Author of the Regan Reilly Mysteries:
Best-Selling Author Shares Her Delight in Writing and Encourages Others to Follow Their Dreams

Carol Higgins Clark

STORY BY MAUREEN TRAXLER
Photo by Christine Conniff Sheahan

Zapped, Carol Higgins Clark’s 11th mystery, published this spring, draws on the author’s personal experiences and continues her signature one-word titles. New Yorkers can certainly identify with Regan and her husband Jack, who return to their Tribeca apartment just as the City is plunged into a major power outage. As the story unfolds, Clark’s famous sleuth finds herself hunting down a jilted psychopath named Georgina who lures young, blond men into isolated places and brands their arms with the words, “I am a Snake.” The book’s characters include Regan’s best friend Kit, who hobbles through the escapade on crutches; Lorraine, an aspiring actress whose husband is filing for divorce; Billy, a young struggling comedian looking for good jokes; the victim, Chip Jones, a college guy who likes to bar hop; and two hapless petty thieves who wind up working with the police to find Georgina. How, you ask, does this reflect Clark’s personal experiences?

In a recent interview with Networking® Magazine, Clark, a trained actor, spoke about having foot surgery in the summer of 2003 and returning to her Manhattan apartment just before the start of the extensive Northeast Blackout. She says, “I crutched down 19 flights of stairs. I had a car and could drive because it was my left foot that was bandaged. I drove uptown, wound up giving people rides and stayed at a friend’s apartment.” And so, a story begins…and Regan finds herself in curious situations with a cadre of wacky people.

Clark says that her mom—America’s Queen of Suspense, Mary Higgins Clark—had published eight books by the time Carol had her first, Decked. Clark was a 19-year-old college student when her mom’s career started to take off, and she remembers retyping some of her mom’s early books so they could get them to the publisher. “It was before computers!” she bemoans.
When Clark was typing Weep No More My Lady, she couldn’t stop herself from stepping in on behalf of the cleaning woman character, Elvira. “I saved her life. Mother killed her off!” Clark exclaims. And thanks to Clark, Elvira lived to play a role in other Mary Higgins Clark stories. During those days, Clark would talk to her mom about characters and plot. She began recording audio tapes of her mom’s books, and a producer suggested that she write a part she might like to play.

“That’s how I came up with Regan Reilly,” she remarks, adding, “However, Regan hasn’t aged a bit in these 16 years, so I don’t think I’ll be playing her if she ever reaches the screen.” Clark confesses that she was an avid Nancy Drew reader when she was growing up. “I thought Nancy had the coolest life with her red convertible and something exciting always happening. Regan is like a grown up Nancy Drew.” She adds that it was a publisher who suggested she write in Regan’s mom as a mystery writer.
Clark says, “It certainly helped me at the beginning,” that she was the daughter of Mary Higgins Clark. “They were interested in seeing what I could do.” Referring to the often-difficult-to-break-into publishing business, she recalls her mother, who is very supportive she adds, saying, “They’ll open the door for you, and they’d be glad to slam it on you.” While they are both mystery writers, Clark developed a very different style from her mom, along a lighter, more humorous vein.

Clark graduated from Mount Holyoke College, where she earned a liberal arts degree in American studies, and began to take acting classes. After studying in New York, she moved to Los Angeles, attending the Beverly Hills Playhouse. She liked acting in funny scenes. “That was my strength in acting class,” she says. “So when I started writing, it was natural for me to do humor.”
Clark’s first book, Decked, about a murder on a cruise ship, was published in 1992. “Mom came up with the title,” she says. For Clark’s second book, she drew on her personal experience attending a pantyhose convention. The spoof about a murder at just such a convention, was titled, Snagged. “That’s how my one-world titles happened…by accident,” claims Clark. In Hitched, Clark says she thought: What would be interesting around Regan’s wedding? What if she went to pick up her dress and the designers are all tied up and her dress is gone?

“One reviewer said, ‘Mary goes for the jugular, and I go for the funny bone,’” Clark says. “I’m not trying to scare you to death, but my mother is.”

