By Patricia Shanae Smith
Most kids remember their first lost tooth. First bike ride. First pet. I remember my first dead body. I was six. His name was Don.
I shared a room with my dad. Stuck to him like glue. Thunder scared me. Strangers. The dark. Downstairs, two tenants rented out the bottom floor. More strangers. Another reason I never left my dad’s side.
One night, my sister came home screaming. Sixteen, breathless, shaking.
“Don is dead.” My dad didn’t believe her. She was a kid. Dramatic. That’s why he didn’t tell me to stay put. We both went to see for ourselves.
Dad knocked gently, slowly opening the door, and stepping in. Sister whimpers in the background. I shimmy my way through and walk to the bed. Dad was taking too long.
Don laid on his back. Arms crossed.
The room was small. Cramped. Walls stained yellow from years of smoke. He always had a cigarette in hand. You could still smell it, stale and clinging to everything.
He was wearing a dark blue bathrobe. Looked peaceful, like he had just lied down and never got up again.
“He’s just sleeping,” I said.
“I think you’re right, kiddo.”
I wasn’t.
My dad shook him. Checked for a pulse. My sister cried. Now loud. Annoying.
She swears God told her to check on him. Got a feeling when he didn’t come to the door. He was in his 70s. It was night. How was that her first thought?
There were no sirens. No dramatic rush of paramedics. Just quiet movements, people speaking low. My dad. My sister. Then strangers.
I didn’t know what a Coroner was, but I saw the word stitched onto a jacket. I saw the black body bag. Watched them unzip it, slide him in. The sound of the zipper—sharp, final—stuck with me.
I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t crying. I just watched. Studied. I felt something. But I didn’t have a word for it.
Later, I realized it was jealousy. Not of Don. Not of death.
Of the moment.
Of the silence.
Of the way life stopped, and no one had answers.
That feeling started the rest of my life.
I think about that night a lot. It’s not just about Don. About me. My sister screaming and crying. My dad looked serious, focused, and worried.
And me?
I was cold. Emotionless. Maybe, I have always been this way. Maybe I had this reaction because my mother passed when I was two years old, and it just felt familiar because I knew my sister was hysterical then too.
After that night, I stopped asking for blank paper. Started asking for lined.
Instead of drawing, I wrote.
First short story? Three girls wanted boyfriends. Then pushed them off a cliff.
Every story had a dead body.
I always wanted to be a writer, but I also wanted to be a mortician. Research, I told myself. Then criminologist. Then actress, so I could play a profiler. Nancy Drew. Criminal Minds. Everything Dick Wolf. Everything Bruckheimer.
It was never about blood or gore. It was about the unknown. The one thing in life without an answer.
My dad had answers to everything. Why is the sky blue? Why do we need money? Where did I come from? But death? He had nothing.
I’ve had a lot of talks about how I’m supposed to feel about death. That it’s sad. That it should devastate me.
I hear you.
So now, my characters feel sad and devastated when people die. I lacked emotion as a child they said so I put it all in my writing. I didn’t know how to make myself feel but I knew the words that described them at a young age.
I eventually grew to feel but not appropriately. I never stopped writing. I’ve written over fifty-three novels by the time I saw Dons’ body and dozens of short stories.
I always wrote about crime and never really thought about why until I was told to write a bio and realized it all started with him.
The thing about crime fiction, thrillers and mysteries is we’re all trying to make sense of something we never will. Don wasn’t murdered. There wasn’t blood. He just died. There was no mystery to solve except my own. Why did I not scream? Did his death reveal something in me that was already there?
Don didn’t die in vain.
His death sparked something in me. A purpose. A path. A reason to create.
Because of him, I tell stories that might outlive us all. I hope.
At six years old Patricia Shanae Smith saw her first dead body, sparking a lifetime passion for writing that would lead to a career in crime fiction and screenwriting. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Smith was inspired by the power of escapism in television to begin writing stories worse than her personal life. As an adult Smith moved to Nashville where she continued her writing career at Belmont University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Motion Pictures with a focus in screenwriting. While at Belmont Smith directed two short films, finished her second novel, and wrote four pilot television scripts; of course, the majority of these publications included a dead body. Smith loves to be part of the storytelling process, whether that takes place on screen or page, and hopes to help consumers escape from their own chaotic lives through her work. Connect with her at www.patriciashanaesmith.com, and follow Patricia on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X(Twitter).
About the Book: ‘Remember’ (April 22, 2025, DATURA/WATKINS MEDIA) is a compelling psychological thriller about a young girl who is forced to confront her past demons after a mysterious new neighbor moves in next door. Portia Willows was a high school senior in Los Angeles when a devastating car accident took the lives of her mother and sister. After their death, Portia’s social anxiety grows worse. She and her father become heavily dependent on cigarettes and alcohol to cope with their grief. The book starts five years in the future when she must confront her distorted memory of the past. As investigators close in, her fractured mind becomes a puzzle she must solve before it’s too late. Then Ethan Torke moves in across the street. At first, he seems like a distraction, but soon, his presence forces Portia to confront a possibility that she would have never expected. The deeper she digs, the more the walls of her safe reality crumble. Sinister pasts are bound to be revealed; the truth always catches up, and fantasies never last.
