The Swiss Suitcase (LSD, #1)

Extra: Satisfaction

Extra: Satisfaction

When I (Ronaldo7) was a little boy, my environment told me I would be a poor mason because I was not good with my hands, and neither would I become a good writer or teacher because I wasn't good with letters and language at all. They convinced me to dedicate myself to numbers: I became a bookkeeper. It was never my dream to become a writer or a mason or a bookkeeper. It was my dream to live a fascinating life, to save the world from the bad guys, the ones with the power to decide who becomes a teacher, who becomes a mason and who becomes a bookkeeper, because teachers and masons and bookkeepers do all the boring work and make it possible that the bad guys can live fascinating lives.

How many little boys dream of becoming a spy? How many ideals do we have when we're young, ideals that others tried to take away from us because they never learnt how to make their own dreams come true, because nobody ever motivated them to live a fascinating life, because they never read fascinating stories of fiction?

A fascinating life, like a fascinating story of fiction, doesn't fall out of the sky. You have to work for it. If you have a dream, you can keep dreaming (or, worse, forget about the dream and accept reality: you're a boring bookkeeper) or you can make a plan to make those dreams come true. If you're a butcher boy from Luxembourg, you can study languages and economy, develop skills, and get into shape. If you're lucky, you might get that one chance to make your dream come true. If you're a bookkeeper, you can study languages (I speak seven now, three of them good enough to write in), you can develop writing skills, train as many hours as you can, and even learn a little masonry. Luck has nothing to do with it: all you have to do is work for it, and write that fascinating story. If I can do it (in a language that's not my native one), everybody can.

Many people try to give you advice. Some do that because they want something from you, something that is better for them, so they advise you to buy their product or follow their political ideas or offer them a drink. There are also people who give you advice because they love you, because they wish you all the best, so they advise you to stop smoking and start saving and do your best at school because they hope you'll become rich and famous and successful. And there is «you», a unique individual who gets born in a big and hostile world, full of opportunities and impossibilities, with dreams and limits, with desires and necessities. The art of life, of living, is exactly the same as the art of writing fiction: when it gives you satisfaction, you know you've done it well.

I'm convinced (by study and by experience) that fame, money and success will never give you satisfaction. In 2015, Cristiano Ronaldo was the first football player ever who got the Golden Shoe for European top scorer for the fourth time, which made him the most successful and famous (and richest) football player in the game's history. His comment was: "I go for the fifth and the sixth Golden Shoe.", in Mick Jagger's words: "I can't get no Satisfaction."

Writing and finishing fascinating fiction (or fulfilling your own impossible dream) gives more satisfaction than fame, money and success. Develop skills nobody ever thought you had in you. Look back at something impossible you just did. It gives a satisfaction like only someone who achieved it can understand. Do something for others, help them, motivate them. It gives more satisfaction than being number 1 on the New Joke Times Bestseller List.

That's my advice to you, my dear reader: listen to the advice of others, but never forget that only you can decide how to make your life as fascinating as possible. Don't give up; in Mick Jagger's words: "I try and I try and I try." Give everything you have in you and enjoy it. In our modern, peaceful world, our freedom of choice is perhaps our most important privilege. You have only one life, and you have the freedom to choose what to do with the precious time that is given to you. Choose with responsibility, based on experience and knowledge. Choose with respect for others, who make everything possible that you see around you. Live, love, laugh and read the stories of Ronaldo7; he writes great plots. Hey, hey, hey. That's what I say.

I came up with the idea for this novel in the summer of 2016. It started with the desire to do something different, not a spy with the CIA or MI6, but someone who works in a tiny organization for a small, independent country. Luxembourg. A butcher boy. A dream, a plan, and a little luck. The rest came as a flow, a Niagara Falls of ideas.

When chatting with my writing buddy, I thought of using Rolling Stones' song titles as chapter titles.

The scene where the Korean spy ends up in the dentist's chair popped up when I sat in the chair of my own dentist, very much trying not to think of what she did with the Captain Hook torture instrument. I was in that chair for an hour and a half, time enough to work out the scene completely, including the dialogue, the way to convince the doctor to let the patient be handled by Lux and Rostov and the joke about Miss Merkel and the North-Korean President. Released from the torture chair, when the anaesthesia stopped working, I wrote the scene, completely, just to have something to do, something to distract me from the unbearable pain that made it almost impossible to think. I think it was a mistake to add this scene to the novel because every time I read it, it brings back painful memories. That's why I added the last part, with the laughing gas, to forget about the pain. Laughter cures any kind of pain.

This story is over, but the world isn't safe yet. There will be more. That Niagara Falls of ideas resulted in a whole series: it will take seven separate novels before the world is at peace. "Peace is hard work", said President Barack Obama. Writing is hard work too. Don't underestimate the work of reading either. Any reader who read Don Quixote or the complete trilogy of The Lord of the Rings will get admiring respect from hor friends (while anyone who declares in public that she's seen every episode of Big Brother on TV can expect hor friends to call the local madhouse with a request for urgent treatment).

If you do something extraordinary, like reading a book all the way until the boring end, you deserve a bonus, an extra, for free, a gift from me, the writer, to say «thank you» for your effort and sacrifice during so many pages of bad jokes and grammatical errors.