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BIO
Clive Cussler grew up in Alhambra, California. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service. Upon discharge he became a copywriter and later creative director at two of the nation's leading ad agencies. He wrote and produced radio and television commercials in Hollywood that won numerous international honors including an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
Cussler began writing novels in 1965 and published his first work featuring his continuous series hero, Dirk Pitt, in 1973. His first non-fiction, THE SEA HUNTERS, was released in 1996. The Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York, considered THE SEA HUNTERS in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in May, 1997. It was the first time since the College was founded in 1874 that such a degree was bestowed.
Cussler is an internationally recognized authority on shipwrecks and the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, (NUMA) a 501C3 non-profit organization (named after the fictional Federal agency in his novels) that dedicates itself to preserving American maritime and naval history. He and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered more than 60 historically significant underwater wreck sites including the first submarine to sink a ship in battle, the Confederacy's Hunley, and its victim, the Union's Housatonic; the U-20, the U-boat that sank the Lusitania; the Cumberland, which was sunk by the famous ironclad, Merrimack; the renowned Confederate raider Florida; the Navy airship, Akron, the Republic of Texas Navy warship, Zavala, found under a parking lot in Galveston, and the Carpathia, which sank almost six years to-the-day after plucking Titanic's survivors from the sea.
In September, 1998, NUMA - which turns over all artifacts to state and Federal authorities, or donates them to museums and universities - launched its own web site for those wishing more information about maritime history or wishing to make donations to the organization. (www.numa.net).
In addition to being the Chairman of NUMA, Cussler is also a fellow in both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London. He has been honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration.
His past international bestsellers include Pacific Vortex, Mediterranean Caper, Iceberg, Raise the Titanic, Vixen 03, Night Probe, Deep Six, Cyclops, Treasure, Dragon, Sahara, Inca Gold, Shock Wave, The Sea Hunters (non-fiction), FLOOD TIDE, and Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt® Revealed. Cussler is also the author, with Paul Kemprecos, of the first in a new Dirk Pitt spinoff series - The NUMA files.
Cussler has been married to his wife, Barbara Knight, for more than 44 years. They have three children, two grandchildren, and divide their time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona.
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PAST INTERVIEW
September 11, 2001
No author is more recognizable for action/adventure novels than Clive Cussler. VALHALLA RISING has become his 18th fictional novel to hit # 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Fans in over 100 countries around the world are wild about Dirk Pitt, the star of Cussler's series, which has been described as a unique blend of James Bond and Jacques Cousteau with a touch of Jules Verne fantasy. In an interview with Bookreporter.com's Ann Bruns, Cussler took a breather from working on the screenplay for the first Dirk Pitt movie, to talk about VALHALLA RISING and his latest NUMA projects, both real and imaginary.
TBR: VALHALLA RISING is loaded with villains, from the corporate sociopath that's bent on controlling the world's oil supply, to the mercenaries that murder the innocent, to the government officials that have been duped or compromised. Is there just a bit of cautionary philosophy regarding our energy resources underlying this story?
CC: No more than usual. I adhere to the famous quote from Samuel Goldwyn: "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union." I've always looked upon myself more as an entertainer, figuring it's my job to entertain the reader in such a manner that when they've reached the end, they feel they got their money's worth.
TBR: This particular adventure contains some futuristic cruise vessels, such as the submarine cruiser that Dirk and Al find themselves trapped in. What can you tell us about advancements in underwater navigation?
CC: They're supposedly working on some kind of an underwater cruise ship, maybe not as large as the one I have in the book, though. It'll be there some day, maybe in a few years, although it probably won't hold that many passengers. It won't go down very deep either. They might make it down to 1,000 feet, but once you go beyond that there's really nothing to see anyway. They'll stay above that level, where you can see all the pretty fish and corals --- a few hundred feet down.
TBR: VALHALLA RISING also has a computer named Max that forms a part of the invaluable research team at NUMA. She has not only a voice and a holographic image but exhibits the ability for independent thought. Do you find this concept even a little scary?
