Tom Clancy, author of "Hunt for Red October" and other bestsellers, dies in Baltimore at 66 Thomas L. Clancy was born in Baltimore in 1947, majored in English at what is now Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore and made his literary debut in 1984 with "The Hunt for Red October," a surprise bestseller that became the 1990 film featuring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin and other Hollywood stars. Then-President Ronald Reagan was a big fan of the "Red October" book and at one point invited Mr. Clancy and his wife to a state dinner. Other Clancy novels included "Patriot Games," "The Sum of All Fears" and "Clear and Present Danger," which also were made into movies, and "Red Storm Rising," "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" and "Without Remorse." Mr. Clancy's latest book, "Command Authority," is slated for publication in December. Before launching his literary career, Mr. Clancy joined his wife's family business, working as an insurance broker in rural Calvert County. He sold "The Hunt for Red October" to a local publisher who did not usually work with fiction, and who initially paid him just $5,000. Mr. Clancy told The Washington Post that he started writing the book "from the beginning, not knowing how it was going to end. It really was a lot more fun doing it that way. . . . If you plan things ahead of time you lose spontaneity. He continued selling insurance policies even after his first book became a bestseller. Some of his clients were former Navy nuclear engineers who had gone on to operate the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Station, overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Clancy told The Post that he queried those clients for some of the technical details that he used in "Red October." He said in the interview that he tried to write four to six hours a day - "all I can stand" - and felt that he hadn't earned his keep if he did not fill at least five pages with prose during that time. Mr. Clancy was a part-owner, with Peter Angelos, of the Baltimore Orioles, and he made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Minnesota Vikings in the 1990s. His marriage to Wanda T. King ended with an acrimonious divorce in 1999, after 28 years of marriage and four children. A short time later, Mr. Clancy married Alexandra Llewellyn, a freelance television reporter 20 years his junior. After the divorce, Mr. Clancy and his first wife became embroiled in a legal dispute over a lucrative paperback series that bore Mr. Clancy's name. Penguin Group did not release any information Wednesday about Mr. Clancy's surviving family members.