Wales grew up in a small northwestern Pennsylvania town. He majored in English under the Writing option at the Pennsylvania State University, where he was a founding member of the Penn State Writers Club and head of its Fiction Writers Group. During his 10 years in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he started the Polyamory Awareness and Acceptance Ribbon Campaign, which is devoted to destigmatizing the lifestyle of responsible non-monogamy. While a resident of Utah, he founded the Freethought Society of Northern Utah.He currently lives in Northern California.