• Dirk Pitt Revealed • Yahoo! Chat December 15,1999 • CNN Hunley Discovered_8-7-2000 • CNN December 2, 2002 •

The reason why I copied it instead of linking it to the actual page is because I'm not really sure if Yahoo will archive this for very much longer.  I could be wrong but I just wanted to be on the safe side.  But if you prefer to go to the actual page it self then just click here.

Transcript of Yahoo! Chat with Clive Cussler
December 15, 1999

Yahoomc: OK folks -- here he is -- Please say hello to Clive Cussler!
author_clive_cussler: Hello. Greetings!
author_clive_cussler: Here we are.
 

jackdubrul asks: I could tell that you realy enjoyed writing Atlantis Found. It showed. I am curious about your reason for moving from S&S to Putnam.
author_clive_cussler: It was a matter of a variety of reasons. There was a difference in money of course.
author_clive_cussler: Putnam is more progressive, they're off the line.
author_clive_cussler: They're really more business like.
author_clive_cussler: S&S, since their sale of their trade side, it's kind of slowed down.
author_clive_cussler: Putnam is far more progressive.
 

leolover27_99 asks: When are you going to be on TV? the ARC of Atlantis Found mentioned TV appearances.
author_clive_cussler: Not really. It's always been funny, a lot of authors have been on TV.
author_clive_cussler: I used to be, but the past couple of years, I've been finding lots of shipwrecks and such.
author_clive_cussler: I'm kind of this old icon in the corner.
author_clive_cussler: I've never been a media darling.
author_clive_cussler: I don't pay big money to a PR or publicity agent. I have a girl in Arizona who fields things.
author_clive_cussler: I'm not out there promoting all the time.
 

tzu69 asks: Hi Clive, loved Atlantis Found. It's one of your best. Will there be a sequesl to the NUMA Files series. If so, do you plan to collaborate with Paul Kemprecos again and when do you expect the book to come out?
author_clive_cussler: Yes.
author_clive_cussler: There will be another one out in about 8 months w/ Kemprecos.
author_clive_cussler: That's a spin-off series, so many people have called in asking if I'm dumping Dirk Pitt.
author_clive_cussler: That's not the case at all.
author_clive_cussler: Pitt has returned and he will return at all.
author_clive_cussler: The NUMA Files series is a spin-off like the Star Trek Next Generation.
 

leolover27_99 asks: Is Atlantis Found the end? With Dirk and Al getting married, is the series now over?
author_clive_cussler: No, I think I always tease at the end that they're going to get married.
author_clive_cussler: But something will happen in the next book where they don't get married.
author_clive_cussler: Nobody wants them to get married.
 

jaysworld69 asks: Is there going to be a movie, ever?
author_clive_cussler: I don't know.
author_clive_cussler: They botched up Raise the Titanic 20 years ago
author_clive_cussler: So I took the books off the market
author_clive_cussler: I've been very reluctant to sell to Hollywood again.
author_clive_cussler: Unless I have script and casting approval.
author_clive_cussler: Which they don't want to give.
 

jaysworld69 asks: If there was a movie, who would play Dirk, Al, and Admr. Sandecker?
author_clive_cussler: I don't have any particular actor in mind.
author_clive_cussler: But I would like him to not be a big, well-known actor.
author_clive_cussler: Let's say Harrison Ford was Dirk Pitt, you wouldn't see Dirk Pitt, you'd see Harrison Ford.
author_clive_cussler: Like Sean Connery was unknown but he bacame James Bond
author_clive_cussler: and that's what I would like to see.
author_clive_cussler: I don't know about Al or Adm. Sandecker.
author_clive_cussler: I've never seen anyone who leaped out at me and said "I'm Al or Sandecker."
 

cybercraz_98 asks: Your books are so adventurous that I would like to see someone like Steven Spielberg do movies of your books
author_clive_cussler: Well, so would I!
author_clive_cussler: He can do my books anytime.
author_clive_cussler: When Raise the Titanic came out, it was 79 and Indiana Jones came out in 80.
author_clive_cussler: I cried, because when I saw Indiana Jones, I thought that's what Pitt should have been in Raise the Titantic.
 

