Mary Jane Clark's New Thriller
Television news may look glamorous, but like any business, it has a dark side. In her new novel, "Close To You," author and CBS News producer Mary Jane Clark exposes the vulnerability of on-air personalities who are never quite sure who's watching them. She talks about it on The Saturday Early Show.
Like her three previous novels, "Close To You" is set at the fictional KEY News network. There, many people are obsessed with the heroine, anchorwoman Eliza Blake. Some are viewers, some are neighbors, some work closely beside her. The trick is to find out who the truly evil, dangerous fan is.
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Says Clark, "I've often wondered what it would be like to be on-air talent, reporting in front of the camera. It sure looks glamorous. Millions of people are watching the reporter and listening to what she's saying. But as the reporter looks into the camera lens and talks to the unseen audience, she has no idea who is watching her. What could be going on in some skewed minds out there as she exposes herself night after night?"
The book is a work of fiction, but in her research, Clark spoke with several people at CBS News who have had problems with obsessed fans.
"The correspondents I talked with were very generous, and they all had stories to tell," she explains. "They all had people become obsessed with them after watching them on television...obsessive fans, some in very unlikely places and willing to go to bizarre lengths. Twisted fan mail, threatening phone calls... One professional man left his wife and kids and flew to Las Vegas and booked a wedding chapel, saying he was going to marry a well-known newswoman, a newswoman he had never even met."
Are such threats taken seriously? "Yes and no," Clark says. "Reporters I asked said they tried not to think about unstable people watching them. They couldn't do their jobs if they spent their time worrying about the so-called 'nuts.' But the network security departments pay attention to these threats. The trick is in figuring how bad a threat really is, and deciding when to invervene, and what with. If you intervene prematurely or inappropriately, it can exacerbate the situatio."
Clark is already at work on her next novel, in which KEY News correspondent Cassie Sheridan goes to Sarasota, Fla., to cover a impending hurricane and finds herself involved in a mystery involving the adult movie industry.
She has a Web site, where fans can see a short movie and participate in a contest related to "Let Me Whisper In Your Ear," a Clark book that was released in paperback this summer.
Explains the author, "It would be great if you could just write the book, and the publisher put it in the stores, and the readers buy it. But the industry is wildly competitive, and we've been trying to do things to get the name out there more."
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