Throughout my early years, the seeds of my love for language and writing were planted, and with careful tending my abilities slowly began to sprout and unfold.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2000.  Armed with a B. S. in management with a minor in English from Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY, and stars in my eyes, I entered the wonderful world of nine to five working.  Quickly, I discovered that my new life as a career woman offered several challenges.  One of those challenges was what exactly to do with my free time.  In college I had kept myself busy holding offices in extracurricular activities, working a part-time job, participating in social justice activities, and maintaining my GPA.  Now, there was work, and nights out with friends and family and...?  What else could I do with myself?

Insert my Mom, who’d always thought I should pursue a major associated with writing.  One summer day in our kitchen at home, she suggested that two of my friends and I write a story.  “Sure, mom,” I quipped.  "I’ll have the beginning to you on Monday."  Little did she know I was only half joking.  This conversation was the impetus for my first manuscript, Jazzy.

Jazzy, then sat untouched, until May of 2002, when during a casual conversation with Yokairy, we discovered yet another of  our common interests—writing.  Turned out we both had the bare bones of dusty manuscripts crammed in drawers somewhere.  “You too?  Really?” I asked her, thrilled to find someone who actually got what I was saying, someone who knew the joys and frustrations of fleshing out characters, making them meld, bringing a story together.  Joy to the world!  I’d found my kindred spirit!

 
Yokairy and I agreed to complete our respective manuscripts and offered one another support through the dry spells when the words just refused to come and rooted one another on during the fruitful times when chapters came as easy as summer breezes.  In October of 2002, my “baby,” Jazzy, was complete and I actively began to seek representation.

 
The inspiration behind Uptempo came one night while I was out on the town in 2005.  I began to toy with the idea of good people who make not-so-good decisions and the ideas mushroomed from there.   More than two years (and 54 chapters later) in July of 2007, I completed the manuscript and began to seek representation yet again.

The manifestation of this lifelong dream is beyond words!  I look forward to the feedback, insights, signings, and all that the post-publication process has to offer!  My current short-term goal is to live in the moment of this dream!  One of a multitude of long-term goals is the same--publication--again and again, as I continue to share my gift with the world.

 
The years have sailed by but the stars in my eyes have not dimmed.  In a nutshell, I’m a woman, I’m a writer, I’m a native New Yorker, therefore I don’t quite know how to quit.

In my spare time I enjoy reading, shopping, home decorating,  and fueling my creative fire.  I've been known to throw a great party and enjoy entertaining and spending time with family and friends. 

 
Read on for a glimpse into the life of Yokairy…



Yokairy:

I was born in 1979, in St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and raised with  my parents and my fifteen month-old sister, Dayetsa in the Bronx. I attended Catholic school all through Elementary and High School and graduated from the Academy of Mount Saint Ursula in the East Bronx in 1997. That September, I started my first semester at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan with a major in Legal Studies, and a minor in English and Creative Writing. The following March, I began work as a Paralegal with a general practitioner three blocks from where I lived. Spending every day riding the train in and out of the city inspired me to write about the hardships faced by average young men and women growing up in the Bronx. In October of 1998, I started on my first manuscript, A Likely Story. Based loosely on a character very much like myself, I explored the topic of a young Hispanic-American woman struggling with the every-day obstacles of life in New York City.

By early 1999, A Likely Story was inadvertently put on hold and by the time 2000 rolled around, several occurrences began to unfold in my personal life. I became engaged and started to plan my wedding for the following April. I was preparing for my final semester in college and possible relocation as Miami became more and more appealing to us. Then, on April 21, 2001, I married my long-time boyfriend and was ready to move the following month after graduation. By Memorial Day, one week after my last final exam, I said goodbye to my hometown and moved to Miami, Florida. In August, my husband and I found out that not only were we expecting, but I was already seven months along. In December of that year, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl.

