Dreamer's Sanctuary

A lot has happened since my last update!  When I wrote my last blog, I was so sure Kevin was S’more on The Masked Singer.  The voice sounded like it could be him, and the clues fit almost perfectly! But after the second episode, I changed my mind – the clues no longer fit, and the voice didn’t sound as much like him.  So disappointing!  I haven’t watched since.

I also went to Nick’s show in Nashville two weeks ago!  It was so much fun!  I scored front row center tickets, so I had an amazing view and got some great videos.  They’re all posted on my YouTube channel if you’re interested in watching them.  Sadly, he did not sing “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” but he did sing “Lovesong” and some other awesome ’80s covers, including an amazing performance of “Wanted Dead or Alive” and an incredible medley of “I Need You Tonight” and “Right Here Waiting.”  That was one of my favorite parts.  I thought of Broken Nick and Claire during a lot of those because I listened to a lot of ’80s rock music and power ballads back in the Broken era.  But I also thought of Cary and Curtain Call when he sang “Just Want You to Know,” which was an unexpected treat – I hadn’t heard that song live in a long time!

Since I spent that whole weekend with friends, I didn’t have much time to write except to keep my streak alive by adding a few words to the story each day.  I’ve gotten back on track since then, but Chapter 47 of The World Will Be Waiting took me longer than expected to finish because of how long it turned out to be, over 8,000 words!  But it’s finally done and posted for your reading pleasure!

With this update, TWWBW has officially surpassed Curtain Call in length.  That’s based on total word count, not the number of chapters.  It’s now my fourth-longest story after By My Side, Song for the Undead, and Broken… and it’s only about 40k words from passing Broken, too, with no end in sight.  To be clear, I do have an ending point in mind, but I still have a lot left to write before I get there.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be my second-longest story.  I don’t think I’ll ever beat BMS, nor do I want to.  But I never set out to write super long stories; they just sort of happen.  Anyway, thanks for sticking with me and reading so many of my words!  I’m always appreciative!

It’s been an exciting week in BSB land!  Brian and AJ both have new songs out, Nick gave us a sneak peek of the setlist for his solo tour, and we may have another Backstreet Boy on The Masked Singer!  Don’t believe it?  Watch the clue package.

• “Gather round, campers.”  Kevin lived at a church camp run by his dad.  It looks a lot like the forest background at the beginning of the video.
• “I started out on a rocket to fame.”  The rocket could be a reference to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the state where Kevin launched his music career.
• “A journey from obscurity to major heartthrob status.”  Kevin was just a normal kid from Kentucky before becoming a Backstreet Boy.
• “Step by step.”  This is a New Kids on the Block song.  BSB toured with NKOTB.
• The tip jar could be a reference to Kevin’s jobs before becoming a Backstreet Boy.  He worked at Pizza Hut and as a tour guide at Disney World, which are both jobs where he may have earned tips.
• The ship could be a reference to the BSB cruises.
• “I traveled the land near and far, making headlines with fellow adventurers and idols.”  The Backstreet Boys were teen idols who have been on many world tours.
• The beach could be a reference to the upcoming Backstreet’s Back at the Beach event.
• The deep dish pizza is a reference to Chicago.  Kevin played Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago.
• “And when I finished with my travels, I hung up my cape.”  Kevin left BSB after the Never Gone tour.
• The Christmas tree could be a reference to BSB’s latest album.
• The angel on top could be the angel Nick gave Jenny McCarthy as a Secret Santa gift when he was on the show.  It could also refer to Los Angeles, where Kevin lives, or the Blue Angels, whom Kevin flew with once.
• “I thought it was the end of the road.”  BSB used to sing “End of the Road” by Boys II Men.
• “But I was still hungry for a new journey.”  Kevin came back to BSB.

There may be even more clues I didn’t catch, but there are certainly a lot of connections to Kevin there!  I can’t wait to see S’more take the stage again!

I’m also very excited to see Nick’s “Who I Am” tour next weekend in Nashville!  Looks like he’s going to sing my favorite BSB song, “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” and some great covers!  I had a major “aww” moment watching the clip of him singing “Lovesong” by The Cure on his Instagram live this afternoon.  That song was definitely on one of the Nick and Claire playlists I created for inspiration when I was writing By My Side.  “Whenever I’m alone with you… you make me feel like I am whole again…”  I can’t wait for this concert!

I will not be updating next Saturday because I’ll be in Nashville, but I do have an update for you today!  Chapter 46 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  This is a cute, fluffy Halloween chapter that also gave me major BMS vibes.  I’ve talked before about how I tend to recycle ideas from old stories, and I’ve definitely found myself unintentionally doing that lately with this story.  The football scene in the last chapter, while inspired by a deleted scene from the documentary, also reminded me of a similar scene from Chapter 52 of BMS where the guys play football together.  Likewise, this chapter made me think of the two Halloween chapters I remember writing for BMS, one of which was particularly memorable.  With TWWBW on its way to becoming my second-longest novel after BMS, I guess that tracks!