CC: I know they're experimenting with it. Right now you've got computers that you can talk to. In fact, quite a few books back, I had the President calling someone and a holographic image appeared of the person he was talking to, and, likewise, the President's image appeared to whoever he was calling. I remember after that book came out I received letters from three different companies who said they were working on that. It's fun to make up that sort of thing. Max has some independent thought, but she's still controlled by Hiram Yeager, so to speak. She just can't off and do what she wants to in many areas.
TBR: The parallel tale of the Vikings exploring North America was fascinating. Have there actually been rune stones discovered that indicate these Scandinavian explorers came as far south as the Midwestern United States?
CC: Oh, all over the place! At least as far to the southwest as Oklahoma. There are a number of them in Oklahoma. Of course there's always controversy, like over the stone discovered in Minnesota, but they've found quite a few, actually, around the Midwest. There's still some controversy, but they're coming around, because who would have carved these back then if they wanted to create a hoax? They've dated these things by the wear on the rock, so they know they're extremely old and most of them are written in Ogam, an ancient Celt alphabet. I've always believed that there was pre-Columbian contact, and that someday someone will stumble upon a pre-Columbian wreck somewhere in the United States.
TBR: Since your collection of vintage autos often makes an appearance in your novels, are the vintage airplanes featured in VALHALLA RISING also a part of your collection?
CC: No, I don't own any planes nor a Pullman car, nor a bathtub with an outboard motor in it. Just cars --- about 85 of them. Some people buy stocks and bonds, I buy old cars.
TBR: Do you plan on your new Numa Files series (SERPENT and BLUE GOLD) featuring Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala to become as prolific as the Dirk Pitt novels?
CC: Yes, in fact Paul Kemprecos is finishing up one now. We met and went through the whole plotting and I'll be doing the rewrites. They thought it was a good idea because I'm kind of slow between novels, so these come out in between. They aren't Dirk Pitt books by any means, they're a spin-off. That's basically the reasoning behind it, it's not a big money thing here.
And we're going to be doing another spin-off that not's connected with NUMA. In FLOOD TIDE I had this ship, old and beat up on the outside, but inside it had these missle systems, huge engines that could do 15 knots --- all modernized with these Rembrandt paintings on the bulkhead. The captain was chairman of the board, the chief engineer was president of the company...it was like a corporation of mercenaries. We're going to do a spin-off series of that, like a Mission Impossible thing; a ship hired to go around the world and do all these wild things.
TBR: All of your novels contain elements of history and/or scientific discovery. When you begin a novel like VALHALLA RISING, are you sparked by some tidbit of historical or scientific research that leads to your development of the fictional adventure?
CC: That's exactly it. I just read something and maybe an idea will pop into my head, or I see something on tv, or maybe an old movie. I'm certainly not a literary writer, but I've always had a good imagination.
TBR: While every fan knows that a Cussler novel contains expertly fictionalized events, it is sometimes frustrating not knowing where fact leaves off and fiction begins. Have you ever thought about including an appendix giving a synopsis of the real historic events to the extent they can be documented?
CC: Oh gosh, it'd be really different to do that in a fiction novel. It's more fun to take some segment of history and expand on it. For instance, in SAHARA, they captured Abraham Lincoln. The idea started from the fact that John Wilkes Booth came within a hair of doing just exactly that. He was going to kidnap Lincoln during one of his carriage rides. It was all set up but, on that particular day, Lincoln changed his route. So Wilkes came that close to actually pulling it off. So I thought, all right, suppose he does pull it off. What if...? And that's all it is --- "what if..."
TBR: One of my favorite Cussler books is THE SEA HUNTERS which is a nonfiction account of some of your real life NUMA expeditions, as well as a dramatization of how each of the nautical disasters probably took place. Since this book covered only a handful of NUMA's discoveries, can we look forward to another collection of real life adventures sometime soon?
