Goodreads asked Jeff Foltz:

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

Jeff Foltz I hadn't realized how close the Japanese were to having their own atomic bomb at the end of WWll. Like most folks, I thought the Germans were far more active in trying to develop a bomb. As i researched i realized that the Japanese were on pace with the Manhattan Project. They had brilliant physicists, two programs that were competitive with each other to the point of animosity, and a stroke of luck in adopting the correct process for refining the U-235 into fissionable material on their first try, while the much larger Manhattan Project exhausted three other theories before adopting the correct one.

All of this led me to question the reasons that the Truman administration gave for using the bomb as quickly as he did. In other words, i found a good reason to have the readers ask "what if", almost always a good ingredient in histrical fiction.

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