My Story

M N Jolley is a creative professional born and raised in Kansas City, where he still lives. Since 2016, he's been writing professionally, and despite industry convention, he still finds it odd to write about himself in the third person...

So I'm not going to do that!

I'm Max. It's mostly a one man operation over here, so I'm going to drop the "He's" and the "We's"... unless I'm referring to my wonderful editing team, fantastic beta readers, or the artists who've made the stunning covers for my books. They're awesome, (seriously, I've got some amazing people in my corner, so much so that I'm running out of synonyms for 'people who I admire and who do cool things,') but they're not the ones writing copy for the 'About' section on my website. 

I write a smattering of things in the Fantasy genre, and I've done enough to get an eye for my own particular hangups and interests as an author. I love the process of developing a world and then interrogating the systems I've built - Asking not just what would be an interesting system of magic, but how that system of magic would shape society around it. 

Also, for what it's worth - I'm autistic, and many of my characters are as well. (Sometimes, I even make my characters autistic on purpose!) It's my opinion that fantasy stories are often lacking when it comes to including people off all backgrounds and types, and more often than not that inclusion tends to be stereotypical or all consuming. (Think about how many developmentally disabled or neurodiverse characters you've seen in fantasy novels, and then ask how many of them have personalities that can be defined outside of their diagnosis.) I don't want to pretend that I'm the only author doing this - there are many great fantasy novels out there with well written neurodiverse characters. I'm not the first to write casual representation by any means, I'm just one of many. 

For those of you curious:

Levi Lawson, the protagonist of The Kansas City Warlock Weekly, is autistic, confirmed on the page.

David Undertow, deuteragonist in The Sacrosanct Records, is autistic, but undiagnosed and unstated in the text of the books - at least for now. 

I also ended up giving Maggie Cartwright (of, "Maggie Cartwright",) a smattering of autistic traits, though in this case, I'm not going to author-diagnose her. 


I could ramble on for a while longer, but I think I'll leave it here for now. If you've got any questions for me, please feel free to reach out on my contact page and I'd be happy to answer them!