CC: Yes, I'm finishing up now on SEA HUNTERS II with Craig Dirgo, the co-author of the first SEA HUNTERS. (Publish date sometime in early 2002)
TBR: You recently sold the movie rights to the Dirk Pitt novels and it's reported that the action/adventure films will begin with the novel SAHARA. Will these be fashioned as sort of a new millennium James Bond? Have there been any discussions as to who will play the role of Dirk?
CC: I'm sitting here today working on the screenplay. I sold to Hollywood finally, and they are going to do SAHARA first. It could change, but at the moment it looks like Dirk will be played by Hugh Jackman (Swordfish, Someone Like You, X-Men). We're trying to keep it away from being Bond-like, not so stiff or anything else.
You know, they messed up Raise the Titanic 20 some years ago. They made such a botch of it I held off for all these years, but finally they gave me script and casting approval. So that's why I'm reading the script the screenwriter came up with. If it fails this time, it's my fault.
TBR: Your National Underwater and Marine Agency website (http://www.numa.net) was recently honored with the Lightspan Academic Excellence Award for its outstanding contribution to education in the field of marine archaeology and historic preservation. Congratulations! Which do you find most gratifying --- your continuing research and salvage expeditions or writing the novels?
CC: Well, it's both. A lot of writers do nothing but write, but I've got my other interests. I never realized when I started writing how many people I would reach out and touch, young people that I've inspired to go into ocean sciences. I'll be signing books and young people will come up and say: "I went into Marine Biology because of your books." And school teachers and parents write me all the time, that they had children who just absolutely wouldn't read. They finally get them to read one of my books, usually RAISE THE TITANIC because kids are wild about the Titanic. They read that, then they read all the rest of my books, and now they're reading everything in sight.
A doctor from New York wrote me that he and his father were out swimming off Long Island and got caught in the riptides. They were struggling to get to shore and weren't making it. Finally, they were so exhausted, the father said: "go on without me, I can't make it." And the son was almost ready to drown too, but at that moment he said he remembered reading in one of my books that Dirk Pitt got caught in a riptide. Instead of swimming toward shore, Pitt swum parallel and got out of it. So he told his dad to follow him and swim parallel to shore. They'd only swum about 30 feet and suddenly they were out of the riptides and the waves just carried them in. I was an old California body surfer, so I knew about that, and I think I had just thrown that into a chapter for fun.
TBR: Are there any plans on NUMA's drawing board to open a maritime museum containing artifacts and information on the ships and planes your team has discovered and recovered?
CC: No, you see people think we're a big deal and we're really not. NUMA is almost non-existent...there's no building...no offices... Way back in 1978, during an expedition to try and find the John Paul Jones' ship, the Bon Homme Richard, an attorney said: if you're going to do this, spend money on some historical preservation, you should incorporate into a non-profit foundation. So we did. I had a lot of great trustees and they thought it would be fun to name it NUMA, like in the book. How it works... When I decide to search out a shipwreck, when I'm ready and think I have a ballpark location, then I'll call different fellas. Some work for me and some are volunteers, and we go out and search. That's all it is. We don't have a big outfit, we don't even own a boat.
People come to the house and are always amazed because I don't have any artifacts around. All I have are ship models and paintings of some of the ships we've found. Because we're non-profit, everything, if we do bring up anything, goes to museums and things like that. One of the greatest finds we ever made was the Confederate ship Hunley, which they've raised and are preserving now in Charleston.
TBR: What about doing a series of television documentaries similar to those featuring Jacques Cousteau's explorations several years ago?
CC: Actually, they've gone into production. The outfit doing them is called Eco-Nova out of Halifax, Canada and they're working with the National Geographic. They're taking different shipwrecks and doing documentaries about them. The series is called "Clive Cussler's: The Sea Hunters" from the book. I'm kind of the Arthur C. Clarke in this series, I open and close it.
