About six months previously my agent, Ricia Main-hardt, had asked me to put together a bible for a men's adventure series of novels that we could sell. I gave it some thought and though I eventually rejected the idea, some of those thoughts lingered in the back of my brain. I had decided that I'd write about a band of heroes led by a genius, something akin to Doc Savage and his band of associates. The difference for my group would be that the stories were told from the first-person point of view of one of the aides, much in the same way that Dr. Watson or Archie Goodwin chronicle the exploits of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, respectively. That viewpoint allows the genius to be a genius and the reader to roll along for the ride.