girlfromspain_us asks: I noticed you used a Jack Ryan reference along with James Bond. How about John Clark (Rainbow 6)? Would you ever consider using a Clancy character in one of your upcoming novels?
author_clive_cussler: I couldn't do it legally.
author_clive_cussler: In Night Probe, I did skirt and use a James Bond character.
author_clive_cussler: I called him Brian Shaw, but everybody knew he was James Bond - an older James Bond.
author_clive_cussler: He was in his 60's.
 

leolover27_99 asks: I seem to remember that NUMA Files was going to be a TV series. Any developments on that?
author_clive_cussler: No, I haven't heard anything. You're ahead of me on that!
author_clive_cussler: I've been approached on my shipwreck adventures to do a kind of underwater shipwreck series or program.
 

dldenney1 asks: Any thoughts on the recovery of the Mercury craft?
author_clive_cussler: Well, that's already been done.
author_clive_cussler: They found it and I think they're raising it.
author_clive_cussler: I think it's just terrific that they've done it.
 

stargrl24_99 asks: how did u come up with the idea fo a character like dirk?
author_clive_cussler: I started writing Dirk back in 1965 or 66. I used my son's name - he was only 6 months at the time.
author_clive_cussler: My height and weight - 6ft. 3 and 185 pounds. Made his eyes green.
author_clive_cussler: He's certainly scored better with the girls!
author_clive_cussler: When we both started out, we were both 36 and now he's around 40.
author_clive_cussler: And I'm 68 and it ain't fair!!!!!
 

PWJD007_23 asks: Would you ever bring Brian Shaw back in a future novel as he was a good character
author_clive_cussler: He really was a good character. Critics screamed that he was James Bond.
author_clive_cussler: And it kind of came out in the end.
author_clive_cussler: I haven't really thought of bringing him back,
author_clive_cussler: but it's a possibility.
 

girlfromspain_us asks: Appreciate the Brian Shaw connection. Do you and Tom Clancy ever have a dialogue. Perhaps outside of the legal framework, Tom would be flattered if let's say, John Clark would grace the stage and help Dirk out in some way.
author_clive_cussler: No, but I endorsed The Hunt for Red October and Tom has given me a nice quote on my books.
author_clive_cussler: He called me years ago and asked what do I think if I continue with Jack Ryan.
author_clive_cussler: And I said Dirk Pitt didn't hurt me any!
author_clive_cussler: But I haven't talked to Tom in quite some time.
author_clive_cussler: He did give me a great quote. He said a new book by Clive Cussler is like a visit from an old friend.
 

cybercraz_98 asks: Did you see the movie "Titanic"? and if so what did you think of how the did the sinking?
author_clive_cussler: I thought it was terrific.
author_clive_cussler: It did not break up above the surface, that came under the surface.
author_clive_cussler: But other than that, it was great.
author_clive_cussler: Cameron was very accurate about 90% of it, but he took a little liberty here and there.
author_clive_cussler: The only part I disliked was the fat, foul-mouthed slob in the beginning and the end.
author_clive_cussler: Shouting all those 4-letter words in front of the old lady.
 

gdwtch_1999 asks: Do you feel that finding Atlantis will answer questions about the mystery or create more questions?
author_clive_cussler: Atlantis will never be found.
author_clive_cussler: Because it never existed.
author_clive_cussler: Plato wrote Atlantis just like I write fiction myself.
author_clive_cussler: I believe it's pure fiction.
author_clive_cussler: Geologically there's no continent that could have sunk in the middle of the Atlantic.
author_clive_cussler: Edward Casey, the psychic, said it was in the Caribbean.
author_clive_cussler: It can't be.
author_clive_cussler: If there was an earlier civilization in the Caribbean, something would have been found.
author_clive_cussler: I don't think Atlantis ever existed, Plato just made it up like I make up my stories.
 

