WEBVTT
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I know what it's like to be a podcast listener.
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You're diving into a brand new episode and you find out, ooh,
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this is boring. What can I do? Well, you need
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a choice. Arrow.net, A-R-R-O-E.net. It's 21 different podcasts. It is
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a podcast network for your choices. That's what it's all about.
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Your choice, your choice, your choice. Arrow.net, A-R-R-O-E.net. Enjoy your exploration.
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Hello and good morning. How's everybody doing today?
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Oh, good morning. Just fine.
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How are you?
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Doing absolutely fantastic. Dude, we got to talk about this
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book cover. I know we're not supposed to talk about
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book covers and judge them. I'm not judging them. I
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just know that every grown man on the planet is
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going to walk into a Barnes & Noble and go
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into movie trailer voice when they see this book cover.
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I certainly hope so. Hey, it is a fun one,
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isn't it?
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It is.
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I mean, it's got so much action. You know, I
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got to tell you, it really did bring me back
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to the days of spending time with my father reading
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his books because he was always about the action. And
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he always used to call them, he says, these are
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modern day Westerns, son. They're Westerns because they act just
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like they did out there in the wild open lands
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of America.
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That's true.
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And I think it's clear that you know who... who
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the guy wearing the white hat is and the bad
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guys are wearing the black hat. So you know who
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the villains are. You know who the good guys are.
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And hopefully you get a satisfying ending like a good
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Western as well.
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I was just recently with somebody and I told him,
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I said that the Dirk Pitt novels are coming back
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out again. And his eyes lit up and he says,
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what do you know about that? What is it about
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people who are reading the Dirk Pitt novels? It's like,
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why don't we openly discuss it like we do movies?
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It seems like it's the big kept secret. I don't
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want to keep it a secret anymore, dude.
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I don't either.
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Pass the words. Pass the word. Yeah, it's just, I think,
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introducing him to new generations of readers. Obviously, Ted has
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been around a long time, and so there's certainly established
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fans that have been reading him for years.
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But maybe not as many younger.
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People know about him, obviously, because younger people don't read
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as much as they used to, unfortunately.
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One thing that I've always been inspired by you is
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the fact that you do your homework. I am a
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research pig. I mean, I'm always looking things up and
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making sure that this is not some sort of clickbait.
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I'm going for the facts. You do the same thing, dude.
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Is it a sickness, or is it just that we
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want to just make sure it's right?
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Well, to me, it's the fun part. When I'm writing
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the books, I enjoy the research element more than anything.
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And this one, I'm Took me down a path into
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this lost historic civilization called Tartessos in Spain.
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Which I never knew anything about.
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And I was able to tie that into the biblical
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King Solomon and his first temple of Jerusalem. So, yeah,
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you go down a rabbit hole of research and it
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leads you into some interesting places. But I think it's
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all great fun in the process.
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Well, then I have to ask this question.
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Do you feel like an archaeologist or do you feel
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like sometimes my wife always says that I'm Snoopy when
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I do my research?
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I said, well, then call me Snoopy then.
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Exactly right.
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You got to pick and shovel out there and you
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got to fling the dirt aside to find the bones underneath.
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So I think that's part of the process.
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You're very good at your wordplay, and I think the
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reason why I got really interested in that was when
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different authors will say, look, we have an opportunity to
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touch people and to teach people at the same time.
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I like your wordplay. I call it hidden speak, what
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you're doing. I mean, you're giving me a very heavy subject,
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but you make it a point to where I understand it,
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I learn from it, and I follow the story along
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and can't wait to get to the next page.
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Yeah, I think that's part of the process.
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And maybe what I tried to pick up from my father, too,
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is he wanted to keep the books fast paced and
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he wanted to make them fun. And he always, his advice,
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his writing advice was always cut the dead weight, cut
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the dead wood out when you're writing. It's easy to
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get bogged down in the details, especially when you do
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the research, when you enjoy the research, you become a
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mini expert on things. And so you have a tendency
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to maybe want to share that knowledge that you've discovered.
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But that can work crossways for you in the story
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because you want to keep the reader turning the pages.
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So sometimes you have to sort of scale back your
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little knowledge that.
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You've gained on a topic.
