Pat Simmons Interview Published on: 22, Sep 2022

My name is Pat Simmons, and I grew up in St. Louis. I’m the middle daughter with a younger brother who continues to be a brat. :) I attended private schools and had good mentors and developed a cultural awareness to be compassionate to others.

Yes! I’ve uncovered the families who enslaved my ancestors on my maternal side of the family. I have extended information about her on my website under the “Roots” tab. Robert Jamison in Mississippi enslaved Charlotte Jamison Wilkinson. My second great-grandmother was so close to freedom (1865) when John Wilkinson, a guest in Robert Jamison’s house, fathered her two sons. The real surprise is that she died at 80 years old in 1930, living in the backyard of one of the largest former slaveholders in the area, Bird Caradine.

Growing up, Grandma Wade was always old to me with her long white hair. No one, including my father, knew her exact age when she died. My background is in broadcast journalism, the reporter in me had to search for the answer.

Charlotte Jamieson—I added an ‘e”. Although, at the time, I didn’t know we had any ties to Jamisons in our family. I thought Jamieson was a random name when I named my characters for my first novel, Guilty of Love. I had always heard of her as Charlotte Wilkerson. It was an awe moment.

I had been my late grandmother’s caregiver. I experienced all kinds of emotions as a young mother of two, husband, and dog and responsible for my grandmother’s care after the sudden death of my father. That was back in the mid-90s, when I don’t think many knew much about a caregiver’s life: trial and error, sad and happy, and often exhaustion from doing it alone. Fast forward to 2019, my husband and I are caregivers to his ninety-one-year-old mother and his seventy-one-year-old disabled brother. I wanted to give the reader a peek in the window and be more compassionate when they meet caregivers.

I mixed my love of genealogy and romance to create Black characters who are strong, educated, and family-focused. I had no idea my first book, Guilty of Love, would become a series. The Jamieson Legacy is now ten books strong.

I already had strong Black men in the fictional family, and since they were tenth-generation descendants of a royal African tribe, it made sense to have the name for a woman. She embraces the strong Black single woman who is fierce, confident, and seemingly satisfied with her single status.

It was the fourth book I wrote and my all-time favorite!!!! Since I have a background in news, I wanted to explore several subject matters: post-partum depression, Black women who are incarcerated at a higher rate than White women, and the struggles for victims of crime. In 1987, there was a heinous crime committed in St. Louis. By today’s definition, the death of five grocery store workers would have been considered a mass shooting. I needed an emotional backdrop for Karyn and Levi’s story. What would happen if a victim of crime and a perpetrator fall in love?

Although she’s happy about her daughter’s pending marriage, she doesn’t see herself as someone who can have a love of her own. She learns that life doesn’t stop when she becomes an empty nester, but it’s her opportunity for a second chance at love.

I can’t imagine. I enjoy writing Christian romance to inspire and encourage readers to strengthen their walk with God and be faithful, and Jesus will bless them.

A simple folder on my desktop.

Study books on the craft.

I have a tucked away until I can get to outline them. Can you tell us about one? My November release is Day Not Promised: The intercessors, it’s a Christian fiction with spiritual warfare. This is a story the Lord told me to write. I had no idea there were more stories to come. Book Two will be The Prayer List: The intercessors.

I encourage my author friends to join. The book features and the tweets alone are priceless.