J A Jolley

Joshua Jolley—writing under the pen name J A Jolley—is the founder of the self-publishing imprint Star Shine Stories, based in Sylvania, Alabama. His fiction is fueled by a lifelong love of storytelling, especially the kind forged at the table: homebrew Pathfinder campaigns where hard choices, unlikely heroes, and mythic stakes come alive through play.

Jolley’s debut novels, A Light for the Lost and Cataracts, launch two distinct sci-fi/fantasy series set on the same alternate Earth—separated by different regions and eras, but connected by a shared underlying world. A Light for the Lost blends dystopian grit, futurism, and high fantasy into a sweeping, genre-melding adventure, while Cataracts dives into survival-driven post-apocalyptic sci-fi, horror, and mythic fantasy with a darker edge.

For Jolley, these books are more than stories—they’re the continuation of worlds built with friends, sharpened by imagination, and tested by the kind of narrative chaos only a tabletop campaign can produce. Now, his mission is simple: to get these worlds into the hands of readers who crave bold genre fusion, high stakes, and the feeling that anything can happen—because it can.