Dreamer's Sanctuary

I’m feeling grateful for a couple of reasons today.  First, it’s a blessing to finally have the Boys together and back on tour!  So far, the U.S./Canadian leg of the DNA tour seems to have gone off without a hitch, and I hope it continues to go well!  The Boys are currently in my part of the country for their first batch of Midwest shows this summer.  I wasn’t planning to see them until the end of the month, when they come to Chicago and St. Louis, but I made the somewhat spontaneous decision to drive up to Milwaukee with a friend last night for their show, and I’m so glad I did!  We both scored front row seats (behind the pit) for under $300 a couple days before the show, which is crazy to me!  I am not a “wait until the last minute” concert ticket buyer, especially not for BSB.  The trauma of having the entire Millennium tour sell out in a matter of seconds the first time I tried to get tickets to one of their shows as a young teenager has stuck with me, and I always try to get my tickets the instant they go on sale (usually in a pre-sale) because I’m worried they’ll sell out if I wait.  So being this spontaneous was a new experience for me, but it couldn’t have worked out better!

Not only were we in the front row (behind the pit), but Kevin’s kids stood right in front of us the whole night.  They were both really cute, trying to get his attention and totally rocking out to BSB.  Max is clearly Kevin’s number one fan and danced and clapped all night as if he hasn’t seen this show at least twenty times this year alone.  Mason has gotten really tall, like his dad!  I recognized Max right away, but it took me longer to verify that the lanky kid standing next to him was actually Mason.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing about him as a baby for the last year and half, LOL.  Since my writing has been so Kevin-centered lately, I definitely had a moment during the show where I looked at Mason in front of me and then up at Kevin dancing on the stage and then over at Kristin, who was off in the far back corner of the pit, and thought about My Brother’s Keeper.  I have these moments from time to time – the last time I did VIP was in Vegas in 2017, like ten days after finishing Sick as My Secrets, and all I wanted to do was give Howie the biggest hug, LOL.  But aside from feeling grateful that real life does not resemble my fanfiction, I also realized that the way I see the characters in my stories is different from the way I see the guys (and their families) in real life.  It’s hard to explain, but even though I model my characters after real people and try to make them realistic, they sort of take on a life of their own that I can separate from the real people they’re based on.  I guess that’s why the guilt I sometimes feel when I write these horrifically tragic stories about real people I love has never stopped me from writing them:  because, at the end of the day, they’re still just fiction.

The second reason I’m feeling grateful today is that it’s July 9, the anniversary of when AJ went to rehab for the first time.  I still vividly remember watching TRL on July 9, 2001 when Nick, Kevin, Brian, and Howie made an appearance to announce that they were postponing the Black & Blue tour because AJ was going into treatment.  Besides being disappointed that the concert I had tickets to in a few weeks was getting bumped back a few months, I was worried about AJ and sad for the other guys.  Obviously, sobriety has been a difficult journey for AJ since then.  I wrote him sober in My Brother’s Keeper because he claimed to be sober in real life at that time, but in light of his more recent revelations, who knows?  All I know is that he looked and sounded really good and healthy onstage last night!  This is the best he has looked in the last two decades.  So I’m proud of AJ and grateful that he seems to have gotten it together.

Sorry for the long blog, but Chapter 47 of My Brother’s Keeper is up!  This is technically a filler chapter meant to move time forward a few months, but I love the way it turned out. I hope you enjoy it, too!

Happy July!  I just learned that this month is Disability Pride Month, at least in the United States.  I included a list of content creators with disabilities in one of my author’s notes for My Brother’s Keeper last July, but I wanted to spotlight a couple others that I’ve discovered since then.  Check out their YouTube channels!

Squirmy and Grubs
These two started popping up in my recommended videos after I subscribed to the channel Roll With Cole and Charisma.  Both are interabled couples and so entertaining, they should have their own TLC show!  Squirmy and Grubs, a.k.a. Hannah and Shane, have an awesome sense of humor and a beautiful love story.

Makayla Noble
Makayla Noble is a cheerleader who made the news last September when she sustained a spinal cord injury in a tumbling accident.  I started following her story shortly after hearing about it on the news and continue to be inspired by her positive attitude and the progress she’s made in such a short time.  She is a great example of making the best out of whatever bad situation life throws your way.

In other news, I finished My Brother’s Keeper early yesterday!  Although I wrote the majority of the story in about sixteen months, it actually took nine years from the idea’s conception to its completion.  That’s the longest I’ve spent developing a story that actually made it to the end, so finishing it felt really good!  Even though it’s done, I’m probably going to stick to posting one chapter a week for the rest of the month to give myself more time to get started on my next story, which will be its sequel.  I actually started that yesterday, and my writing streak is still going strong at 162 days!  I haven’t played The Sims in like two weeks, which has also helped my productivity, LOL.

