Clive Cussler is an American adventure novelist and marine archaeologist. His thriller novels, many featuring the character Dirk Pitt, have reached The New York Times fiction best-seller list more than seventeen times. Cussler is the founder and chairman of the real-life National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has discovered more than sixty shipwreck sites and numerous other notable sunken underwater wreckage. He is the author of more than 50 books. Cussler owns a large collection of classic cars, several of which (driven by Pitt) appear in his novels.
VR: How did you start writing?
CC: My wife had a job with the local police department working nights doing dispatch and secretarial work. So it worked out really well, I would get home from my job as a copywriter in advertising, feed the kids and put them to bed and soon realize I have nothing to do. Then it hit me, maybe I’ll write a book. I didn’t have the great American novel in me so I thought I would do a little paperback series. I went out to the library and checked out all the Inspector Dupont and Edgar Allen Poe books at first, then Sherlock Holmes, Mike Hammer, I studied them all. Then I thought, what can I do that’s different? So I had been fiddling around the water and that’s how it all started.
