About The Author

The usual, short bio-clip:

Tanya Jones has been a teacher, appraiser, restaurant owner and newspaper publisher. As a techie who speaks non-tech and a former entrepreneur, her job as a Happiness Engineer with WordPress (Automattic) has been the perfect fit to nurture her desire to help others while allowing the freedom to pursue her passion of writing. The diverse cultural environment of Automattic is something that she warmly embraces and credits them for her ability to pursue work as a woman in tech while developing her author career.

Tanya’s a musician, artist and writer who grew up in the forests surrounding the Alberta Rockies. In her opinion, there’s no better place on earth to develop the imagination of a child that will last a lifetime. A single mom of two young adults, Tanya’s no stranger to financial hardships and the challenges faced by teens. With a zest for life, she believes that we are in control of our own happiness, and that being surrounded by fur babies, 6 to be exact, has a strong influence on a positive mindset.

But for those who might like a bit more…

Fun facts:

• I prefer to write in British English, but I’m Canadian, so we get all mixed up with American English (my book is soundly edited in American)
• I love African daisy flowers
• I’m addicted to Peppermint Mochas from Starbucks
• I have 3 cats, 2 dogs and 1 rabbit
• My adult kids, their partners and myself are now roommates in a house that’s a perfect fit for us – and I couldn’t be happier!
• I want to live in a world where fantasy magic is a regular part of life for everyone
• I’m terrible at declaring “favourites” because there is so much of everything to love!

My life journey

I was an entrepreneur pretty much my entire life… since I was 16. One of the things that I love most about that is that there was never a dull moment – being an entrepreneur served my naturally fickle ways extremely well. Mainly because nothing ever stays the same leaving me no time to get bored!

The down-side? It’s a bloody tough road to take. I’ll never regret it, it’s shaped who I am today. I had many successes, lived through many failures, learned resilience, and made many wonderful friendships along the way. Not to mention the countless skills I’ve developed that no school could hope to teach. But in my 40’s I found and fell in love with my new job as a Happiness Engineer with WordPress.com (owned by Automattic) and I won’t ever look back.

So what has my life looked like? Well, for those interested, keep reading!

I was born in 1974…. to some I’m a young pup – to my kids I’m ancient! I tell ya, if you ever start to think that you’ve learned all there is to learn about life, talk to a teenager, they will soon set you straight on just how much you really don’t know! None-the-less, at this point in my life I am proud to say that I have had the pleasure of enjoying a great many adventures.

In high school, I was the second lead lady in a stage production of Grease – yes, that would be Rizzo. Great fun and many fond memories. I’ve played piano since I was 4 years old and taught for many years – until I found that far too many parents force their kids to take lessons that they really didn’t want to take (please don’t do that). So wanting to maintain my love of music, I moved on. I’ve traveled through more than a dozen countries and look forward to the day I am able to travel a dozen more. I’ve worked in law firms, travel agencies, bakeries, gas stations, grocery stores……. and all of this before I was the ripe age of 20.

Moving on to my adult years, the next 20 years brought with it a whole new world of experiences – including university, marriage, two wonderful kids, a few businesses, the creation of book and a divorce – life keeps you on your toes! In business, there’s been real estate appraisals with my grandfather and mom; a 5-star restaurant with my ex-husband (when he was my husband!); a horse ranch with my mom, dad, brother and nephew; a rock band called Rezinator as the bassist again with my, at the time, non-ex-husband; real estate sales with Mom; and a good news only community newspaper, Gateway Gazette, from 2004-2020, first in print then digital only.

The journey of writing a book has been a bumpy, but highly enjoyable, one

In 2010, having always had a love of literature, movies and romance I found myself bitten by a bug to write. Inspired by a few truly great writers and also a few not so great but incredibly successful authors, I took the plunge and started my author journey and wrote my first, YA Fantasy, over 88,000 words in roughly 45 days. But as life is life, my “masterpiece” ended up getting shelved for almost 5 years. However, I believe everything happens for a reason (it turns out my masterpiece first draft needed a whole lot of work!)

The next 5 years also turned out to be another round of “life” – but it also came with a tremendous amount of initial beta readers, feedback, support, encouragement – and not a little impatience – as my wonderful followers would press me to “get on with it”.

2019 marked the beginning of a new year and an exciting re-write.

But it also marked the end of an era, as I lost my mom near the end of 2018. That’s been a hard adjustment, and I’m sad that she won’t be with me each step of the way during the final leg of this journey. She was a beacon and a rock through-out my entire writer’s journey so far – not to mention her massive presence in all aspects of my life. But I know that I’ll do her proud and that she’s watching over me to make darn sure that I truly make this the final leg of this journey and get this darn book done!

2020 has seen the completion of a major developmental edit and the finalization of a whole new book. The current journey is to focus on getting an agent and new writing projects.

I hope you’ll enjoy this journey with me!

I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has, so feel free to leave comments!

Please be sure to follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tjonesauthor and Instagram: https://instagram.com/tjonesauthor