ReadersRoom: Dr. Cussler, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for taking the time to do this with us.
Clive Cussler: The pleasure's mine.
ReadersRoom: With so much of your work having been on the New York Times bestseller list -- actually, I believe it's every book you've written -- it's a little hard to know where to begin, but let's start with your extraordinarily busy schedule these days. I understand that you have a new novel coming out on October 7th -- titled Golden Buddha. Could you tell our readers something about that?
Clive Cussler: I guess you would call it a spin off series. It's taken from one of my books called Flood Tide where there was this ... we'll call it an old tramp steamer - a freighter that was all rusty and beat up and the crew was mangy -- but it was all a façade. It really had all of this exotic equipment inside, Picasso paintings and a gourmet chef and all of these missiles, and it could do 50 knots. We thought it would be great fun to take that and base stories in and around it where they go from port to port and get contracts -- because they are kind of mercenary -- to save this person or do this or that. I guess you could call it a Mission: Impossible on a boat.
ReadersRoom: And I believe this is the first in what you plan to be a series called The Oregon Files?
Clive Cussler: Yes ... but it will be The Oregon Chronicles, I guess.
ReadersRoom: This series is co-authored with Craig Dirgo I believe, who did The Sea Hunters and The Sea Hunters II with you?
Clive Cussler: Right. I've done the non-fiction Sea Hunters with him.
ReadersRoom: The next of your books scheduled to be released -- near the end of this year -- is Trojan Odyssey, which is going to be another Dirk Pitt ® novel.
Clive Cussler: Right.
ReadersRoom: Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Clive Cussler: Well, it's based on the Trojan War; only the theory is that it didn't take place in Turkey -- that actually it was someplace else we'll say, without giving the story away. It's a new twist on the plot. Odysseus, instead of getting lost in the Mediterranean, actually made it across the Atlantic. And there are villains and, you know, the usual bad guys verses the good guys.
ReadersRoom: The basic Dirk Pitt ® adventure.
Clive Cussler: Yes.
ReadersRoom: That's excellent. Your last release was White Death which I believe was the fourth in the NUMA Files series, with Kurt Austin ® as your main character.
Clive Cussler: That's right.
ReadersRoom: I suppose the question that first comes to mind is with such a successful series of Dirk Pitt ® novels and four bestsellers with Kurt Austin ® what prompted you to begin a new series with The Oregon Chronicles?
Clive Cussler: The publisher thought it would be great fun and it seemed like there were a lot of good stories there that would be separate from the Pitt adventures. That's really the reason why we did it. It wasn't so much about selling more books or anything like that; we just thought it would be a lot of fun.
ReadersRoom: Well, I'm certainly looking forward to it! You have made no secret about the fact that you were not thrilled with the movie version of Raise the Titanic...
Clive Cussler: No, not at all.
ReadersRoom: ...but I do see that Sahara is going to be made into a film, and I'm wondering how that came about?
Clive Cussler: Well after twenty-some years -- after they made such a botch of Raise the Titanic -- I just wasn't about to sell out again, and I didn't want to cheat my readers. But finally they came around and offered me script and casting approval. So with that in mind, I then went ahead and went with a studio -- Paramount, in this case, and Crusader Entertainment. I've been working with the screenwriters to get something that I would approve that I think the readers would like, because I get no satisfaction if they come out of the movie and say: "Oh, the book was better than the movie." So I am at least keeping my hand in to try and do a decent job this time -- unlike Raise the Titanic.
ReadersRoom: Sahara is actually one of your more complex novels. I'm wondering why that novel was chosen. Was that your decision or the studios'?
Clive Cussler: Well, it was partly both. As you know, any book -- if it was shot in its entirety -- would be a ten hour movie. You do have to compress and condense everything, so some of the side plots have had to go. But the exciting parts -- the battles and the train rides and driving across the desert -- all that is still in it.
ReadersRoom: One question I have to ask is whether or not you will be playing the part of yourself in the novel -- the character called The Kid?
Clive Cussler: Somewhat -- it's just been transferred a little bit. Rather than meeting them out in the desert with his mule, I'll be driving this old beat up truck and find Pitt and Giordino when they're half dying out there from thirst.
