They're incredibly cooperative and uncomplaining.
They live normal lives and never have a bad word to say about anybody.
While I was producing the television commercials, I was creating a radiocampaign for a company called Deep Rock Water. I dreamed up an old guywho lived in Deep Rock's well by the name of Drink worthy, who spokewith a Maine Down easterner accent through the versatile voice of JohnnyHarding, a Denver radio personality. Deep Rock was still running thoseads twenty-five years later.
Very quickly, the awards began to roll in for both accounts. SeveralCleos and International Broadcast Awards all came to the agency, alongwith first places at both the Venice and Chicago film festivals.
Hull/Mefford was on a roll. They merged with another agency run by twoladies, Mary Wolfe and Jan Weir, added staff throughout the office andbegan welcoming new clients who walked through the door now that we hadgained a creative reputation.
I was raised to seventeen thousand dollars a year, made vice presidentof the creative department and given a company car, which was all verywell and good but left me little time to write books. My littlecreative gang, the art directors George Yaeger and Errol Beauchamp,along with Ashley O'Neal, our Southern accountant, always had lunchacross 17th Street in downtown Denver at an old hangout called Shanners.A terrific waitress named Brenda never failed to have our private boothreserved. I always ordered a tuna sandwich, heavy on the mayo, withan extra pickle and a Bombay gin martini. I really lived high. Theonly downside was I had no time for Dirk Pitt.
Then my ad world came crashing down.
I was offered a promotion to executive vice president but turned it downbecause I preferred to remain in the creative end. So the agency headshired an account supervisor from a New York agency. I doubt whether hecould explain it, I know I can't, but when we shook hands as we wereintroduced, it was instant dislike. To this day, I can't put my fingeron it.
He was a corporate infighter, and I wasn't. It took him only threemonths to get the ear of the bosses. I was called in one day and toldmy two-hour martini lunches were not acceptable and to clean out mydesk. Dumb old me, I thought as long as I did my job and won awards andpleased the clients, my job was secure. I looked up at God and askedhim, "God, let me keep my job." And God looked down at me and said,"Why?" I swore then and there I would never work for anybody ever againuntil my dying gasp."
CRAIG DIRGO: So you're out of work again.
CLIVE CUSSLER: That was about the size of it. Actually, the sacking wasa blessing in disguise. I went home, returned my antennae and wroteRaise the Titanic! in one corner of my unfinished basement, and therest, as they say, is history.
Peter's persistence finally paid off. He found a publisher willing topublish Dirk Pitt for the first time. A little third-level paperbackpublisher called Pyramid printed about fifty thousand copies, soldthirty-two thousand and paid me the munificent sumof five thousand dollars for The Mediterranean Caper. The book soldretail for seventy-five cents.
One Saturday morning, as I was going to the lumber yard for somematerial to finish the basement, the mailman handed me the mail. Isorted through it and found a letter from the Mystery Writers ofAmerica. I opened the envelope and found a printed form letter.
Thinking it was an invitation to join the club, I merely glanced at it,then froze and read it more carefully. It was notification that TheMediterranean Caper had been nominated as one of the five best paperbackmysteries of 1973. My peers, no matter how deluded, thought I couldwrite. I didn't win, nor have I ever been nominated again.
But I've always owed the MW of A for that shot in the arm when the skieswere gray.
Less than a year later, Dodd Mead bought Iceberg for five thousanddollars. I was coming up in the world. They printed five thousandhardcovers and sold thirty-two hundred. To collectors, a pristine bookand jacket can now pull as high as a thousand dollars. Even an old copyof The Mediterranean Caper by Pyramid can bring three hundred dollars,providing you can find one. I finished Raise the Titanic!and sent it off to Peter, who read it, approved and relayed it to myeditor at Dodd Mead. A rejection came back within ten days.
