Dreamer's Sanctuary

I purposely waited until after midnight to post this update so it would fall on Nick’s birthday.  I figured, if I’m going to take a whole month to finish a chapter, I might as well wait for a Backstreet Boy’s birthday to post it on. Happy birthday, Nick!

And yes, you heard right: Chapter 52 of The World Will Be Waiting is finally finished and posted for your reading pleasure!  Sorry it took me so long.  To be honest, it was not the most exciting chapter to write, and between that and the Sims building spree I’ve been on, I didn’t spend as much time working on it each day as I could have.  The good news is that, along with finishing this chapter, I also finished the last lot in the new Sims world I’ve spent the last few weeks developing, so I won’t be spending so much time on that.  I started Chapter 53 earlier this week and am already enjoying writing it more than I did this last one, so hopefully you won’t have to wait as long to read it.  Thanks for being patient with me!

I’ll preface this post by saying upfront that I have no story update for you today.  Sorry!  The next chapter of TWWBW is started but far from being finished.  Before I get into why, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year!  Whether I have a new chapter to post or not, I enjoy updating around New Year’s so I can reflect on the past year and update the date at the bottom of the page to reflect the new year.  Cheers to 2024!

2023 was a year of ups and downs for me and most people I know, so I was not sad to say goodbye to it.  I certainly hope our Boys have a better year ahead.  Nick and AJ in particular have had a rough time of it lately.  I was sad to see the statement AJ and Rochelle posted on Instagram today.  Although I knew they had been separated for a while, I was pulling for them to reconcile.  Rochelle is/was my favorite Backstreet wife, and I wish both her and AJ nothing but the best as they move forward with their lives.

As for Nick, no one represents the emotional rollercoaster the past year has been better than him.  Although he had some professional successes with the release of his new music and a solo tour, he’s had a lot to deal with in his personal life, between his ongoing legal issues and the recent losses in his family.  I had just finished updating last weekend when I got on Twitter and saw the news of BJ’s death.  I’m not sure how much contact Nick and BJ had had in recent years, but my heart still hurts for him and Angel.  Their family has been through so much.  I just hope things start looking up in the new year.

And, of course, I wish Kevin, Howie, and Brian health and happiness in 2024 and beyond as well!

As for me, 2023 was a successful year in terms of writing.  I set a resolution to write every day, and for the first time ever, I actually kept it!  Below is a screenshot of my year-long NaNoWriMo goal.

I fell about 15,000 words short of my word count goal, but it was never about hitting a specific number of words.  My resolution was to simply to open my story and add something to it each day – even if it was just one word.  As you can see from my recent progress updates, some days I don’t write much more than one word. 😬  Usually I have unproductive stretches like this during busy times of year, but I’ve been off work all week, so I really have no excuse except to say I’ve been busy playing The Sims instead of writing.  🤷‍♀️  I bought a new expansion pack and have been obsessively building for the past few days.  Once I finish what I’ve started and get that out of my system, I will get back to my main hobby, which is writing.  In the meantime, I’m still keeping my daily writing streak alive and am looking forward to hitting my next milestone later this month, which will be two years!

My resolution for this year is the same as last year:  to write every day and continue The World Will Be Waiting.  I would love to say “finish,” but that might be too ambitious considering how much story I still have to write. 🙃  I will finish it one day; it just might not be this year.

I want to thank everyone who’s reading.  I hope you know how much I appreciate you!  Here’s to a happy new year for all of us!

Sorry updates have been so scarce this month!  The holiday season is always a busy time of year, but along with the usual decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking, and celebrating, I’ve been busy writing the world’s longest chapter!  Well, maybe not the world’s longest, but certainly my longest chapter ever!  Seriously, Chapter 51 of The World Will Know Your Name is over 10,000 words long, which is a new record for me, surpassing the previous record I set sixteen years ago with Chapter 193 of By My Side, which was over 9,000 words.  (Yeah, I have a plugin that calculates this stuff for me because I am clearly a numbers nerd.)

There is no particular reason this chapter is so long.  There are no sex scenes, no drawn-out and overly-dramatic resuscitation scenes, no weddings, and no funerals.  It’s really just long because I self-indulgently let it be, because there was no logical place to break it up, and because I know there are many more chapters left to write in this novel and am trying to keep it under a hundred. 🙃  Consider this a month’s worth of updates all wrapped up into one!

I hit a couple of other milestones while working on this long-ass chapter.  First, I finally found out exactly what Google Docs’ character limit was when it abruptly cut me off from adding anything else to my document.  I’d always known there was some kind of limit that was somewhere between the length of Curtain Call and Broken because when I uploaded all my old Word documents to Google Drive years ago, I had to split Broken and everything longer than it into smaller documents.  Google said the limit was 1.02 million characters, but I surpassed that number back in August without any problems.  Apparently, it is actually more like 1.5 million.