The autumn equinox is upon us, bringing the official start of my favorite season, and I’m back for the third week in a row with another chapter of The World Will Be Waiting!  Chapter 45 is up. Two weeks ago, I said I wasn’t going to rehash scenes straight from the documentary, but that was before I got to this chapter, which revolves around Kevin’s hometown visit.  I couldn’t help but borrow from the documentary because there is so much good material there!  If you haven’t watched the deleted scenes, you can watch them here.  I really like this chapter and hope you will, too!

I had another good writing week and finished Chapter 46 today, so I’ll be back again next weekend with another update!

I had another great writing week!  I hit Day 600 on my writing streak, which has been going strong since January 2022!  I’m taking bets on if I can make it to 1000 days and if I’ll still be writing The World Will Be Waiting then.  If I had to make a wager today, I would put my money on yes and… yes. 😬  I usually underestimate how long my stories will be, but I already know this one is going to be long because I still have a lot more planned for it… and even more ideas I will probably save for a potential threequel to prevent TWWBW from being BMS length.  Yes, this may well become a trilogy.  My apologies to anyone who’s patiently waiting for me to write something else, but I’m really enjoying writing this one.  I wrote over 2000 words today alone and finished another chapter, so you can look forward to another update next weekend.  As for today, Chapter 44 is up as promised!  I hope you enjoy it!

And so am I!  This past week has been a pretty productive one, partially thanks to an extra day off for Labor Day.  I got a lot written last weekend but ran out of time to update, so I just decided to wait until today.  Chapter 43 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  I actually just finished Chapter 44 this morning, which means I’ll have an update for you next weekend as well!

This stretch of chapters revolves around the hometown road trip the guys took back in the fall of 2012 for their documentary.  What an incredible gift that documentary was for us fans, especially for those of us who like to write fanfics about the guys, LOL.  I’ve done a lot of rewatching as I write this story, but I’m trying not to just take scenes straight out of the documentary and write them exactly as they happened because, let’s be honest:  it’s a lot more fun to just watch the actual documentary than read a written account of it.  What I’m striving to do instead is expand on parts that I would have liked to see more of and focus on the content that most closely relates to Kevin’s storyline and/or would play out differently in this alternate universe I’ve created as a result of his circumstances in the story.

Thanks, as always, for your patience!  I hope you enjoy these next few BSB-centered chapters!

I’m back!  More on that in a minute, but first, have you heard Nick’s new song “Superman” yet?  If not, what are you waiting for?!  Go download it now!  It’s seriously so, so good in every way – musically, lyrically, symbolically… so clever and such a fitting metaphor for what Nick has been through over the past few years, this last year especially.  He’s been so strong for his family and fan-mily.  Love you, Nick!

Switching gears from Nick to Kevin, Chapter 42 of The World Will Be Waiting is finally up!  I apologize again for the delay.  It’s unfortunate timing that I ran out of chapters right around back-to-school time, which is one of the busiest times of year for me.  I’m still writing daily and will continue to do so once school starts next week, but with as long as my chapters have been in this story, it may be a few weeks between updates until I can get ahead of myself again.  Thanks for understanding!  I appreciate your patience, but I also don’t mind being asked for status updates and will give you an honest answer about how the new chapter’s going.  The Boys will be back in the next one as their hometown roadtrip begins!

I hit page 500 on TWWBW this week!  It’s been longer than MBK in terms of both pages and word count (just not chapter count yet) for a little while and is now the longest story I’ve written all in one Google Doc.  I obviously have longer novels, but I either wrote them in Microsoft Word before switching over to Google or divided them into smaller documents.  I wrote MBK all in one document, and that sucker was slow as molasses by the end.  We’ll see who gives up on the one document format first with this one, Google or me.  Unlike Word, Google Docs has a limit to how large a document can be, but I’m not exactly sure what it is.  According to the internet, the limit is 1.02 million characters.  I’m already at 1,239,492 characters including spaces, but if spaces don’t count, I’m at just over a million, so I may soon find out if that’s true.  All I know for sure is that Broken, By My Side, and Song for the Undead are all too long to be converted to single Google Docs, so I had to break them up into smaller parts in order to back them up on Google Drive.  Will TWWBW be next?  We’ll see!

Well, faithful readers, it has finally happened:  Here it is, Update Day, and I don’t have an update ready for you. 😔  I even had an extra week to finish the next chapter of The World Will Be Waiting, and it’s still not finished.  Not for a lack of trying; I have still been writing every day, my streak is up to 561, and I’m 7 pages and almost 4,000 words into Chapter 42.  But it’s not done, and there’s no way I can finish it in the next few hours without putting pressure on myself to push out a piece of hastily-edited writing, which I’m just not willing to do at this point.

