Category: <span>Updates</span>

Category: Updates

Throwback Thursday #9: Top Five Favorite Teacher/Nurse Characters

We’ve finally made it to May, and what an exciting week it’s been in the BSB fandom!  A new BSB song with Rascal Flatts, a live performance on the ACM Awards, and an announcement about Nick’s long-awaited solo album, coming out next week!

This week, in honor of both Teacher Appreciation Week and National Nurses Week, I’m blogging about my favorite teacher and nurse characters. As a teacher myself, I love it when I have the rare opportunity to “write what I know” and include teacher characters and classroom scenes in my stories. If I wasn’t a teacher, I would probably be working somewhere in the healthcare field, so I have a healthy admiration for nurses as well and have included many of them in my stories over the years. Teachers and nurses are similar in a lot of ways. Traditionally female-dominated occupations, they both require patience, empathy, a nurturing personality, strong communication and problem-solving skills, and the ability to multitask and think on your feet. Despite the important role they play in our society, teachers and nurses tend to be disrespected, undervalued, and underpaid. So this post is dedicated to all the teachers and nurses out there. Special shout-out to school and medical support staff, too, including paraprofessionals, CNAs, technicians, orderlies, secretaries, custodians, cafeteria workers, and so forth. Anyone who’s worked in a school or clinical setting knows that these places would fall apart without all the important people who work together to keep them functioning well. Without further ado, here are my top five favorite teacher/nurse characters!

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25 Years!

Today marks Dreamer’s Sanctuary’s 25th anniversary!  A quarter of a century ago, I created a simple webpage for my growing collection of fanfics.  I did it using Microsoft Word on my mom’s desktop computer and uploaded it to Geocities with dial-up internet, as one did in the year 2000.  I was 15 years old then and had only been writing fanfic for a few months.  I never imagined that I would still be writing BSB fic twenty-five years later, nor that the simple website I dubbed “Dreamer’s Sanctuary” would still be around and active.  But here we are!  I just turned 40 a couple weeks ago, and writing fanfic is still my favorite hobby.  Contrary to what I believed back then, I’ve learned in my old age that you never truly outgrow the things you love.

In honor of this milestone, I’ve given the site a makeover!  I was obviously inspired by the Boys’ amazing Millennium 2.0 photoshoot.  Considering that I started this site during the original Millennium era, it seemed like the perfect theme for a twenty-fifth anniversary layout.  This layout pays homage to Dreamer’s Sanctuary’s first couple of looks:  the original blue cloud background and the subsequent rainbow layout, which featured this black and blue splash page.  (This is the earliest version of Dreamer’s Sanctuary preserved by the Wayback Machine, although my 2015 April Fool’s throwback layout gives you an idea of what it looked like before that.)

The banner I created for this layout also brings to life an idea I had a long time ago for a stained glass layout that featured the five “element” photos from the original Millennium album shoot.  For as many different looks as DS has had over the years, there are almost as many reject layouts that I started making and never ended up using.  Because I save everything and never let go, I still have them all, including this stained glass graphic I made at some point in the early 2000s.

I’m thrilled that I was finally able to use this idea all these years later!  The rainbow of colors represented by the element photos reminded me of colorful stained glass windows, which I have always loved.  Stained glass makes me think of old churches, which fits with the “sanctuary” part of my site’s name, so it works on multiple levels.  I hope you like the new look!  I dearly loved my last layout, but I decided it was finally time to leave the DNA era behind and move on to Millennium 2.0!

Meanwhile, it’s still the In a World Like This era in my current work in progress.  Chapter 71 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  I got carried away with writing this chapter, which is why it’s so long and took me so long to finish.  I got really into researching the unique location of Bombay Beach, CA and wanted to incorporate many of the details I discovered.  I also had to include some drama, of course!  Chapter 72 is not done yet, but it’s well underway and shouldn’t take me as long to write as the last two chapters did.

Thanks, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking with me over the years.  Here’s to twenty-five more! 🥂

Throwback Thursday #8: Top Five Favorite Bromantic Fics

This past Sunday, the Backstreet Boys celebrated thirty-two years together! As most fans know, one of the reasons this group has stood the test of time while so many of their contemporaries have broken up or fizzled out is that they truly are a band of brothers. The genuine brotherly love AJ, Brian, Howie, Kevin, and Nick show for one another is something I have always appreciated, both in real life and in fanfiction. For my last Throwback Thursday blog of April, I’m looking back on some of my most “bromantic” stories.

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A lot to celebrate!