It happened! 😱 I reached Google Docs’s character limit, which is not 1.02 million characters but 1,506,283 characters, apparently. pic.twitter.com/uUog8J1QEU

— Julie (@RokofAges75) December 6, 2023

The other milestone was making it to Day 700 on my writing streak yesterday!  That’s seven hundred days in a row that I’ve added something to Kevin’s story, dating back to January 22, 2022 when I was still working on the first part, My Brother’s Keeper.  If I can keep it going for another year, I’ll be over a thousand!

Thank you for sticking with me and continuing to read this story.  Assuming the next chapter is more normal in length, I hope to be back with one more update before the year ends!  Merry Christmas!🎄

Happy December!  I’m back with Chapter 50 of The World Will Be Waiting!  I don’t really know what to say about this chapter because it’s kind of all over the place.  If you’re like me, the first scene might make you cringe, the last scene might make you cry, and the middle might make you smile.  I hope that it does and that I haven’t bored you all to death with this story!  I always appreciate hearing from those of you who are still alive and reading.

I guess I’m on the every-other-weekend updating plan for now since the holiday season is always so busy, and I haven’t been the most productive writer lately.  I do have a great start on the next chapter and am hoping to finish that this weekend, so we’ll see.  This part of the story takes place during December, which has been fun because I can listen to Christmas music while I’m writing and have it fit both the scene in my story and the season in real life.  That rarely happens; it seems like I usually end up writing Christmas scenes in the summer.  So far, it hasn’t helped me write any faster, but I’m still having fun with it, even if I am slow.  Thanks for being patient with me!

Today marks Day 666 (😈) of my writing streak, and I’m back with Chapter 49 of The World Will Be Waiting!  I had this chapter finished last weekend but decided to hang onto it for an extra week in case I wanted to do more editing before I posted it.  It didn’t quite turn out the way I planned – I went into it thinking it was going to include a sex scene, but I ended up writing a little more conversation and a little less action.  Elvis would not approve, but I doubt any of you read my stories for the smut, so hopefully that’s not too disappointing to you.  I actually hate writing sex scenes and typically only include them to further the plot and character development, which apparently was not needed at this point in the story, but I hope the chapter doesn’t seem too boring without one.  I know it’s a lot of talking.  I welcome feedback, so please feel free to share your thoughts!

As we’re approaching Thanksgiving in the U.S., I want to say how much I appreciate those of you who continue to visit my site and read my work.  Writing fanfiction has become an increasingly lonely hobby, at least in the BSB fandom.  I’ve made many friends through fanfic over the years, but I’ve also been left behind as many of them have moved on – from fanfic, from the fandom, and from me.  I’m thankful for the ones who have stuck around.  I especially want to thank those of you who take time to let me know you’re still out there reading, that I’m not just writing for my own entertainment.  I wouldn’t keep doing this if I didn’t want to, but it’s nice to know there are others who enjoy the same kind of stories I do.  Thank you!

Alas, spooky season is over, but that means Christmas is just around the corner, so it’s perfectly acceptable to start listening to A Very Backstreet Christmas on repeat!  That’s if you’re not still nonstop-streaming Nick’s new single, “Made For Us.”

I’ve had a long week  and a frustrating day of writing, but thankfully, I finished Chapter 48 of The World Will Be Waiting last weekend.  It’s now posted for your reading pleasure, and hopefully Chapter 49 will be ready by next weekend.  Thanks for your patience!

A lot has happened since my last update!  When I wrote my last blog, I was so sure Kevin was S’more on The Masked Singer.  The voice sounded like it could be him, and the clues fit almost perfectly! But after the second episode, I changed my mind – the clues no longer fit, and the voice didn’t sound as much like him.  So disappointing!  I haven’t watched since.

I also went to Nick’s show in Nashville two weeks ago!  It was so much fun!  I scored front row center tickets, so I had an amazing view and got some great videos.  They’re all posted on my YouTube channel if you’re interested in watching them.  Sadly, he did not sing “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” but he did sing “Lovesong” and some other awesome ’80s covers, including an amazing performance of “Wanted Dead or Alive” and an incredible medley of “I Need You Tonight” and “Right Here Waiting.”  That was one of my favorite parts.  I thought of Broken Nick and Claire during a lot of those because I listened to a lot of ’80s rock music and power ballads back in the Broken era.  But I also thought of Cary and Curtain Call when he sang “Just Want You to Know,” which was an unexpected treat – I hadn’t heard that song live in a long time!

Since I spent that whole weekend with friends, I didn’t have much time to write except to keep my streak alive by adding a few words to the story each day.  I’ve gotten back on track since then, but Chapter 47 of The World Will Be Waiting took me longer than expected to finish because of how long it turned out to be, over 8,000 words!  But it’s finally done and posted for your reading pleasure!