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In order to keep the story flowing rapidly.
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Now, is that the reason why you put so much
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energy into making your villains colorful? Because it's like you're
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engaging us as readers. What side do I want to
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be on? If I go the bad side, then I'm
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going to be the rebel. What am I going to
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do here? I mean, because you really do give us
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a good visual of who the villain is. There's no
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questions asked.
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Yeah, and that's kind of the fun part of the stories.
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I mean, writing them, we sort of know who Dirk
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Pitt is and who the kind of recurring characters are. So,
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So the villain is the one I get to have
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a little bit more fun with to try and flesh
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out somebody different, somebody unique.
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And it is kind of a fine line.
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Though, because you want to make them as mean and
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nasty as possible, but you also want to make them believable.
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So sometimes it's sort of a fine line you're walking
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with the villains.
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Yeah, because a lot of these villains, they're not necessarily old,
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evil people or anything like that. I mean, it's like somehow,
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some way they invited people into their circle and they
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became villains with the guy.
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Right. Yeah, exactly.
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Or, you know, maybe their motive isn't necessarily wrong. I think,
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you know, I've got a character in this story that's concerned.
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About global warming.
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Now, maybe she kind of takes her actions a little extreme,
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but perhaps, you know, her original motivation wasn't necessarily.
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Bad, but she kind of went down a bad path
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in the process.
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My wife and I got in kind of a squabble
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over the fact I said that the John Paul Jones
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revolutionary ship is your needle in a haystack. She says
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it is not. He's trying to prove to you that
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it's not something that you couldn't find. It was always there.
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Who's right in this?
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You are, I'm afraid. I mean, I guess you both are.
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I mean, it's got to be there somewhere. But, boy,
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we have searched valiantly over the years for the darn thing.
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And it's really proving elusive, but it's such a significant
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warship in American history that it deserves to be found.
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And it's just a mystery because it fought the battle
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with the British ship, the Serapis, and Jones won the battle,
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but he lost his ship a day and a half later.
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And so over that period of time, it could have
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covered quite a bit of ground. And that's why it's
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been such a mystery in terms of where it ended
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up over in the North Sea.
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Please don't move.
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We're going to continue with Dirk Kussler coming up next.
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The name of the book, Obsidian Sky, a Dirk Pitt novel.
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We are back with Dirk Kussler. Mystery and conspiracy. How
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do you balance the two out and make it work
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for us as readers?
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Well, it's fiction, right? So you can always kind of
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play around a little bit with that. I mean, a
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lot of the stories obviously take something historical and maybe
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put a different twist on it. uh, my, you know,
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my father's probably most famous book was Raise the Titanic. So,
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so he had the question in mind, well, what if
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we raise the Titanic? Uh, and obviously it had to
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have a reason to do so. Uh, so he, you know,
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fabricated a fictional story related to, to something of value that, uh,
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allegedly was stored on the Titanic when it took its
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maiden voyage. So it's, it's just kind of a mix
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of taking maybe something, uh, Factual and kind of playing
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around with it and adding a little fictional element to
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it to have some fun with.
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You do something pretty spectacular in the opening part of
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this book, and that is the map. Now, it might
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be just a guy thing, but I love maps. And boy,
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if that did not put me in the right place
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when I started opening up the book and reading the story,
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that map really did its thing to me.
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Yeah, we've had a great artist help us with those
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over the years. And we try to incorporate that into
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all the Pitt books. And typically the stories bounce around, right?
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I mean, they're not normally taking place in one geographic area.
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We usually have Pitt or some of the other characters
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hopping around different geographic locations around the world. And, of course,
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we're creating subplots that hopefully all tie together in the end.
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So it's a little maybe kind of teaser for the
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reader or maybe a guide, I guess, as they're going
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through the book, just to kind of keep track of
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where things are in.
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The real world.
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I think it's kind of funny.
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We were talking about being an archaeologist when it comes
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to all the different research and stuff that we do.
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And then you've got Dirk Pitt, who goes after archaeologists.
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And I thought, oh, my God, oxymoron. Here we go.
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I'm against archaeologists, but I love them because Dirk Pitt
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does it, man. He undigs that story.
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Yeah. Yeah, you have to, right?
