Books Published by Tracy Curtis
Beach Bummed
Riding the Wave of Summer
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With sharp wit and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Charlotte Observer humor columnist Tracy Curtis shares a collection of stories about being thrown into the deep end of our hottest season. Beach Bummed compiles the flips and flops in trying to keep everybody happy during the wild ride of summer!
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It’s impossible to get post-baby bodies into pre-baby bathing suits. Paddleboarding is like trying to ride an ironing board on a bed of marbles. The beach chairs don’t match, leaving one person talking to everybody’s feet — and anchoring a beach tent in sand is like installing a jungle gym in sugar. The kids are bored, the hermit crab is missing and it’s so hot you’d rather pour your mojito over your body than drink it. And why do kids get to go to camp? Their whole life is summer camp — send the moms!
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Beach Bummed reminds us that if you’re counting on the perfect summer ... you’re gonna get burned!
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Trophy Mom
Hope Springs Maternal
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With sharp wit and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Charlotte Observer humor columnist Tracy Curtis shares a collection of stories about motherhood and the mother of all seasons, spring. Trophy Mom compiles the failure and the funny in trying to be the perfect mom during a season of mayhem.
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The kids won’t spring ahead an hour, so they drag an hour behind. Spring break is still yelling at the kids, just with an ocean view. And why is a “perfect game” in baseball a game when nothing happens? Scheduling a girls’ lunch is like coordinating the G8 summit. Recipe prep times are off by about ninety minutes. It’s impossible to decide between bangs and Botox. “Skinny” jeans have been whittled down to “toothpick” — and everybody’s running around in yoga pants, which aren’t even pants! And what’s with fourth grade math? It doesn’t even have numbers in it!
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Trophy Mom reminds us that if you’re waiting for life to be perfect ... you’re going to be waiting a while!
Trophy Mom is available on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and locally in Charlotte at Park Road Books, The Buttercup, Green With Envy, Charlotte's, and Barnes & Noble.
Holidazed
Wrapping Your Brain Around Christmas
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With sharp wit and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Charlotte Observer humor columnist Tracy Curtis shares a collection of Christmas columns past. Holidazed is a spirited look at the chaos and craziness of the season, and the absurdity of trying to make it perfect.
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Christmas isn’t perfect and it never has been. The video card replaced the Facebook card that replaced the Christmas card. People are giving kidneys, like you could ever top that. The kids can make advent wreaths, but can’t make their beds. Elf on the Shelf won’t do his job, Santa’s getting dissed on holiday napkins, and Starbucks killed Christmas with a single red cup. And nobody knows the words to these carols — why is everything ye, yonder, yon — yore, troll and don? Who talks like that?
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Tracy Curtis is an award-winning author, speaker and former syndicated humor columnist for The McClatchy Company, nationwide. She has written over 500 columns for the Charlotte Observer, and is now publishing her Humor Me trilogy of gift books, collections of her columns from the last decade about the imperfection of motherhood.
Trophy Mom, Beach Bummed and Holidazed were released in 2016, and Holidazed was awarded a national 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award. Tracy speaks to literary groups, book clubs, professional organizations and conferences, and has also performed standup at The Comedy Zone. In 2017 Tracy was a finalist in the Erma Bombeck I Anna Lefler Humorist-in-Residence writing competition.
A former CNN producer, Tracy enjoyed a fifteen-year career in radio, television and film. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, two sons and three step-children.
And when she’s not writing? She’s unloading the dishwasher.