The Dark Nursery Diaries Blog Posts

Welcome back to my blog, officially coined as Dark Nursery Diaries, based on the series title for Fallen Ribbon.

I am new coming out to the literary world, but I have been writing for a long time, since I was about 13.  I developed my passion for writing through the vast genres of books I would read, the shows and movies I’d watch, and the video games I would play.  It is my firm belief that everyone has a story to tell, and that storytelling is the most beautifully basic human idea a person can share to the world.

When I was at the age where I was doing a ton of reading, I remember feeling moved by the words of the authors that filled my shelves.  I remember the physical reactions I would get from the events of the stories I would read, such as when a beloved character died suddenly, my heart would sink to the pit of my stomach.  Or when something embarrassing happened, my stomach would flutter like butterflies and I would shut the book for a minute, fingers wedged between the pages so I wouldn’t lose my spot.  Those feelings I would get from reading my favorite stories are the same feelings I would love to replicate for future readers with my stories.

Better late than never, my first opportunity to prove my literary skill did not present itself until the end of my junior year of high school when I applied for Grubstreet’s Summer Young Adult Writing Program in Boston.  There I was able to work with professional writers who would help a selected group of teens hone their writing skills over the course of the eight or nine week program.  At this point, over a decade later, I don’t remember exactly how long it was, but it was over the course of the chunk of my summer.  The program also followed a summer semester I did at Bunker Hill Community College studying Sociology 101 and Oral Communication to get ahead before my senior year of high school.

From there, I would continue to work on my writing following high school, have my son, and eventually after getting through one of the toughest points of my life; I went back to college in 2019.  After studying Engineering Design for less than a year at Massbay Community College in Wellesley, MA, and upon the insistence of my advisor, I began to apply to universities to study my bachelor's degree.  In March 2020 I received my acceptance letter to my first choice of college, Wentworth Institute of Technology to study Architecture on the basis of my writing skills in a STEM field.  As it would turn out, Architecture would not be my passion, so I switched to Civil Engineering before pulling out due to financial obligations in 2022.

Since then, I have gone back to working on my writing and other passions such as baking.  I am using blogging in the meantime to get myself back into the flow of writing regularly, as well as promoting my upcoming book, Fallen Ribbon since the two go hand in hand and eventually I would like to go back to working on the next installment of the series.  In the meantime, per usual, don’t forget to like my author Facebook page, T.J. Vasquez, and my twitter page @fallenribbon to keep up to date with Launch Campaign news!  Don’t forget Fallen Ribbon launches Late Summer 2024!

Thanks For Reading,

T.J. Vasquez