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So, yeah, he's got a team there he saves right
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early on in the story. So that really kind of
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triggers his whole sort of investigative hunt for the silver
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scroll that's found with the old warrior there in the cave. So, yeah,
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he's always a friend of the marine archaeologist, especially because
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he loves shipwrecks as well. So that's kind of almost
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his second calling, I guess.
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You could say.
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Well, chronologically speaking, how do you lay that out in
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your book? Is that something that your editor, you know,
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you just, like they always told me, they said, just
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get it out, we'll figure it out.
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Do you go by the same rule?
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No, you know, I try to outline the stories. You know,
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typically we have a couple of subplots that we have
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to work together. And when I start writing, I'll have
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the end generally in mind and usually have the prologue
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and a start, maybe a few action scenes up front.
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And the hard part is sort of assembling the metal,
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crossing the bridge.
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I guess, from the beginning to the end.
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There was one of my father's co-writers earlier, a fellow
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named Justin Scott, used to call it the muddle.
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You work your way through the.
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Middle of the story and try to piece the thing.
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together and set it for the ending. So I always
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thought that was appropriate. But that's generally how it works
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for me.
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I love books like yours because it seems like that
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you are like– light years or years ahead of where
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we are as readers in real life. So when you're
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starting to talk about plutonium and stuff like that, of course,
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I want to bring this book of history right up
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to the present going, oh, he's on to something here.
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What is he trying to share with me right now?
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What do I need to be aware of?
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Well, it was, again, it was something my father always
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did that I've continued, is we always set the books
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a couple of years in advance. So that gives us
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a chance to kind of play around with the technology
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a little bit.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, one of the inspirations of this one, frankly,
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was Elon Musk. One of his lesser known companies is
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he's building a boring, it's actually called the Boring Company.
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He's working on building an advanced tunnel board, I guess,
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to build.
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A subway line in LA underground.
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And as I was looking into that, I found some
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other companies that were involved with a technology of drilling
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geothermal wells. And they use microwaves at really high power
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that are so intense and so powerful that they can
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actually melt rocks. And so their intent is to be
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able to drill these geothermal wells very deep, three, four,
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five miles, that they can drill these wells by melting
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the rocks. And so they could quickly excavate these wells
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down to tap the geothermal resources. So I sort of
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combined those two technologies together in my story in order to...
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to build a boring machine that can melt rocks in
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the process.
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I would love to see your research. Are you putting
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this in a yellow pad or are you like me?
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You just grab whatever notebooks available and just start writing.
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Yeah, it's a, it's a massive, I've got, I try
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to keep most of my notes in a single notebook,
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but I've always got articles. My wife gets mad at
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me because I'm carrying articles out of magazines and leaving
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them laying around the house and the And, of course,
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there's all kinds of Internet stuff you can pull off
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and save the files on your computer.
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So it's just a hodgepodge of resources, I guess.
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So is your wife like my wife?
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I could be sitting in the same room doing research,
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and I'll look up to see what show she's on,
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and I go, what are you watching?
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What's going on? Update me. But I'm still with her.
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I'm just mentally, no, I'm gone.
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Oh, yeah, yeah. When you're working on the book, it
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takes over your mind. Sometimes she accuses me of being
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a zombie or we'll have a conversation. She'll ask me
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to repeat what she just told me, and I just
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have to give her the blank look. I'm saving a
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bit from a sinking ship or a fist fight with
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a villain or something like that.
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Well, I was going to ask you about that, how
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you're able to do that, to pull off these battles
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and then come back into the real world. Because even
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in radio, I've got to shake it off and go
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spend about 15, 20 minutes alone so that I can
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get back into our present place.
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Because your mind takes you anywhere you want to go.
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Yeah, and it's just a matter of focus, really. I mean,
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I have to. I'd have to rent an office and
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go to a quiet space just to kind of get
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your mindset into that because there's so many distractions today,
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I mean, especially with the phones and the technology and everything.
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And so you really have to kind of set all
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that aside and just give your mind a chance to
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blank out and really let it take you into some
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imaginative places.
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My favorite place in every book, I want to know
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the dedication because we don't really get to know who
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these people are, such as Peter Lampak. I'm sitting there going, oh,
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my God, let me research this. Let me figure out what's.