By May of 2002, Nakia, a kindred spirit and now partner on this crazy literary roller-coaster we've blindly mounted, hinted that she too had begun an attempt at a novel and it was sitting in a pile of dust. With a renewed eagerness to complete it, I started again on A Likely Story, this time finishing it by August with the help and guidance of Nakia. In November, while commencing the search for a representative agent, I began my second manuscript, The Blue Brotherhood, a fictional drama about the New York City Police Department and the bands of corruption and solidarity that exist behind its walls, in and out of the city. By December, I discovered I was expecting again and in June of 2003, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

My search for an agent continued, along with Nakia, who had also been seeking representation for her own completed manuscript, Jazzy. Still full of ideas, I began my third manuscript in late September of 2004, At Night She Stood, and completed it the following May. By far my favorite and most personal story, this particular tale centers around a single mother in Yonkers, New York, recently divorced, whose daughter is kidnapped and murdered.

In the summer of 2005, I began my fourth manuscript, entitled Glory Lasts Forever. Breaking away from the mainstream norm, this story circles around a high school senior who defies tradition and tackles adversity by becoming the first female in the history of her town to make the varsity football team.

Shortly thereafter, Nakia and I embarked upon another journey, one less familiar, yet equally exciting for us. We began co-writing a children's book, entitled Wanderlust: Where Seasons Meet & Magic Begins. It's a tale about two young girls living miles apart who meet by fate and discover their shared knowledge of a legendary land of enchantment and mystical creatures. They commence a voyage that takes them out of our world into the one they've been dreaming of all their lives.

Last summer my family and I watched the Florida palm trees fade into the reflection in our rearview mirror when we relocated back to New York.  I was looking for a better education for my children, one that South Florida was not providing, and truth be told- I just wanted to come back home.

Establishing myself in a litigation firm and more recently undergoing certification to become a Family/Divorce/Visitation and Child Support Mediator, I have become settled back into my New York lifestyle enough to begin work on my fifth manuscript, entitled The Lost Highway. This story centers around a young women who witnesses a brutal murder and goes on the run as a result, spending years building a safe and solid life until the same man that has haunted her nightmares since finds her again.

On the cusp of my 30^th Birthday last September, The Blue Brotherhood was picked up for release by JimSam Publishing, Inc., a publishing house based in Tampa, Florida. I am proud to announce that The Blue Brotherhood is now published! Please visit www.yokairytavarez.com for more information.

With this new venture we have undertaken, along with the decision to re-vamp Our Writes of Passage, Nakia and I are hoping that this will only not open new doors for us insofar as getting our names known and recognized, but in establishing us as novelists, as well. The release of The Blue Brotherhood and Uptempo gives me the drive needed to push myself even harder, push the envelope even further and immerse myself in the literary world.

I have many goals for the future, some more realistic than others. I hope that some of this passion and fire to write and express myself has been passed on to either or both of my children. Seeing the straight lines drawn by other people isn’t nearly as interesting as drawing the crooked lines yourself, and I hope that they learn a way to find the laughter, beauty and tragedy in everything they encounter the way writing has done for me. I hope to publish the rest of my manuscripts and see them all adorning the shelves of bookstores all across the country.  I hope to make Oprah’s Book Club List and see ‘Yokairy Tavarez’ become a household name. I love watching movies and oddly enough, before I pass I hope to have seen every film ever made to date.

More personally, I still hold on to the hope that one day I will walk into a movie theatre, buy tickets and a couple of snacks for my family and I, find some seats in a crowded room and sit back while a movie made from one of my books comes to life on screen. The rejection letters from agents who weren’t interested, those moments of writer’s block when I couldn’t even put two words coherently together, those times when so many ideas were popping out simultaneously I could barely get them on paper and those times when it seemed this crazy roller-coaster had plans to throw me off; it will all have been worth it just to see those ten beautiful words on screen- “The Blue Brotherhood, Based on the novel by Yokairy Tavarez.”