Oh, the shame of it all. Rejected by my own editor and publisher. Itwas me against the world, and the world was winning. Peter sent therenounced manuscript to Putnam, but the editor there wanted a massiverewrite, and I refused to do it. Out of the blue, Viking Press boughtit, asked for very few changes and paid me seventy-five hundred dollars.
Then strange forces went to work.
An editor from Macmillan in London was visiting an editor friend atViking and heard about the story.
Since, as he put it, the Titanic was a British ship, he asked for a copyof the manuscript to read on the plane back to England. He liked it andwanted to buy it. Luckily, Peter had sold Iceberg to Nick Austin atSphere, a small publishing house in London, for, I believe, about fourhundred dollars. Since Sphere had the first option, they put in a bidfor Raise the Titanic! that was promptly topped by Macmillan. When thebidding war was over, Sphere owned the book, paying twenty-two thousanddollars, which was rather a healthy sum for Britain in those days.
A week before, I had pulled off one of my craftier moves. Somehow I gotthe gut feeling that things were failing my way. I called Peter andasked him if I might get the rights back to The Mediterranean Caper. Hereplied it shouldn't be a problem since it was out of print.
He was right. Pyramid signed over the rights without a protest. Atthat time, Jonathan Dodd at Dodd Mead notified Peter that PlayboyPublications had offered four thousand dollars for the paperback rightsto Iceberg. Peter commented that since it was the only game in town, Imight as well play. Again, something tugged at my mind. I instructedPeter, "Tell Jonathan that I'll pay him five thousand dollars for theexclusive rights to Iceberg." Peter thought I was crazy. "Authors donot buy back rights," he admonished me. "It just isn't done in thepublishing business. Besides, it's a dumb play. You split the fourthousand dollars with Dodd Mead, so it would be stupid to offer themthree thousand dollars up and above the offered price from Playboy."
Following my instincts and with a mania to own what's mine, I commanded,"Offer Jonathan the five thousand dollars."
Two hours later, Peter called back. "It's a mystery to me why, butJonathan okayed the deal."
"How can he miss?" I replied. "He's making an extra three thousanddollars."
Talk about guts. Barbara and I had all of four hundred dollars in thebank. We might have tried to borrow from our folks, but I rightlyassumed they would think I was crazy, too. So I took out a loan on ouraging 1969 Mercury, and Barbara managed to borrow the rest through hercredit union at Memorex, where she worked as a secretary. In myenthusiasm, I whisked off a check to Dodd Mead before my deposits hadcleared the bank, and the check bounced in New York just as the momentumbegan building on Raise the Titanic! Jonathan Dodd, being the truegentleman he is, honored the deal when the check finally cleared.
The British interest in Raise the Titanic! then boomeranged back toAmerica, with Peter officiating over an auction among the Americanpaperback publishers. Never having experienced a book auction before, Iwas in the dark until Peter explained the procedure. A floor price isset, and the publishers bid up from that amount, the high bid being thewinner.
CRAIG DIRGO: Were you confident this would finally allow you to writefull-time?
CLIVE CUSSLER: When Barbara walked out of the house on the morning ofthe auction to drive to her office, I said jokingly, and I swear to GodI truly was being facetious, "When the bidding gets to two hundred fiftythousand, you can quit."
At 10:00 A.M. Rocky Mountain Standard Time, I called her at work andtold her to quit. Barbara walked right in and gave her boss two weeks'notice.
"the bidding ultimately went to eight hundred forty thousand dollars,with Bantam Books as the winning bidder. Friends and acquaintancesoften came up to me and said, "Congratulations on your overnightsuccess."
My reply was, "Yeah, eleven years," the time that had elapsed since Ifirst sat down
at that old portable Smith Corona typewriter at a desk inmy son's bedroom in that little tract house in Costa Mesa, California.
Later, when the dust from the auction had settled, the management atBantam was stunned to learn that Raise the Titanic! was the third bookin a series.
Fearful that I would sell The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg to anotherpublisher and thereby cut into their sales of Raise the Titanic! theypaid me forty thousand dollars apiece for both books, with the expresspurpose of simply keeping them off the market.
