Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed By Clive Cussler with Craig ...

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Talk about guts. Barbara and I had all of four hundred dollars in the bank. We might have tried to
borrow from our folks, but I rightly assumed they would think I was crazy, too. So I took out a loan on
our aging 1969 Mercury, and Barbara managed to borrow the rest through her credit union at Memorex,
where she worked as a secretary. In my enthusiasm, I whisked off a check to Dodd Mead before my
deposits had cleared the bank, and the check bounced in New York just as the momentum began
building onRaise the Titanic! Jonathan Dodd, being the true gentleman he is, honored the deal when the
check finally cleared.
The British interest inRaise the Titanic! then boomeranged back to America, with Peter officiating
over an auction among the American paperback publishers. Never having experienced a book auction
before, I was in the dark until Peter explained the procedure. A floor price is set, and the publishers bid
up from that amount, the high bid being the winner.
CRAIG DIRGO:Were you confident this would finally allow you to write full-time?
CLIVE CUSSLER:When Barbara walked out of the house on the morning of the auction to drive to
her office, I said jokingly, and I swear to God I truly was being facetious, "When the bidding gets to two
hundred fifty thousand, you can quit."
At 10:00 A.M. Rocky Mountain Standard Time, I called her at work and told 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 acquaintances often came up to me and said, "Congratulations on your overnight
success."
My reply was, "Yeah, eleven years," the time that had elapsed since I first sat down at that old
portable Smith Corona typewriter at a desk in my son's bedroom in that little tract house in Costa Mesa,
California.
Later, when the dust from the auction had settled, the management at Bantam was stunned to learn
thatRaise the Titanic! was the third book in a series.