Warning. Spoiler Alert. Please Do Not Read The Following Unless You Have Already Read The Lions of Lucerne
When shooting the Lucerne episode of my public television series, Traveling Lite, we visited Lucerne’s Löwendenkmal, or Lion Monument. Carved from a sheer cliff face to commemorate the 700 plus Swiss Guard who died defending King Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette during an attack on the Paris Tuileries in 1792, Mark Twain called it "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world."
While the sculpture of the dying lion with a spear broken off in its side is indeed moving, it had another, unintended influence on me. I kept kicking around the phrase "The Lion of Lucerne" in my head, finally changing it to "The Lions of Lucerne." It sounded like a great book title. All I needed now was a story to go along with it.
Fast-forward about two years to my honeymoon. My wife, Trish, and I had bought an around-the-world airline ticket and one night we were sitting in a piazza in Italy discussing what we would regret on our deathbeds never having done. For me it was writing a novel and getting it published. We agreed that when we returned home, I would take at least two hours every day with no interruptions to work on making my lifelong dream of becoming a novelist a reality. Great idea, but I still didn’t have my story idea yet.
On a train ride from Munich to Amsterdam, we shared an overnight sleeping compartment with a brother and sister – Rob & Cindy Jackson from Atlanta. Cindy and I hit it off immediately and spent the entire evening talking about our love of books. The next morning, as our train was pulling into Amsterdam, I told Cindy that I was going to begin a manuscript when I returned home. She pulled out her business card and told me she’d love to read it and if she liked it, would be more than happy to see what she could do for me. It turned out that Cindy was a sales rep for Simon and Schuster.
At this point I had made the decision to write a novel, I had a title for it, and I even had a bonafide publishing industry contact. All I needed was an idea. Little did I know that I was about to get one later that day.
After wandering around Amsterdam’s beautiful canals, Trish and I stopped at a small café for a drink and a bite to eat. Next to our table, someone had left a copy of the International Herald Tribune. I picket it up and began reading as I waited for our lunch to arrive. A small news brief caught my attention. It was about a former Swiss intelligence officer who had embezzled millions from the Swiss army and was training his own shadow militia high in the Alps with high-tech weapons from his own private arsenal. Suddenly, my mind began weaving a story….
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