Goodreads asked Ron McGaw:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ron McGaw Thirty years ago, standing in the Medici Palace in Florence, a tour guide explained to our group that the great artist Michelangelo and the amazing genius Leonardo da Vinci both had lived and worked in Florence at the same time. I hadn't realized this fact, and I immediately began to wonder whether they had been rivals. And if rivals, had they ever faced off in any kind of competition, and what was the outcome? "Oh no," the guide assured me. "They were good friends." But there was a hesitation in
his voice. I could tell he really didn’t know, so I decided to find out for myself. This encounter, and that trip, created in me a lifelong fascination with the Italian Renaissance and the towering figures who lived and worked together in Florence during that time. Florence in the late 15th
Century was a place of great violence and intrigue, but it was also a city of great genius – Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo all lived there. The question is, how did this ex
plosion of talent and intellect occur at this one place and time in the world? Why did the people of Florence excel in the arts, science,
political theory, architecture, medicine and philosophy far beyond what random chance would suggest is possible? Frankly, the notion still strikes me as fantastic, and it formed the basis of the book I had to write. Lorenzo's Daggers transports the reader back to Renaissance Florence, where our protagonist, Prester John, meets many of the characters – famous and infamous – from that period. I hope, first, that this book is entertaining, but I hope too that it inspires in the reader the same sense of awe that struck me so many years ago, and still fills me with the wonder of it all.

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