This isn’t a real update, but I wanted to acknowledge this anniversary. Not only is it the 33rd anniversary of our beloved blonde Backstreet Boy’s birth, but it’s also the anniversary of a couple of milestones on this site.
January 28, 2003: Ten years ago on this date, I posted the first two chapters of a new story I had just started called Broken. In the update blurb on the site that day, I wrote, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to post it yet or not because I just started it last week and wasn’t sure if I would keep going on it or not.” Thank goodness I did, because Broken turned out to be one of the biggest successes of my fanfic-writing life. It’s the story that brought a lot of you here at some point in the last decade. It’s also the story that, for better or worse, taught me the most about writing and made me the writer I am today. I can’t believe it’s ten years old!
January 28, 2008: Five years ago on this date, and five years after Broken began, I posted the last three chapters of its sequel, By My Side. One of the only sequels I’ve successfully completed, By My Side is also my longest novel by far, weighing in at around 800,000 words and well over 1,000 pages. No wonder it took almost four years of consistent writing to finish! The day I posted the end of BMS still holds the record for the most traffic ever on Dreamer’s Sanctuary. While it certainly isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, it is definitely the biggest achievement of my writing “career” so far.
So happy birthday (and sorry), Nick! Happy birthday, Broken! And happy anniversary, BMS! And thank you, readers, for sticking around and supporting the site through all these years!