Welcome to my sanctuary!

I’m Julie, and BSB fanfiction is one of my favorite ways to escape from the real world for a while. I fell in love with the Boys in 1998 and first discovered fanfic in ’99. I’ve been reading, writing, and dreaming up stories ever since. I write a variety of genres, but I’m best known for my angsty medical dramas. On this site, you will find my stories, along with links to some of my all-time favorites by other authors. If you read something you like, please leave a comment and let me know! Enjoy your escape!

Throwback Thursday #3: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Couples

It’s finally February, and with Valentine’s Day coming up next week, love is in the air! So is smoke, fear, and hatred from the recent wildfires, plane crashes, and political upheaval here in the United States… but, since this is a fanfic website, and we’re all here to escape the hellscape that is the real world, let’s focus on the love. For my third Throwback Thursday blog, I’m featuring five of my favorite couples from my fics. While I’ve never considered myself to be a true romance writer, many of my novels do include romantic subplots. The original theme of this blog was going to be “favorite romantic chapters,” but when I realized that my top five might all come from the same story, I changed it to couples instead to ensure more variety. As I blog about each pair of characters, I’ll also include a link to one of my favorite romantic chapters that features them.

Read“Throwback Thursday #3: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Couples”

In a world like this…

…it’s nice to have a hobby to distract myself from the horrors of the real world.  My writing hasn’t been going particularly well for the last week or so, but I officially hit three straight years on my writing streak last week and am still plugging away on The World Will Be Waiting!  Chapter 68 is now up.  It starts out sweet and then gets a little spicy, so enjoy!

Throwback Thursday #2: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Nick Roles

I’m back with the second in my series of twenty-five retrospective blogs to commemorate this site’s upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary in April! A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated AJ’s birthday with a blog about my top five favorite fictional AJs. Since Nick’s birthday is next, it only makes sense to do the same for him. So here they are, my top five favorite portrayals of Nick!

Read“Throwback Thursday #2: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Nick Roles”

Better late than never!

Sorry I’m a day late with this, the first story update of 2025!  I should have posted last night while everyone was mourning the temporary ban on TikTok, but alas, better late than never.  Chapter 67 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  This is the first of two chapters that take place on Valentine’s Day, so, for once, I’m actually pretty timely with my holiday updates!  What’s sad is the fact that I was writing the Christmas chapters last January, which means that I only covered a couple of months in the story’s timeline in a year of writing, in which I wrote every single day. 🤦‍♀️  This is why my stories get so long, you guys, LOL.  But I hope you’re still enjoying this one.

I’ll be back on Thursday with the next in my series of 25th anniversary blogs!

Throwback Thursday #1: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional AJ Roles

Happy New Year! It’s officially 2025, which means Dreamer’s Sanctuary will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in April! To commemorate this milestone, I’m writing a series of twenty-five retrospective blogs about my favorite characters and moments from my fics. And, in honor of the birthday boy, my first blog is all about AJ!

While I’ve written a handful of AJ fics over the years, AJ usually plays more of a supporting role than a starring role in my stories. He often serves as the comic relief, cracking jokes to lighten the mood during otherwise dark, dramatic moments. I love writing the relationship he has with each of his Backstreet brothers and exploring the good person behind his “bad boy” persona. With that being said, here are my top five favorite portrayals of AJ!

Read“Throwback Thursday #1: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional AJ Roles”

Happy New Year!

As promised, I’m back with one last story update to close out 2024!  Chapter 66 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  This was a fun one to write.  You may be able to tell I’ve been teaching for a couple of decades now by my – I mean, Kevin’s – little name rant in the middle of this chapter.  I hope I don’t offend anyone, but if I do, I apologize. 🙃

I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to reflect a little on the past year in its last few hours.  Fandom-wise, 2024 was a bit quiet on the Backstreet front, but I did get to go to the big 30th 31st anniversary celebration in Cancun back in April.  I also saw Nick three more times on his Who I Am tour, once in Chicago in September and twice in Vegas in November.  Finally, it was fun watching the Boys perform at the Rockefeller tree-lighting special and finally getting to celebrate A Very Backstreet Christmas two years after the fact.  They’ve been teasing big things to come in the new year, but we all know how Backstreet Time works, so I’ll believe it when I see it.  Still, I feel blessed to be a part of this fandom and to know that my favorite group is still together, making music and performing after all these years.

On the writing front, this year was less productive than last year, but for the second year in a row, I kept my resolution to write every day!  366 days in a row, thanks to Leap Day, and 1,075 days straight since my current streak began… and I’m still writing this story!  I’m still enjoying it, though, so that’s all that really matters to me.  Here are my stats this year from NaNoWriMo, which I use to keep track of my daily progress.

As you can see, I fell a couple thousand words short of my word count goal for the year, but that’s okay, too.  And, hey, the night is not yet over!  I’m trying to finish the chapter I’m currently writing before the clock strikes midnight, so my final word count will likely be a little higher.

Regardless, I’m grateful for everyone who has read my work and given feedback this year.  I appreciate every click, kudo, and kind word more than you can ever know.  Thanks for helping me stay inspired!  I wish you nothing but the best in 2025.  Happy New Year! 🍾🥂

Merry Christmas!

It has been a busy start to my winter break with the usual Christmas preparations, so I’m not posting a new chapter today.  But, between the holidays and planning for 2025, I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic and wanted to write a quick blog post before Christmas.  It’s been a few years since I’ve written a story for the holidays, but if you find yourself with some downtime in the next few days, here are a handful of festive fics you can read right here on Dreamer’s Sanctuary!