With that being said, Chapter 46 is up!  Thank you to everyone who’s still reading, especially those of you who have taken time to leave feedback, whether that’s here, on AO3, Twitter, or wherever.  I hope you know how much I appreciate you!

Happy belated Canada Day to my Canadian readers and an early happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans!  Sending birthday wishes to Mason tomorrow as well – happy birthday, buddy!

I had a nice little staycation this past week, dog-sitting at my parents’ house while they were out of town.  I got a lot of writing done, which was what I had hoped to accomplish.  I’m on the second-to-last chapter of My Brother’s Keeper now, so I think it’s time to get back to weekly updates.  Chapter 45 is up!  In rereading this one, I realized it sounds a lot like the last chapter of the story, but it’s not.  There are (or will be) five more where this one came from!  I promised my friend Gio I would write about one specific thing in this story and haven’t delivered on that promise yet, but it’s coming.  (Chapter 48, Gio; I wrote it this week!)

If all goes well, I’ll get the rest of this story posted by the end of July and hopefully have started on the sequel.  Thank you for reading!

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, including five of the best – Brian, Kevin, Howie, AJ, and Nick!  It’s been so fun watching the guys grow up and start families of their own.  In case you missed the video of them bringing (almost) all the kids onstage during “No Place” earlier this month, it’s a perfect day to watch it!  I doubt there are any dads reading this post, but if so, you’re awesome, and I hope you have a great day!

Chapter 44 of My Brother’s Keeper is up!  I made it past page 500 of the story this weekend!  While it’s far from my longest novel, it is the longest story I’ve written all in one Google Doc, which is very slow-loading at this point, LOL.  I’m determined to stick it out until the end.  I’m still a few chapters ahead of what I’ve posted and am currently working on Chapter 47 out of a planned 50.  I feel like I’m rushing through some things in these last few chapters and could easily add at least a couple more, but I’m trying to only focus on events that directly relate to the plot and not get distracted writing about things that happened during this time period in real life but don’t have an impact on Kevin and Nick’s story.  I’m also still planning to start a sequel when this story is done, as long as I don’t get a better idea before then.  I’m not expecting that to happen, but you never know!  This is the time of year when that tends to happen to me; I always seem to get story ideas on or around the Fourth of July.  Some of my favorite ones have come in a sudden flash of inspiration when I was either trying to finish a novel or just starting a new one.  The idea for A Heart That Isn’t Mine came to me in June as I was in the middle of my end-of-story streak for Sick as My Secrets, and I got the idea for Curtain Call in early July after I had just started posting Guilty Roads.  So I know better than promise anything until I actually start posting said sequel.  But it has a title, outline, characters, and a banner already, so it’s in good shape for a story that hasn’t actually been started yet.

Thanks for reading!

Sorry it’s been a minute since my last update.  After managing to avoid it for more than two years, I finally came down with Covid last week.  What a fun way to start my summer vacation! Thankfully, I only had mild cold symptoms for a couple of days and then felt fine. Very grateful for vaccines!

I should have gotten a lot written while I was in isolation, but instead, I decided to download The Sims (4) and start playing that for the first time in at least a decade.  Turns out, that game is just as addicting in my thirties as it was in my teens.  I started the same way I often did in my teens, too, by creating the BSB and building a mansion for them to live in together, LOL.  As a grown woman, I have moved past my teenybopper fantasy of marrying one of them and did not make myself as a Sim this time.  Instead, I’ve been putting my various fanfic original characters into the game.  Of course, one of the first characters I created was Claire from Broken, with the end goal of having her happily married to Nick.  They are just getting to know each other now.  She got the stomach flu the other day and gave it to him, so they were both nauseous and throwing up all the time – just like in Broken! LOL  I may have to post some screenshots sometime because I also built the Gravel Funeral Home from A Heart That Isn’t Mine in all its twisted glory, and it’s kind of amazing.

Anyway, I didn’t write much while I was obsessively playing The Sims for ten hours a day, but I did manage to keep my daily writing streak alive and have gotten back on track with writing more than a sentence a day the last two days.  My streak is up to 140 days now!  The last one ended at 148 days, so I’m close to breaking my record.  I thought I would be done with this story before I made it to 150 days, but since I have slowed down so much, that’s not going to happen.  But I do have an update for you today!  Chapter 43 of My Brother’s Keeper is up.  I intend to find a better balance between my creative hobbies and get back to more regular updates this summer.  Thanks for reading!