Now elderly but well-preserved, Mary Higgins Clark walked gracefully to the podium. I sat with two hundred other women waiting to hear what the famous suspense writer would say.

"I grew up believing my mother's frequent proclamation, 'Mary is a writer!'" she said. She then relayed the memory of getting caught in high school math class writing stories instead of paying attention to the lecture. "After graduation, I studied advertising, but I longed for adventure, so on a whim, I became a stewardess for Pan Am. We flew the skies of Europe, Africa, and East india, and yes—I found adventure. The most exciting time was being on the last plane out of Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain closed."

Deciding to return to normal life, she enrolled in a short story writing class. The first assignment: to examine a dramatic situation and consider: SUPPOSE this happens, WHAT IF this happens and WHY would it happen? and then turn it into fiction. "By the way," the teacher added, "the motive has to be believable."

That last flight out of Czechoslovakia had been very dramatic for Mary. They had landed and seven stranded Americans hurriedly boarded. Minutes later, they were in the air again. As the plane took off, the captain said to her as they looked down at the workers on the ground watching their take-off, "There isn't a soul down there that wouldn't give everything to be on this plane."

To fulfill the writing assignment, Mars took that incident and asked: what if I had found an eighteen-year-old stowaway? From there, her story developed. The teacher, after reading it, insisted it would sell. Six years and forty rejection slips later, a magazine bought it for $100. She went on to sell short stories to Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, and Courier, until a trend of publishing strictly non-fiction began to dominate.

She married, but after a few years her husband died. She had young children to provide for, so she arose in the morning at 5 a.m. and wrote until seven. Then she'd get her children up and off to school, and she'd catch the carpool to her advertising job.

"A love story about George and Martha Washington? Are you crazy?" her agent said about her first published novel, Aspired to the Heavens (the Washington family motto). She wasn't discouraged that it didn't sell well. She was just happy to be published. Though it was well written, the title led browsers to believe it was religious.

A major event, the highly publicized trial of a young mother accused of murdering her children, changed the flavor of her writing. The trial split the nation and was the subject of many debates. Mary applied the three elements: SUPPOSE, WHAT IF, AND WHY, and a story emerged with the working title, Die a Little Death. Missing children are always high public interest, but in the 1950's it was a daring subject. The publishers feared exploiting children. Finally, she sold the rights for $3000 and Where Are the Children? became the first of her twenty-two suspense novels.

The day President Reagan was shot in 1981, Mary rushed to the hospital to "get a feel" for the event. Cops poured in from all directions, and she could hardly get to the door until she remembered the advertiser's press card in her purse. She flashed it to the guards and it became her ticket to a four-hour press conference. Vice President Bush was on a plane at the moment and reporters kept asking, "Could this be a conspiracy? Is Bush a target, too?" This event was the springboard for her novel, Still Watch.

"Do your research," she reminded us. In the first manuscript for The Cradle will Fall she wrote that a fetus was "transplanted" before learning that the word is "transferred." She likened the error of poor research to "a door jamb that doesn't match up."

I agreed with her when she said her writer's critique group is invaluable because they challenged her thinking. At one meeting the topic of discussion was turning the usual into the unusual. "Imagine you are alone in a house," the leader began. "What would be the scariest sound you could hear?" Answers included a scream, glass breaking, and footsteps. Then the leader said, "A toilet flushing."

It was a great lecture by a great writer.