ReadersRoom: So you will be in it.
Clive Cussler: Yes, I'll make a brief appearance.
ReadersRoom: Well, with all that on your plate, I'd like to know what you can tell us about upcoming projects. For instance, will there be another Dirk Pitt ® novel after Trojan Odyssey?
Clive Cussler: Yes, I'm working with my son, Dirk, on that. He's something of a writer himself and I thought it would be great fun. I'm not getting any younger, but if I could slowly break him in to where he can write with my style and I can work on the plots and what have you, then someday when I'm gone he can continue with it. Then, of course, Dirgo is working on another Oregon Chronicles book and (Paul) Kemprecos is working on another NUMA Files book. And then also I'll be working soon on a car book -- everybody wanted a book on the cars supposedly I have and Pitt has. The photographer is starting to shoot that, so I'll have to start working pretty soon on that.
ReadersRoom: I was going to ask you about that. You are rumored to have a car collection of 85 ...
Clive Cussler: I think at last count it was 87.
ReadersRoom: ...87 classic coachwork cars. The book that you are planning to do about those is going to be a coffee table sort of book, is it not?
Clive Cussler: Yes, you know, one of those typical coffee table books with photographs of the cars and brief descriptions.
ReadersRoom: And will you be doing your almost patented historical perspective of the cars featured in the book?
Clive Cussler: No, it will be fairly brief. You know, I've picked up some of these coffee table books that had too much text and I thought, no, they are going to want to look at the pictures in this one. So the copy, the description, the statistics on the cars -- some have a story, some don't -- will briefly deal with when they came out and how many were produced, and things like that.
ReadersRoom: That sounds fascinating. I'd like to shift gears here and discuss The Sea Hunters, and The Sea Hunters II -- which I think, quite frankly, contain some of the most compelling and entertaining writing I've ever read. The design of the books, basically, is that there is a fictionalized history of each ship and the tragedy which befell it, followed by your personal memoirs of searching for these wrecks. I would like to know how you came up with the idea of presenting these stories in that fashion.
Clive Cussler: Well, I really wanted to do something more interesting than the average sort of historical book, particularly on shipwrecks, because it can be dull in that sense. So we tried to take the actual event and we stick with it pretty closely, but we throw in dialogue and maybe some of the people who were actually involved and have them speak dialogue and things like that. And then we try to describe, as if we were there, how it would look to us. The second section takes place 100 or 200 years later -- whenever it is that we go out and look for the wreck.
ReadersRoom: You've searched for some amazing shipwrecks.
Clive Cussler: Well, we've been successful, but I got a kick -- unlike most of shipwreck hunters, the big ones anyway -- out of putting in my failures as well as the successes.
ReadersRoom: And some of those failures are every bit as entertaining as the successes.
Clive Cussler: Oh sure, they're fascinating. I mean, you can't hit a home run every time you step up to the plate.
ReadersRoom: Is there a Sea Hunters III anywhere in the foreseeable future?
Clive Cussler: I don't think so. I've pretty much tapped out all the interesting wrecks we've looked for. Maybe someday -- I mean, I haven't given up. I spent three weeks recently looking for John Paul Jones' ship the Bonhomme Richard in the North Sea and didn't find it. That's about the fourth time I've looked for it. I'd hate to give up on that -- it took me off and on fifteen years to find the Hunley. There are a lot of interesting things out there. We recently found the wreck of an airplane -- the family asked us if we might make a search because everybody else failed for two months, and my crew went out there and found it in a day and a half.
ReadersRoom: Of all of the searches, which one was your most fulfilling?
Clive Cussler: I suppose the Hunley because it took so long, and there was such a fabulous history. That's the only one we've found where they actually raised the wreck. It's being conserved and probed and examined and studied. The bones of the crew were intact, and artifacts ... it's just an incredible story.
ReadersRoom: It certainly is. Dr. Cussler, since we announced this interview we have been swamped with questions from our readers. Would you answer a few of them for us?
Clive Cussler: Sure, go ahead.
ReadersRoom: From Robin in Texas: Hello, Dr. Cussler. Once in an interview Stephen King gave, King said that "Cussler is one of the most terrifying writers I have ever read." I would like to know who Dr. Cussler's favorite, most thrilling writers are.
