About the author

Ordinary lives. Impossible mysteries.

I’m Stephen Jeffrey—an author, publisher and community storyteller based in Alberta, Canada.

Long before I began creating magical worlds or writing about backyard dragons, I grew up in the Canadian Maritimes, surrounded by the ocean, forests, barn cats, crows and people who knew how to tell a good tall tale.

The Maritimes has a long tradition of stories told around kitchen tables, on front steps and anywhere people have time to gather. Some were true. Some became less true with every telling. The best ones lived somewhere between memory, folklore and imagination. Growing up among those places, animals and storytellers shaped my desire to become a storyteller too.

The worlds I create

I write fantasy that begins close to home. My stories often start in places readers recognize: a library, a café, an old neighbourhood, a small city or an apparently ordinary backyard. Then the impossible arrives.

My writing blends mystery, heart, humour, found family and just enough magic to make ordinary life suspicious. Some stories are warm, hopeful and comforting. Others travel through shadowed streets, ancient secrets and mysteries with dangerous consequences. Even in the darker tales, I try to leave room for kindness, humour and hope.

Cats, crows and water

Readers will almost always find cats, crows and water somewhere in my stories. Cats notice what is hidden. Crows remember what has been forgotten. Oceans, lakes, rivers, rain and fog carry the movement and mystery of the place where I grew up.

They were part of the landscape that shaped my imagination. They continue to follow me into every world I create.

Why I write

Through local publishing and community radio, I have had the privilege of meeting people from every walk of life, listening to their experiences and helping their stories find an audience. That work reinforced something I first learned growing up in the Maritimes: no person, place or life is ever truly ordinary.

I write because wonder should not have an age limit. Adults still need mystery, adventure, imagination and the possibility that the world might be larger and stranger than it appears. We need stories that bring us home feeling a little more hopeful than when we left.

The quiet strength behind the stories

Beside me through all of this is my wife, Barb—my greatest supporter, a deeply creative and artistic person, and the glue that holds our large family together. Her patience, artistic eye, encouragement and steady presence are woven into the person I am and the stories I tell.

Most of all, I write for readers who have ever suspected that the ordinary world is hiding something.

Perhaps dragons have not disappeared at all. Perhaps they have simply become very good at hiding.