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Dropping like flies
Dec. 16th, 2002 07:40 amAuthor Cussler, Master of Sea Adventures, to Retire
Fri Dec 13,12:41 PM ET
By Aleksandrs Rozens
NEW YORK (Reuters) - After three decades of spinning tales about lost ships and sunken treasures, Clive Cussler, author of best-selling adventure books "Raise The Titanic" and "Night Probe!," is tired and plans to quit.
Reuters Photo
In New York recently to promote his latest book, a non-fiction account of his search for and exploration of underwater wrecks titled "The Sea Hunters II," 71-year-old Cussler said that after his next novel he will stop writing.
"The imagination is still working, but the drive is just gone," Cussler said in an interview in the lounge of Manhattan's Ritz Carlton hotel.
"I can't explain it. I guess (after) 35 years of this stuff ... I'm tired of it. And I have to push to try to maintain the quality because I don't want to cheat my readers," said Cussler, who has produced 19 fiction best-sellers and one non-fiction bestseller.
Describing himself foremost as an entertainer, Cussler expects to complete that next, last novel, tentatively titled "Trojan Odyssey," in April.
His most popular books have been adventure stories that often involve the discovery of old wrecks -- sunken ships or planes lost in deep mountain lakes.
Sometimes the wrecks contain lost documents or treasures that his main character, a nautical Indiana Jones figure named Dirk Pitt, uncovers, and these finds have big consequences. For example, "Night Probe!" features a lost agreement offering the United States all of Canada for aiding England in World War II and it becomes hotly pursued when oil is found off Canada.
Cussler's stories usually start with a slice of history dressed in fiction and often are fun "what-if" explorations, looking at how history would have been changed if, for example, the Hudson River had been explored by Vikings.
STILL BUSY
But retirement doesn't mean Cussler plans to disappear from the scene.
Instead of writing himself, Cussler expects to act as creative director for a series of books based on characters and situations introduced in his books. These spinoff adventures -- one of them about a tramp steamship tentatively titled "Oregon Chronicles" -- will be authored by other writers.
"I'm tired. It's a chore really. I force myself. I used to go down early at 8:30 a.m. and just type through. Now I sit down and knock out a page in the morning. Then I'll go play a game with the computer or something like get the mail. Then I'll come back and maybe write another page and finish that and have lunch," said Cussler. "Maybe I'll write another page in the afternoon. It's just not there."
Cussler, tall and broad-shouldered with gray hair and beard, expressed concern about maintaining the quality of his writing in his adventure stories.
"I won't slop it up. Some writers get successful and slop it up. I won't do that," he said.
His fascination with wrecks is not just fiction. Cussler has a passion for looking for lost ships and planes and has set up a foundation devoted to these projects. He has spent a lot of his own money on the hunts and jokes that his accountant and wife would like to lock him up in a "rubber room."
His two "Sea Hunters" books are non-fiction accounts of his experiences looking for shipwrecks. He discovered the first submarine to sink a ship in battle and still wishes he could find the U.S. Navy (news - web sites)'s famed lost vessel The Bonhomme Richard.
But Cussler admitted that age may be slowing him down. "I'm just getting old I guess."
A YOUTH'S HUNGER FOR ADVENTURE
Cussler, whose books have sold more than 120 million copies, now divides his time between Colorado, where he has an extensive classic car collection, and Arizona.
He grew up in Alhambra, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. An avid reader of adventure books for young boys and a regular listener to radio adventures set in the American West or mysteries, Cussler had a fertile imagination.
As a youth, Cussler and his childhood friends conjured up adventures in hay fields near his Alhambra home. When it was not a game of cowboys and Indians, Cussler and his friends would build tree houses or fashion forts out of bales of hay and pretend to be French Foreign Legionnaires.
Cussler attended Pasadena College for two years and served in the U.S. Air Force as an aircraft mechanic during the Korean War. He then worked as an advertising copy writer.
Inspired by adventure writers like Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean, best known for "The Guns of Navarone," Cussler turned to writing when his wife worked in evenings.
"I had nothing to do after I put the kids to bed and it hit me: 'I should write a book,"' he recalled.
Initially, Cussler recalled being influenced by MacLean. "I leaned on him in the beginning. After a while, I drifted into the Cussler style," he said.
Cussler first wrote "Pacific Vortex" and while this manuscript was being rejected by publishers, he penned "Mediterranean Caper." His efforts to get his work published recall some of the creative trickery employed by the hero of his novels, Dirk Pitt, in dramatic situations.
Faced with rejections and unable to find a literary agent, Cussler had the art director in his advertising firm design letterhead for a phony movie screenwriting agency.
He wrote a letter on it recommending himself to a New York literary agent and within weeks the agent took on his manuscripts. Three or four years later, Cussler recalled, a publisher bought his first book.
