A Little About Grafton

Grafton Carter is the pen name of an educator, theatre artist, and independent publisher who writes authentic, sexy, emotionally grounded, and gloriously queer romance centered on joy, intimacy, community, and connection. Created in part to keep his academic and scholarly work separate from his fiction career, the Grafton Carter name has become home to stories that celebrate the full spectrum of queer life with honesty, heat, humor, and heart.

Carter is the creator of the interconnected Havenwood universe and the author of novels including Spreadsheets and Bedsheets, Glitches and Kisses, Campfires and Desires, and the soon to be released Tattoos and Truths, and Pickups and Pawprints. His stories blend romance, found family, emotional vulnerability, queer friendship, and high-heat intimacy with richly connected communities and deeply human characters.

His work embraces the wide and beautiful complexity of queer culture, including twinks, bears, otters, daddies, nerds, theater kids, drag performers, musicians, nonbinary characters, bisexuality, polyamory, open relationships, age-gap dynamics, bar and club culture, chosen family, and the messy, joyful realities of queer adulthood. Carter believes queer stories deserve to be expansive, representative, complicated, funny, tender, political, and deeply alive.

Drawing heavily from his background in theatre education, intimacy choreography, consent-based practices, and mental health coordination, Carter approaches romance writing with a strong focus on emotional authenticity, communication, vulnerability, and character-centered intimacy. His professional work in storytelling, trauma-informed creative spaces, and human behavior directly informs the emotional landscapes of his fiction.

Influenced by creators like Dan Levy and the philosophy behind Schitt’s Creek, Carter intentionally creates worlds where queerness simply exists. While acknowledging the realities queer people face in the real world, his fiction imagines communities untouched by homophobia, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, ableism, and other forms of systemic othering. In his stories, queer people are allowed to love openly, build families, explore desire without shame, and exist fully as themselves.

For Carter, queer romance is both comfort and resistance. It is escapism with purpose. It is the radical act of imagining worlds where people take care of each other, where pleasure is not punished, where identity is not debated, and where love, friendship, sex, art, and community are treated as necessary parts of a meaningful life.

When he is not writing queer romance, Carter is a university professor in his spare time. He writes academic books and articles with major publishers, continues to work professionally in theatre as a director, intimacy choreographer, and mental health coordinator, and regularly teaches and presents on storytelling, consent, mental wellness, and trauma-informed creative practices.

He lives in central Illinois with his brilliant, compassionate, and very sexy husband, their three amazing kids, and three lovingly needy dogs who firmly believe they are the main characters in everyone’s story.

Because ultimately, the stories Carter writes are the stories he wants to read: queer stories full of joy, intimacy, laughter, chosen family, good food, good sex, good music, and people who love each other well.