 

The Pandaskunk Saga

This trilogy of novellas started out as a silly little story that I wrote right after the release of “It’s Christmas Time Again” in an attempt to explain the strange music video for that song.  If the first part reads like a fever dream, it’s because I wrote it while I was literally home sick with the flu for two days.  Apparently, cold medicine makes me more creative!  It began as a simple Rudolph parody that became so much more, spawning two 35,000+ word sequels that spoof all sorts of things.  I’ve always specialized in writing drama and don’t do a lot of comedy, but this series is seriously one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.  Be warned that the third story, written in 2019, does feature a pretty unflattering portrayal of Aaron Carter that was based on his real-life antics at the time.  That probably hasn’t aged well, given everything that has happened since, but Melissa’s character will always make me laugh.

 

How That Bitch Stole Backstreet Christmas

Speaking of That Bitch…  This is a Grinch parody I rage-wrote in 2022, when we were all reeling from the cancellation of the Backstreet Christmas special and most of their other promotional appearances and endorsements.  Two years later, I’m still salty about it.  This poem may be more mean-spirited than kind-hearted, but, much like the story it was based on, it does have a happy ending.  Hopefully, Nick’s ongoing legal drama will, too.

 

A 00Carter Christmas

This one will make more sense if you’ve read the rest of 00Carter, but it was originally intended to be a standalone, special episode within the 00Carter universe.  It spoofs several different Christmas movies and specials, but I’m most proud of the Home Alone and Grinch parodies I wrote for it.  Howie’s character, the supervillain Dr. Rough, will always be one of my all-time favorite characters to write!

 

If…

Moving away from the funny fics, this one-shot is more serious.  It was written as a companion piece to my novel Curtain Call and came out of the desire for Cary, one of the main characters of that story, to hear Nick’s new (at the time) solo album, All American, which included two tracks that reminded me of her and that I knew she would absolutely love.  It’s a poignant “What if?” kind of story that takes place at Christmas time and explores an alternate version of events from the original novel, which I would highly recommend that you read first if you aren’t familiar with it.

 

The Road to Bethlehem

The only novel on this list (albeit a short one by my usual standards), The Road to Bethlehem actually takes place in June.  But, since the premise revolves around the Boys retreating to a remote cabin to record a Christmas album during the pandemic (before they actually did), it still has a lot of Christmas references.  Plus, it also has an entertaining blend of bromance, humor, action, suspense, and drama.  So much drama!  This was my big quarantine project back in 2020, and I’m quite proud of how it turned out.

 

Nick’s Zombie Nightmare Before Christmas

This is just a random little “Night Before Christmas” parody poem that I co-wrote with my friend Rose late one night at the height of our zombie obsession during the Song for the Undead era.  As the title suggests, it’s about Nick battling zombies on Christmas Eve!

 

Home for Christmas

And, finally, for a fun little throwback from the Dreamer’s Sanctuary archive, here is the first Christmas fanfic I ever wrote back in 2000, when I was 15.  It’s a Brian one-shot, but, for some reason, I wrote it from Leighanne’s perspective.  In hindsight, it would have been better with Brian’s perspective, too, but I was clearly still figuring out the whole “show, not tell” thing back then.  I’m only posting a link to it because it’s kind of fun to look back on the writing I did at the beginning of my fanfiction journey and see how my writing style has evolved since then.

 

Dreamer’s Sanctuary will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in April, so I want to do more retrospective blogs in the new year, sort of like I did back in 2020.  I’m also planning to update once more before the end of 2024 to post the next chapter of The World Will Be Waiting.  In the meantime, I wish all who celebrate a very merry Christmas!

Good times and happy days

As my friend Dee texted me this morning, it’s been a very Backstreet week!  It was so fun seeing all five guys together again at the Rockefeller tree lighting special this past Wednesday.  I’m glad Kevin came out of hibernation for the occasion!  Hopefully, he didn’t see his shadow and go back into hiding for the next six weeks.  But even if he did, you can still enjoy reading about his fictional counterpart in The World Will Be Waiting, which has been updated with Chapter 65!  Fittingly, this one features all five Boys and has a nice Kevin and Nick scene at the end that is reminiscent of My Brother’s Keeper.  I hope you enjoy it!

Thankful

I’m back! Sorry it’s been more than a month since my last update. November has been a month of highs and lows. The results of the recent election had me wanting to retreat into a cave and hide out there for the next four years… but, instead, I took a trip to Vegas last weekend to see two of my Backstreet besties and two of our beloved Backstreet Boys. I’ve been trying to surround myself with people and things that make me happy, and Nick Carter concerts are definitely one of my happy places (especially when AJ makes a surprise appearance at one of them!). But, then, so is my house. It’s been nice having this weekend to just stay cozy at home and write.

Chapter 64 of The World Will Be Waiting is up, and it’s an absolute beast of a chapter! It took me over a month to finish because it’s over 9,000 words long – easily the length of two or three of my typical chapters. I didn’t want to break it up into multiple chapters because this story is already so long and still has a ways to go. I hope you’ll enjoy reading two or three weeks’ worth of updates all rolled up into one!

Finally, as this will be my last update before Thanksgiving, I just want to say how thankful I am for the readers who follow my fics, the friends I’ve made through the BSB fandom, and the Boys themselves. I’m fortunate to have found a hobby that has brought me so much joy and helped me connect with people around the world whom I never would have met otherwise. Thanks for everything! 🥰

1000!

On Thursday, I made it to Day 1000 of my writing streak! 🍾 This streak dates back to January 22, 2022, when I was still writing My Brother’s Keeper.   I have continued writing Kevin’s story every day since and am proud of my consistency.  There were definitely days when it wasn’t easy to maintain, but most days, I’ve enjoyed the process.  It has been slow-going lately due to regular old real life getting in the way, but I’m still plugging along on the sequel.  Chapter 63 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  This is the last chapter I’ve finished, but the next one is well underway, so you hopefully won’t have to wait too long for it.  Thanks for reading!