TBR: With the demands of writing including the research that obviously goes into building the storylines, as well as your participation in the Explorers Club, the Royal Geographic Society and the American Society of Oceanographers, do you still have time to actively participate in all the NUMA expeditions?
CC: Not as much as I used to. I missed out on the expedition where my crew found the Carpathia. I've got one fellow out now in the Hudson River, and my son and Craig Dirgo just got back from the Solomons where we did a preliminary search for the PT 109, but we didn't find anything. I was out last April in Haiti, looking for the Mary Celeste, the great ghost ship. But I can't get out as much as I'd like to; I'm getting more buried all the time. I wish I could retire, but they won't let me. (chuckle)
TBR: NUMA just announced their discovery of the Mary Celeste August 9th. Can you tell us a little about the legend of this "ghost" ship?
CC: In 1875 another ship found her floating off the Azores, they boarded, and found nobody on the ship. The crew, the captain, his wife, and his two-year-old daughter had vanished. So it's always been one of the great sea mysteries. They don't know exactly where she started from, but they figured the distance by the ship's log, and found that it had sailed so many miles by itself. Here is what they speculate happened:
The Mary Celeste was carrying a cargo of alcohol, and it started seeping. The crew was experiencing headaches from the fumes and they were afraid there might be an explosion. So they took the hatch covers off to air out the cargo, got in a boat and were rowing alongside until it all aired out. But they made the mistake of leaving a sail or two up. A breeze came up and the ship sailed off without them.
TBR: How long does it take you to write a Dirk Pitt novel?
CC: In the old days, of course, when I was a nobody --- and the phone never rang (chuckle) --- it took me about 9 months, but now it takes about 14 or 15 months.
TBR: Will this ship be featured in the next NUMA novel or do you have another writing project already underway, aside from the screenplay of SAHARA, that you can share a bit about with our readers?
CC: First, we'll wrap up Sea Hunters II; we're close to finishing that one. Then wrap up the next Kurt Austin book and then I'll start thinking about the next Pitt book.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions for our readers!
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PAST INTERVIEW
November 6, 1999
Clive Cussler...the name makes TBR's Carol Fitzgerald's eyes sizzle --- mention Dirk Pitt and they glow. You definitely should not miss this exclusive interview with the master of underwater intrigue. Learn what Cussler thinks of James Bond, cars, women, booze, and most importantly writing. Cussler is a down home kind of guy who tells it like it is with a bite of humor. Read on and enter the Cussler's world of adventure.
TBR: What inspired you to create Dirk Pitt?
CC: My wife was working nights at the local police department where we lived in California so after fixing dinner for the kids and putting them to bed, I had nobody to talk to. So I decided to write. Since I didn't have the great American novel brewing inside me I thought it would be fun to do a paperback series. I went out and studied all the series characters and heroes, including of course James Bond, and all the rest. Then I thought what could I do that's different? So I put my hero in and around water and that's where Dirk Pitt came from.
TBR: How much of Dirk do you see in yourself? Are you living vicariously?
CC: (laughing) When we started out years ago we were both about thirty-six, and while he's knocking around age forty, I'm sixty-seven which really ain't fair. He weights about 25 pounds less than I do now, and his hair is darker. Originally we both weighed 185 and 6' 3'' or course I've filled out some and shrunk an inch. Although I think it's fun to live vicariously, I'm not in the mood to get shot or stabbed like Pitt does.
TBR: What made you decide at this time to rework two of your titles into YA books? And what changes did you make in the text to do that?
CC: It all began when I received a letter from a schoolteacher. She said in the letter that it's a shame that there are no really good YA books for boys like there are for girls. So I passed the letter on to Pat McCormick, who heads up the juvenile department, and she said what a great idea - why didn't we think of that? After that all we did was remove most of the blood and gore and any allusions to sex, and then condensed them. I've already received letters from fans, the youngest was eight!
TBR: You're right about the lack of fiction for boys, it's really hard to come by, that's why as soon as I saw the YA versions of SHOCK WAVE and INCA GOLD, I said, we're doing this.