Clive Cussler: Gosh, most thrilling writers. Well, some of the early ones. In adventure I know that Hammond Innes is still alive -- he's in his 80's and still writing. Alistair Mclean, I think, was one of the all time best adventure writers. Wilber Smith, from South Africa is very good. And from America I read Nelson DeMille. But usually, like most authors when you're working on a book, your reading non-fiction for research, and generally most of the fiction books I read are new books by new authors. They ask me for a quote or an endorsement and if they've done a relatively good job, I try to give them a helping hand. In fact, I endorsed Flight of the Intruder by Stephen J. Coonts, and then The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy years ago.
ReadersRoom: The next question is from Brad in Minnesota: I heard you got your start in advertising. What prompted you to start writing novels, and did your novels create the interest in sea exploration and NUMA, or did you always have that interest?
Clive Cussler: I always had the interest. Being able to support it financially was what happened when the books became popular. Any expeditions I did in the old days were strictly on a shoe-string. I began writing when my wife took a fascinating job working evenings for the local police department. There was only an hour difference from when I came home and when she left for work and so I'd fix dinner for the kids and put them to bed and then I didn't have anything to do or anybody to talk to. That was when I thought it would be fun to write a little. I only had in mind a little paperback series, and so I just started writing evenings and weekends. After about four years I had two manuscripts and got an agent, and then decided that this was what I wanted to do. We decided to leave Los Angeles because of the traffic and the smog, and so we sold the house, stored the furniture, bought a new car and tent trailer, packed up the kids and took off. We lit in a little town in Colorado where I wrote the third book in the series and later on the fifth one which was Raise the Titanic, and that was the breakthrough book. Then I could afford to write full time.
ReadersRoom: This is from Carlton in San Diego: With more than twenty novels under your belt, do you ever find yourself hard pressed to come up with new and exciting topics that will live up to your other plots?
Clive Cussler: Yes indeed! It gets harder all the time because I've used so many plots it gets harder to be original. I'll be writing and I'll think, oh hell I used that same line of dialogue six books back. So it is difficult to try and be original and come up with new plots all the time.
ReadersRoom: Our final reader question is from Karen in New Mexico: I've read that you divide your time between Arizona and Colorado, and yet you know so much about the ocean. Is there a reason you don't live closer to it?
Clive Cussler: No, no particular reason. It's just that I don't care to go back to California, and I'm not that fond of Florida. I do have a house down in Mexico that's near the beach, but the fact is that I'm on the water probably thirty to sixty days out of the year looking for shipwrecks. That more or less satisfies my love of the sea.
ReadersRoom: Dr. Cussler, you mentioned earlier that a lot of your reading these days is research, and I would like to touch on that a little bit. For your novels, can you break down how much time is spent on research and how much time is spent on the actual writing?
Clive Cussler: I would probably say that, in the beginning at least, a good six weeks -- and it can be as long as two months -- is spent on research, and really compiling details and all that for the plots and the scenes particularly, to describe them accurately. Then when I start writing it will take, I would say about a year -- because I get so many interruptions now. I used to be able to write a book sooner. But I would say, from start to finish, we're probably talking about 14 months.
ReadersRoom: When you are in the actual process of writing, do you have a set schedule?
Clive Cussler: Yes. I usually walk about three miles in the morning, then take a shower and eat breakfast and so on, and start to work usually about 8:30. Then, I'll work till 5:30 -- almost six o'clock. And that's it -- it's like an all day job. Of course, evenings and weekends don't mean anything. I usually work right through those, unless we have to go somewhere.
ReadersRoom: All of your Dirk Pitt ® novels -- as well as the Kurt Austin ® novels -- begin with an historical event of some kind. Is that where these novels start in your creative process, or do you start with the Dirk Pitt ® part of it and then weave the historical aspects into it?
Clive Cussler: No, it's usually that I weave Dirk Pitt ® into the historical part. I always start with the historical. Of course, I bend the truth a little -- like in Raise the Titanic, and some of the others, like Sahara with the old Confederate Ironclad (making it to Africa), and in the new one Trojan Odyssey with the Trojan War. In Atlantis Found I used a meteor that hits the world -- so it can be fun. I've always been a history buff, and I think the reader enjoys that tying in some historical event and then building a modern-day plot of intrigue around it.
