Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed Read online

  CRAIG DIRGO: So advertising was growing old?

  CLIVE CUSSLER: It was. We still lived in Costa Mesa, and it was onthose long rides on the crowded freeways between the office and homethat I created My best ad campaigns. But by now, the old enthusiasm wasfading, and I began to think about other ways to make a living.

  Unknowingly to both of us, Barbara presented the key.

  She would go through cycles, staying home with the kids when they wereyoung, then going back to work, then becoming bored with her job andstaying home again. Finally, she found an interesting job workingnights for the local police department as a clerk, dispatcher and matronfor female prisoners.

  The schedule worked out very well for the family.

  She was with the kids during the day, and I took over when I returned inthe evening. After fixing the family dinner and putting Teri, Dirk and,by now, Dana, who arrived in 1964, to bed, I faced many an evening withno one to talk to. I was never the type to take my work burdens homewith me, so out of solitude I decided to write a book.

  But what book? I didn't have the great American novel burning inside meor an Aunt Fanny to chronicle who came across the prairie in a coveredwagon.

  After mulling the idea over in my mind for a few nights, I thought itwould be fun to produce a little paperback series. No highfalutinschemes to write a best-seller entered my mind.

  Thanks to my marketing experience, I began researching and analyzing allthe series heroes, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dumas.Next came Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and all the other ensuingfiction detectives and spies. Bulldog

  Drummond, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Matt Helm, JamesBond, I studied them all.

  When creating advertising, I had always looked at the competition andwondered what I could conceive that was totally different. I thought itfoolish to compete on the same terms with already-famous authors andtheir established protagonists. Bond was becoming incredibly popularthrough the movies, and I knew I couldn't match Ian Fleming's style andprose.

  So I was determined not to write about a detective, secret agent orundercover investigator or deal in murder mysteries. My hero'sadventures would be based on and under water. And thus, the basicconcept for Dirk Pitt the marine engineer with the National Underwaterand Marine Agency (NUMA) was born.

  CRAIG DIRGO: So, unlike a lot of writers, you started writing with adefinite plan in mind.

  CLIVE CUSSLER: Correct. The days of Doc Savage and Alan Quartermainwere long past, yet I found it interesting that almost no authors werewriting pure, old-fashioned adventure. It seemed a lost genre.

  After taking a refresher course in English, I launched the first bookthat introduced Pitt and most all of the characters who appeared in thefollowing thirteen novels. The first book was named Pacific Vortex.

  When I speak at writers' classes, I usually tell the students they cansave many, many hours of wasted time by studying and copying the writingstyle of successful authors who write in the same genre.

  Ernest Hemingway often told how his early style borrowed heavily fromTolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

  Thomas Wolfe, when he was in the merchant marine, purchased a used copyof James Joyce's Ulysses, which came close to being the size of theManhattan phone book. When sailing from port to port, Wolfe laboriouslycopied the entire book by hand. Months later, when he had at lastfinished, he took the three-foot-high stack of paper and threw it offthe stern into the wake of the ship. When his stunned shipmates askedwhy, after so much labor, he had simply cast it away, Wolfe saidshrewdly, "Because now I know how to write a book."

  Me? I leaned heavily on Alistair McLean on my first two books. I wasflattered when critics of my early work said I wrote like him. By mythird book, though, I began to drift into my own convoluted style with amyriad of subplots. Iceberg was always a sentimental favorite of minebecause it begins in Iceland and ends up at the Pirates of the Caribbeanin Disneyland.

  After completing Pacific Vortex, I was about to launch a second bookwhen I was offered an excellent position it a large advertising agencyas a creative director on the Prudential Insurance account.

  This was a lucrative opportunity that paid extremely well, but my wife,shrewd judge of me that she is, circled an ad in the help-wanted columnof a local newspaper. The ad was for a clerk in a dive shop that paidfour hundred dollars a month.

  She said, "You want to write sea stories, why don't you take this jobinstead."

  Odd person that I am, I wasted little time in deciding to decline the$2,500-a-month ad job, which was dam good money in 1968, and walked intothe Aquatic Center dive shop in Newport Beach toapply as a behind-the-counter salesman. The owners, Ron Merker, OmarWood and Don Spencer, looked at me as if I had stepped from a UFO. Theobvious question was, "Don't you think you're overqualified?"

  Maybe I was, but they were astute enough to see a sincerity behind myapplication and hired me to work in their Santa Ana store. Although Ihad dived since my years in Hawaii, I was never certified.

  MerkeT soon took care of that chore, and before long Spencer had meacting as dive master on diving expeditions to Santa Catalina. I hadmany fun experiences with those three fine men that are related in thebook The Sea Hunters.

  After a few weeks, they put me in charge of the store while Spencer wasworking other duties. I'd carry my portable typewriter with me when Iopened the doors in the morning and write at a card table behind thecounter when business was slow, usually in the afternoons. A littleover a year later, I finished Mediterranean Caper, bid a fond farewellto the dive shop and returned to the unscrupulous world of advertising.

