Explore J.P. Graves: Author & Storyteller

Meet J.P. Graves

Discover the world of literature through the captivating stories and insights of author J.P. Graves. Explore the books, learn about the author, and join the literary journey.

I’m J.P. Graves, and honestly, it still feels a little weird to say that.

I’m a metalhead, a sci-fi and fantasy nerd, a gym rat, and I’ve spent the past fifteen years in the U.S. Military (and I am so very ready for retierment at 20). I’ve been all over the world, as you’ll see in the pictures below, and for a long time, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going.

Becoming an author was never part of the plan.

To be completely honest, I started writing on a whim. One night, while stuck on twenty-four-hour duty, I started typing out an idea that had been bouncing around in my head. That turned into an eighteen-hour, caffeine, nicotine, and ADHD-fueled plunge into writing, and I never really looked back.

After that first stretch, I was hooked. I spent hour after hour writing when I got home from work, throwing increasingly wild plot ideas at my wonderful, incredibly supportive, and all-around amazing wife, and trying to figure out what publishing might actually look like if I decided to take this seriously.

In the end, self-publishing felt like the right path.

One thing you should probably know about me is that I do not take “you can’t do that” particularly well. It tends to sound more like a challenge.

Plenty of people made it seem impossible to just start writing and actually publish a book. Naturally, that only made me want to do it more.

I finished Crimes of an Empire in about eight months and published it under the pen name J.P. Graves, mostly because almost nobody can pronounce my real last name. Trust me, it was the right decision.

After that, I hit a strange point. I had done the thing I set out to do. I wrote a book. I published it. I did the thing. Then came the obvious question.

What the hell do I do now?

For a few months, I stepped away from writing. Then my wife and I took a trip to Japan, and while riding a bus to the Naruto Theme Park, which I highly recommend because it was awesome, I noticed a small building perched alone on a mountainside.

It got me thinking about isolation. Not just being alone, but the kind of isolation that slowly gets under your skin. That thought eventually led me to fire watchtowers in the 1950s and, from there, to the idea that became In Darkest Dreams.

The story changed a lot along the way. At first, it leaned much more heavily into the fire watch aspect and involved some kind of fire demon. Eventually, it became something darker, a Lovecraftian-inspired horror story centered around an entity with no clear motives and no easy explanation. I actually ended up writing and rewriting In Darkest Dreams three different times over about ten months before it finally became the book it is now.

While I was writing In Darkest Dreams, another idea showed up. That one eventually became Writer’s Block. Then, while I was finishing that book, I started developing another story currently titled What Can’t Be Seen, although that is still a working title. While plotting that book, I had the idea for the grimdark fantasy novel I am writing called Flayed. I got about 30,000 words into that manuscript before I had a great idea for another book.

Do you see the ADHD now?

That is pretty much how all of this evolved. It has become a nonstop joyride powered by whatever idea happens to hit my dopamine button next.

Creating these stories, worlds, and characters brings me an incredible amount of joy. Apparently, inventing fictional people and then putting them through increasingly terrible situations is one of the most fun things I do.

That is probably enough rambling for one author bio, but if you made it this far, I just want to say welcome to the mind of a depraved individual who may or may not have issues.

Trust me when I say it is a great time and I’m glad you’re here.