Tracy Jones, Author at Tracy Joy Jones

The Horse of My Dreams

The cover is here, and it’s so very lovely! It makes me want to get to know those beautiful horses and hope against hope they’d like me too. My horse story in this beautiful compilation book is a comedic warning against pretending to know more than you do entitled, “Kendall & the Magician.” It’s the story of the time I rode a thoroughbred racehorse at a barrel racing track. As you can imagine, it did not go well. However, one of my other horse stories bears remembering as well. If you aren’t laughing by the end, then perhaps you had …

A Beautiful Day Once by Tracy Joy Jones - Chapter 1

A Beautiful Day Once (a novella) – Chapter 1

Eden—Age 24“Button up your coats today because the Windy City is going to pack a punch with gusts of wind and temperatures well below freezing. But the real trouble is on its way first thing tomorrow morning. More on the blizzard after this.” Blizzard?!? Eden choked on the bite of frosted flakes that suddenly felt like gravel in her mouth. This could not be happening. Surely she’d heard wrong. The news station cut to a commercial about toilet paper while she tried to recover from an urge to weep. Extreme cold and snow went without saying in Chicago’s brutal winters, …

A Beautiful Day Once by Tracy Joy Jones - Prologue

A Beautiful Day Once (a novella) – Prologue

Eden—Age 14 “Eden, this movie is ancient! Why do we have to watch this one?” Abby and Isla were both pouting. They’d thought Eden meant a “real movie” when she invited them over for her a birthday/slumber party. And she had. Opening night in the theatre, bags of candy hidden in their purses, curled up in the luxurious reclining seats Eden had only experienced once before. The girls talked of nothing else all week. And then this morning happened. The lunch lady pulled Eden aside. Ms. Jenkins tried to be discreet about her empty lunch balance, but it didn’t stop …

Tracy Joy Jones - The Cobbler has No Shoes

The Cobbler’s Children Have No shoes

Do you know that old saying? In the Spanish translation, it goes something like, “In a blacksmith’s home, knives are wooden”. In Chinese “the lady who sells fans fans herself with her hands”. In Arabic, “at the potter’s house water is served in a broken jug”. In the Jones House, “my website is desperately in need of a facelift.” Anyway, for the last few years, my website has been a little sad. Yes, we build websites for a living, but it’s the last thing Matt or I want to be doing on evenings and weekends for ourselves (and no money). …

All Red and All Wrong

I knew something was wrong the moment we arrived at the Christmas party, but I didn’t know much else. I kind of knew the lady through a few common acquaintances, but it was her husband who had invited us to come. He was a client of ours, so Matt and I agreed. We dressed appropriately, and I felt cute in my red sweater. Elegant, not too flashy. Client wear. Matt always looks handsome, but he’d even donned a suit coat for the party. She’d told me not to bring anything, but I didn’t want to arrive empty-handed, so I picked …

An Excerpt from “Must Love Pumpkins”

I love this little story I wrote last fall, and I hope you will too. It’s releasing on Amazon in July. But if you’re longing for pumpkins and fall and hot chocolate a little early, enjoy! Kayla Mayberry had always been sensitive about her hair. She should have been over both the compliments and the comments by now, but she wasn’t. It didn’t help that she had two older sisters with dark, russet-red hair or that her younger siblings all tended towards strawberry-blonde rather than red. In contrast, Kayla’s hair was “full of copper” — her mother’s gentle way of …

Off to the Races

A few months ago, I got a random email in my inbox — Does anyone have a horse story where you learned a lesson from a horse? Horses? In all honesty, I’ve probably ridden ten horses in my life, maybe fifteen. The point is, I am anything but an expert. Although, I have ridden in some spectacular locations. I rode a horse in Montana across the flat, flat earth where all I could see was the horizon. I’ve ridden on long skinny roads in the middle of farmland (see picture – That’s not me on the horse, but it’s the …

Lego Lessons in Confidence

Ever felt like your faith was hanging on by a thread? I know I’ve both felt and spoken those exact words more than once—especially when everything looks dire. I imagine myself struggling to hang on to a fraying thread, clinging with all my might over a Grand Canyon of despair, and knowing that my faith might break at any second. In those moments, faith seems puny and fragile, especially with that mental picture in my mind. I recently saw this exact moment of anemic fragile faith illustrated in a search through the lego pile with my son. My fifteen-year-old boy …

Lessons from Lego

Ever stepped on a lego? Ever vacuumed a lego piece and then had to silence that barb of guilt that wonders if your child will miss it, and if you just vacuumed up the key to his entire lego universe? Have you ever looked at your family’s pile of legos and wanted to cry at home much money is represented in those oddly assorted, multi-colored blocks that now lie in rubble? Whatever your feelings toward lego, God has been speaking to me through my lego pile lately and I wanted to share a few randomly shaped nuggets with you. A …

Once Upon a Time on National Television

Ever had a moment that made you cringe every single time you relived it in your mind? Total humiliation? Awkwardness? High profile failure? Did it make you afraid of failing or did it make you try to protect yourself from ever letting it happen again? In honor of my new novella, “Unlucky in Love and Lyrics,” (releasing on March 17th – free to my newsletter subscribers). I’d like to share a little story of one of my moments which involved all three: total humiliation, awkwardness, and failure. Do you remember the song “Shout to the Lord”? Most likely you’ve heard …

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