ReadersRoom: Absolutely! I also notice that the Kurt Austin ® series is written with Paul Kemprecos, and your new series is being co-written with Dirgo. Do you enjoy working with co-authors?
Clive Cussler: Yes, it's a lot of fun because -- in truth, you know, they do the lion's share of the work and the writing is the hard part. I know for me ... I can envision ships blowing up and explosions and sinking and traveling underwater and that sort of thing, but to translate that into these little black things on white paper -- that's the tough part. And so working with someone where they're doing the majority of the hard work and I'm doing plotting and concepts and editing and rewriting -- it's really fun.
ReadersRoom: If we could return for a moment to the movie version of Sahara - is that currently in pre-production?
Clive Cussler: Yes, at the moment, Mathew McConaughey is playing Dirk Pitt ®.
ReadersRoom: That was my next question. There have been rumors about a number of different actors getting that role.
Clive Cussler: Originally, they kind of wanted Hugh Jackman, but he went back to New York to be in a Broadway play. McConaughey really wanted the part, and after interviewing him, he seems to work out very well.
ReadersRoom: And I have to ask, who will play Pitt's sidekick, Al Giordino?
Clive Cussler: We talked to several actors, and I think the fellow's name is Steve Zahn. He's been in kind of goofy movies, but he's the right height and he's muscling up and everything else to work into the part. And he's got a good wit to him which will certainly work for Al. And then the female lead in this one -- Eva Rojas -- we were hoping to get Salma Hayek, but she's starting another movie I guess so it looks like it could be Penelope Cruz.
ReadersRoom: Excellent. One other question about The Sea Hunters -- I understand that there's a television series based on those books.
Clive Cussler: Yes, it's done by a Canadian outfit called Eco-Nova, and it's distributed by The National Geographic International. It's called The Sea Hunters, and I think they've run three or four domestically, but they've cut me out. I open and close the narration of it but in the domestic version, for some reason, National Geo cut me out. I'm not there. But The Sea Hunters is running in, gosh, I think about 160 countries around the world.
ReadersRoom: And have you gotten much feedback from that?
Clive Cussler: I know at our NUMA site (www.NUMA.net) I'm told we get probably fifty to one hundred inquiries a day from around the world because of the program.
ReadersRoom: And you do, I believe, fund NUMA totally from your book royalties?
Clive Cussler: That's right. I do get a few small donations from nice people. In the beginning I used to try and get funding and it was like crawling with your hat in your hand. After a while I just couldn't do it any more so I just figured I'll pay for it myself. It's probably been a greater source of satisfaction doing it that way. There was one fellow -- Doug Wheeler out of Chicago -- a businessman, he was one of the few who actually contributed a substantial amount. That was for the search for the explorer LaSalle's flagship down in Matagorda Bay.
ReadersRoom: Do you still go exploring for shipwrecks?
Clive Cussler: Occasionally. As I said I recently spent three weeks in the North Sea on the Bonhomme Richard expedition, and when I can I go. But sometimes it just proves impossible, so I just put together the crew and send them.
ReadersRoom: Last question. What are you working on now?
Clive Cussler: Well, as I say, I'm working with my son, Dirk, on the next Dirk Pitt ® book, which starts out again with history -- a Japanese submarine that's shelling the American Coast in World War Two. And then I'm working with Kemprecos on a new one, and with Dirgo also on another one that's fascinating.
ReadersRoom: Finally, Dr. Cussler, is there anything you would like to say to your literally millions of fans who may happen to read this here at ReadersRoom.com?
Clive Cussler: Well, I've always had a love affair with my fans, because I always have great fun with them. When I sign books I always take the time to inscribe and joke with them and take pictures. I've always tried to go out of my way for my fans. I answer my own mail and people send me books and I'll sign them for them and all that because I figure my readers have put me where I am today, so I owe them big time.
ReadersRoom: Dr. Cussler, I want to thank you for what has been an absolutely fascinating interview.
Clive Cussler: Thank you. It's been my pleasure.
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