Fri Dec 13,12:41 PM ET
By Aleksandrs Rozens
NEW YORK (Reuters) - After three decades of spinning tales about lost ships and sunken treasures, Clive Cussler, author of best-selling adventure books "Raise The Titanic" and "Night Probe!," is tired and plans to quit.
Reuters Photo
In New York recently to promote his latest book, a non-fiction account of his search for and exploration of underwater wrecks titled "The Sea Hunters II," 71-year-old Cussler said that after his next novel he will stop writing.
"The imagination is still working, but the drive is just gone," Cussler said in an interview in the lounge of Manhattan's Ritz Carlton hotel.
"I can't explain it. I guess (after) 35 years of this stuff ... I'm tired of it. And I have to push to try to maintain the quality because I don't want to cheat my readers," said Cussler, who has produced 19 fiction best-sellers and one non-fiction bestseller.
Describing himself foremost as an entertainer, Cussler expects to complete that next, last novel, tentatively titled "Trojan Odyssey," in April.
His most popular books have been adventure stories that often involve the discovery of old wrecks -- sunken ships or planes lost in deep mountain lakes.
Sometimes the wrecks contain lost documents or treasures that his main character, a nautical Indiana Jones figure named Dirk Pitt, uncovers, and these finds have big consequences. For example, "Night Probe!" features a lost agreement offering the United States all of Canada for aiding England in World War II and it becomes hotly pursued when oil is found off Canada.
Cussler's stories usually start with a slice of history dressed in fiction and often are fun "what-if" explorations, looking at how history would have been changed if, for example, the Hudson River had been explored by Vikings.
STILL BUSY
But retirement doesn't mean Cussler plans to disappear from the scene.
Instead of writing himself, Cussler expects to act as creative director for a series of books based on characters and situations introduced in his books. These spinoff adventures -- one of them about a tramp steamship tentatively titled "Oregon Chronicles" -- will be authored by other writers.
"I'm tired. It's a chore really. I force myself. I used to go down early at 8:30 a.m. and just type through. Now I sit down and knock out a page in the morning. Then I'll go play a game with the computer or something like get the mail. Then I'll come back and maybe write another page and finish that and have lunch," said Cussler. "Maybe I'll write another page in the afternoon. It's just not there."
Cussler, tall and broad-shouldered with gray hair and beard, expressed concern about maintaining the quality of his writing in his adventure stories.
"I won't slop it up. Some writers get successful and slop it up. I won't do that," he said.
His fascination with wrecks is not just fiction. Cussler has a passion for looking for lost ships and planes and has set up a foundation devoted to these projects. He has spent a lot of his own money on the hunts and jokes that his accountant and wife would like to lock him up in a "rubber room."
His two "Sea Hunters" books are non-fiction accounts of his experiences looking for shipwrecks. He discovered the first submarine to sink a ship in battle and still wishes he could find the U.S. Navy (news - web sites)'s famed lost vessel The Bonhomme Richard.
But Cussler admitted that age may be slowing him down. "I'm just getting old I guess."
A YOUTH'S HUNGER FOR ADVENTURE
Cussler, whose books have sold more than 120 million copies, now divides his time between Colorado, where he has an extensive classic car collection, and Arizona.
He grew up in Alhambra, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. An avid reader of adventure books for young boys and a regular listener to radio adventures set in the American West or mysteries, Cussler had a fertile imagination.
As a youth, Cussler and his childhood friends conjured up adventures in hay fields near his Alhambra home. When it was not a game of cowboys and Indians, Cussler and his friends would build tree houses or fashion forts out of bales of hay and pretend to be French Foreign Legionnaires.
Cussler attended Pasadena College for two years and served in the U.S. Air Force as an aircraft mechanic during the Korean War. He then worked as an advertising copy writer.
Inspired by adventure writers like Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean, best known for "The Guns of Navarone," Cussler turned to writing when his wife worked in evenings.
"I had nothing to do after I put the kids to bed and it hit me: 'I should write a book,"' he recalled.
Initially, Cussler recalled being influenced by MacLean. "I leaned on him in the beginning. After a while, I drifted into the Cussler style," he said.
Cussler first wrote "Pacific Vortex" and while this manuscript was being rejected by publishers, he penned "Mediterranean Caper." His efforts to get his work published recall some of the creative trickery employed by the hero of his novels, Dirk Pitt, in dramatic situations.
Faced with rejections and unable to find a literary agent, Cussler had the art director in his advertising firm design letterhead for a phony movie screenwriting agency.
He wrote a letter on it recommending himself to a New York literary agent and within weeks the agent took on his manuscripts. Three or four years later, Cussler recalled, a publisher bought his first book.
