A Recipe for Making Books

It seems Cussler starts with reality and mixes in a cup or two of “What if....” That’s his recipe for making books.

Today, Cussler is an international best-selling author with books translated into more than 40 languages. His last 17 books have hit the New York Times fiction bestseller list. But unless it’s a really good act he’s got going, Clive Cussler is just a regular guy. No chaffeur, no huge household staff, no struggling college student doing grunt work research for Cussler’s next bestseller. He does his own research, most of it at least.

And when he can’t be the expert...

“I lean on people who happen to be experts,” Cussler said. “I do some research on the Internet now, but that has really come into play just in my last two books. In Shockwave I was using underwater acoustics, so I had an expert who figured out a plan.... In Sahara I went to an environmental chemist and he came up with cobalt,” said Cussler of his work with outside sources.

“Treasure was a ‘what if?’. What if they actually managed to remove the great artifacts from the Alexandria library?” Cussler mused. “That had to be one of the greatest libraries, and I thought it would be great fun to take it over sea. I started researching and thought, ‘What river?’ How about the Rio Grande? So, I took it up the Rio Grande and buried it in Texas.”

Saving the World

Decades before anyone ever heard of The Powerpuff Girls, Dirk Pitt and his NUMA buddies were busy saving the world before bedtime. In 1979, Cussler brought fiction to life when he established NUMA in the real world. According to the NUMA web page, the National Underwater & Marine Agency has found over 60 lost ships and submarines, including the CSS Louisiana, the General Slocum, the USS Housatonic and the Titanic’s latecomer rescuer, the Carpathia.

Of all NUMA’s successes, the one Cussler is most proud of is the CSS Hunley.

“It’s my biggest, partly because of what they are doing with it,” Cussler said. “They raised it. It’s still in the tank, leaching salt out of it.”

The side stories to the Hunley were undoubtedly part of the intrigue for Cussler. When the Hunley sank for the third and final time, it

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