The "Queen of Suspense" didn't spin a nail-biting yarn. She didn't keep the audience on the edge of its seat. There was no cliffhanger.
Best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark turned the pages of her life. Stories from her childhood in New York. Tales about her job as an international flight attendant. She talked about how the deaths of her husband and father affected her. She described the toil that goes into becoming an overnight success."I didn't decide to be a writer," she told a packed Abravanel Hall at Sen. Orrin and Elaine Hatch's 15th annual Utah Women's Conference. "It was decided for me."
Godmothers, she said, stood around the cribs telling one child she would sing and another she would dance and another she would build bridges.
"All these people didn't show up at mine," Clark said. "The only one who popped by was the one who said, 'You're going to be a storyteller.' "
Lucky for her, Clark said, she's Irish, and the Irish are storytellers by nature. Her heritage has had a great influence on her writing.
"Everything, everything is grist for the mill," she says.
Clark's 21 mystery novels have sold more than 50 million copies. Several of her books have been made into films and television movies. Her next novel, "Before I Say Good-bye," is due out next April.
Her father's death in 1939 when she was 10 changed the way she looked at life.
"From that day, I have always understood the fragility of life. It doesn't matter if the curtains don't match. It doesn't matter if you miss the bus," she said. "When you live knowing that the time is not too long, nothing bothers you that really isn't important."
Clark, 69, started writing short stories soon after her first marriage. Six years and 40 rejection slips later, she sold her first story in 1956.
"In those days I was so dumb I thought that if I had a subscription to the magazine, it just might tip the balance," she said.
In 1964, her husband of 14 years died of a heart attack, leaving her alone to rear five children. She took a job writing radio scripts. At the same time, she decided to try her hand at penning a book, rising at 5 a.m. to write for two hours until her children awoke for school. "There's no virtue in that. If you want to do something, you find the time," she said.
Her first book, a biographical novel about George Washington called "Aspire to the Heavens," was published but did not sell. Clark said her time wasn't wasted because she learned the craft of writing. She decided her next book would be a suspense novel. "Where are the Children" became a best-seller, marking a turning point in her life and career.
In addition to writing more books, Clark enrolled at Fordham University in 1974, graduating summa cum laude in 1979 with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy. She remarried in 1996 and lives in New Jersey with her husband, John J. Conheeny, a retired CEO.
Clark said she enjoys tackling tough issues in her books, which are free from sex and violence. Capital punishment, in vitro fertilization, nursing homes and health care are among the topics woven into her suspense novels.
Through all her experiences and education, Clark still holds on to some advice she received in a writing course at New York University years ago. The professor told her to take a dramatic event and ask two questions: "Suppose . . . " and "What if . . . " and turn it into fiction.