Goodreads asked Michael Scott Bertrand:

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

Michael Scott Bertrand Flying Conquistadors was born out of frustration! I had been trying to write an altogether different story, with a different lead character. There was nothing about Pan Am, nothing about Lindbergh.

I had spent a year or so trying to write that damn tale, but the story and my characters were stuck in the mud. I had done too much research, too much web-wandering, and was trying to cram too much into not enough space. I wanted to get my main characters to the Yucatan, but I was having trouble getting them out of Madrid, which is where I insisted the book begin.

So I started to think about stretching my story out. Instead of force-feeding everything into a single book, stretch it out over two book . . . or maybe three. I stopped writing, and started researching again, and tried to figure out how to put the story together in a more logical (and better-sounding) manner.

During this new round of research and deep thought, I came across an old newspaper article that intrigued me. It was about Charles Lindbergh, on a promotional tour in the Spirit of St. Louis, spotting unmapped ruins deep in the jungles while flying from Guatemala to Belize City. I decided to dig deeper, and looked into Lindbergh's tour . . . which led me to Lindbergh's later journeys with his wife, Anne, to view and photographs Mayan ruins throughout Mexico and Central America. Trips they took on a cool-looking amphibious plane, on loan from Pan American, which had just hired Lindbergh as their Technical Advisor.

That was the genesis of Flying Conquistadors. A few months later a young mailboy in the back of the plane - Oliver Wheelock - would get promoted to become the narrator of the tale. I also made the decision that the early days of Pan Am were too much fun to pass up, and I decided to devote several chapters in the book to the airline's (and my narrator's) beginnings. But that's for another post . . .

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