Clive Cussler(1931-2020)
- Writer
- Actor
![Clive Cussler's Sea Hunters, Set 2-Vol. 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTI0YjgzMDEtNDgxOS00NTNiLTkzODQtYjM1Njk5NTA5NWVjXkEyXkFqcGdeQXRyYW5zY29kZS13b3JrZmxvdw@@._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,22,500,281_.jpg)
Probably one of the greatest adventure novelists of our time. When his
novel "Raise the Titanic" was bought for $840,000 by Viking Publishing
in 1976, it put him on the map after 11 years of hard work. Before his
success with RTT, he previously had written "Pacific Vortex", which
wasn't published until after his successes, "The Mediterranean Caper"
and "Iceberg". Originally in advertising, first as an award-winning
copy writer, and then as creative director for two of the nation's
largest agencies. He started his writing career when his wife, Barbara,
got a night job for the local police station as a clerk. At night after
putting his kids to bed, he had hardly anything to do and no one to
talk to. So out of solitude he decided to write a book. After a few
nights of thinking of an idea on what to write about he thought it
would be fun to produce a little paperback series. The thought of a
best-seller never crossed his mind. Thanks to his marketing experience,
he began researching and analyzing all the series heroes, beginning
with Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dumas. Next came Conan Doyle and
Sherlock Holmes and all the other fiction detectives and spies. Like
the likes of Bulldog Drummond, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer,
Matt Helm, James Bond. Whatever he could find, he studied them all.
With his experience in creative advertising under his belt, he started
to wonder what he could conceive that was totally different. He didn't
want to compete with already-famous authors. He was determined not to
write about a detective, secret agent or undercover investigator or
deal in murder mysteries. He then decided his hero's adventure would be
based on and under water. And thus, the basic concept for Dirk Pitt the
marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA)
was born. He found it interesting that almost no authors were writing
pure, old-fashioned adventure. It seemed to him, a lost genre. After
taking a refresher course in English, he launched his first book that
introduced Pitt and most all of his characters who appeared in the
upcoming novels to follow afterwards. The first book was named "Pacific
Vortex". Dr. Cussler, leaned heavily on Alistair McLean on his first
two books and was quite flattered when critics told him they were quite
similar. But by his third book, he began to drift into his own style
with a myriad of sub-plots. And because of that, "Iceberg", to this
day, has and always will be a sentimental favorite of his because it
never ended where it began. After completing "Pacific Vortex", he was
about to launch a second book when he was offered a position at a large
advertising agency. It would have been a wonderful opportunity with a
well-paid salary, but his wife challenged him. She knew that if he
wanted to write sea stories, why didn't he take a job as a clerk at the
local dive shop who at the time was hiring. He wasted little time and
in 1968 he started working for the Aquatic Center Dive ship in Newport
Beach as a behind-the-counter-salesman. Never being a certified diver,
it took him just a few weeks. Once he was certified, Dr. Cussler
started bringing in his typewriter in the morning and wrote at a card
table behind the counter when business was slow which was usually in
the afternoons. A little over a year later, Dr. Cussler finished his
second novel, "Mediterranean Caper". That's when he decided to leave
the shop and return to advertising. With constant rejection letters on
his first novel, Pacific Vortex, Dr. Cussler had decided that it would
be a smart decision to find himself a literary agent. With a little
cunning and ingenuity, he soon met Peter Lampack, who was with the
William Morris Agency in Manhattan. With Peter liking his second novel,
"Mediterranean Caper", Dr. Cussler now had a contract. With the
contract promptly signed and mailed, he started working on his third
novel, "Iceberg". Now that he had an agent and with renewed
inspiration, Dr. Cussler left the advertising agency, and decided to
write full time. Fed up with Southern California and wanting to change
his family's lifestyle, he sold his boat, house and car. He bought a
new family sedan and a tent trailer. After a wonderful summer, he and
his family relocated to Estes Park, Colorado. Once settled in, he
started to work on his third novel, Iceberg. After a year he finished
Iceberg and with his agent having no success finding an editor to take
"Mediterranean Caper" and now, "Iceberg" and with his savings about
depleted, Dr. Cussler went back to advertising. Once he got himself a
job with a very small agency and started to prove to them his value,
Dr. Cussler moved his family to the suburb of Arvada just outside of
Denver. It wouldn't be long before he was given the pink slip again.