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Going on here. Just ask the source. Who's Peter? What's
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going on?
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Oh, Peter is our literary agent. He's my literary agent.
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And he was Clive's literary agent. And he was Clive's
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very first literary agent. And they had probably the longest
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author-agent relationship possibly in the history of publishing because they
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got together in the 1960s. And Peter's represented us ever
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since through my father's death and continues to represent us.
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He's 80 years old. He's sharp as a whip and
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just a great guy. He has a great wit as well.
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And he's just amazing. It's been a great guiding hand,
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I mean, for me as well, in terms of continuing
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the legacy of writing the books after Clive's passing.
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Wow.
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Where can people go to find out more about you? Because,
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I mean, I want them to really dive in. And
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this is not your first Clive Kessler book. I mean,
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you've really been involved with this project.
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Yeah, this is the 11th one I've actually written. So, yeah,
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it's kind of hard to, kind of crazy to think
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about in hindsight. But, yeah, I've been checking along here
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a bit for these. I'm not, I hate to say it,
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I'm not real active on social media. I have a
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Facebook site. I've got a website. If I can make
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a quick plug, I'm going to be signing the books
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to events coming up. The book comes out November 10th.
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I'll be at the Poison Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona on
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November 14th. And they actually take online orders for autograph
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books too. So if you can't make the event and
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would like an autograph book, you can contact the Poison Pen.
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And a week later on November 21st, I'll be at
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the Kessler Museum in Arvada, Colorado, which is where my
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father assembled his collection of antique cars. And we're going
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to have the museum open for free to the public.
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Everybody come in and look at the cars and you'd
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like to buy a book and shake hands.
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Well, I'll be happy to do that as well. I
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love it.
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I love it.
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Please come back to this show anytime in the future.
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The door is always going to be open for you, sir.
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Oh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to
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talk to you.
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Well, you be brilliant today, okay?
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Okay, you as well. Best wishes.
1
00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:01.870
I know what it's like to be a podcast listener.
2
00:00:01.950 --> 00:00:04.269
You're diving into a brand new episode and you find out, ooh,
3
00:00:04.309 --> 00:00:07.320
this is boring. What can I do? Well, you need
4
00:00:07.330 --> 00:00:13.660
a choice. Arrow.net, A-R-R-O-E.net. It's 21 different podcasts. It is
5
00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:16.980
a podcast network for your choices. That's what it's all about.
6
00:00:17.100 --> 00:00:25.019
Your choice, your choice, your choice. Arrow.net, A-R-R-O-E.net. Enjoy your exploration.
7
00:00:25.399 --> 00:00:27.339
Hello and good morning. How's everybody doing today?
8
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Oh, good morning. Just fine.
9
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How are you?
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Doing absolutely fantastic. Dude, we got to talk about this
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book cover. I know we're not supposed to talk about
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book covers and judge them. I'm not judging them. I
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just know that every grown man on the planet is
14
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going to walk into a Barnes & Noble and go
15
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into movie trailer voice when they see this book cover.
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I certainly hope so. Hey, it is a fun one,
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isn't it?
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It is.
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I mean, it's got so much action. You know, I
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got to tell you, it really did bring me back
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to the days of spending time with my father reading
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his books because he was always about the action. And
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he always used to call them, he says, these are
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modern day Westerns, son. They're Westerns because they act just
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like they did out there in the wild open lands
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of America.
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That's true.
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And I think it's clear that you know who... who
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the guy wearing the white hat is and the bad
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guys are wearing the black hat. So you know who
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the villains are. You know who the good guys are.
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And hopefully you get a satisfying ending like a good
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Western as well.
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I was just recently with somebody and I told him,
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I said that the Dirk Pitt novels are coming back
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out again. And his eyes lit up and he says,
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what do you know about that? What is it about
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people who are reading the Dirk Pitt novels? It's like,
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why don't we openly discuss it like we do movies?
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It seems like it's the big kept secret. I don't
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want to keep it a secret anymore, dude.
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I don't either.
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Pass the words. Pass the word. Yeah, it's just, I think,
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introducing him to new generations of readers. Obviously, Ted has
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been around a long time, and so there's certainly established
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fans that have been reading him for years.
