Jaina Simmons
LITERARY FICTION NOVELIST
Meet Jaina Simmons
Jaina Simmons writes literary fiction exploring identity, belonging, and the ways psychological and emotional pressure reshape a life. Her debut novel, THE SILENCE OF DIRT, is a work of literary psychological suspense. A member of the Authors Guild and AWP, she brings an extensive professional background in writing, design, and entrepreneurship to her fiction. Earlier in her career, she was a designer and founder of an internationally distributed creative-products company, where she incorporated her own lyrical typography and literary quotations into designs featured in more than 180 national magazines, including a multi-page feature in Southern Living, two national magazine covers, and two industry publication covers. She lives in Miami, Florida, and is at work on additional novels.
You won't find me on social media. You'll usually find me at my desk, working on the next novel or walking my dogs.
Jaina Simmons and Emma.
THE SILENCE OF DIRT
Literary Psychological Suspense
Currently seeking literary representation.
Gwyneth has built a life—an accounting career, a longtime relationship, and her dog, Jules—but the edges are beginning to blur. She knows the protein bar he reaches for and the treat that makes Jules’s tail tap, but she is no longer certain where she belongs within her own life.
Gwyneth abandons her shopping cart in the checkout line and drives away with Jules. North, toward nowhere, intending to be gone only a few days. A stop for food in Landrum, South Carolina, leads to an offer of a cabin at the edge of the woods. She steps into the stillness. It slowly begins to settle around her.
Days pass. Her former life grows more distant as the people of Landrum begin to press into the edges of her days. They welcome her with quiet kindness, offering moments of connection that ask nothing in return. Gwyneth remains at a distance, unable to step fully into their lives. Her life narrows around Jules, whose health begins to fail, transforming each day into an act of vigilance, devotion, and love. Then Jules dies.
The boundary between Jules’s death and Gwyneth’s own existence disappears. Stripped of routine, purpose, and the identity that had formed around Jules, Gwyneth drifts beyond ordinary thought, where survival itself becomes uncertain. Thought recedes. Humanity gives way to instinct. Only the smallest acts of attention—to the woods, to another living creature, and finally to herself—offer the possibility of return.
THE SILENCE OF DIRT is a literary psychological suspense novel about identity, devotion, and the way the deepest love can become the quietest form of disappearance.
A literary psychological suspense about identity, devotion, and the way the deepest love can become the quietest form of disappearance.
On the Writing Desk
Untitled Montana Novel
Literary Fiction
Set beneath Montana's immense skies, Jaina's next novel explores memory, belonging, and the quiet consequences of a single decision that echoes across generations.