Clive Cussler

Literary Specialty: Page-turning action adventures

The Story: 13 bestsellers, more than 70 million copies sold worldwide

Date of Birth: July 15, 1931

Place of Birth: Aurora, Illinois

Education: Pasadena City College 1949-51; Orange Coast College, California State University, Los Angeles

Family Ties: Wife, Barbara Knight; three children, Teri, Dirk, Dana; and two grandchildren

Did You Know?: Cussler, who worked for many years in advertising, was one of the copywriters responsible for the Ajax White Knight commercial slogan, "It's stronger than dirt."

I Yam What I Yam Quote: "I look upon myself not so much as a writer as I do an entertainer. It's my job to entertain the reader in such a way that he or she feels that they got their money's worth when they finish the book."

Clive Cussler is acclaimed worldwide as the Grandmaster of Adventure, a title richly deserved given that there are over 70,000,000 copies of his best-selling Dirk Pitt¨ novels in print. He got his start in advertising, first as an award-winning copy writer, and then as creative director for two of the nation's largest agencies. His initial foray into fiction was in 1973, when he wrote his first Dirk Pitt¨ novel.

Since then he has continued to write Dirk Pitt¨ adventures while living a life that nearly parallels that of his action hero. Like Pitt, Cussler enjoys discovering and collecting things of historical significance. With NUMA (National Underwater & Marine Agency, a non profit group begun by Cussler) he has had an amazing record of finding over 60 shipwrecks, including the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley and the recent discovery of LaSalle's ship L'Aimable, near Galveston TX. Cussler also has a renowned and extensive classic car collection, which features over 80 examples of custom coachwork.

Along with being Chairman of NUMA, he is also a fellow of the Explorers Club (which honored him with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration), the Royal Geographic Society and the American Society of Oceanographers. Married to Barbara Knight for 40 years, with three children and two grandchildren, he divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona.

Interview with Clive Cussler

His major novels are:

Did you know that Clive Cussler:
* was an advertising creative director?

Flood Tide	Cussler takes Dirk Pitt back to the sea -- and to the Mississippi River -- for another action adventure. This time, Pitt, who has previously searched for Cleopatra's barge, Lincoln's body, Inca gold and the Titanic,is hunting for a sunken ship containing a fabulous archeological treasure -- the bones of Peking Man.

The Sea Hunters

For the millions of Dirk Pitt fans comes Clive Cussler's first nonfiction book. With his NUMA foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to the discovery and preservation of historic shipwrecks. Cussler and his volunteers have discovered more than 60 ships. In Sea Hunters, he has chosen 13 of the most interesting of these finds and, in gripping detail, describes their lives as working ships, their eventual demise, and their discovery. (General History)

Shock Wave

In Shock Wave, Dirk Pitt® meets the most intriguing and sinister villain of his adventurous and legendary career -- a billionaire Australian diamond king with three beautiful Amazon daughters -- in a conflict thatis waged above and below the sea for the survival of vast numbers of sea creatures and more than a million human beings. In 1856, a British clipper ship sinks after a storm while transporting convicts to an Australian penal colony. After horrible carnage on a raft, the pitiful survivors, among them Betsy Fletcher and Jess Dorsett, are washed up on a solitary tropical island, where they discover an immense source of diamonds and found a powerful and wealthy dynasty. One hundred forty years later, Maeve Fletcher, one of their descendants, is stranded on an island in Antarctica with a party of passengers after their cruise ship seemingly abandons them. Dirk Pitt, on an expedition to find the source of a deadly plague that is killing dolphins and seals in the Weddell Sea, finds Maeve and the passengers and rescues them from death. When Pitt later uncovers the cause of the plague, he discovers that Maeve's father, Arthur Dorsett, and her two sisters are responsible because of their diamond-mining technology. A deadly race develops to stop Dorsett from continuing his murderous mining operations and to head off a disaster that will kill millions. Pitt's struggle to foil Dorsett's ruthless plan to destroy the market for diamonds and thus gain a monopoly of his own takes him from harrowing adventures off the west coast of Canadato being cast adrift in the Tasman Sea in a small boat with his good friend Al Giordino and the lovely Maeve Dorsett. Through trial by storms, hunger, and thirst, Pitt's inventive genius and relentless drive to survive eventually bring him to a final, spine-chilling confrontation with Arthur Dorsett himself, at the very heart of his domain, with the clock ticking against devastating tragedy -- a confrontation in which Pitt gains triumph, but at the cost of great personal loss, as he discovers a lethal surprise that will shock and astonish the reader. Only Clive Cussler -- the Grandmaster of Adventure -- could have written a story this suspenseful.