I knew this day would come, if not this week then probably next week.  It’s August, which is one of the busiest times of years for teachers.  School doesn’t officially start for a couple weeks, but if you are a teacher or know a teacher, you know there is a lot of classroom prep and professional development that happens before the first day for students.  I’m in back-to-school mode and just don’t have a lot of time to devote to writing right now.  I do have a great routine established and am committed to keeping my streak going, so I will still be writing every day – it just won’t be enough to stay consistent with my weekly Saturday updates for a while.  I will post Chapter 42 when I’m finished writing and editing it to the point that I feel confident posting it.  I’m not sure yet when that will be, but I will try not to leave you hanging for too long.  I was actually surprisingly productive on this story last August, so it may not be long at all, but I’m not going to make any promises about weekly updates until I have a buffer of chapters built up again and know I can deliver on it.

I am celebrating the fact that I was able to keep up with my weekly updates for as long as I did.  With the exception of three planned and announced weekends off, I posted a chapter weekly for almost ten months before I ran out of chapters.  If my chapters for this story weren’t so dang long, I would have been able to keep it up for even longer.  I am also appreciative of the fact that, while I’m still enjoying writing TWWBW, it’s not constantly in my head, haunting me the way some of my previous stories have.  As much as I love feeling inspired, it’s frustrating when all I want to do is write but can’t because my career and other real life responsibilities have to take priority.  My morning/before work writing sessions I still do every day started a few years ago out of desperation to finish AHTIM and get it out of my head.  With the content of TWWBW being a lot more light-hearted, I don’t feel as driven to get myself and my characters to the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel; I’m just enjoying the journey.  I hope you are as well!  If you’re not caught up on TWWBW, this is a good time to do it.  I’ll most likely be back later this month with the next chapter, and we’ll go from there!  Thanks for being patient and waiting for me; I appreciate you! ❤️

Picking up where the last one left off on Kevin’s forty-first birthday, Chapter 41 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  If you love food as much as me, the first part of this chapter might make you hungry, but I would highly recommend you refrain from eating while you read it.  You’ll thank me later… haha…

This chapter turned out to be quite long and could have been two chapters, but I left it all together as one.  Consider it this week’s update and next week update combined.  I will be out of town and away from my computer next weekend, so I am going to take a week off from updating the story next Saturday.  I should be back with the next chapter the following Saturday and may have a BSB-related-but-not-an-update post in the meantime.  Thanks for reading!

Today is Day 540 of my writing streak, and Chapter 40 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  I’ve been dog-sitting for the past week and have gotten a lot of writing done during my little staycation!  Not only did I finish this chapter in plenty of time to post it, but I already have a good start on the next chapter, so I’m 99% sure I will have another update ready by next weekend.

A couple people have asked me recently how much longer I expect TWWBW to be, which is a great question, especially considering it’s already almost as long as MBK.  The answer is:  I have no idea. 😬  I’m nowhere near the end of the story I’ve planned.  To give you some perspective in terms of the timeline, Chapter 40 takes place on Kevin’s 41st birthday, October 3, 2012.  I’ve always intended to show at least some of the IAWLT tour, which would take me into 2014.  So I have a ways to go yet, both in terms of time and planned events in the plot.  If I had to make a prediction now, I would say I’m probably at about the halfway point.  So, I hope you’re enjoying the story so far and are in it for the long haul!  Huge thanks to those of you who have been reading and giving feedback.  I appreciate you! ❤️

I have managed to delay the inevitable update drought for another week!  Not only did I finish the next chapter of The World Will Be Waiting on time, but I’m actually posting it super early in the day instead of late!  I’m going to be away from home this weekend, so I figured I’d update while I can do it on my desktop computer, since I’m a geriatric millennial who still prefers to use a mouse over a touchpad.  Chapter 39 is up!  And because I know you’re going to want to listen to the song when you read it, here’s an excuse to watch the video for “Show ‘Em (What You’re Made Of).” 😍🤤  You’re welcome!

It’s been almost ten years since this music video was released, and as a Brian girl, I still have to pinch myself sometimes to prove it’s real.  I remember vividly where I was when Brian posted a shirtless pic from the set:  at the Port of Miami, standing in line to board the 2013 cruise.  What a great day that was!

I give “Take Care” a lot of credit for inspiring My Brother’s Keeper, but I’ve also drawn a lot of inspiration from “Show ‘Em (What You’re Made Of),” not only for the title of The World Will Be Waiting but even going back to MBK.  Even though the song hadn’t been written yet in the time period when MBK took place, I made a few references to its lyrics that I call back to in this chapter.  I hope you enjoy it!

For anyone else who has joined Threads, I’m @RokofAges75 there just like on Twitter.  Follow me if you wish!  I will still be using Twitter as long as the people I follow do, as I much prefer its organization to Threads, but it’s always good to have other options.