Nephele Tempest, Agent

Until the age of ten, Nephele wanted to be a ballerina. Then she wrote her first short story and began to consider a career that would allow her to eat chocolate. An avid reader from the age of three, she decided writing books was as close as she was going to get to reading for a living, and set off to fill stacks of school notebooks with her scribbling. In high school, Nephele wrote her first novel (which will never see the light of day), and served as editor of the school literary magazine. She majored in English Literature at the University of Chicago, where they further encouraged her to embrace her love of all things impractical. Then she graduated in the middle of a recession and discovered that creative writing skills only get you so far when you’re working on a resume.

In her ongoing quest to pay the rent while supporting her book habit, Nephele has worked as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster, an area manager at a major east coast department store, a paralegal, a stockbroker, and a marketing writer/web site manager for a financial services firm. Other skills in her arsenal include the ability to scoop the perfect ice cream cone, organize a charity auction, code a basic web site, and drive a person insane with her insistence on correcting their grammar.

Nephele quit her well-paying job in New York in 2002, packed up her Honda Civic, and moved to Los Angeles, where she planned to set up her laptop by the pool and to never shovel snow again. She worked as a freelance writer until her good friend Deidre, whom she knew from an online writing group, approached her with the idea of opening a west coast office of The Knight Agency. After several discussions, and approximately six months of helping screen submissions, Nephele joined the agency fulltime in January, 2005. She currently belongs to the Association of Authors' Representatives and Romance Writers of America. Although she still loves to write, she is ecstatic to have finally found a career that allows her to read for a living. She is currently accepting submissions in the following fiction genres: literary, women's, romantic suspense, paranormal/urban fantasy, sf/f, and YA.