Taking a once broken down and small firm and making it into
multi-million company, Dr. Cussler vowed to never work in the
advertising agency again. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Because that's when he started to work on "Raise The Titanic!" in one
corner of his unfinished basement. By then his agent, Peter Lampack,
had found a small publisher to take Mediterranean Caper. Printing
fifty-thousand copies and selling thirty-two thousand, Pyramid
Publishing paid him five thousand dollars and sold the novel for
seventy-five cents a piece. Less then a year later, Dr. Cussler sold
his novel, Iceberg to Dodd Mead Publishing for five-thousand dollars.
The novel sold thirty-two thousand copies with an initial intent of
only printing five thousand. Once he finished Raise The Titanic, Dr.
Cussler sent it off to his agent. Once approved, it was relayed to Dodd
Mead. It was rejected within ten days. His agent decided to sent the
renounced manuscript to Putnam but they wanted a massive rewrite which
Dr. Cussler refused to do. And what Dr. Cussler would later say, "Out
of the blue, Viking Press bought it, asked for very few changes and
paid me seventy-five hundred dollars." And that's when "strange forces"
went to work. A London editor from Macmillan Publishing was visiting a
friend at Viking and heard about the Dr. Cussler manuscript. Since the
Titanic was a British ship, he asked for a copy of the manuscript to
read on his plane back to England. He ended up wanting to buy it. But
his agent had already sold "Iceberg" to Sphere Publishing, a small
publishing house in London, for four hundred dollars. Since Sphere had
the first option, they put in a bid for the manuscript that was
promptly topped by Macmillan. Once the dust settled from the bidding
war, Sphere owned the book, paying twenty-two thousand dollars, a high
price for England in those days. Getting the feeling that things were
suddenly falling into place, Dr. Cussler called his agent and got his
rights back for Mediterranean Caper. At the same time, Dodd Mead
Publishing notified his agent that Playboy Publications had offered
four thousand dollars for the paperback right to Iceberg. Still with
that "gut" feeling, Dr. Cussler told his agent that he would buy back
Mediterranean Caper from Dodd Mead Publishing for five thousand
dollars. The deal was done two weeks later. With the buzz and interest
about Raise The Titanic over in Britain, it didn't take long for
American paperback publishers to take notice. It soon went to auction
with Viking Press winning the rights for $840,000. Once the auction was
over and finding out that "Raise The Titanic" was the third Dirk Pitt
novel, Viking Press bought them both for forty thousand dollar a piece.
"Raise The Titanic" was Cussler's first novel to have several plots
going on at the same time and to have them all converge at the end.
Since then, Dr. Cussler has sold over 100 million copies of his Dirk
Pitt Adventures. He continues to write Dirk Pitt adventures while
living a life that nearly parallels that of his action hero. Like Pitt,
Dr. Cussler enjoys discovering and collecting things of historical
significance. With NUMA (National Underwater & Marine Agency, a non
profit group begun by Cussler) he has had an amazing record of finding
over 60 shipwrecks, one of which was the long-lost Confederate
submarine Hunley. And recently discovered the rescue ship Carpathia who
picked up the Titanic survivors. Dr. Cussler also has a renowned and
extensive classic car collection, which features over 80 examples of
custom coachwork. Along with being Chairman of NUMA, he is also a
fellow of the Explorers Club (which honored him with the Lowell Thomas
Award for outstanding underwater exploration), the Royal Geographical
Society and the American Society of Oceanographers. Married to Barbara
Knight for 40 years, with three children and two grandchildren, he
divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of
Arizona. He is represented by the Bartholomeaux Agency.