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On the publication day for It Had to Be You, which I co-authored with Mary Higgins Clark, I've been recalling fond memories of my time working with the heralded Queen of Suspense.
I had met Mary only once when I was invited to meet for lunch to discuss collaborating on a new series of novels she had in mind. The No. 1 New York Times bestselling author whose books I had read since I was a child had read my work and thought we might be good writing partners. Once I managed to un-drop my jaw, it was the easiest yes I’d ever give.
But then we found ourselves in a jam. I had never coauthored fiction before, and when Mary had, it was with her daughter, Carol.
“How’d you and Carol do it?” I asked.
Mother and daughter would sit and write each word together, side-by-side. Well, apparently Mary wasn’t ready for her new coauthor to move in to replicate that process, so we needed another plan. We decided to let the characters lead the way. Before writing a word, we would meet for hours and hours in multiple sessions at her home in Saddle River, New Jersey, or at the publishing offices of Simon & Schuster, identifying every character in the story, their secrets and motives, the backstabs and lies. Eventually the characters had a way of revealing the ending and all the satisfying twists along the way. With time, our writing meetings approached the level of storytelling telepathy, the two of us building on each other’s thoughts so quickly that I had trouble keeping up with the note-taking. Only then did the writing begin, passing pages back and forth — two writers with a single story to tell in a blended voice, centered on the work of our character: journalist Laurie Moran, a young widow and mother whose television show, Under Suspicion, reinvestigates unsolved criminal cases.
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