CC: The letters are already coming in, I'm amazed. They're all saying, 'It's about time!' We filled a gap.
TBR: People say that your hero, Dirk Pitt, is a mixture of James Bond and Indiana Jones, what do you think?
CC: Well any hero you come up with is always going to be compared with Bond, and Bond of course was out before Pitt, but Pitt was out seven years before Indiana Jones. I tried to make Pitt different --- so first of all he's American whereas Bond is pretty snooty, you know having his martini's shaken and not stirred and all that --- but Pitt could take a stylish lady to an elegant gourmet restaurant and order the right wine, and then the next day he's down at the saloon slopping beer with the boys watching football.
TBR: He's so real, that's the reason why women all want him!
CC: Much of my readership, judging from the mail, is female.
TBR: The only book of yours that was made into a movie was RAISE THE TITANIC and after that you never gave Hollywood access to any more of your books. What happened?
CC: It was so poorly done, that's what bothered me. The screenwriting was abominable, the direction was pathetic, even the film editing was terrible. The whole thing was just lousy…except for the musical score and the special effects, it was a cheap production --- and it showed. I want script and casting approval which Hollywood of course refuses to give. I have to have some kind of guarantee that at least the quality is there, even if it's not a blockbuster success.
TBR: Here's the big question --- who would you cast as Dirk? You mention in your book DIRK PITT REVEALED that Dirk in a movie would have to be an unknown.
CC: Yes, it would have to be an unknown, just like Sean Connery --- nobody knew him and then he became James Bond. Whereas if you have Tom Selleck, or Harrison Ford or Sylvester Stallone, you don't see Dirk Pitt, you see them. That's the fight I've had with Hollywood, they want the box office draw and I don't.
TBR: What do you think of the Tom Clancy movies that have been adapted?
CC: I think Tom's been pretty lucky, I think his movies have come out well. Overall, they were successful and exciting.
TBR: What's your favorite Dirk Pitt adventure?
CC: I think I like them all for different reasons. RAISE THE TITANIC was the best concept, and NIGHT PROBE was my best plot, INCA GOLD and SAHARA were probably the best written. I always have a sentimental favorite with ICEBERG. My first two books were kind of potboilers, and what I call Formula A, the reader starts with the hero and walks with him all the way through the book. But in Formula B I have subplots --- this is what I call my own convoluted form. In ICEBERG I began in Iceland and wound up in the Pirates of Caribbean at Disneyland --- this book was where I really started to get into my own plotting.
TBR: Now, you don't write from outlines. You just sit down and start --- how do you do that?
CC: I know it's crazy. I don't know why I can visualize --- I have to have an ending, sometimes I'm a little foggy about the middle, but as long as I have my ending I can work towards it. It's all in my head, the only thing I put down in notes is who's got green eyes and red hair, things like that. My last several books have all been within about ten pages of each other, I can't explain it.
TBR: You used to type on an old Royal typewriter, what do you do now?
CC: Well just like everyone else I've got a word processor. The word processor is so neat because you can edit on the machine instead of typing, editing, and typing again.
TBR: In your books the protagonist is always using gadgets and gizmos, but what about you? For example, do you use email?
CC: I haven't really had much time for that. I'm a guy who would rather pick up the phone and talk to the person. But I do find a lot of research data on the Internet. When I'm working on a book I try the Internet first before I start going through libraries and experts.
TBR: I love when you drop yourself into your books, going into them do you know exactly where you're going to have yourself come in?
CC: Oh kind of a vague idea. I did that the first time in a book called DRAGON. Since both Pitt and I like cars we were parked next to each other at a classic car meet. I just thought it would be fun. It started as a joke and I thought that my editor would insist I take it out, and I was amazed when he didn't. He told me later that he was going to take it out but then thought, 'Oh hell that's Cussler,' so he left it in, and my God the letters I've received! Now it's become like Alfred Hitchcock, I have to show up. And it's always a place where maybe I can guide Pitt, but we never recognize each other. I'm just amazed that fans get such a big kick out of it. I love to do things that other authors don't do.
