Category: Updates

Backstreet Time is so strange.  They make us wait an extra year for an already long-awaited Christmas album, then release it a whole month earlier than necessary.  But hey, I can’t complain about new music, even when it comes in the wrong season.  I’m a big fan of spooky season, but you bet I’m listening to the new album on repeat as I write this post.

Quick review before I get to today’s update:  I absolutely love it!  Their covers of classic Christmas songs are beautifully arranged, the new songs are fun, their vocals sound incredible, and there’s a perfect balance between all five voices.  I absolutely love hearing more of the low range of their registers, especially Kevin and Nick.  Swoon!  Their rendition of “White Christmas” to open the album was a perfect choice. I’ve never been a big fan of “The Christmas Song,” but of course, they sound great singing it.  I love the a capella arrangement of “Winter Wonderland.”  After writing The Road to Bethlehem, I was really happy to see “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” included on the track listing.  It’s the perfect Christmas song for these troubled times.  “O Holy Night” is one of my very favorite religious Christmas songs, so I was happy they recorded that one, too, but so far, “Silent Night” is my favorite of the classics on the album.  It brought tears to my eyes because it’s just so beautiful!  Speaking of beautiful, my favorite track on the album is “Same Old Lang Syne.”  I just learned yesterday that this is a cover; I had never heard the original before, but I adore it.  I’ve always loved a song that tells a story, and this one is so beautiful!  Can’t wait to see who’s going to write the first fanfic based on it, LOL.  “Last Christmas” is a great cover as well, and I’m enjoying all three of the new songs.  “Together” is particularly bouncy and fun.  “It’s Christmas Time Again” still beats them all, though; I freaking love that song as much now as I did a decade ago!  Also, how has it been almost ten years since the pandaskunk song was released?!

Speaking of ten years ago, Chapter 3 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  It takes place during AJ and Rochelle’s wedding, which was also almost ten years ago.  They got married in December, so while it’s not quite a Christmas chapter, it’s close enough.  Perfect for A Very Backstreet Christmas in October!

Thank you to everyone who’s been reading, as well as to those of you who voted in the poll I posted last week.  The majority of you preferred Saturday updates, so I’m going back to that.  I’ll be back next weekend with the next chapter!

Thanks so much to everyone who read the first chapter of my new story, The World Will Be Waiting!  I’m especially grateful to those of you who have taken time to leave comments or kudos here or on AO3.  I appreciate every single one!

I’m back with Chapter 2 this week!  I went ahead and waited until today to post it, knowing I would have the day off for Indigenous Peoples’ Day/Columbus Day here in the U.S.  (But also, happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!)  But I’m still wondering if I should go back to weekends for my regular updates.  It doesn’t really matter to me either way, so I want to know what my readers prefer!  Which day of the week would you like to see me update?  Please vote in the poll below!  I picked days that I can usually count on having some time to update.  Keep in mind, I typically update in the late afternoon or evening, so for my friends overseas, whatever day you pick might actually mean the following morning.

Thanks for reading and voting!

Happy birthday, Kevy Kev!  As a “gift” to you, I’m posting the first chapter of my very first solely-Kevin-centered novel, The World Will Be Waiting.

Synopsis:
Four years after the tragic accident that changed his life forever, Kevin tries to keep moving forward… by going back.

This is, of course, the sequel to my latest novel, My Brother’s Keeper.  While I would recommend you reading that one first, it’s not absolutely required.  The sequel starts a few years after its predecessor, and I provide enough back story that you can get the gist of what happened in the first story without reading the whole thing… but I hope it will make you want to if you haven’t already!

For those of you who did read MBK, I hope you’ll enjoy reading the continuation of Kevin’s story.  So far, the tone of this sequel is completely different from the first one.  It’s a lot less angsty and more light-hearted, which has been refreshing for me to write.  Don’t worry, angst-lovers – there will still be drama down the road, of course.  There will be also be romance, which is a genre I haven’t written in a while.  There will be bromance as well, but Nick is not going to be as much of a main character as he was in MBK.  Sorry, Nick girls – he and the other Boys will still play prominent roles in the story, but it’s going to be told solely from Kevin’s point of view.  If you’d asked me a decade ago if I thought I would ever write a Kevin novel, I would have said it was possible but not probable.  Well, here I am, writing a Kevin romance novel, of all the crazy things, and I’m loving it!  I literally started this story the day after finishing MBK and have written every day since, which puts my writing streak at 255 days.  I’m over 60,000 words and thirteen chapters in already, so you can expect regular updates at least through the rest of the year.  I’m not sure yet if I’ll stick with Mondays as my update day or go back to Saturday updates, but I thought Kevin’s birthday would be a good day to post Chapter 1.  I hope you enjoy it!