There’s a lot to celebrate this April 20th.  Happy Easter to Christians!  Happy 420 to cannabis users!  And, of course, happy 32nd anniversary to the Backstreet Boys!  How blessed are we to be fans of a band that’s still going strong after more than three decades in the music business?  As a fandom, we may complain about a lot of things – the price of concert tickets and meet-and-greets, the places that get left out of tours, and the time it takes the Boys to put out a new album, just to name a few – but every anniversary serves as a reminder of how grateful we should be to have these things to complain about.  Remember, it could always be worse, as *NSYNC  fans know.  At least our group is still together, still making music, and still performing live shows.  Let’s enjoy it while it lasts!

My readers have one more reason to celebrate today:  Chapter 70 of The World Will Be Waiting is FINALLY up!  I’m sorry it took me so long.  This chapter centers around the In a World Like This album photo shoot, which is well-documented on YouTube.

This “behind the scenes” video the Boys posted was both a blessing and a curse to me.  It was a blessing because it gave me so much material to work with when writing this part of the story.  I did a lot of research about the shooting location, which led me down quite the rabbit hole, let me tell you!  It was also a curse because it inspired me to include way too much detail.  Believe it or not, I started this chapter on January first and, despite adding to it every day, only finished it a few weeks ago.  It was originally like 16,000 words long (which is the length of about four average-sized chapters), but I ended up splitting it into two chapters, which means Chapter 71 is also done and will be posted later this month.  I’m glad to be done with these chapters, but since they do feature all five guys, I figured today would be a good day to post the first part.  I will probably post the second part either this weekend or next Tuesday, which is my site’s anniversary!  Thanks for your patience, as always.  I appreciate you!

Throwback Thursday #7: Top Five Favorite April Fools’ Day Pranks

Happy April!  For my first of the two Throwback Thursday blogs I have planned for this month, I’m going to take a break from blogging about my fanfics to focus on an April staple here at Dreamer’s Sanctuary: my annual April Fools’ Day prank! For the past twenty-five years, without fail, I’ve posted something for April Fools’ Day. Some years, I spend weeks working on these pranks, while other years (like this year), they come together at the eleventh hour. Sometimes they’re funny, and sometimes they’re lame. To be honest, the pressure I put on myself to deliver something and keep the tradition alive usually stresses me out, to the point that I almost threw in the towel this year and announced that I was letting go of this tradition and leaving it in the past. But I ended up pulling something out of my ass at the last minute, like I often do, so the tradition lives on. Here are my top five favorite April Fools’ Day pranks from the last twenty-five years!

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Dreamer’s Sanctuary 2.0

Sorry it’s been so long since my last real update!  As you might have surmised, it’s been a busy couple of months.  I’ve managed to keep my writing streak alive, but it’s been slow-going on The World Will Be Waiting lately.  After working on the same story for so long, I’ve been feeling sort of burnt out, so I decided to start a new project to change things up a bit.

Introducing… Dreamer’s Sanctuary 2.0!  Inspired by BSB’s Millennium 2.0 album and residency, I’ve decided to rewrite my stories from the Millennium era, which is when I first discovered fan fiction.  Back then, I was just a kid with a lot of creativity and a lot to learn.  My ideas were bigger than my talent for bringing them to life.  As I’ve been writing my Throwback Thursday blogs, I’ve  thought about what a shame it is that I can’t include more from the pre-Broken era because I really like the ideas behind many of my early stories – but the execution wasn’t there.  That’s why I wanted to embark on this new writing adventure and do those ideas justice.

This is obviously going to be a time-consuming project; what originally took me a matter of weeks or months to write may take years to rewrite well.  But I’ve already started working on some of my favorites from the year 2000.  Click the links below to access an exclusive sneak peek of each new old story!

Heartache 2.0

Heart of an Angel 2.0

Don’t Wanna Lose You Now 2.0

End of the Road 2.0

Fight for Survival 2.0

One Night 2.0

You can still read the originals over at the Dreamer’s Sanctuary Archive, but I hope you’ll enjoy the updated versions even more.  Feedback is always appreciated!  Thanks, as always, for your support and patience. I’ll be back soon with the next chapter of TWWBW and more Throwback Thursday blogs!

Throwback Thursday #6: Top Five Favorite Musical Moments

We’re just over a month away from Dreamer’s Sanctuary’s twenty-fifth anniversary, so I’m back with another Throwback Thursday blog. This week, I’m blogging about my favorite musical moments from my fanfiction. Music has always been a big part of my stories, which makes sense when you consider the fact that most of my main characters are musicians. Because I’ve written so many musical scenes over the years, choosing my top five favorites was a challenge. This was the hardest time I’ve had making one of these lists so far! In the end, I went with five scenes that made me feel some sort of way when I reread them – and what a wide range of feelings are represented here! But that’s the power of music. It packs an emotional punch!

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Throwback Thursday #5: Top Five Favorite Female Characters

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…

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Throwback Thursday #4: Top Five Favorite Fanfictional Brian Roles

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”

Oh, I wish we could go back to…

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!