Dreamer's Sanctuary

Well, we’ve made it to the end of another year!  It was nice to see things sort of return to normal this year.  It wasn’t a perfect year, but at least the Boys finally got back out on the road to continue the DNA World Tour.  And we finally got the Christmas album!  All in all, 2022 was a pretty good year to be a BSB fan.

It’s also been a good year for me in terms of writing.  After almost a decade on hiatus, my 00Carter co-writers and I posted three new episodes this year.  Five years after beginning it, I finished My Brother’s Keeper, started its sequel The World Will Be Waiting, and even managed to write a Christmas parody before the year was done.  But my biggest accomplishment this year was writing as regularly as I did.  I wrote something 358 out of 365 days this year and have been on a daily writing streak since January 22, which amounts to 344 consecutive days of writing MBK/TWWBW.  Prior to this year, the longest streak I kept track of was 148 days in 2021, also on MBK, so I’ve more than doubled my record.  At this rate, not only do I fully intend to reach 365 days, but I would love to be able to say I wrote every day in 2023… or at least until TWWBW is done.  I don’t know if I’ll finish it next year or not because, at this point, it’s too early for me to estimate how long it will be, but it would be cool to be able to say I wrote daily on it from start to finish.  I’m afraid to jinx myself by making a formal resolution, but so far, so good!  With that being said, Chapter 13 of The World Will Be Waiting has been posted.

As always, thank you for your support this year!  Whether you’re a longtime visitor or new to Dreamer’s Sanctuary, I appreciate each and every visitor and reader.  While we seem to be in something of a BSB renaissance fueled by ’90s nostalgia, the fanfic corner of our fandom seems to get smaller and smaller every year.  That being said, I had more visitors this year than I did last year, so I’ll take that as a win.  Thank you again to everyone who has visited my site, read one of my stories, or commented on one of my posts or chapters.  It’s nice to have someone to share my ideas with.  I wish you all a happy, healthy new year and hope to deliver a lot more free reading material for you in 2023!

It’s my last update before Christmas, and my gift to you is a new short story!  I mentioned in my last post wanting to rage-write another pandaskunk story but not having enough time.  Well, here’s the next best thing…

Synopsis:
It’s been decades in the making, and after a year’s delay, the Backstreet Army is beyond excited to celebrate A Very Backstreet Christmas!  But when a thirsty bitch and several spineless companies conspire to thwart their plans, the Boys and their fans must stand together – heart to heart and hand in hand – to keep the Christmas spirit and Backstreet pride alive.  Inspired by true events.

Thanks to Sara from What Happens on the Backstreet, who inadvertently inspired me with this tweet:

If you’ve read enough of my stories, you know I love a good Grinch parody.  I’ve written two of them before.  I was not planning to write another one, but I apparently needed to write something to get this out of my system.  Now maybe I’ll be able to move on. 🙃

Chapter 12 of The World Will Be Waiting is up as well!  This is another happy chapter that revolves around one of the greatest moments in all of Backstreet history, so hopefully it will help balance out the negativity in my other story, LOL.  Thanks for reading!  Your support is such a gift to me.  I wish you all a very merry Backstreet Christmas!

It hasn’t exactly been “good times and happy days” lately in real life, but life is looking up for Kevin in The World Will Be Waiting.  I hope I still have some romance readers who will enjoy the big ball of fluff that is Chapter 11, which is now online.  Feedback is always appreciated!  Do you like this rare bit of sweetness and light from me, or do you miss the darkness and drama?

My writing has slowed down quite a bit in the last month due to a combination of illness, holiday busyness, and The Sims, but my streak is still alive.  Today is Day 330!  I almost got derailed by the drama last weekend and started rage-writing another pandaskunk story.  I actually started a fourth pandaskunk story two years ago; I had a decent idea for it, but it never quite came together in time to finish before Christmas.  I figured I would come back to it another year when the timing was right.  I thought about it earlier this year because of the Christmas album coming out, but then when Aaron died, I decided definitely not.  Then all this shit went down with Nick, and I got reinspired and revised my outline to incorporate recent events.  After all, writing is my favorite form of revenge.  But, alas, there’s just not enough time for me to pull it off this year.  I wrote the first pandaskunk story in a couple of days, but it was less than 8,000 words long.  The other two are closer to 40,000 words and took me months to write.  As much as I enjoyed writing them and want to write another one someday, I know that any attempt to do so now will just slow me down on TWWBW even more, and that story is my main priority right now.  All this to say, it is highly likely I will write a fourth pandaskunk story at some point, but it won’t be this year.

I’ll be back next week with the next chapter of TWWBW!  I may even post it a day early to avoid updating on Christmas Eve.  Thanks for reading!

Well, it’s been another tough week in the fandom.  I’m getting tired of writing these posts, but once again, I’m reminded of how strong the BSB Army and the Backstreet Boys themselves are.  Rose wrote a great post about this on her site The Dark Side yesterday that reminded me of one of my all-time favorite BSB lyrics:  “We’ve been through days of thunder.  Some people say we don’t belong.  They try to pull us under, but here we stand together, and we’re millions strong.”  The media can try to cancel them based on an opportunistic and completely unsubstantiated claim by one person who’s been manipulated by another, but the Boys will keep going, and we the fans will continue to band together to support them.  As far as Nick goes, I don’t have time to write all that I want to say right now, but if you’ve read my stories and my recent tweets, you already know how I feel about him and this situation.  The short version is:  I support Nick and don’t believe he or the group deserve to be “cancelled” over an alleged incident that may or may not have happened over twenty years ago when there is absolutely no proof or evidence that he did what he’s been accused of.

Nick has a small part in Chapter 10 of The World Will Be Waiting, which is now online.  You know things are bad when one of my chapters is happier and more light-hearted than reality, LOL.  While my stories are fictional, I try to infuse them with as much reality as I can, and I genuinely believe that Nick has a good heart, would do anything for his brothers, and would never take advantage or abuse someone with disabilities.  I sincerely hope that the companies who were so quick to cancel him without digging deeper into this claim will do some investigating and reconsider their decisions, but even if they don’t and we’re left disappointed by the lack of appearances we’ve been looking forward to, we – and the group – will survive.  This, too, shall pass, and we’ll all be even stronger at the end of it.  Sending lots of love to Nick, Kevin, Brian, Howie, AJ, and all my friends in the fandom.  Hang in there, BSB fam. 🖤💙

Well, I’m not, but Kevin and the Boys are in Chapter 9 of The World Will Be Waiting, which is now online for your reading pleasure.  I wish I was going somewhere to see one of their Christmas performances in person, but I will have to settle for watching them on TV/YouTube.  The JCPenney Holiday Spectacular on Thursday was so much fun!  If you missed it, you can watch it here.  Enjoy!