Dreamer's Sanctuary

March is Women’s History Month, so this week’s Throwback Thursday blog will focus on five of my favorite original female characters. Love them or hate them, OFCs have always been a big part of Backstreet Boys fan fiction. As BSB fangirls, we may not have been able to fulfill our teenage fantasy of hooking up with our favorite Backstreet Boy for real, but we could write a fanfic about it! Those of us who continued to write past our teenybopper years and into adulthood saw our female protagonists evolve from thinly-disguised self-inserts and Mary Sues to more mature, multifaceted characters, who may or may not have hooked up with a Backstreet Boy. Not all of them did!

Case in point…

Read“Throwback Thursday #5: Top Five Favorite Female Characters”

Happy birthday, Brian! I can’t believe you’re fifty! But still looking fine. 😍 In honor of the Birthday Boy, I’m throwing it back by blogging about five of my favorite portrayals of Brian in my fics.

I’ve always been a Brian girl and have actually written a lot of Brian stories, but it doesn’t feel that way because the majority of them were written almost twenty-five years ago! After Brian got married and became a father, I moved away from writing so much about him and started focusing on Nick more because, honestly, it was a lot easier to come up with ideas that involved a main character who was less settled in life. But, since those super old Brian stories I wrote back in high school suck, I’m focusing on my more recent Brian characters in this blog.

Read“Throwback Thursday #4: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Brian Roles”

Hey!  What an exciting week it’s been in the BSB fandom!  A new Vegas residency announcement, an appearance on Today, a Millennium 2.0 album to look forward to, a brand new song to listen to on repeat now, and a live performance on the SNL 50th Anniversary concert that had a whole room full of celebrities singing along to “I Want It That Way” last night.  And, if all that wasn’t enough, Nick dropped what appears to be his new solo album cover and title earlier today.  Stages!  I love it and can’t wait!  With so many bad things going on in the world, we desperately needed some good news and something to look forward to, and our Boys delivered, like they always do.

I was especially glad to see Kevin come out of hibernation yesterday.  Between bowing out on random BSB appearances and not posting anything about his beloved Chiefs playing in the Super Bowl, I was starting to get a little concerned about him.  I was hoping he was just taking a break from social media and turning down standalone performances that required flying across the world right before Super Bowl weekend, but his absence was starting to trigger bad memories of June 2006.  I’d rather relive the trauma of trying to score tickets for the Into the Millennium Tour than have Kevin leave again.  (And it looks like I’ll be doing that in a few days… yay!)  It was such a relief to see all five Boys together again.  Backstreet’s back, all right!

I’m also back with another chapter of The World Will Be Waiting!  Chapter 69 is up.  This is the last chapter I’ve finished as of now.  Chapter 70 has been an interesting challenge to write, but I’m almost done drafting it, so hopefully I’ll have another story update in a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, I’ll be back this Thursday with my next Throwback Thursday blog, which will focus on the birthday boy, Brian!

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”

…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!

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”

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!

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”

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! 🍾🥂

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!