Fortunately, an editor took them home over the weekend and read them.
On Monday, having become a believer in Dirk Pitt, he sold the editorialcommittee on publishing them both. The Mediterranean Caper and Icebergsince have gone on to sell many millions of copies around the world.
My first and only review from the New York Times was a classic. Thereviewer wrote, "If good books received roses and bad books skunks,Cussler would get four skunks." With depth of understanding. This hadto be a reviewer who took almost sensual pleasure from his craft. Icalled Peter and grumbled. "They didn't have to be that nasty."
And Peter came back with the classic reply. "Listen," he saidseriously, "when we start getting good literary reviews, we're in bigtrouble."
He was right, of course. The highly touted literary books seldom sellbig-time. My own observation of the self-congratulatory establishmentwriters is that although they create worldly-wise prose, most of themcan't plot worth a grunt.
My favorite sinister review came out of the Christian Science Monitor.
It took up nearly two-thirds of a page and was very tongue-in-cheek.
The reviewer criticized and nitpicked every page of Inca Gold.
When I reached the end of the review, I broke up in fits of laughter.
It seems it had been written and sent to the Monitor by thesuperintendent of sewers for the city of Muncie, Indiana. I've savedthat one for posterity.
CRAIG DIRGO: So it would seem at this point you had it made.
CLIVE CUSSLER: Things were better, that's for sure.
When the first royalty check came in, Barbara, the kids and I celebratedby buying a new refrigerator and a used Fiat sports car.
Then I went back to my corner of the basement and started Vixen 03, butnot before Barbara and I flew to New York to meet my new editor andpublisher. Our arrival in the Big Apple was timely. Peter had justconcluded negotiations to sell Raise the Titanic! to Lord Lew Grade andMartin Stagger of Marble Arch Productions to be made into a motionpicture.
To celebrate, Peter and his lovely wife, Diane, and Barbara and I wentout to dinner at a restaurant called Sign of the Dove. While waitingfor dessert, I turned to Barbara and said, "I think the time has come."
Peter and I had now been together for six years, and he had persistedthrough all the rejections, believing in me, until we finally achieved abreakthrough. He has always possessed a ton of integrity, and I hadbeen reluctant to tell him about Charlie Winthrop for fear he might dropme. But now I was his biggest client and knew he would think twicebefore making such a decision. I confessed my scam to get him to readmy manuscripts with great trepidation.
When I finished, Peter looked blank for a moment and then laughedhimself under the table.
When he recovered, he said, "Oh my God. I always thought CharlieWinthrop was some guy I met when I was drunk at a cocktail party."
Peter and I have been together now for twenty nine years. We have thesecond-longest-running agent-author relationship behind thethirty-one-year association of Henry Morrison and Robert Ludlum.
He is my dearest friend, and since he left William Morris to launch hisown agency almost twenty years ago, our, only contract has been ahandshake.
Ninety percent of what I have achieved through Dirk Pitt and his pals Iowe to Peter Lampack. He is an honest but tough negotiator who iswidely respected throughout the publishing field.
The following year, I finished Vixen 03 and mailed it off to Peter inNew York. Tom Ginsberg, whose family had run Viking Press for severaldecades, also bought the new book and paid a generous advance, perhapsbelieving I might become a popular author. Unfortunately, Tom soldViking to Penguin, a foreign publisher that overturned the oldmanagement. Two young hotshots (there's that word again)
were put in control and commenced to change the entire face of VikingPress. They alienated everyone in sight. Established authors fled thehouse, including Judith Guest and Saul Bellow. The new corporate chiefsfelt that since Vixen 03 had been purchased by the previous management,it wasn't their personal property. They sent me out on a book tour withlittle or no advertising under less budget than Willie Loman had sellingneckties out of cheap hotel rooms. Ebenezer Scrooge spent money like alottery winner next to these guys. They put me on night flights so theairline would feed me. They booked me in cheap hotels. The entire tourwas chaos and confusion.