  Having received nothing but rejection letters on Pacific Vortex, most ofthem printed forms, and with the manuscript of my second book in hand, Ifigured that now was as good a time as any to find an agent.

  I've told the following story more times than Judy Garland sang "Overthe Rainbow," but here goes.

  Working in TV production in Hollywood, I knew a number of people attheatrical casting agencies but no literary agents. Gathering the namesof twenty-five literary agents in New York from the casting people, Iset about contacting them one byone. Having an idea about the competition and how many manuscriptsagents and editors receive in a week-anywhere from thirty to sixty-Iwisely concluded that I had to beat the odds somehow.

  I bought a thousand sheets of blank stationery and a thousand envelopesand had the art director of the ad agency where I was working design alogo and specify the type. Then I went to a printer and had him printthe stationery and envelopes so that they read "The Charles WinthropAgency." For an address, I used my parents' since they lived in aritzier neighborhood than mine. Next, I wrote to the first name on thelist, which happened to be Peter Lampack, who was with the WilliamMorris Agency in Manhattan.

  The letter read: "Dear Peter: As you know, I primarily handle motionpicture and television screenplays; however, I've run across a pair ofbook-length manuscripts which I think have a great deal of potential.

  I would pursue them, but I am retiring soon.

  Would you like to take a look at them?" Signed Charlie Winthrop.

  I mailed off the letter to Lampack and waited for whatever responsewithout a great deal of optimism.

  A week later my dad called. "You have a letter from New York."

  Peter replied, "Dear Charlie, on your say-so, I'll take a look at themanuscripts. Send them to my office."

  Thinking so far so good, I sent off Pacific Vortex and The MediterraneanCaper and pushed the event to the back of my mind while I worked on acampaign to introduce a new El Toro lawn mower. Two weeks later,another letter arrived from Lampack:

  "Dear Charlie: Read the manuscripts. The first one is only fair, butthe second one looks good. Where can I sign Cussler to a contract?"

  I almost went into cardiac arrest. I couldn't believe it was that easy.I fired off a final letter from Charlie Winthrop telling Peter Lampackwhere he could reach Clive Cussler. Peter sent a letter introducinghimself along with a contract I promptly
signed and returned. I threwaway the envelopes and wrote the next book, Iceberg, on the back ofCharlie Winthrop's stationary.

  CRAIG DIRGO: So you had an agent now.

  CLIVE CUSSLER: It may not have appeared so, but this was a major turningpoint in my life. Peter taking me on as a client was enough of aninspiration for me to leave advertising and consider life as a writer.

  Sure, no book was published and no money coming in, but still it wasworth a shot. Fed up with Southern California smog and traffic andwanting to change our lifestyle, which now that I look back on it wasthe only sane thing to do, I sold the boat thank God I sold the boat andactually broke even-then sold the house, bought a new car, a big 1969Mercury Monterey four-door sedan, and a tent trailer. After the housecleared escrow, we stored the furniture and took off for places unknownin the summer of 1970.

  Teri, Dirk and our youngest daughter, Dana, all in elementary school,were happy to go. It wasn't as traumatic for them to pack up and takeoff as it might have been if they were attending high school.

  The whole family looked upon our escape as a big adventure. It struckme that it was almost impossible to starve in the United States. Theidea was tofind a nice little resort area off the beaten path, where Barbara mightfind a part-time job and I could drive a school bus between hours spentover a typewriter writing the next Dirk Pitt epic. Naturally, all ourfriends and relatives thought we were crazy to leave California in thosedays. As it turned out, we were the vanguard of a mass exodus over thenext twenty-eight years.

  After a remarkably enjoyable summer, we finally settled in Estes Park,Colorado, a lovely little community at the entrance to Rocky MountainNational Park. We leased an attractive alpine house with spectacularviews and took up residence. The kids entered their new schools,Barbara took up housekeeping and I began writing Iceberg.

  The entire family enjoyed an idyllic life for almost a year and a half.

  I finished the book but had yet to be published. Peter Lampack triedvery hard to sell my books to editors but met with no success.

  At one point, his bosses called him into a conference and urged him todump Clive Cussler because it was obvious- I was going nowhere. ButPeter hung in, bless his heart. He refused to give up on me and keptpushing the manuscripts to editors. He now had two books to promote,The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, Pacific Vortex having beencondemned to a shelf in my closet.

  CRAIG DIRGO: What happened next?

  CLIVE CUSSLER: By now, I had put a healthy dent in my savings and themoney from the sale of our house in California. I concluded I had tofind a job to tide us over until I could finish another book or Peterfound me a publisher with an advance of royalties. I put on my bestsuit, typed my resume,put together a portfolio of my work in Los Angeles and knocked on thedoors of Denver advertising agencies, having no concept of how bucolicthey were. Three agencies had openings for a copywriter, and I wastedno time in applying.

  The vice president of the first agency looked over my resume andportfolio and shook his head.

  "You're overqualified," he said. "A former creative director from majorLos Angeles agencies taking a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year pay cut towork as a copywriter in Denver. It hardly makes sense."