tzu69 asks: In Sahara, you made a reference to the "faked" moon landing program. Did you actually believe that?
author_clive_cussler: My personal belief is that we never went to the moon.
author_clive_cussler: I could go on for hours about this.
author_clive_cussler: We can't even put a lander on Mars.
author_clive_cussler: The Apollo program worked every time . . .
Yahoomc: Hey DudsMom98 -- We're getting your stuff -- Ask us a question and we'll post it!
 

knitem_45 asks: Apologize, have not read book, could you synopsize it?
author_clive_cussler: You know my plots are so convaluted.
author_clive_cussler: Pitt finds Atlantis - how about that.
author_clive_cussler: Have you got half an hour. I just don't write simple plots.
 

bookreader42 asks: Just finished Atlantis Found, what is next for you?
author_clive_cussler: I'm playing around. Lightning hasn't struck.
author_clive_cussler: I've been doing a lot of research.
author_clive_cussler: I just don't have a hook on a good concept yet.
 

rudigunn asks: How did you think up the chase from Gordon's Corners in the executive jet? It was one of the best chase scenes in the series. Thanks for writing these books.
author_clive_cussler: I just thought that I needed a little more action at the end, so I just kind of put that in.
author_clive_cussler: I had to do lots of research and figure out the streets and the telephone poles.
author_clive_cussler: When I write I'm researching constantly.
 

stargrl24_99 asks: do u plan on doing any other books with Kurt Austin? That book Serpent was great.
author_clive_cussler: Yes, we're working on the next one of the NUMA files which has to do with the coming draughts and water
author_clive_cussler: loss they expect in the future.
 

tzu69 asks: Clive, what's your take on the world of the internet? Did you ever think you'd have the opportunity to chat with so many of your fans?
author_clive_cussler: No, I never thought that when I started writing that much would come of it.
author_clive_cussler: I never knew there would be so many people that I'd reach out and touch.
 

rick364_1999 asks: Mr Cussler: What was the inspiration for the friendship between Pitt and Giordino? It is so trusting and unconditional. Like brothers. Have you ever had such a friendship with someone?
author_clive_cussler: Yes, the real Al Giordino is the only character who truly exists.
author_clive_cussler: I made up all the other characters, but Al is drawn off an old Air Force buddy
author_clive_cussler: whose name is Al Giorano
author_clive_cussler: Girodano - who is a retired stone mason in Florida.
author_clive_cussler: He's just as I described him in the books.
Yahoomc: Hey folks -- We're chatitng with Clive Cussler!
Yahoomc: Keep sending in your questions...
 

girlfromspain_us asks: Clive, the big question: is Summer Moran really dead?
author_clive_cussler: Not really. Let say she's died in the meantime. But she lived and had a son.
author_clive_cussler: I've often referred to her in books - as Pitt's long lost love.
 

davethoms00 asks: Many of us perhaps dream of being a mystery/action writer - do you think it is harder or easier these days for a new writer to make it?
author_clive_cussler: It's much harder. And I'm an old fashioned adventure writer.
author_clive_cussler: It's almost, but not quite impossible, to make it today.
author_clive_cussler: An editor or an agent received almost 50 manuscripts a week.
author_clive_cussler: Unless one just knocks them off their seats, they don't pursue it.
author_clive_cussler: They only read the first page.
 

jackdubrul asks: How long does it take you to write the first draft of one of your novels?
author_clive_cussler: I don't do drafts.
author_clive_cussler: I just plug away and that's ti.
author_clive_cussler: When I finish a chapter, that's it.
 

skiingincali_99 asks: Clive where do you do most of your reasearch?
author_clive_cussler: All over.
author_clive_cussler: Off the Internet as well. It give me a good starting point.
author_clive_cussler: When it comes to research, I contact people who are knowledgable in a particular subject.
 

alexiskha16 asks: Mr. Cussler....what's the best thing about being an author and what's the worst
author_clive_cussler: Best thing: Nobody recognizes you!
author_clive_cussler: I can eat in a restaurant and nobody bothers you.
author_clive_cussler: Worse: Probably complicated - cocktail parties.
author_clive_cussler: People come up and ask "What do you do?"
author_clive_cussler: and I'd say, I'm a writer.
author_clive_cussler: "What do you write?"
author_clive_cussler: I'd say fiction and adventure books.
author_clive_cussler: "Have I read any?" They'd say.
author_clive_cussler: So I name off a few and they'll come back with
author_clive_cussler: "I read Dick Francis and Crichton, but I've never heard of you!"
 

