Hello

My Story

Early on, I took an interest in writing, but life got in the way, and I didn't pursue it earnestly until I was fifty-five. At first, I regretted that, and maybe I still do a little bit, but what I have to say in my mid-fifties is more interesting than what I had to say in my twenties or thirties. 

I was born on October 2, 1965, in the small southern Ohio town of Greenfield. Greenfield sits in the extreme northwest corner of the Appalachian region between Columbus and the Ohio River. By the time I was born, my family had lived and died there for generations. Most of them continue to do so today. In 1984, I  graduated from Edward Lee McClain High School and joined the Marine Corps just a few months later. The Marines took me all over the world and introduced me to things that I had only ever read about before. Four years later, I returned to Greenfield with a family and set about trying to support them as best I could. It was during my formative years in Greenfield and in the Marine Corps that I started dabbling in poetry and prose.

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On March 13, 1989, I took a job with an auto parts factory in Blanchester, OH, that supplied parts to Honda. Four days later, on March 17, I was on a plane to Japan for training. That started me on a twenty-year career as a Quality Engineer in the automotive industry. During these twenty years, I found myself traveling all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Japan, sitting in meetings and making decisions that were usually reserved for people educated well beyond my two semesters of community college.  I did well in my career, always advancing either through promotion or by discovering new opportunities elsewhere. Still, I woke up one morning in 2009 and decided I needed a change.

In 2000, I moved from Greenfield, OH, to Danville, KY. Nine years later, in 2009, I left the automotive industry and opened a portrait studio that I called "GX2 Photography."  I didn't know much about photography, but I learned quickly, and within a couple of years, I had the area's top Senior Portrait studio, photographing 70 to 80 seniors a year. It was during this period that I started to think about writing a little more, but I never really got it going.

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The thought of owning a coffee shop had always appealed to me, so in 2018, I bought a food truck and sold donuts and coffee from it to learn a little about the food service industry, having never worked a day in it. In 2019, Big Jack's Donuts & Coffee was voted Food Truck of the Year in Boyle County, KY.  It was then that I decided to close my portrait studio and open a cafe.

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In 2020, I sold my food truck and opened Big Jack's Cafe in Lawrenceburg. KY. We opened just as COVID hit, and it was tough, to say the least. Two years later, we are thriving because we serve a great product and treat our guests like family.

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Shortly after opening Big Jack's Cafe, something hit me, and I began pursuing writing seriously. I decided to concentrate on short stories, as  I felt doing so would not take me away from the cafe while I was working to get it off the ground. I've been asked what genre of fiction I write. It is usually classified as "Noir," but I like to call it "Hardscarbble." It is a style of writing that presents protagonists as anti-hero types at odds with themselves as much as with anything else. 

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In 2023, I published my first book, The Streets of Greenfield, a collection of 17 short stories set in my hometown of Greenfield, Ohio. I published my second book, Snapshots In Time, in 2024. It is a collection of vignettes written in much the same style as my first.

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In February 2025, I began writing my first non-fiction book, titled The Notorious Adams Boys. It is the true story of the Adams Boys Band from Greenfield, OH. Their story is a remarkable one about life on the road as a major touring band in 1960s and 1970s America. While being a true story, it fits right into my hardscrabble style of writing. It is scheduled to be released on April 202, 2026

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***I am currently living in Danville, KY, with my wife, Michelle, and our mean cat, Boo Radley. When I'm not writing, I'm making coffee at Big Jack's Cafe, taking a road trip along the back roads of America, or riding recumbent trikes with my Michelle.***

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Eric Grate 

Danville, KY

January 6, 2026 (updated)

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