  "It does to me," said I, competing for the congeniality trophy. "Youmust admit you're getting a bargain."

  "Perhaps, but the last thing we need around here is you hotshots comingin from the east and west coasts and telling us how to run ourbusiness."

  "I assure you that is not my intention. I simply have a wife and threekids to support."

  "Sorry, Mr. Cussler. It won't work out."

  Incredibly, the next agency director who interviewed me had seeminglymemorized the last interviewer's remarks. It was like listening to arecording. He actually said, "You must remember, the last thing we needis for you hotshots from the big cities coming in here and telling ushow it's done."

  I was sorely tempted to drive to the city limits and make sure the signsaid "Welcome to Denver" and not "Pumpkin Corners."

  I made an appointment with the last agency for the following Mondaymorning. Over the weekend, I took my oldest suit, wadded it up andthrew it in a corner of the bedroom. Then I revised my resumebackward, putting only a few of my newspaper ads in the portfolio, andleft the demo tapes of my television commercials in a drawer. And, ohyes, I didn't shave for two days. Properly subdued, I drove to Denverand walked into an agency called Hull/Mefford. I noticed that only onefour-year-old local advertising award plaque hung in the lobby.

  Jack Hull, an intense and congenial man, went through the paces. Hebought my pathetic story of escaping those know-it-all hotshots on theWest Coast to move to a friendly climate. He offered ten thousanddollars a year to start, but I jacked him up to twelve. Fortunately,when he called my prior agencies in Los Angeles to verify my employment,all he asked the personnel managers was, "Did a Clive Cussler workthere?"

  They said yes, and he was satisfied I was genuine.

  I reported for work the next day and was given an old desk badly in needof varnish next to the restrooms, with an old Royal typewriter and nophone.

  My creative talents were not exactly taxed. My assignment was- to writeads for a real estate client, cartoon captions for a trucking companyseries and ads congratulating insurance agents for selling their quotasin premiums. None suspected I was once a big executive who wrote andproduced national advertising, and I never said a word.

  Everyone in the office thought I was a real hustler because I was typingfrom dawn to dusk as if my life depended on it. What they didn't knowwas that I usually knocked out my workload by ten o'clock and spent therest of the day writing my next book.

  I was driving between Estes Park and Denver, a run of sixty-five miles.

  The locals thought I wasshort on gray matter, but after the freeway driving of Los Angeles, Irather enjoyed the scenic trip between city and mountains. The drivesoon became old, however, and I moved the family to the suburbancommunity of Arvada just outside Denver, where I bought a tract home ona municipal golf course. Again becoming a slave to the yard, I laid inrailroad ties for steps, built a wooden sun deck with stairs and anotherfence and redwood planters.

  Then the day came when the president of our largest million-dollaraccount, a savings and loan company, notified the head of the agencythat if his advertising did not become more creative, he was going tolook at other agencies. Pandemonium reigned. I was ignored untilsomeone in desperation said, "What about that guy over by the bathrooms?

  Maybe he can come up with something." I was called into the conference room and asked, "We know it isn't muchtime, but do you think you can create an advertising campaign our clientmight consider by Friday?"

  This being Wednesday, I stared around the table, smiled my bestMachiavellian smile and said modestly, "I'll try."

  I actually had a campaign pretty well sketched out, I worked around thefact that all savings and loans gave the same interest and premiums tocustomers. But the one thing people prized was their name. So Icreated a campaign where the tellers and managers went out of their wayto call the customers by name, to read them off the passbooks andmemorize as many as possible. The primary idea was to make the savingsand loan office a warm and friendly place to do business. I did a storyboardon a little, mean, old, nasty lady who was avoided like the plague whenshe walked down the street.

  Mothers snatched their kids from in front of her, shades were pulledwhen she passed by and men crossed the street to avoid her. Then, whenshe comes into the savings and loan, she's treated royally and called byname. Simple, but when properly produced, it proved quite effective.

  On Friday, I made my dazzling pitch, the client bought the campaign andI was off and running.

  With a budget below three thousand dollars a spot, I concentrated on thetalent and chintzed on the production. I coaxed Margaret Hamilton, sobeloved as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, to play the mean littleold lady. She was a marvelous, talented woman, kind and approachable toeveryone, regaling the pr
oduction crew with stories about the making ofWizard. During the camera scenes, when she turned and faced the cameraafter having a pert little teller call her by name, Margaret's taut,prune face lit up like a Christmas tree. Then I had the famous actor ofthe forties and fifties, Richard Carlson, do the voice over. "Just whenyou thought you hadn't a friend in the world, isn't it nice to knowsomebody cares enough to remember your name?" Then came the savings andloan logo before the fade-out.

  I produced a series of commercials featuring the great character actorsCharlie Dell, who was on Evening Shade; Mike Mazurki, who playedgangsters in the classic movie mysteries; Joey Ross from Sergeant Bilkoand Car Fifty-four, Where Are You' " and little Judith Lowery, who wasMother Dexter on the Rhoda show. And last but not least, TedKnight, who played Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Characteractors, to my way of thinking, are the finest people in the moviebusiness.