The fourth of five children, Clark says her parents moved to New Jersey from their 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan six months before she was born. She now lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Like her mom, she enjoys setting some of her books in the New York-Long Island-New Jersey area. Her fourth book, Twanged took place in the Hamptons, where Regan’s parents live. Clark says her next book, due out April ’09, will take place in the Hamptons and Los Angeles, where she has just purchased an apartment.

“People love to be familiar with place in our books,” Clark adds. “They say, ‘I’ve been there!’” She always researches locations before using them…even Ireland, although with her Irish heritage, she’s visited the Emerald Isle many times. For her book Laced, Regan and Jack’s honeymoon adventure, she visited Ashford Castle in Cong and the city of Galway to get familiar with local atmosphere.
Also gleaning from her heritage, Clark has researched Irish superstitions, noting with interest how they developed and why people believe in them. She adds, “They’re always good for books.” In Jinxed, she reveals the superstition that if something is made from a tree where fairies lived (in this case, a fiddle), it can be the cause of accident or death.

“The Irish are great storytellers,” she remarks, recalling how her aunts would gather around the table to tell stories. “In our family the joke was, if you were boring, you were cut off! You couldn’t ramble on in my house, especially being one of five kids.”
Her storytelling family tradition certainly added to Clark’s success. But in addition, she says, “More important than beautiful prose, people have to want to turn the page to see what happens. You have to bring readers in; they have to care about the characters.” Clark often uses real people as models for her characters, and she says Regan’s best friend Kit developed from one of her own college friends.

“I think I’ve developed my voice as a writer in the Regan Reilly mysteries,” adds Clark. “I try to be consistent with that so people know what they’re going to get when they pick up one of my books.”

Although writing is in some ways a solitary task, Clark says, “I enjoy spending time with Regan and Jack, they’re old friends now.” She adds, “The challenge is more in coming up with a good story—that’s the stress—get the plot and develop the other characters, like Wally and Arthur who try to break in to Regan’s apartment in Zapped.” Clark enjoys her characters, especially when they start to take on a life of their own. “When you really get into it, it’s very satisfying when you finish a chapter that works!”

Clark encourages anyone who wants to be a writer to take a creative writing class, as her mother did. Writers need the feedback that those situations provide. “People shouldn’t be discouraged,” she remarks. “If you really want to be a writer and have one book that keeps being rejected, start the next one. It takes work. Keep writing.”
“I can’t picture not being a writer now,” states Clark, who enjoys movies, theater and working out in her precious little spare time. She looks forward to setting up her LA apartment, and in between continuing her Regan Reilly mystery series, she hopes to pursue acting.
Clark has recorded several of her mother’s novels, including The Cradle Will Fall, A Cry in the Night, All Through the Night, and the stories, Death on the Cape, That’s the Ticket, Voices in the Coal Bin and The Body in the Closet. She’s also recorded her own novels, including Snagged, Iced, Twanged, Fleeced, Jinxed, Popped, Burned, Hitched and Laced.
Clark believes her background as an actor has helped her in recording the works. She calls the experience “intense,” saying, “You have to try to get into a zone.”
For her reading of Jinxed, she received AudioFile’s Earphones Award of Excellence. During that recording, she met someone who told her about the Albuquerque [New Mexico] Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, and they talked about Las Vegas. Clark’s next book, Popped, has Regan summoned to Las Vegas by a former classmate from her grammar school days in New Jersey, who is producing a reality show for his boss who’s obsessed with hot air balloons.

Clark’s experiences crisscross her novels, and with a touch of Irish superstition, she tells Networking® magazine about the purchase and renovation of her Manhattan apartment, which had been formerly owned by a corporation. The apartment was stripped clean when she moved in, but in the course of renovating, she was cleaning out a cabinet and found what she describes as “hidden treasure.” It was two shot glasses: one from Las Vegas and one from the Albuquerque Balloon Fest. She sighs, saying, that’s when she knew, “This apartment was meant to be mine.”