With this update, TWWBW has officially surpassed Curtain Call in length.  That’s based on total word count, not the number of chapters.  It’s now my fourth-longest story after By My Side, Song for the Undead, and Broken… and it’s only about 40k words from passing Broken, too, with no end in sight.  To be clear, I do have an ending point in mind, but I still have a lot left to write before I get there.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be my second-longest story.  I don’t think I’ll ever beat BMS, nor do I want to.  But I never set out to write super long stories; they just sort of happen.  Anyway, thanks for sticking with me and reading so many of my words!  I’m always appreciative!

It’s been an exciting week in BSB land!  Brian and AJ both have new songs out, Nick gave us a sneak peek of the setlist for his solo tour, and we may have another Backstreet Boy on The Masked Singer!  Don’t believe it?  Watch the clue package.

• “Gather round, campers.”  Kevin lived at a church camp run by his dad.  It looks a lot like the forest background at the beginning of the video.
• “I started out on a rocket to fame.”  The rocket could be a reference to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the state where Kevin launched his music career.
• “A journey from obscurity to major heartthrob status.”  Kevin was just a normal kid from Kentucky before becoming a Backstreet Boy.
• “Step by step.”  This is a New Kids on the Block song.  BSB toured with NKOTB.
• The tip jar could be a reference to Kevin’s jobs before becoming a Backstreet Boy.  He worked at Pizza Hut and as a tour guide at Disney World, which are both jobs where he may have earned tips.
• The ship could be a reference to the BSB cruises.
• “I traveled the land near and far, making headlines with fellow adventurers and idols.”  The Backstreet Boys were teen idols who have been on many world tours.
• The beach could be a reference to the upcoming Backstreet’s Back at the Beach event.
• The deep dish pizza is a reference to Chicago.  Kevin played Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago.
• “And when I finished with my travels, I hung up my cape.”  Kevin left BSB after the Never Gone tour.
• The Christmas tree could be a reference to BSB’s latest album.
• The angel on top could be the angel Nick gave Jenny McCarthy as a Secret Santa gift when he was on the show.  It could also refer to Los Angeles, where Kevin lives, or the Blue Angels, whom Kevin flew with once.
• “I thought it was the end of the road.”  BSB used to sing “End of the Road” by Boys II Men.
• “But I was still hungry for a new journey.”  Kevin came back to BSB.

There may be even more clues I didn’t catch, but there are certainly a lot of connections to Kevin there!  I can’t wait to see S’more take the stage again!

I’m also very excited to see Nick’s “Who I Am” tour next weekend in Nashville!  Looks like he’s going to sing my favorite BSB song, “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” and some great covers!  I had a major “aww” moment watching the clip of him singing “Lovesong” by The Cure on his Instagram live this afternoon.  That song was definitely on one of the Nick and Claire playlists I created for inspiration when I was writing By My Side.  “Whenever I’m alone with you… you make me feel like I am whole again…”  I can’t wait for this concert!

I will not be updating next Saturday because I’ll be in Nashville, but I do have an update for you today!  Chapter 46 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  This is a cute, fluffy Halloween chapter that also gave me major BMS vibes.  I’ve talked before about how I tend to recycle ideas from old stories, and I’ve definitely found myself unintentionally doing that lately with this story.  The football scene in the last chapter, while inspired by a deleted scene from the documentary, also reminded me of a similar scene from Chapter 52 of BMS where the guys play football together.  Likewise, this chapter made me think of the two Halloween chapters I remember writing for BMS, one of which was particularly memorable.  With TWWBW on its way to becoming my second-longest novel after BMS, I guess that tracks!

The autumn equinox is upon us, bringing the official start of my favorite season, and I’m back for the third week in a row with another chapter of The World Will Be Waiting!  Chapter 45 is up. Two weeks ago, I said I wasn’t going to rehash scenes straight from the documentary, but that was before I got to this chapter, which revolves around Kevin’s hometown visit.  I couldn’t help but borrow from the documentary because there is so much good material there!  If you haven’t watched the deleted scenes, you can watch them here.  I really like this chapter and hope you will, too!

I had another good writing week and finished Chapter 46 today, so I’ll be back again next weekend with another update!

I had another great writing week!  I hit Day 600 on my writing streak, which has been going strong since January 2022!  I’m taking bets on if I can make it to 1000 days and if I’ll still be writing The World Will Be Waiting then.  If I had to make a wager today, I would put my money on yes and… yes. 😬  I usually underestimate how long my stories will be, but I already know this one is going to be long because I still have a lot more planned for it… and even more ideas I will probably save for a potential threequel to prevent TWWBW from being BMS length.  Yes, this may well become a trilogy.  My apologies to anyone who’s patiently waiting for me to write something else, but I’m really enjoying writing this one.  I wrote over 2000 words today alone and finished another chapter, so you can look forward to another update next weekend.  As for today, Chapter 44 is up as promised!  I hope you enjoy it!