A warm welcome back to author Amy Lane joining us today to talk about new release “Silent Heart”, part 2 of her Search and Rescue series and part of Dreamspun Desires line.

Welcome Amy 🙂

Professional Growth

By Amy Lane

I love professional growth workshops—all of them. But my no-holds-barred, hands-down favorites, are the ones that have nothing to do about writing and everything to do about other people’s jobs.

It’s bound to come up—writers like to cast doctors, lawyers, cops, firefighters, PI’s, etc, in their books—high conflict jobs create interesting characters and exciting situations. Sadly, as human beings we can usually only hold one, maybe two jobs at a time—so listening to someone with some solid background in a thing we’re interested in is, well, interesting. I’ve seen firefighters talk about the forensics of a burning building, forensics experts talk about autopsies, and 911 Operators talk about the best—and the worst—of their days on the jobs.

All of it was fascinating, helpful, and made me a better writer.

But sometimes a workshop comes along you weren’t planning on, and it sort of changes your entire writing trajectory—and that is super cool.

In this case, the subject was dogs.

I’d been mulling over a more action/adventure oriented series, and dogs come up a lot. The canine companion is a very attractive addition to any good-looking hero/heroine and when I saw the workshop in Denver, I got very excited. And man, was it worth my time.

The woman who hosted it was in her fifties, tough, funny, and very experienced—and she was very frank about one rather discouraging thing: The people who wrangle search and rescue dogs have no lives.

Search and rescue dogs need to be worked with hours each day—which is a great way to spend your time after work, but it doesn’t allow any time for, say, a relationship. The dogs need to be taken on outings, trained, rewarded, worked, constantly—these are high energy dogs, and they need to be tired by the end of the day or they’ll be in no shape to go find someone when they’re put on the spot. And the people who work them need to be in shape as well.

It’s a great life for the relationship between human and dog—but not so much for the relationship of human and human.

Which, in a way, was how Preston was born.

Preston doesn’t need much human time—even with the humans he really cares about—and he has a vital, active body that needs to be perpetually on the move. When he inherits his grandmother’s property and her few search and rescue dogs, he lets his best friends move in and together, they work for dogs.

They make some money training, some money boarding, and Preston gets a retainer for being in his brother’s business, which he shares with his housemates. Together they clean up, wrangle, feed, care for, and train, a couple dozen dogs. Preston has taken animal husbandry and animal health technician classes—he can administer shots and give basic health tests, as well as medicate and assess the animals, and his helpers follow his lead.

For people who weren’t great at school and weren’t great with people, it’s a vital productive life. But for Preston, unless he’s dealing with his family and friends, it’s a lonely one.

Damien, on the other hand, is gone a lot. Not all the time—he has downtime between jobs and a day or two a week when he and Glen, Preston’s brother, knock around the apartment and drive each other crazy—and while he would love a relationship, it’s hard to promise forever when you might get called away in the next five minutes.

Preston doesn’t need Damien around all the time—he needs someone who gets him when he’s there. And Damien needs a place that he can call home, not just an apartment with a buddy. And they both love dogs.

Eventually—if Preston can make Damien see sense, it’ll be a match made in heaven. Or a really clean, comfy kennel, with lots of furry friends