About Greg

Hello, I’m Greg Clarkin. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Cold Open is my first novel, and the first in what I envision to be a mystery series featuring cable news reporter Sam North.

Why a cable news reporter? Well, I wanted a character who asked questions for a living. And, I figured I had a good sense of the job being that I had been a business reporter at CNN for a decade.

While there, I covered the ups and downs of Wall Street. During the dot-com boom it was mostly ups. Then, when that bubble burst, it was downs. Straight down in a lot of cases, depending on the stock.

During the housing boom, everything was happy again on Wall Street. When that bubble popped, not so much. I’m sensing a pattern here with this bubble thing.

I also covered media and entertainment, which meant I had chance to follow the mergers that seemed to constantly shake the business. AOL buying Time Warner. Remember that one? Seemed like a good idea for about a day.

Before getting into TV, I was a print reporter. That included a stop at the New York Post. Spend any time at a tabloid, and you’re forever seeing the world in terms of catchy headlines.

Newsman Pens Mystery; Joins Self-Pub Club would be the one for this venture.

Reporting for the Post taught me about writing a lot, and writing on deadline. Reporting for CNN refined the writing even more. You learn about economy of words when a producer tells you have exactly a minute and a half to explain a 500-point drop in the Dow, or the bursting of the housing bubble.

In addition to the Post and CNN, my work has also appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Men’s Journal and The Hollywood Reporter.

Today, I live along the Connecticut coast with my wife and three children. In the spring and summer, I can be found coaching baseball. In the fall and winter, basketball. Year round, I’m plotting the next Sam North mystery, and working on other writing projects.