Stu_From_London asks: What would you consider to be the best (most interesting / exciting) wreck that you have dived on?
author_clive_cussler: At the moment, it would be the Confederate submarine Hunley.
author_clive_cussler: Because it had such a wonderful history, sinking three times and killing all it's crews.
author_clive_cussler: Finally becoming the first submarine to ever sink a war ship.
author_clive_cussler: We found that in 1995.
author_clive_cussler: And they hope to raise it next year.
author_clive_cussler: Next wreck I'd love to find would be John Paul Jones' ship.
author_clive_cussler: The Bonhomme Richard.
author_clive_cussler: That went down in the North Sea.
author_clive_cussler: It's a tough one to find.
 

rowdy1953 asks: are you working on any new expeditions at the moment?
author_clive_cussler: We found the Carpathia which picked up the Titanic survivors and was later torpedoed in World War I
author_clive_cussler: We want to go back and put cameras down on it.
author_clive_cussler: And then we want to search for the Savannah
author_clive_cussler: which was the first steamboat to cross the Atlantic.
author_clive_cussler: And later grounded on Fire Island.
author_clive_cussler: in New York.
 

rick364_1999 asks: What did you thinkg of the TNT cable movie of the Hunley?
author_clive_cussler: It was okay.
author_clive_cussler: It didn't do much on the summary.
author_clive_cussler: It was mostly on the characters and it wasn't very accurate.
author_clive_cussler: I wasn't consulted on the project and even the end just said that it was found in 1995 and didn't mention us at all.
 

Stu_From_London asks: Is raising wrecks (like Hunley) the right thing to do? Or should they be left for future exploration in-situ?
author_clive_cussler: Why leave it?
author_clive_cussler: Do it now or later.
author_clive_cussler: Do it now, because they're disintegrating.
author_clive_cussler: In another hundred years, the Titanic will just be a lump of junk on the bottom.
 

tzu69 asks: Clive, you do something crazy for your birthday every five years. Any plans for your 70th yet?
author_clive_cussler: Yes, I'm skydiving. First time.
author_clive_cussler: I bungee jumped on 60 and rode a bicycle to L.A. on the 50th.
 

dldenney1 asks: What is the next great car you plan to buy?
author_clive_cussler: Oh gosh, I don't know!
author_clive_cussler: It's just whatever comes across the classic car auction block that grabs me.
author_clive_cussler: I used to search for cars, but my warehouse is almost full, so I'm not really actively searching like I used to.
author_clive_cussler: The last car I bought was a 1928 Stutz.
author_clive_cussler: Marvellous engine, huge, big.
 

diver1502 asks: How many cars do you have?
author_clive_cussler: 85.
author_clive_cussler: I've known collectors who have 1000.
author_clive_cussler: They all run too.
 

davethoms00 asks: Mr. Cussler - will you ever do a cameo character appearance again (as done in Flood Tide)?
author_clive_cussler: I've done them in all the books since Dragon. I've had a walk-on.
author_clive_cussler: When Pitt and I meet, it's always like the name is familiar, but I can't place the face.
author_clive_cussler: I've walked on all of them since Dragon, including this one.
author_clive_cussler: I did it originally, as a joke, but I received over 300 letters saying what fun.
author_clive_cussler: Now it's like Hitchcock, I appear in every book.
author_clive_cussler: It's fun to do things other authors don't do.
 

rowdy1953 asks: Are you ever going to put your cars anywhere so people can come and take a look?
author_clive_cussler: No, I let car clubs come in. But to open them to the public just doesn't work out very well.
author_clive_cussler: There are all sorts of legal problems.
 

black_cat_owner asks: any chance of starting a web site about the car collection?
author_clive_cussler: I've never thought about it. I'm planning to do a car book, Dirk Pitt and Clive Cussler's car collection in about a year or so.
 

