Teddy Jones has worked as nurse, nurse practitioner, university professor, college dean, and occasional farmhand. She grew up in Iowa Park, a small north Texas town, and gained college degrees in nursing at Incarnate Word and University of Texas and a Ph.D. in Education at University of Texas in Austin. After holding nursing and head administrative positions in Austin, Denver, and Lubbock, and working as a nurse practitioner in Texas and New Mexico, she and her husband left their salaried jobs in 2001. Today she writes and he farms near Friona, in the Panhandle of Texas.