. That's when you know that the book is working. Because when I store it, I have the characters laid out. I know what the story is. I know who done it. I know what the climax scene is going to generally be, generally.

But you're pushing them around on paper. You are the puppeteer. And then the moment comes as in the nutcracker when the dolls come to life. And the people start walking out of scenes and you say, wait a minute, wait a minute. I said, no, no, that's somebody else's line. I'll see you later. That's wonderful. Because that means the book is working. And yes, they start to do things you didn't know they were going to do. Say things you didn't know. And that's when it's a joy to get back to the tie-preder. Well, I will tell you, I can think of a couple of people in your book if they'd really gotten away from it, they could have become the murderer. Yeah, exactly. But you weren't going to let that happen? No, I knew. Because it is like Hansel and Gretel where you have to put the breadcrumbs out. And some people will eat the breadcrumbs and lose their way. And some will pick them up and hold them. And yeah, I knew, I knew because I knew the compelling reason. I knew the backstory.

Well, the breadcrumbs can sometimes have a surprising, have a surprising result. I remember a story about a fellow who had the skunk in the basement and called the fire department who said, we'll get them out. All you have to do is use those breadcrumbs and they'll just follow them out to the woods. Did it work? Well, the next day the fellow called, said they do work. And he said, no, but I have two skunks in the basement. I love it. That's a case where... That's one where the skunk got away from him. You know what I mean? I love it. See, there's a little romance there. Yeah, there is. There's your one. You are romantic. I didn't think of that. Well, how did all begin? I mean, how did Mary Higgins Clark become this best-selling mystery writer? Well, I think that I've always been a storyteller. I know I have.

As from the time I was seven, I was writing poems. And fortunately for me, my mother would say, Mary has written a lovely new poem, everybody. Mary stand on the steps and recite your new poem, quiet everyone. Well, I'm sure they were ready to shoot Mary. But it was wonderful because then when I finish, she leads the applause and say, Mary is going to be a wonderful writer, you know. Well, you need that. It's really important because when you really start to grow up and start to say, I must learn how to be a professional. And start to send stories out and get them back in the next mail with a printed rejection slip. Or even the rejection slip as I started to get where they take notice of you. Mrs. Clark, your story is a light, slight and tried. Really? Yes. I have it. How cool. I said, I could pull out the knife, baby. Pull it out. But that same magazine, which I shall not name here now because that wouldn't be fair. But years later, when they came to my age and said, would you do a story for us? I said, make them pay.

Not no, but make them pay. Don't get mad, get even mad. So you went through a period of rejection? Oh, six years. My first short story was right after I was married as a sweet young thing. In fact, it was two days after I was 22. I was married. And I said, now I've got to learn how to be a professional writer. It's burning, yearning, churning in me. And I'd always kept a journal. See, that's one of the signs of a writer. You've always keeping a journal. You've got to get it down. You've got to recall it. The need is there. And this is what separates the talented writer, the person who really could write, from the one who becomes professional. Because the professional writer is one who has a burning need to write. The talented one is the one who says, when? And that's when I say, oh, no, no, you're never going to do it. Get the private room. I wrote on the kitchen table. When the kids are grown, when I retire, I say, no, no. If you're talking like that, it's never going to happen. You have to put it down.

And I went to that class, that first class, at night. And the professor was terrific. He said, take the most interesting incident you've had. Because I'd been a pan, I'm stupid. And ask yourself, what if and suppose? And that's what I do all the time. When I was doing this book, what if a serial killer is placing ads? What if somebody answers them? Do friends do it as a joke? And naturally, the one who's reluctant to do it, has a bad feeling about it, was the one who was right. What if the glass slipper goes bizarre? The other side of the glass slipper. In fact, for that book, they had given me a mock-up of the cover. And there was one shoe. I said, no, no, you haven't got it. It's got to look like the glass slipper. And I went scouting around and I found the shoe. Did you really? Yeah. I said, this is the shoe. Well, since the shoe became a fixation for Charlie and Charlie's alter ego, how much of a study of serial killers was required?

I mean, how much did you? Oh, I really studied. Did you? Yeah. And I check with my psychiatrist friends. What would he do? Because I think a book should have the ring of truth. When I did a book set in a hospital, I had a doctor friend who read out of context, like page two, line 10, page 15, line six. He had a set of galleys, I did. He was on the phone with me. And what he did was the medical reference has just jumped at him. And he said things like, no, Mary, don't say she was pale. Say her lips were ashen. No, Mary, don't say when we find that she'll need a transfusion. You've got two surgeons talking. Say when we find that we'll hang a bottle of O negative. And that's the sort of thing. And my daughter was an assistant prosecutor for many, not many years, but about eight years. And now she's a judge. So she reads me for legal so that I don't make mistakes in legalese. That's wonderful.

The FBI agent who is now retired and a consultant, I consulted with him on this book to make sure I was depicting the FBI properly with their working with the New York Police Department. Because I do think it should be accurate. Well, that's the other thing that I wondered how you'd get an FBI agent into a murder case. And you did it very legitimately. Oh, it is legitimate because they do have the violent criminal apprehension program. And they said if that had been in place, when Ted Bundy started in Seattle and worked his way to Florida, they would have seen the pattern. Is there in the, is one of the dominant characteristics of a serial killer, a fixation on something like a shoe or many of them? Many of them are ear rings or ear rings. They say a serial killer will always leave his calling card. The trick is to find out what the calling card is. And of course, and this one, it was the dancing choose.