TBR: You're also very well known for your car collection, how many do you have now? And what was your first?
CC: Right now I have eighty-two cars. Oh, the first was years back when my wife and I were driving through some farmland in Colorado. She noticed a car parked on the front yard of this farm, and said, 'Oh look, there's a '46 Ford Club Coupe like I had in high school.' I turned around and it was on sale, so I bought it. That was the first and we still have it.
TBR: Which is your favorite?
CC: Similar to books, I like different ones for different reasons.
TBR: I know you have your cars restored, do you have your own restorers working on them?
CC: Yes, I have a warehouse in Colorado. As well as restoring mine and other cars they maintain the collection for me so it works out very well.
TBR: How often do you drive the cars?
CC: I'm not there anymore, when I used to live nearby I was down there three or four times a week. But now I only see my car collection six or seven times a year.
TBR: Do you have other car collections that you admire? Have you seen Jay Leno's collection for example?
CC: Well I don't know if he shows it. I've seen a lot of collections --- there are some in California that are magnificent. I just love going to see car collections.
TBR: I'd love to see you on Leno's show one night! I've always thought that it would be great to see the two of you bantering about cars one evening.
CC: I actually saw Leno one time at Pebble Beach, I went up and introduced myself and he was very approachable, and I asked him how come he doesn't have cars on-stage, and he said most people aren't into them. That's true I guess.
TBR: What car would you love to own?
CC: Well it would have to be a Bugatti Royale, which is currently worth 15-20 million. I do love town cars and there's a Bugatti town car that would be the epitome of what I'd love to own. That's a little out of my reach right now, way out.
TBR: Do you ever do your own restoration?
CC: I used to do a lot of the work by myself, therapy from writing. Sometimes at an auction I'll see a car that I like and do some minor work to it, otherwise I buy clunks and have them restored all the way up.
TBR: What inspired you to put your own cars in your stories? And how do your pick a particular one like the Pierce-Arrow Travelodge trailer found in INCA GOLD.
CC: Well Pitt was traveling to Mexico and I thought, why not that one? I know that in the next one I'm working on Pitt drives a '36 Ford Cabriolet hotrod. I was a California hot-rodder and a beach bum in the '40s.
TBR: Do you read books about cars?
CC: Oh sure, I have a whole collection of car books.
TBR: OK - here's an important question --- when is your next book, ATLANTIS, going to be published?
CC: I hope to finish it in March or April, so probably next fall. I can't put them out like I used because I'm busy with lots of other projects. For example, this year I did a family biography book and the companion books, and now I'm also working with another writer on NUMA FILES which is a spin-off series. And then they want to do another spin-off series about characters from FLOOD TIDE. In that book I have this ship with mercenaries that's run like a corporation. Everyone thought that would make a great series of its own. So that's in the works, and of course there are the YA books to work on.
TBR: Are you going to do a book about your cars?
CC: Yeah, that's another thing that's coming up. S&S wants to do a coffee table car book and so again, it would be Dirk Pitt and Clive Cussler's cars or something like that. A funny thing about the Dirk Pitt companion book and THE SEA HUNTERS is that S&S originally didn't want to publish them. They said, 'Oh shipwreck books don't sell,' so we insinuated that we'd take it to another Berkley Publishing Group and well they couldn't have that. With the companion book they said companion books don't sell and now I think it's supposed to hit 10 on the list! I tried to make it fun with all the anecdotes, and people seem to really like it.
TBR: Definitely, it's a must-have for all your fans, I loved it. Would you write another book about sea adventures?
CC: People ask me that all the time, SEA HUNTERS II which I said I would do, but there's a couple of shipwrecks I'd like to find first.
TBR: How often do you dive now? Do you still go out for the month a year?
CC: Yes, we still go out between 30 and 60 days looking for shipwrecks, and anything else we can find. I don't dive as much as I used to, but I'd love to find a wreck.