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But maybe not as many younger.
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People know about him, obviously, because younger people don't read
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as much as they used to, unfortunately.
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One thing that I've always been inspired by you is
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the fact that you do your homework. I am a
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research pig. I mean, I'm always looking things up and
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making sure that this is not some sort of clickbait.
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I'm going for the facts. You do the same thing, dude.
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Is it a sickness, or is it just that we
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want to just make sure it's right?
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Well, to me, it's the fun part. When I'm writing
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the books, I enjoy the research element more than anything.
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And this one, I'm Took me down a path into
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this lost historic civilization called Tartessos in Spain.
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Which I never knew anything about.
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And I was able to tie that into the biblical
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King Solomon and his first temple of Jerusalem. So, yeah,
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you go down a rabbit hole of research and it
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leads you into some interesting places. But I think it's
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all great fun in the process.
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Well, then I have to ask this question.
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Do you feel like an archaeologist or do you feel
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like sometimes my wife always says that I'm Snoopy when
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I do my research?
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I said, well, then call me Snoopy then.
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Exactly right.
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You got to pick and shovel out there and you
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got to fling the dirt aside to find the bones underneath.
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So I think that's part of the process.
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You're very good at your wordplay, and I think the
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reason why I got really interested in that was when
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different authors will say, look, we have an opportunity to
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touch people and to teach people at the same time.
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I like your wordplay. I call it hidden speak, what
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you're doing. I mean, you're giving me a very heavy subject,
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but you make it a point to where I understand it,
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I learn from it, and I follow the story along
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and can't wait to get to the next page.
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Yeah, I think that's part of the process.
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And maybe what I tried to pick up from my father, too,
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is he wanted to keep the books fast paced and
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he wanted to make them fun. And he always, his advice,
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his writing advice was always cut the dead weight, cut
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the dead wood out when you're writing. It's easy to
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get bogged down in the details, especially when you do
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the research, when you enjoy the research, you become a
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mini expert on things. And so you have a tendency
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to maybe want to share that knowledge that you've discovered.
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But that can work crossways for you in the story
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because you want to keep the reader turning the pages.
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So sometimes you have to sort of scale back your
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little knowledge that.
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You've gained on a topic.
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In order to keep the story flowing rapidly.
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Now, is that the reason why you put so much
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energy into making your villains colorful? Because it's like you're
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engaging us as readers. What side do I want to
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be on? If I go the bad side, then I'm
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going to be the rebel. What am I going to
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do here? I mean, because you really do give us
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a good visual of who the villain is. There's no
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questions asked.
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Yeah, and that's kind of the fun part of the stories.
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I mean, writing them, we sort of know who Dirk
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Pitt is and who the kind of recurring characters are. So,
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So the villain is the one I get to have
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a little bit more fun with to try and flesh
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out somebody different, somebody unique.
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And it is kind of a fine line.
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Though, because you want to make them as mean and
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nasty as possible, but you also want to make them believable.
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So sometimes it's sort of a fine line you're walking
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with the villains.
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Yeah, because a lot of these villains, they're not necessarily old,
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evil people or anything like that. I mean, it's like somehow,
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some way they invited people into their circle and they
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became villains with the guy.
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Right. Yeah, exactly.
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Or, you know, maybe their motive isn't necessarily wrong. I think,
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you know, I've got a character in this story that's concerned.
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About global warming.
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Now, maybe she kind of takes her actions a little extreme,
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but perhaps, you know, her original motivation wasn't necessarily.
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Bad, but she kind of went down a bad path
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in the process.
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My wife and I got in kind of a squabble
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over the fact I said that the John Paul Jones
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revolutionary ship is your needle in a haystack. She says
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it is not. He's trying to prove to you that
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it's not something that you couldn't find. It was always there.
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Who's right in this?
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You are, I'm afraid. I mean, I guess you both are.
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I mean, it's got to be there somewhere. But, boy,
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we have searched valiantly over the years for the darn thing.
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And it's really proving elusive, but it's such a significant
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warship in American history that it deserves to be found.
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And it's just a mystery because it fought the battle
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with the British ship, the Serapis, and Jones won the battle,
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but he lost his ship a day and a half later.
