McNeill was born in Glasgow, Scotland and studied architecture and building surveying at Glasgow Caledonian University from 1989–1996. In 1996 he started work in an architects’ office designing new flats and commercial properties, until he saw an advertisement for a writer in the December 1999 copy of White Dwarf. In February 2000, Graham started work for Games Workshop as a staff writer for games development, writing articles for White Dwarf and army-specific books. In May 2000 he started writing for the Warhammer 40,000 team, but has also kept up writing articles for White Dwarf. Graham has been heavily involved working on codexes, especially Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Tau between late 2000 and June 2001. Other codexes he has been involved with are Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Necrons, Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Chaos Space Marines, Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Imperial Guard and Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Daemonhunters. Since a promotion from staff writer to games developer, he has written Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Witch Hunters and Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Space Marines. Graham is an avid writer and has had several novels published by The Black Library. They are Nightbringer published in January 2002, Storm of Iron in July 2002, Warriors of Ultramar in February 2003 and Dead Sky Black Sun. In addition McNeill has written The Ambassador, a Warhammer novel, in November 2003, "The Ambassador Chronicles" in July 2005, "Guardians of the Forest" in September 2005. His most recent works have been False Gods, published in June 2006, Fulgrim, published in July 2007,and Mechanicum, the three of which are part of the Black Library'sHorus Heresynovel series. Another part to McNeill's story about the Ultramarines, The Killing Ground, was released in May 2008. Early 2009 saw the release of his first novel outside of the Black Library, I, Mengsk, set in Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft universe. The novel tells the tale of three generations of the Mengsk family - Angus and his revolutionary activities, his son Arcturus and his rise to power, and Arcturus' son Valerian as he struggles to embrace his family's legacy. In April 2009, Graham also contributed to the anthology book Tales of Heresy with a story entitled The Last Church, one of the first stories in the Black Library imprint in which the Emperor spoke directly and at length, rather than described from afar as had so far been the case in the Horus Heresy series. Early in 2010, Graham then released A Thousand Sons, a Horus Heresy novel focusing on the Thousand Sons legion and their fall from the graces of the Emperor by the hand of the Space Wolves. This novel was written in sync with a novel due to be released in early 2011 by Dan Abnett, titled Prospero Burns, which tells the same narrative from the opposite perspective. Graham worked closely with Abnett on the two novels, ensuring they met at certain points and would not contradict one another. This planning was rewarded when, a month after A Thousand Sons was published, it not only reached the top of the UK science fiction charts, but soon entered at number 22 on the New York Times Bestseller List, cementing his reputation as a writer of high-standard tie-in fiction. Graham plays both Warhammer 40,000, in which he plays with both Tau and Necron armies, he started with The Ultramarines, and Warhammer, in which he plays an Empire army. In 2011, Graham wrote his first novel for Fantasy Flight Games, Ghouls of the Miskatonic, the first story of the Dark Waters Trilogy, based on FFG's Arkham Horror board game and thus closely linked to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In June 2015 Graham accepted a job offer from Riot Games, the developing studio of the popular video game League of Legends, after visiting their main office in West Los Angeles in December 2014. As one of the company's Senior Narrative Writers, Graham is developing backstories and lore for individual characters of the game and the in-game world. He is well known for focusing on the lore of Demacia, a fictional region which lies in the League Of Legends universe. Within the League of Legends community he is primarily known by his alias "Dinopawz".
