WAPAKONETA — A local author, who has been busy writing books for the last 20 years, will hold a book signing on March 21, for her newly published book, “Smoky Mountains Romance.”

Pam Egbert has been writing books since she first started on her computer that was a green screen, and everything was saved on disks. Her first book, “The Silver Heart,” was saved on disks, and when she brought the manuscript back out of her file cabinet, they had to retype it from the hard copy. No one had the equipment to download the files off the floppy disks. So, she had her office assistant come in and start typing while working on other projects she had to do for other clients.

Before “The Silver Heart” was published, Egbert took back her pen name for her books, Samantha Sheridan. Her children’s book, “Galon the Northern Pintail Duck,” had a stalker on her Facebook Messenger, and she decided to use a pen name for the rest of her books. Many authors use pen names so they can keep their private life separate from their public life.

Egbert’s new book, Smoky Mountains Romance, was started after she went to a Lima Memorial Hospital banquet. Randolph Mantooth was speaking about his time playing John Gage on the television show, “Emergency.” The event was for the paramedics, firefighters, and police officers in the surrounding area.

“Listening to him inspired me,” Egbert said. Mantooth told the story of a little boy who was injured, and the fire department captain told the little boy he would stay with him until he went to the hospital. Just that little bit of compassion made a big difference to the little boy. He was no longer scared and afraid.

“Mantooth was doing a ride-along for his part of the TV show,” Egbert added.

A few days later, Egbert put down the book she had been working on and started a new book. She had been to the Smoky Mountains hundreds of times, and she wanted to make that area the backdrop of the book in the Smokies. Because of copyright rules, Egbert could not use the character’s names from the television series. She used Mantooth’s first name in the show, John. She then changed the last name to Tate.

She wanted to make things in the book as real as possible with the correct terminology and procedures. Derek Stitzel, a paramedic for Sidney Fire Department, and Jason Wright, Jackson Center firefighter, were her sources when she had a situation where she needed more information.

The romance book is about a young lady to moves to Tennessee for a job at the local hospital and bumps into John Tate. After that, fate takes over, bringing them together through forest fires, accidents, and other incidents that throw a bump in the road for them. Will they be together in the end, and how with their love, conquer all? These are questions the readers ask themselves.

The book signing will be held at Interior Motifs, 204 E. Auglaize St., Wapakoneta, from 1 to 2 p.m. There will be paperbacks available and hardcover books for autographs.

The book has been published by Archway Publishing/Simon and Schuster.

For more information on Samantha Sheridan, aka Pam Egbert, go to www.samanthasheridanauthor.com or go to her Facebook page @authorSamanthaSheridan.