An interview with Dr Cussler, from the Coffee with Kate series:

ReadersRoom: Dr. Cussler, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for taking the time to do this with us.

Clive Cussler: The pleasure's mine.

ReadersRoom: With so much of your work having been on the New York Times bestseller list -- actually, I believe it's every book you've written -- it's a little hard to know where to begin, but let's start with your extraordinarily busy schedule these days. I understand that you have a new novel coming out on October 7th -- titled Golden Buddha. Could you tell our readers something about that?

Clive Cussler: I guess you would call it a spin off series. It's taken from one of my books called Flood Tide where there was this ... we'll call it an old tramp steamer - a freighter that was all rusty and beat up and the crew was mangy -- but it was all a façade. It really had all of this exotic equipment inside, Picasso paintings and a gourmet chef and all of these missiles, and it could do 50 knots. We thought it would be great fun to take that and base stories in and around it where they go from port to port and get contracts -- because they are kind of mercenary -- to save this person or do this or that. I guess you could call it a Mission: Impossible on a boat.

ReadersRoom: And I believe this is the first in what you plan to be a series called The Oregon Files?

Clive Cussler: Yes ... but it will be The Oregon Chronicles, I guess.

ReadersRoom: This series is co-authored with Craig Dirgo I believe, who did The Sea Hunters and The Sea Hunters II with you?

Clive Cussler: Right. I've done the non-fiction Sea Hunters with him.

For the full interview go to http://www.readersroom.com/coffee14.html.