Hello!  It’s been about seven weeks since my last update.  When I posted the final chapter of My Brother’s Keeper toward the end of July, I was getting ready for my last bit of BSB summer fun before I went back to work and working on Chapter 3 of the sequel.  Now that we’re more than halfway through September, school has started, the North American tour has ended, and I’m working on Chapter 12!  I thought it might take me more time to get far enough to feel comfortable posting the story, especially considering how busy and exhausting this time of year is for teachers, but August and September have been surprisingly productive months for me on the fanfic front.  I’ve managed to keep my daily writing streak alive and well – it’s up to 241 days as of today! – and the new story is already over 100 pages and 50,000 words long.  I’ve always been wary of starting sequels because pre-BMS me didn’t have the best track record for finishing them, but I’ve come a long way since then, and I’m glad I made an exception for this one.  It’s going well so far, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

In honor of Kevin’s birthday, I’m going to post the first chapter on October 3, two weeks from today!  That gives you a little time to catch up on My Brother’s Keeper if you haven’t read it all.  In the meantime, here’s a little sneak peek of the premise for its sequel!

Synopsis:
Four years after the tragic accident that changed his life forever, Kevin tries to keep moving forward… by going back.

It was nice to log into my site account today and see that I’ve still had traffic even though I haven’t updated in a while.  I actually had more visitors in August – a month in which I did not update even once – than I’ve had in any month since January of last year.  Go figure!  I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder.  In any case, I love knowing that people are still coming here, clicking around, and reading my old stories.  If you’re one of those people, thank you!  You are a big part of the reason I keep this site up and running.  I’m excited to deliver some new content for you in a couple weeks!  Stay tuned!

My Brother’s Keeper is officially finished!  I hope you enjoy the last chapter, Chapter 50, and the chapter-length “Behind the Story” blog I added at the end.  I’m gonna start doing these for all my novels in place of my usual author’s note at the end of the story.  It’s fun to share my process and preserve my memories while they’re still fairly fresh in my mind, and hopefully some of you enjoy reading about the behind-the-scenes stuff.

Thank you so much to everyone who read this story!  I really enjoyed writing it.  This one’s been in my head for a long time, so it feels good to finally finish it.  I would love to read your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment here or on AO3, email me, tweet me, or however you feel comfortable giving feedback.  I always appreciate it!

As for my future fanfic projects, I have started a sequel to My Brother’s Keeper called The World Will Be Waiting.  I’m not very far into it yet (just started Chapter 3), so I’m going to wait a while before I start posting it.  I would give you a sneak peek, but I learned my lesson from doing that with MBK.  Instead, I will start posting when I feel comfortable with how the story’s going and have completed enough chapters to be able to guarantee regular updates for a while.  Usually, that’s around ten chapters, but with summer winding down and school starting up soon for me, it may take me a few months to get that far.

My daily writing streak is still going strong at 188 days, and I’m determined to keep that going even when life gets busy again.  For any of my fellow writers who struggle to find time to write every day, here’s my pro tip:  I write while I’m getting ready for work in the morning.  I started doing this during the end-of-story streak for A Heart That Isn’t Mine because I was so obsessed with finishing that story, I would write whenever and wherever I could, including sitting on the closed toilet seat with my chromebook on the bathroom counter and pecking at the keyboard with one hand while I blow-dried my hair with the other.  On a good day, I could get a few paragraphs written this way, so I kept doing it.  This is how I manage to keep my writing streaks going on busy days, when I come home from work too tired to write or simply don’t have time.  Although I always seem to revert back to my night owl nature in the summer, my mind is usually freshest in the morning (after I’ve had coffee), and knowing I only have a few minutes helps me focus.  Some days, I may only write a sentence – or maybe just one word – but the simple act of opening my story each day and adding something to it keeps it in my head and helps motivate me to open it again the next day.  I’ve found it much easier to stay inspired this way.

I’m honestly not sure when you’ll see updates on any of my other stories.  Hopefully we’ll write another episode of 00Carter at some point, but that seems to be on hold at the moment.  And as much as I would love to say I’ve been secretly working on Guilty Roads or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Backstreet Boy behind the scenes, that would be a lie.  Maybe someday I’ll feel inspired to finish those.  In the meantime, I’m looking forward to continuing Kevin’s story and hope you are, too!  Thanks, as always, for your support!