TBR: Did you see TITANIC the movie, what did you think of it?
CC: I enjoyed it, as far as the criticism goes, but I immediately thought, 'Oh no, not another RAISE THE TITANTIC!' The first half hour is pretty bad --- you have this jerk with an earring whose running this expedition and then you've got this fat, foul-mouth slob and I thought, 'Oh God this is awful!' But once that passes you see that the set and the costumes are incredible. I'd say Cameron was about 90 percent accurate.
TBR: Does the real life NUMA still exist?
CC: NUMA gets bigger and bigger all the time. We're based in Austin, Texas and we've got expeditions going all the time. We recently found a nifty early 19th century Spanish wreck and we can't figure out what it is, but it's just got a ton of artifacts on it. We're really trying for LaSalle's ship, which sank in 1687. Then we have another expedition going later in the year up in Fire Island, NY looking for Savannah, which was the first steamboat that went across the Atlantic.
TBR: Here's what impresses me --- you've stayed loyal to so many people and for all your success, I feel like I'm talking to someone down the block!
CC: I don't know if you've ever run across a writer named Robyn Carr, and she does female mysteries, she's an old pal, a real character. A cute lady too --- she says to me, 'Whenever I call up the big name women mystery and romance writers, I always get some secretary, but when I call you, and you're bigger than any of them, and the phone rings and this voice comes on, "Hulllo?" It's funny --- I've never even had a secretary.
TBR: What are you reading right now?
CC: Well, actually right now I'm doing a lot of research. I had lunch with James Michener one time and as a joke I asked him if he's read any good books lately. He laughed and said I don't read when I'm working on books. The books I have time to read are first time authors, I always try to give a quote and endorse first time authors, which is funny because I endorsed Tom Clancy's THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and Stephen Coonts' FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDERS. Those are really the only fiction books I read, other than that I just love to read nonfiction and research. By the way after Clancy finished his first one he called and asked if I thought he should continue Jack Ryan as a character. I told him how well Pitt had worked for me. And you know the rest.
TBR: The writers that influenced you most, were they the ones you read before you started Dirk Pitt?
CC: I would say the one who influenced me the most, because I leaned on his writing style with my first two books, was Alistair McLean. Hemingway once said that he leaned heavily on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy at first, then, after a book or two he came into his own style.
TBR: Your style keeps me going the whole time because there are those great inside jokes and you feel like you actually know the characters. It's the style, besides the plot and the story, that really captivates the audience.
CC: Yes, like how the readers love when Pitt and Giordino backhand each other.
TBR: Exactly, especially because there aren't a lot of books about friendships between men.
CC: Pitt and Giordino are like the guys next door, yet they can pull out a .45 and blow the villain away.
TBR: And then drink a shot of tequila. Are you drinking tequila these days, just like Dirk?
CC: (laughing) That's right. We quit smoking at the same time, and I think in the beginning it was Cutty Sark scotch, then Bombay gin, and now of course he's on tequila. It was funny, in the last book I had Giordino drinking Jack Daniels so last week I traveled to Lynchburg, Tennessee and judge their 10th annual barbecue.
TBR: You've taken so many things that you enjoy and woven them together --- I think that's one of the things that make your stories such a success. You had a dream and you just kept with it.
CC: And I had so many obstacles in the beginning, and still do, because I do things nobody else does. When I first started out I was even told not to waste my time, that nobody reads adventure and they told me that I shouldn't use a continuing hero. It won't fly, they said, it's become passe. You know, I heard things like, 'Don't waste your time on THE SEA HUNTERS it'll never sell' --- it's always been that way and it's really funny. When I was in advertising I had a philosophy, if I had to promote a product the first thing I'd do would be to go out and see what the competition was doing --- and then do the opposite. I put myself in the books because no other author was doing it. I've been accused of having a big ego but I didn't do it for that reason at all.
TBR: Do you ever give books as gifts?
