AR Simmons grew up in the Missouri Ozarks. He walked a gravel road to a rural school evocative of “Walton’s Mountain.” His parents did factory work to buy things not provided by their subsistence farm which was passed down from his grandfather who cleared the land from the native forest. He and his wife (beta reader, illustrator, and muse) still live on that Ozark farm. So his roots run deep in the Ozark soil. Using the culture, language, and mores of this "Bible Belt" region, he writes culturally immersive contemporary stories of obsession set amidst the small-town and rural life that he knows and loves.

He began writing seriously with a suspense novel which he serialized around the turn of the millennium on his website www.bluecreeknovels. It was then that he met and got to know his main character Richard Carter. It took Simmons until 2013 for him to publish the first Richard Carter novel (Bonne Femme) as an e-book. The series now includes fourteen mystery/suspense stand-alone stories that also chronicle Richard’s life with each story spaced about a year apart. This required two year-by-year updates, one to the technology available to the characters, and two to the growth of Richard's daughter Mirabelle who is now twelve and a half.

PS. AR is a rather common drudge, so once considered changing his nom-de-plume to “Bess Sellers.”