“Think Douglas Adams distracted by Kafka (inside a simulator built by Charlie Kaufman), before wandering into a Terry Pratchett footnote and leaving a phone number on a napkin for Kurt Vonnegut. Written for anyone who’s ever made eye contact with the void and awkwardly waved.”
— Possibly someone’s slightly confused uncle on Goodreads
About the Author (Or, A Brief Guide to the Soft-Spoken Biped Responsible for Turning Strange Thoughts into Sentences)
(Note to Self: Be Brief. Be Poetic. Try Not to Spiral.)
I write for the existentially exhausted—for the emotionally crispy, the cosmically confused, and anyone who’s ever looked at reality’s user manual and thought: This could use a plot twist.
I’m Kailum Graves (Hello, Guten Tag, Goeie dag, Hola, 01001000 01101001, Ni hao): speculative fiction writer, time-travel tragic, and part-time philosopher of the soft and absurd. My stories live somewhere between grief and quantum hiccups—metaphysical little worlds where crying and laughing happen at once—like a glitch in the soul’s emotional firmware.
Before fiction, I worked in the art world, where my creations were framed, projected, and occasionally misinterpreted in very expensive lighting. But words have always been my happy medium—a place where paradoxes stretch their legs, jokes wear trench coats over heartbreak, and metaphors refuse to go quietly.
I’m represented by Shannon Snow at Creative Media Agency, and my debut novel, Mukail’s Time, is currently seeking a publishing home with good coffee and a high tolerance for metaphysical mischief.
Kailum Graves
I write books about being human. I am still practising being human myself.
Mukail’s Time (The First Book, Unless You’re Reading This in the Wrong Timeline)
(Remember to Insert an Obligatory Grand Statement Here)
A ~100,000-word adult speculative fiction novel with multiple POVs, braided timelines, and an interdimensional bureaucracy—funny, philosophical, and quietly gutting.
Told across a modern-day timeline that keeps threatening to fold in on itself, Mukail’s Time follows Mukail, a gentle, space-obsessed twelve-year-old clinging to imagination and time-travel novels to survive a brutal home life—until a cloaked figure steps through a shimmering tear in the air and proves the impossible is real.
Meanwhile, time agent Zimmer (courage: approximately one teaspoon) and Scribbles (a sentient book with strong opinions) are sent on a recovery mission involving a missing operative and a relic known as the Whispering Cube—an object powerful enough to end time entirely in the wrong hands.
Expect: found family (by accident, mostly); soft rebellion; absurd bureaucracy with teeth; accessible, contemporary time travel; and humour used as a life raft in deep water. Best for readers who like their sci-fi heartfelt and weird, their comedy sharp, and their hope earned rather than neatly packaged.
“My dream cover idea (if a publisher would ever allow this),” said Kailum, adopting the hopeful tone of someone requesting a jetpack for Christmas and fully expecting socks.
Works in Progress (Like Me, But With Better Dialogue)
✦ How to Survive Being Human (While Gently Avoiding Implosion, Crying in Public, or Accidentally Joining a Cult… Again)
An ~80,000-word upper YA/NA/adult crossover sci-fi diary with big feelings, dark humour, and thematic bite.
Told through the log entries of a sarcastic, anxious 17-year-old trying to stay human after Earth’s collapse—without pretending everything’s fine. It’s a contemporary coming-of-age story in space: intimate, funny, and emotionally serious, with philosophy threaded through the narrative like a lifeline you keep joking about because otherwise you’ll cry.
Expect: found family; identity and belonging; climate grief; philosophy-as-fiction; weird bureaucracy; cosmic questions; and the small daily moments that somehow matter more than the stars—the kind of hope that doesn’t arrive as a neat “I’m healed now” ending. Best for teens, young adults, and exhausted grown-ups who don’t trust motivational posters—but still want to feel a little less alone.
AI-generated mock-up for fun and tone exploration while drafting. Final cover will be created by a professional designer.
✦ How to Survive Being Human (While Having a Purpose Crisis, Bonding with Ancient Aliens, and Becoming Emotionally Responsible for Two Civilisations)
An ~100,000-word upper YA/NA/adult crossover speculative sci-fi diary about purpose, belonging, and what happens when paying attention actually changes things.
Set after Earth’s collapse and humanity’s fragile resettlement on a new world, this second instalment follows the same anxious, sarcastic narrator—now technically an adult, still deeply unqualified—as they stumble into a role no one officially gave them and everyone quietly expects them to perform.
While juggling settlement life, found family, and a baby who radiates inconvenient hope, they uncover evidence of an ancient alien intelligence that once shaped the world they now call home. What begins as curiosity spirals into responsibility. Contact brings insight. Insight brings consequence. And suddenly the narrator is standing in the narrowing space between two civilisations—Sapiens and Hearthfolk—while ancient technology, competing philosophies of time, and very modern bureaucracies all pull in different directions.
Expect: purpose crises; cross-civilisation tension; ancient alien mysteries; soft political fallout; philosophy-as-fiction; found family under pressure; and the unsettling realisation that progress always costs something. Best for teens, young adults, and exhausted grown-ups who survived the first book and are ready to ask the harder question: now that you’re here, what are you for?
AI-generated mock-up for fun and tone exploration while drafting. Final cover will be created by a professional designer.
✦ Mukail’s Time, Twice Removed (Or, How to Reboot the Universe Without Breaking Your Favourite Mug)
This follow-up dives deeper into timelines discarded, forgotten, and grieving. It’s part interdimensional scavenger hunt, part philosophical love letter to memory, meaning, and mug-ownership. Expect more paradoxes, more metaphorical shrapnel, and more strange children asking uncomfortable questions about causality. Also, tea.
AI-generated mock-up for fun and tone exploration while drafting. Final cover will be created by a professional designer.
Words are how we try to hold each other without touching. They’re our way of saying: I see you across the void (or the dinner table), and I’m waving with syllables. They fail, mostly. They slip, distort, fracture mid-air. But still—we build them like bridges made of breath. Because somewhere in the great, trembling dark, we want to feel a connection. Even if all we have are metaphors—and a slightly trembling voice.