The smart thing after this kind of treatment was to flee the publishinghouse for another. But how?
They had dibs on my next book. A manifestation of Cussler's law is thateverybody in their life has accomplished something that will paydividends eventually. It turns out I had knocked out a silly manuscripton the Denver advertising follies right after Raise the Titanic! as acatharsis to being fired.
It must have taken all of sixty days to write the farce before I threwit in a closet. The tale was called I Went to Denver but It Was Closed.Off it went to Peter, who submitted it to Viking's editors.
The rejection was incredibly prompt, and, having satisfied our optionagreement, we were free to take the next Dirk Pitt book to anotherpublisher. In this case, it was Bantam, which wanted to get into thehardcover market. They bought Night Probe! which I always consider asone of my better plots.
CRAIG DIRGO: So you landed at Bantam. CLIVE CUSSLER: Luckily, it worked out OK. One day, as I talked to mynew editor about minor changes in the manuscript, he asked where NightProbe!came in sequence in relation to the earlier books. I casually mentionedPacific Vortex as being the first book to introduce the characters, butit was never published. He sounded stunned. "What?"
he gasped. "There's another Dirk Pitt manuscript out there? How sooncan you get it to me?"
By now, since all the books were high on the bestseller list, all thepublishers saw were dollar signs. I called Peter and told him Bantamwanted to have a look at Pacific Vortex. "Not on your life," he cameback. "Publish that rag, and you're ruined."
Curious after not having looked at the manuscript in almost fifteenyears, I took it off the closet shelf where it was living under I Wentto Denver but It Was Closed, blew off the dust and began reading.
The Story was pretty good. It was just that my early style of writingleft much to be desired. I spent about three months rewriting it, thensent it to Peter with instructions to pass it along to Bantam. Peterwasn't a happy camper, but to make me happy, he gave it to my editor,who received it enthusiastically.
Months later, when Pacific Vortex was ready to be distributed, Petersaid he was going on vacation to Jamaica because he didn't want to bearound when the book bombed. I have to give Bantam credit, they did aterrific job on the book jacket, designing a double cover with acircular die cut on the outer one that opened to reveal a diver inside.
A week after the book hit the stands and the shelves, I sent Peter atelegram at his hotel in Jamaica. It read, "Screw YOU, Pacific VOrtexjust went number two on the New York Times paperback list."
Not long afterward, I had lunch with the president of Bantam. Irevealed that I was happy at last to have all my paperback books underone house and that I'd have taken less money to be there. He looked atme in shock, dropped his fork and muttered, "Well, I'll have you knowthat I was willing to pay more."
One-upmanship lives.
This little conversation came back to haunt me when I turned in my nextbook, Deep Six. After entering contract negotiations, Peter was stunnedwhen the head of Bantam offered less money for the new book than theyhad paid for Night Probe!
which was
their first hardcover to make the bestseller list and madethem a considerable sum of money. Peter told them in no uncertain termstheir train had jumped the track. Then they came back with the sameroyalty payment as before. I knew deep down inside that this ridiculouspetty haggling was due to the lunch.
CRAIG DIRGO: So it was time to switch publishers again?
CLIVE CUSSLER: It was time. Peter and I decided to throw the book onthe open market. Michael Korda of Simon & Schuster offered a muchhigher amount than Bantam, and I changed publishing houses.
CRAIG DIRGO: Let's talk about the layout of your books and your habit offeaturing your cars.
CLIVE CUSSLER: I've always had fun with the author photos on the books.
On Iceberg, I was pushed by a deadline, and since I was into diving butliving in Colorado, I put on an old wet suit and talked a friend intoshooting a black-and-white photo of me from the waist up surrounded bywater. What no 66 body knew was that I was standing in a pond in themiddle of a golf course. On the jacket of Raise the Titanic! I wore anIrish knit sweater that was about two sizes too large and was taken upin the back by seven or eight clothespins.