Jones grew up in Arlington, Texas and moved to Seattle, Washington in 1999 to study music recording at The Art Institute of Seattle. Here he began recording music under the name Surgery in the Attic. He studied English at The University of Texas and received his MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Montana. In 2008, along with Shane Joaquín Jiménez, Jones founded Zero Ducats, a literary journal assembled entirely from recycled and stolen materials and distributed for free.