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And so over that period of time, it could have
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covered quite a bit of ground. And that's why it's
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been such a mystery in terms of where it ended
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up over in the North Sea.
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Please don't move.
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We're going to continue with Dirk Kussler coming up next.
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The name of the book, Obsidian Sky, a Dirk Pitt novel.
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We are back with Dirk Kussler. Mystery and conspiracy. How
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do you balance the two out and make it work
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for us as readers?
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Well, it's fiction, right? So you can always kind of
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play around a little bit with that. I mean, a
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lot of the stories obviously take something historical and maybe
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put a different twist on it. uh, my, you know,
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my father's probably most famous book was Raise the Titanic. So,
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so he had the question in mind, well, what if
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we raise the Titanic? Uh, and obviously it had to
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have a reason to do so. Uh, so he, you know,
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fabricated a fictional story related to, to something of value that, uh,
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allegedly was stored on the Titanic when it took its
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maiden voyage. So it's, it's just kind of a mix
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of taking maybe something, uh, Factual and kind of playing
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around with it and adding a little fictional element to
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it to have some fun with.
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You do something pretty spectacular in the opening part of
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this book, and that is the map. Now, it might
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be just a guy thing, but I love maps. And boy,
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if that did not put me in the right place
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when I started opening up the book and reading the story,
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that map really did its thing to me.
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Yeah, we've had a great artist help us with those
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over the years. And we try to incorporate that into
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all the Pitt books. And typically the stories bounce around, right?
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I mean, they're not normally taking place in one geographic area.
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We usually have Pitt or some of the other characters
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hopping around different geographic locations around the world. And, of course,
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we're creating subplots that hopefully all tie together in the end.
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So it's a little maybe kind of teaser for the
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reader or maybe a guide, I guess, as they're going
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through the book, just to kind of keep track of
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where things are in.
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The real world.
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I think it's kind of funny.
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We were talking about being an archaeologist when it comes
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to all the different research and stuff that we do.
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And then you've got Dirk Pitt, who goes after archaeologists.
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And I thought, oh, my God, oxymoron. Here we go.
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I'm against archaeologists, but I love them because Dirk Pitt
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does it, man. He undigs that story.
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Yeah. Yeah, you have to, right?
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So, yeah, he's got a team there he saves right
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early on in the story. So that really kind of
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triggers his whole sort of investigative hunt for the silver
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scroll that's found with the old warrior there in the cave. So, yeah,
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he's always a friend of the marine archaeologist, especially because
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he loves shipwrecks as well. So that's kind of almost
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his second calling, I guess.
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You could say.
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Well, chronologically speaking, how do you lay that out in
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your book? Is that something that your editor, you know,
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you just, like they always told me, they said, just
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get it out, we'll figure it out.
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Do you go by the same rule?
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No, you know, I try to outline the stories. You know,
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typically we have a couple of subplots that we have
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to work together. And when I start writing, I'll have
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the end generally in mind and usually have the prologue
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and a start, maybe a few action scenes up front.
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And the hard part is sort of assembling the metal,
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crossing the bridge.
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I guess, from the beginning to the end.
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There was one of my father's co-writers earlier, a fellow
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named Justin Scott, used to call it the muddle.
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You work your way through the.
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Middle of the story and try to piece the thing.
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together and set it for the ending. So I always
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thought that was appropriate. But that's generally how it works
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for me.
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I love books like yours because it seems like that
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you are like– light years or years ahead of where
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we are as readers in real life. So when you're
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starting to talk about plutonium and stuff like that, of course,
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I want to bring this book of history right up
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to the present going, oh, he's on to something here.
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What is he trying to share with me right now?
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What do I need to be aware of?
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Well, it was, again, it was something my father always
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did that I've continued, is we always set the books
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a couple of years in advance. So that gives us
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a chance to kind of play around with the technology
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a little bit.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, one of the inspirations of this one, frankly,
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was Elon Musk. One of his lesser known companies is
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he's building a boring, it's actually called the Boring Company.
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He's working on building an advanced tunnel board, I guess,
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to build.
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A subway line in LA underground.
