NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

What be­gan dur­ing child­hood as a form of ther­a­py for Ja­son Granger even­tu­al­ly turned in­to a long-last­ing pas­sion. Fo­cused on main­tain­ing au­then­tic­i­ty and cre­at­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty, the Ari­ma au­thor is now steadi­ly build­ing his cat­a­logue chap­ter by chap­ter.

Granger, 45, told HE that his writ­ing jour­ney ac­tu­al­ly be­gan with sim­ple jour­nal­ing dur­ing his sec­ondary school days. He at­tend­ed both El Do­ra­do East and West. “This was about in my ear­ly teens when I was overnight­ing by one of my cousins,” he re­called. “I found an out­dat­ed di­ary, and I just wrote down what­ev­er was in my head at the time. I still have that di­ary.”

There was a lot on his mind back then, so the words flowed eas­i­ly. He would write about things he faced as an in­di­vid­ual, as well as chal­lenges his fam­i­ly ex­pe­ri­enced. “I start­ed writ­ing as an out­let for hard times, for painful sit­u­a­tions and mo­ments… So it was re­al­ly an out­let for pain.” But even­tu­al­ly, he ex­plained, “The jour­nal en­tries start­ed rhyming, so it evolved in­to po­et­ry.” He al­so tried his hand at song­writ­ing.

While writ­ing pro­vid­ed re­lief for him, he did not ini­tial­ly pur­sue it as a ca­reer. He ven­tured in­to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing and sales. Still, he wrote, as the ideas per­sist­ed. And fast for­ward to 2025, it was on­ly then that he be­gan pub­lish­ing his work af­ter decades of un­cer­tain­ty.

An in­tro­vert at heart, he said he held on to his work for so long be­cause “com­ing out of his shell” was “a slow, creep­ing process.”

“I nev­er re­al­ly saw my­self as a pro­fes­sion­al writer… But bit by bit, peo­ple (I showed my work to) were like, ‘Oh wow, this is dif­fer­ent. This is great. This is ex­cel­lent.’ And then I just built a bit more con­fi­dence.” One of the peo­ple who gave him pos­i­tive re­as­sur­ance was his broth­er, Kristo­pher. “He is such a big in­flu­ence. He was like, ‘You have so much work, put it out, just put it out.’ If it was not for him, I prob­a­bly would not have come this far in terms of pub­lish­ing my ma­te­r­i­al and con­tin­u­ance.”

Be­ing a writer is now his main pro­fes­sion, and he has pub­lished a to­tal of ten books, so far, in­clud­ing fic­tion and non-fic­tion.

Many things in­spire him, and the in­spi­ra­tion can hap­pen at any time — whether he’s stuck in traf­fic or tak­ing a stroll. “When­ev­er the idea comes, it comes. I just reach for my phone if I’m in a po­si­tion to text or voice note my­self to get the core idea doc­u­ment­ed.” But to prop­er­ly ex­pand on it, he said his space must be noise-free and clut­ter-free. “I can­not func­tion (oth­er­wise). My space has to be qui­et, neat and clean.”

Some of his book ti­tles in­clude In­tro­vert Mind of Mine—The Pow­er of Un­der­stand­ing, The Un­named Sto­ry—a Guid­ed Con­ver­sa­tion­al Jour­nal, and Even Rose Petals Fall.

“About 20 per cent of my cur­rent­ly pub­lished work is old, so 80 per cent is new,” he said. “For ex­am­ple, Even Rose Petals Fall, that’s a po­et­ic sto­ry, and I didn’t even re­alise I was writ­ing that. It was lit­tle po­ems that I was putting to­geth­er over a pe­ri­od of about five years.”

When it comes to the guid­ed con­ver­sa­tions, he said it is a se­ries of quotes based on “things (he) was think­ing about at that time…”

“And I re­alised, hey, this could be bro­ken in­to cat­e­gories, and it could be used to help some­body else get through maybe the same is­sues or thought process­es or what­ev­er, maybe even in­spire them any way that it did for me.”

One book he’s par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of is ti­tled See Me - Un­der­stand­ing and Sup­port­ing the In­tro­vert­ed Teen. “In­tro­ver­sion is not some­thing to fix. It is some­thing to see, un­der­stand and sup­port,” the syn­op­sis reads.

“Writ­ing for me is al­so about see­ing is­sues and see­ing how I could help. So that came from my ex­pe­ri­ence and re­search, be­cause as an adult (look­ing back), I saw that I prob­a­bly need­ed sup­port as an in­tro­vert­ed teen. So I did the book to help par­ents nav­i­gate kids who faced the same is­sues as I did,” he ex­plained.

Granger added that he con­tact­ed psy­chol­o­gists (for adults and chil­dren) to share his books on in­tro­ver­sion. “I have a few books in the pipeline right now as well.”

He al­so built a web­site — ja­sonyg.com — where he high­lights his en­tire cat­a­logue. He calls it a “mul­ti-genre lit­er­ary home” in­clud­ing sto­ries on love, loss, iden­ti­ty, in­ti­ma­cy and imag­i­na­tion. “We cre­ate books and ex­pe­ri­ences that help read­ers ex­plore the full spec­trum of hu­man ex­pres­sion,” the web­site says.

He said it took about a month to com­plete, and he launched it last year. “I’m re­lent­less when it comes to a project. I lit­er­al­ly don’t stop un­til it’s done,” he added.

He re­mains “re­al­ly con­scious” about his au­then­tic­i­ty, ex­po­sure and in­flu­ence as a writer. De­scrib­ing him­self as a “trans­la­tor of emo­tion,” Granger fur­ther ex­plained, “It’s just find­ing knowl­edge and find­ing ways to help and sort of cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty.”

His books can be pur­chased on Ama­zon, and those in­ter­est­ed in keep­ing up with his jour­ney can fol­low Ja­sonYG Nar­ra­tive House on so­cial me­dia.