Clark grew up in the East Riding of Yorkshire and attended a girls' grammar school before reading English and Philosophy at the University of London, Bedford College.
[citation needed] After graduating, Clark divided her time between running a print-making business with her then husband, artist Alan Sharpe, tutoring at the Open University and writing.
Clark also ran a lunch-time theatre and collaborated with composers on two music theatre works, one based on the life of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima for York Arts Centre and the second, The Death of Purcell, for Smith Square Hall in London, with two choirs and orchestra conducted by Ronald Corp.[citation needed] In 1991, she returned to study her Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia.
[3] After training as a psychotherapist in North Yorkshire, and the death of her parents, Clark moved to London and began a series of Medieval mystery novels.
[1] Clark currently divides her time between North Yorkshire and the English South Coast and is working on a screen adaptation of the Abbess of Meaux mystery series and a new stage play about free speech and the brief life of William Sawtrey, the first man to be burned in England for heresy.