Lynda Sandoval came to my attention when Sandy reviewed the first three installments of her Return to Troublesome Gulch miniseries. Sandy loved them, and I thought the premise was pretty interesting. Lynda joins us to discuss her inspiration for these books. Read on for a fascinating story of real life tragedy and the people who are the first on the scene.

It’s funny. Some books live in your heart for a long time before they see the light of day. I had the ideas for the Troublesome Gulch series before I’d even sold to Silhouette Special Edition, and they grew out of my own experience working in “the field,” as we call it.

In addition to my writing, I’ve been in emergency services in one form or another for fourteen years. I spent seven years as a police officer, and I’ve worked the past seven as a medical/fire 9-1-1 dispatcher for the fire department. I’m certified in Medical Priority Dispatch (which means, among other things, I can conduct CPR and deliver babies over the phone until the medics arrive) and First Responder CPR. The training we receive is extensive, the situations in which we assist, life-changing. My head and my heart are full of the real-life emergencies, both heartbreaking and hopeful, in which I’ve been involved over the years, and key to those stories is the people. Always. That’s what I love about Special Edition–they’re stories about the true human spirit, with characters who could be your sister or your best friend or the man you fell in love with. My kind of story.

Though I’ve never taken an actual case and fictionalized it (too hard!), little incidents seep into the subconscious as you work these kinds of jobs, and as a writer, occasionally inspiration takes hold.

One spring, when Coloradoans held their collective breath that the last snow had come and gone, prom season rolled around. While teens in the metro area pondered satin or sequins, steak or seafood, those of us in “the field” simply prayed all of them would live through the night that should provide only good memories. But we know how frequently that doesn’t happen. Teens think they’re invincible, and
it doesn’t matter how much adults caution them, they have to live through the good and bad to learn. I know–I thought I was invincible
as a teenager, too.

Unfortunately, just as we’d all feared, a truly catastrophic crash happened on one prom night, not within my jurisdiction, but near my old high school, which hit hard.

Some of the kids died in ways bright-eyed teens should *never* die. Some lived. Grisly details were all over the news channels.

Though I, along with the whole community, breathed relief that it hadn’t been an entire carload of dead teens, I couldn’t imagine a worse hell for the survivors. My mind had moved beyond the call, the crisis, the care and recuperation to the rest of their lives. The implications boggled my mind.

Many first responders carry a bad call with them until the end of shift, then let it go for sanity’s sake. For me, being a writer, the image hung on and grew into a series of questions in my head.

How would the survivors come to terms with what had happened?
What about guilt?
How would growing up in an instant–and in such an awful way–impact their futures?

I have a friend who lost her fiance in college when he fell asleep at the wheel and collided with a semi truck. I absolutely know this led her to her career first as a paramedic, then as a firefighter/paramedic who eventually made captain. Before her personal tragedy, she’d been pre-med. But after she lost the man she intended to marry, she didn’t want to spend her life inside a doctor’s office or hospital. She wanted to be in the middle of the highway during a rainstorm, belly down in the blood and wreckage doing everything possible to keep someone else from suffering as she had.

And there you have it. All of that came together and the Troublesome Gulch series was born. Despite the serious subject matter, I’d like to think the books are uplifting stories of love, hope, and healing. A prom night with four couples riding together, a terrible crash, four dead, four survivors. My stories pick up about twelve years after the event that changed their lives in ways they would never have expected, and they are inextricably linked. All of my survivors enter the field of emergency services: Brody, a paramedic in The Other Sister, Erin, a firefighter in Deja You , Cagney, a cop in You, and No Other, and Lexy, a 9-1-1 dispatcher whose story hasn’t been titled yet, but will be released in 2009.

I’m a huge believer in the resiliency of the human spirit, and if I were to boil the Troublesome Gulch series down to its clearest distillation, that would be it. We are stronger than the struggles we suffer through, and love is the ultimate healing balm. I hope the Troublesome Gulch books will help readers survive and thrive, no matter what they might be facing.