Hello everyone and welcome to my first official post of my blog series. These posts will range from information about me and my writing process to more background to the Frythiel Empire where The Cardinal War is set as well as specific characters and items within the story.

To start, my name is Jennifer Tempest, and I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta and currently live with my boyfriend Evan and our large cat Jerry. We have only had Jerry since December 2020, but he fits right into our family. I am a big lover of board games (we have over 150 games) and escape rooms (I have completed 70). I also love animals and spending time with my friends and family, and of course I love reading and writing!

My love of stories grew from an early age when I was read to at night by one of my parents. I still remember some of the series ranging from Poppy and Rye to Chronicles of Narnia to Harry Potter. I looked forward to story time and quickly began to read on my own to devour   more reading material. I remember I read so much during the summer that when I tried to submit my reading times to the library summer reading contest, they thought I was cheating with the minutes I was submitting.

The love of writing came a bit later, but my first ‘published’, in the sense each has a cover and are coiled, were a collection of stories written in school at the age of eight. I wrote a story about a magical cat, named Tigger after one of the cats I had growing up, and another story of magical leprechauns following clues. Both themes seem to have stuck with me as I am an avid Fantasy reader and writer as well as I host and now write murder mysteries. I have a full binder where I keep my completed stories as well as ongoing ideas and partial stories. Some are inspired by my friends, and some are inspired by things around me.

Despite loving math and science while growing up, once I hit high school and then while attending Grant MacEwan University, I switched my love to the creative world. I love English and continued to read and write whenever I could and started acting as well. While acting is more of a hobby for me then a career aspiration, I enjoyed every minute of it, and it has helped my ability to public speak immensely.

While I have never had a story published previously, I have had several poems published via contests and the feeling of having those in solid books helped guide me to the journey of my publishing of The Cardinal War. But more on my writing process in a later blog!

I’m sure you are tired about hearing parts of my life story and just want to hear what’s next? Well, my plan is to write a blog for you every month to finish the month off. This month the post will be a bit early since I wanted one ready to go for my new website viewers! But otherwise, you can expect at least one a month with potential bonus blogs if I have anything exciting to share with you guys. The other thing I wanted to address in this blog is I want to encourage engagement with you! If you have any comments, please feel free to post on the blogs, even if you are new and the blog was posted months ago, I will still have a read.

In addition to this, if you have any topics or themes, you would like me to cover, drop it in the comments and I will keep a running list in my notes! You can also drop any questions you have for me, if I see a lot of questions, especially if they are the same question, maybe that will turn into a bonus blog.

I look forward to connecting with all of you and I hope you enjoy these blogs as well as The Cardinal War when it is available for purchase!