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And as I was looking into that, I found some
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other companies that were involved with a technology of drilling
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geothermal wells. And they use microwaves at really high power
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that are so intense and so powerful that they can
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actually melt rocks. And so their intent is to be
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able to drill these geothermal wells very deep, three, four,
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five miles, that they can drill these wells by melting
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the rocks. And so they could quickly excavate these wells
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down to tap the geothermal resources. So I sort of
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combined those two technologies together in my story in order to...
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to build a boring machine that can melt rocks in
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the process.
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I would love to see your research. Are you putting
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this in a yellow pad or are you like me?
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You just grab whatever notebooks available and just start writing.
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Yeah, it's a, it's a massive, I've got, I try
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to keep most of my notes in a single notebook,
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but I've always got articles. My wife gets mad at
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me because I'm carrying articles out of magazines and leaving
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them laying around the house and the And, of course,
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there's all kinds of Internet stuff you can pull off
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and save the files on your computer.
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So it's just a hodgepodge of resources, I guess.
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So is your wife like my wife?
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I could be sitting in the same room doing research,
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and I'll look up to see what show she's on,
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and I go, what are you watching?
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What's going on? Update me. But I'm still with her.
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I'm just mentally, no, I'm gone.
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Oh, yeah, yeah. When you're working on the book, it
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takes over your mind. Sometimes she accuses me of being
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a zombie or we'll have a conversation. She'll ask me
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to repeat what she just told me, and I just
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have to give her the blank look. I'm saving a
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bit from a sinking ship or a fist fight with
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a villain or something like that.
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Well, I was going to ask you about that, how
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you're able to do that, to pull off these battles
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and then come back into the real world. Because even
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in radio, I've got to shake it off and go
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spend about 15, 20 minutes alone so that I can
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get back into our present place.
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Because your mind takes you anywhere you want to go.
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Yeah, and it's just a matter of focus, really. I mean,
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I have to. I'd have to rent an office and
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go to a quiet space just to kind of get
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your mindset into that because there's so many distractions today,
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I mean, especially with the phones and the technology and everything.
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And so you really have to kind of set all
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that aside and just give your mind a chance to
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blank out and really let it take you into some
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imaginative places.
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My favorite place in every book, I want to know
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the dedication because we don't really get to know who
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these people are, such as Peter Lampak. I'm sitting there going, oh,
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my God, let me research this. Let me figure out what's.
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Going on here. Just ask the source. Who's Peter? What's
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going on?
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Oh, Peter is our literary agent. He's my literary agent.
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And he was Clive's literary agent. And he was Clive's
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very first literary agent. And they had probably the longest
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author-agent relationship possibly in the history of publishing because they
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got together in the 1960s. And Peter's represented us ever
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since through my father's death and continues to represent us.
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He's 80 years old. He's sharp as a whip and
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just a great guy. He has a great wit as well.
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And he's just amazing. It's been a great guiding hand,
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I mean, for me as well, in terms of continuing
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the legacy of writing the books after Clive's passing.
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Wow.
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Where can people go to find out more about you? Because,
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I mean, I want them to really dive in. And
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this is not your first Clive Kessler book. I mean,
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you've really been involved with this project.
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Yeah, this is the 11th one I've actually written. So, yeah,
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it's kind of hard to, kind of crazy to think
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about in hindsight. But, yeah, I've been checking along here
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a bit for these. I'm not, I hate to say it,
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I'm not real active on social media. I have a
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Facebook site. I've got a website. If I can make
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a quick plug, I'm going to be signing the books
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to events coming up. The book comes out November 10th.
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I'll be at the Poison Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona on
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November 14th. And they actually take online orders for autograph
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books too. So if you can't make the event and
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would like an autograph book, you can contact the Poison Pen.
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And a week later on November 21st, I'll be at
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the Kessler Museum in Arvada, Colorado, which is where my
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father assembled his collection of antique cars. And we're going
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to have the museum open for free to the public.
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Everybody come in and look at the cars and you'd
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like to buy a book and shake hands.
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Well, I'll be happy to do that as well. I
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love it.
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I love it.
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Please come back to this show anytime in the future.
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The door is always going to be open for you, sir.
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Oh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to
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talk to you.
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Well, you be brilliant today, okay?
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Okay, you as well. Best wishes.
