Sherri Crichton Carries the Torch

Michael Crichton's Widow Sparks Publishing Fireworks. Plus: Your July 4 Reads!

Sherri Alexander Crichton was pregnant with her son John when her husband Michael died of cancer in 2008. She was left with a child to raise and a legacy to protect. Sixteen years later, Michael Crichton—mega-bestselling author of The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Coma, and Jurassic Park, and the force behind TV’s Westworld and E.R.—remains a cultural juggernaut.

That’s a credit to his widow, the CEO of CrichtonSun, which protects and promotes his work. To say she’s been successful is an understatement. Michael Crichton’s name still powers multibillion dollar deals. To date, he’s sold more than 250 million books and his blockbuster franchises keep Hollywood afloat. And Sherri Crichton is just getting started.

Last month, Eruption, a posthumous novel, debuted at the top of the bestseller list. Sherri Crichton delved into her husband’s archives for inspiration and tapped publishing star James Patterson to finish the work. Set in Hawaii—Michael’s “favorite place”—the book is a page-turner with a serious message about climate change. She sat down with BookWag discuss how she hatched a summer sensation. — BKP

Book Wag: What finally pushed you to start looking at Michael’s papers and other materials?

Sherri Crichton: Since Michael died when I was six months pregnant, for quite a while our son John took all my focus, and rightfully so. At first, I quarantined Michael’s two offices, both of which were in our homes. He always worked out of a home. I just said, Nobody touch anything. I need that to be left alone for as long as possible.

When I finally got in there, it was a process. I wanted to know the last words he had written. It makes me cry to this day. But when I found this particular manuscript, I was so excited, because I knew about it. He had talked about it with me. It gave me chills to read it, but it came to an abrupt end that didn’t feel right.

BW: So you decided to do something about it. But that didn’t involve just dashing off an ending yourself, right?

SC: Right! I went back, and it took years, because I knew from the beginning that we had to have all of the papers, and for that, I would need to create an archive. That’s a huge process. I also worked with Michael’s longtime computer expert to gather all of his hard drives. I told everyone involved to keep an eye out for Blackout, which I knew was the working name of this project.

I control all of the archives, which is important to me because I still have a lot of learning to do about Michael, and our son and his daughter and his family and his fans all deserve to know as much as possible about how he worked. We’re going to curate the story of Michael and figure out firsthand how his mind operated. Because he was his mind.

BW: How did you find the story that would eventually become Eruption?

SC: In different manuscripts and files, I saw that Michael added characters here and there. I thought, well, I’m just going to follow the characters. Eventually Michael added things like backstory, family history, more about a particular character’s journey. I wanted to be able to hand all of that over to Jim [Patterson].

I had all the notes, and I hired someone to unlock all of these old hard drives, but eventually I had to take over some things that I only trusted myself with. That’s when I found a two-and-a-half-hour video of Michael in a helicopter over a volcano with researchers and volcanologists—a whole team. You also see him driving the streets of the Big Island, pointing out all the different landmarks that eventually made it into the book. It was tremendously affecting, and also essential for the book.

BW: What was it like collaborating with James Patterson?

SC: It was a gift. Not only did he take to the pages, he took to the research and all of the background. To even share it was a risk for me, but he has integrity and honesty combined with skill and talent. When he said “Sherri, you always walk away from a Michael Crichton book smarter,” I knew he would take care that the science was correct.

I've never actually met anybody who had anything negative to say about Michael's storytelling. I mean, maybe sometimes the critics will say, well, his characters weren't deep enough or whatever. But not the storytelling. So to have these two mega-storytellers on the same pages turned out beautifully.

BW: A few minutes ago you mentioned Michael’s brain. Can you tell me a bit more about his thought processes?

SC: Michael was always curious. That’s why I decided to turn the archive back into his office, and when I was putting things back on the walls, I realized we didn’t have his very first published piece. When he was 14, he published an article in the New York Times about a family trip to Grand Canyon. He wrote about Sunset Crater, and toward the end, he talks about its formation, its unusual ice tube, and more. Once someone reads Eruption, they’ll understand that this was percolating in his brain from age 13. He was curious about everything, and he never forgot anything he was curious about.

BW: What surprised you in those archives?

SC: Michael was famous for two things: First, he blurred the lines between science fiction and science fact in such a plausible way, because everything he wrote was so well researched. Second, he was brilliant at setting up what if? scenarios, both to try and figure them out, and to get people talking about the issues involved. He never said he didn’t believe in climate change, although some people mistakenly think he did. He did want to get conversation about climate change going, to make people think about what was actually happening and what could actually be done about it. I saw this, in his archives, through his way of keeping structure and balance in his life. He did it through charts. He charted everything! How many pages he wrote. How much work time he would take during vacation. Books compared to other books. He had an incredible internal dance he maintained, which is why connecting with nature was essential for him. It quieted his mind.

BW: What do you want people to know about Michael that they don’t?

SC: Michael was still growing internally. He meditated every day. He knew that when you let something bigger than you take over, you can continue to change and learn.

This book is really a celebration of Michael. We live in Michael’s world when we read his stories and watch his movies, because Michael lived in the world—and no part of it was boring to him. We get the joy of living in his playground.

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