dldenney1 asks: Clive...how do you keep Dirk so sexy yet remain a faithful man? Is he a "release" for you?
author_clive_cussler: You'll have to talk to my wife on that one!
author_clive_cussler: No , he's not a release, I don't have time to full around@
author_clive_cussler: I think Pitt has mellowed.
author_clive_cussler: Like myself, he really admires and adores women.
author_clive_cussler: Women are so much fun and enjoyable and it shows in him.
author_clive_cussler: He appreciates women.
author_clive_cussler: And he's not a lech or anything like that.
 

heard_no_more asks: Mr. Cussler...What is the gravesite at the end of Inca Gold?
author_clive_cussler: Oh, that's interesting. I took an archealogical tour through the Sonoran desert in Mexico.
author_clive_cussler: And in one small village at a cathedral with a graveyard, I found this tombstone in English
author_clive_cussler: to this young girl.
author_clive_cussler: And I thought, how did she come to be here?
author_clive_cussler: There was a marvellous inscription on her tombstone.
author_clive_cussler: So I really put it in the book as an interesting side bar - in hopes that somebody might write me and tell me who she was, but noone did.
author_clive_cussler: And people always ask me, why was she in there, because it didn't have anything to do with the plot.
author_clive_cussler: One fellow wrote and said his minister used to close his sermon with that inscription and another one found it on a gravestone in England.
author_clive_cussler: The closest I could come, was that Mormons went down into Mexico to form a colony and the best possibility was that she was the daughter of a Mormon missionary
author_clive_cussler: because she was only ten years old.
 

ebola_rob asks: Clive, I have just heard you are on-line, so fullest apologies if I am repeating a question. I am always dismayed whenever I read critics demeaning your work - how do you respond to them?
author_clive_cussler: I don't mind. I know that people like Ebola_rob enjoy it so why should I care what the critics think.
author_clive_cussler: I write to the readers.
author_clive_cussler: My job is to entertain them.
 

jackdubrul asks: Do you know what ever happened to the real ZMC-2 that you used in Cyclops?
author_clive_cussler: It was scrapped, in fact the fellow sent me a piece of it.
author_clive_cussler: It was scrapped a few years later.
 

leolover27_99 asks: Any plans for another nonfiction book like the one a few years ago?
author_clive_cussler: Yes, when I find a few more shipwrecks then I'll do a sequel to "The SeaHunters."
 

Shawn_E_mail asks: what kind of surroundings do you need to do good writing?
author_clive_cussler: I just have to face a wall.
author_clive_cussler: A blank wall because them my mind starts to imagine things.
author_clive_cussler: If I look out a window, I start to drift.
 

davethoms00 asks: After all these years, do you ever get tired of writing? Or do you enjoy more? (please keep writing!)
author_clive_cussler: I don't neccessarily enjoy it more. It becomes harder.
author_clive_cussler: But I still enjoy it because when I type the end, I feel as though I've achieved something.
author_clive_cussler: I also like being paroled from prison when it's over!A
 

tzu69 asks: I know you're wrapping up a book tour, but will there be other tour stops after the holidays?
author_clive_cussler: Oh no, I have one more stop, Albuquereque and them my wife is going to meet me.
author_clive_cussler: And then we're going to drive to Santa Fe for a couple of days.
 

PWJD007_23 asks: Will you ever let Dirk and Austin team up in a future novel?
author_clive_cussler: I don't know. I've never thought about that come to think about it!
author_clive_cussler: Pitt and Giordino will walk on.
author_clive_cussler: I've had them meet in an elevator and they're really going to Atlantis found.
author_clive_cussler: It's fun for me - doing what other authors don't do.
author_clive_cussler: I owe everything where I am today to my readers and I'd just like to say that I'm extremely grateful that they enjoy the books.
author_clive_cussler: And I'll do my best not to disappoint them.
Yahoomc: Hey folks -- Thanks for joining us today!
Yahoomc: Be sure to check out the Yahoo! Author Series at
Yahoomc: authors.yahoo.com
Yahoomc: Thanks to Mr. Cussler for joining us...
Yahoomc: and thank to all of you for all of your terrific questions.
Yahoomc: So long!