CC:All the time. I never push them on people, but if they want one I'm happy to give it to them. I give away tons of them. I send out at least 10 books a week to all these auctions for just about everything. Harold Robbins used to say that he gives away more books than he sells! I give them to my close friends and my agent of course. And when each book comes out I have fifty made up with leather binding and I give them away. Also when people send me letters saying, 'Oh I liked this book,' if they're not all gone or if they send me books to sign I'll send them a page from the original draft.
TBR: That's why I really feel that you really listen to what the readers are saying and you respond to them, which is so critical.
CC: I know it sounds ridiculous but I try and ask myself every so often, what would the reader like to see at this point. Now you might say, how would I know, but if you stop and ask yourself it helps. The reader has always been uppermost in my mind.
TBR: I think that makes it a lot more fun because it really feels like you're writing directly to the reader. It feels like it's a conversation.
CC: My greatest fear has always been reaching my peak --- all authors peak. Whenever someone says, 'Your last book was your best,' I think, 'Oh no it's downhill from here!' I know I'll peak sooner or later, even now it's so much harder to be original and come up with new concepts after writing for so long.
TBR: But you've gone off in so many other directions. For example, the companion book is so much fun because it takes you back to your past characters. Do you ever plan on retiring?
CC: I want to continue writing. Sometimes I joke and think about retiring, but I'm really not the kind of person to be happy playing golf everyday.
TBR: You're doing what you passionately enjoy.
CC: Yes, although writing is work I do love the research. I joke that if my wife threw me out of the house I'd just get a cot and sleep in the basement of the library.
TBR: What's a typical day like for you, writing wise?
CC: Well on an average day I get up around 7:30AM and read the paper until a little after 8, then go the office, turn on the computer, play a couple of games of Free Cell. Then I'm in the mood and I start in, and work most of day, knock off for lunch, and end about 5:30PM. I'll finish up the day with a couple more games of Free Cell before I go in for dinner.
TBR: Do you write in the evening or do you really manage it like it's a workday?
CC: I research in the evening, but I don't write. It's funny, I'll be watching TV with a stack of books by my chair, researching and my wife gets mad at me because I can read and watch TV at the same time but I can't listen to her too.
TBR: (laughing) I totally understand.
CC: You know, I remember reading that men speak 3,000 words a day and women speak 5,000, and it hit me that the difference between men and women is that I will walk outside and see the sun shining and think, oh it looks like it's going to be a nice day. And then my wife will do the same thing but say aloud what she's thinking. And I think that's the difference, women say what they think --- whatever runs through their mind they automatically verbalize. My wife says I don't listen to her, but I do if she's talking about something I'm interested in, but if she's just kind of babbling on you just automatically tune her out.
TBR: So we should lead with the most exciting topics to get men's attention?
CC: Well you could just call out, 'SEX' and get their attention that way for sure.
TBR: (laughing) Yeah, start there and then more on to the more menial conversation like the grocery list.
CC: I remember somebody saying that women marry men and want to change them, and can't. Men marry women and don't want them to change, but they do.
TBR: Men want the same person they dated.
CC: Yes! When my wife and I got married she was so quiet, I couldn't get two words out of her, and now, boy, she's going all the time. Oh, I enjoy women, they are great fun --- in real life and in my books. I never have bimbos in my stories, they're always smart.
TBR: Yes they are!
CC: I had a little sex in my books way back, but then I got wise. Actually I think what happened was that I got a letter from a nine-year-old and I thought, 'Oh my God!' Out with all the four-letter words. And times have changed, I couldn't get away with a lot of the things I wrote about back then. It's fun to project too, in one of my books from the late 70's I talked about South Africa ten years before it became really trendy. It's fun to project things, sometimes you come close and sometimes you don't.
TBR: Yeah, sometimes it's just good reading. Well thank you so much for this interview, it has been so much fun!
CC: Yes it has.
TBR: Come back to us when you publish your next book!
CC: I sure will.
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