Now, is that an effort, is that a compulsion to play games and to deceive? Or is it a craft or help, an effort to get caught? Sometimes it's a little of each. Some of them want to be caught. They, they don't want to kill anymore. And they will, in fact, somebody wrote once the Chicago kill a year ago, stop me before I kill more. Right. And so some of them do want to, others, they have a fetish. And they really want to, they're proud of it. They're tricking you. They're proud of getting away with it. And as you create Charlie, which is, which is the dark side of... One of the characters. Of one of the characters. Yeah. Of the killer. Yeah. As you create Charlie, he wants, he gets very jealous when it appears that he had not been guilty of all these parts. That he, that it was a copycat murder. Yeah.

He also had taken his murder of Nann earlier. And so he let them know. I only did it. Yeah, he's fury. He's proved it. He sends enough shoes so that, and enough letter so that everybody knows it's one person. And very clear that it's one person. And then you leave us guessing who that one person is until we're pretty well along into the book. Now, it's amazing to me that you take the time to promote your book. I mean, you knew this thing was going to hit the top of that best seller list? No. You never take anything for granted. Never, never, never. It's like having, I have five children. It's like having another baby when you start another book. And the thing is, you can't be sure because you have five healthy children that the sixth one will be healthy. And I always like, and when people say, suppose you get badly reviewed, what happens? And it does, of course, you know. You're not planning on having a baby, are you? Oh, God, no. That would be a bit of a miracle. Thanks a bunch.

No, but it's as though you try to do everything right. If you're pregnant, you don't smoke, and you don't drink, and you exercise, and you see the doctor, and you eat the right foods, so that when the baby is born, if someone says, I'm not an ugly kid, that is my God, but an ugly kid. You'd say, well, it's the best baby I could give you. Well, you know, I've heard other writers, not as eloquently, I don't think, but I've heard other writers use that metaphor, that pregnancy, similarly before, and I take it that when the story is there, if you're a writer, you're in labor with it. And the birth must take place. Yeah, you've got to stay with it. And sometimes, I mean, in this one, all last summer, I could not find the relationship between Aaron and Darcy. They were cousins, one had just come in from London. They were part of a group of five of them at once a month. I could fill this studio with the outtakes of that book

until I finally found them, because it just came hard. And finally, it turned out the simplest answer of all, they were classmates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about Darcy's parents? Well, that added a little buzzazz, the fact that they were... Lama stars. Yeah, Lama stars. It also gave you a reason to make Darcy express her emotional inadequacy. Well, I have seen, because I'm around showbiz enough, that I have seen that when you have very, very glamorous, famous parents, the kids almost will dress in reverse. They dress down. And of course, I do believe that there is nothing that hurts a child more than a crack about his or her looks. You remember it years later. And when someone says, how could those two stunning people have produced that mousey-looking child? She was blotted with a self-image that, of course, was unjust. And then she blamed them a bit for it. It was as though it was their fault.

It was so gorgeous, and she was perceived as being plain. And I think that's valid, because you know how people will remember what she said when they were in kindergarten, and just... People carry her with them. That's why I can never see people saying anything unkind to a child. You know, it's one thing to say, don't jump off the pier, you know? It also gave your young, attractive, psychiatrist an opportunity to become a little more magnetic for her. He was a little more attractive because he was able to deal with that crack. He picked it up. He picked it up. He made her start to think. Well, what's next? I mean, are you working on another book already? Oh, I've got the best idea. Your kid. No, I saw something about a trial. This one, I won't give away. Most of the time, I hang over the back fence, and when someone asks me, what are you writing? 20 minutes later, when the eyes are glazed, and they're saying, gee, I've got a kettlebell. I'm still saying, and then this happens.

But this one is a darn good idea. I saw a trial, a report of a trial. And I said, now this is something that's coming over the horizon, a new kind of defense. And again, the character started jumping into my mind. And it was just as I was wrapping this one up. And this is the way it always is. It's as though the new company is arriving, and they're in the car, waiting for the old company to finish saying goodbye. And I heard these characters saying, come on, get rid of them. Get rid of them. It's our turn. So move off that block. Did you start taking notes to me? Oh, yeah. Even before you finished. Lost notes today. No, this was turned in. This was completely turned in before I started. But I have a suitcase full of books. I'm on a tour that I'm reading during research. I'm sketching the characters, the scenes. So that by the time I get to Cape Cod in July, I will be able to tear into that book and have a version of it in September. Will you really?

Yeah, because it's jumping in my head. Can you always predict with that accuracy, how long it'll take for a book to be produced? No, I feel this one will go faster. This one went more slowly. And the joke is I had injured my foot during aerobics. So when I was writing it, I was in a cast. My foot was in a cast while I'm talking about pretty shoes. The music loves to dance, yeah. And I was wearing Margaret Hamilton's. Mary Higgins Clark, author of Love's Music, Love's to Dance, has been our guest on a word on words featuring John Seganthal. This program was produced in the studios of WDC and Television Nashville, Tennessee.