The End of an Era

Once again, this is not an update, but, rather, an announcement.

If you’ve been coming to this site for any length of time, I’m sure you’re aware of how the updates have slowed down over the last few months/years.  It’s been especially slow lately.  I have been busy with real life, of course, but I won’t make any more excuses.  The truth is that I just haven’t had the motivation or inspiration to write.

This has been going on for awhile.  It’s evident in the lack of updates on all of my stories.  Guilty Roads hasn’t been updated in I don’t even know how long.  The Harry Potter crossover that was I so gung-ho about around this time last year hasn’t been updated since.  Even the collaborations I was so into have fallen by the wayside.

It is with a heavy heart that I admit defeat and officially announce that I am taking a hiatus from writing fan fiction.  I will continue to contribute to 00Carter and help Rose finish Song for the Undead because I owe her and my other co-writers that much, but for the time being, I will not be updating any of my other projects.  I want to use this time to focus on my personal life and other creative endeavors, without the pressure of any unfinished novels or a website waiting to be updated.

Lately, whenever I think of this site or the stories on it, I get a sick feeling in my stomach because I know I’m letting you down.  Take today, for example.  It’s April Fool’s Day, and I ALWAYS do something to the site or write a joke story for April Fool’s.  In twelve years, I have never failed to produce an April Fool’s prank.  But this year?  I got nothing.  It hit me this weekend as I was scrambling to come up with an idea, knowing I had no time and even less inspiration to get something done.  And that’s when I knew… this is the end.

I’ve always vowed I would never be one of those writers who just falls off the face of the internet and disappears, never to update her stories again, or worse, the one who removes her stories without warning first.  I promised I would at least warn you and let you know what was going on.  So now that that time has come, here it is.

I will not be removing my stories, and I will continue to pay for my domain so my site can stay online.  I don’t want Dreamer’s Sanctuary to disappear completely.  I’m also not going to say that I will never write again.  I hope that, after taking some time off, I will rediscover my love of writing.  I would love to explore other fandoms, such as Harry Potter, The Walking Dead, and Tetris, as well as original fiction.  And who knows, maybe one day I’ll even come back to BSB and finish some of the unfinished stories I’m leaving behind.  But for now, it’s time for me to say goodbye.

Thank you for all the support over the years!

Signing off,

Julie

Thank You!

Thanks to those of you who voted for me at the Backstreet Boys Fan Fiction Awards!  I was 1st runner-up in three categories:

 

          

Thanks again for these awards!  Also, thanks to those of you who have registered as readers on the site!  Hopefully one of these days I’ll actually update a story that’s posted on the new site so you can try out the review feature LOL.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

This isn’t a real update, but I wanted to acknowledge this anniversary.  Not only is it the 33rd anniversary of our beloved blonde Backstreet Boy’s birth, but it’s also the anniversary of a couple of milestones on this site.

January 28, 2003:  Ten years ago on this date, I posted the first two chapters of a new story I had just started called Broken.  In the update blurb on the site that day, I wrote, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to post it yet or not because I just started it last week and wasn’t sure if I would keep going on it or not.”  Thank goodness I did, because Broken turned out to be one of the biggest successes of my fanfic-writing life.  It’s the story that brought a lot of you here at some point in the last decade.  It’s also the story that, for better or worse, taught me the most about writing and made me the writer I am today.  I can’t believe it’s ten years old!

January 28, 2008:  Five years ago on this date, and five years after Broken began, I posted the last three chapters of its sequel, By My Side.  One of the only sequels I’ve successfully completed, By My Side is also my longest novel by far, weighing in at around 800,000 words and well over 1,000 pages.  No wonder it took almost four years of consistent writing to finish!  The day I posted the end of BMS still holds the record for the most traffic ever on Dreamer’s Sanctuary.  While it certainly isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, it is definitely the biggest achievement of my writing “career” so far.

So happy birthday (and sorry), Nick!  Happy birthday, Broken!  And happy anniversary, BMS!  And thank you, readers, for sticking around and supporting the site through all these years!

Undead Update!

Chapter 104 of Song for the Undead is up!  Rose and I hope you enjoy it!

Also, I’ve been having a lot of problems with spam comments and reviews, so for the time being, I’m requiring readers to register for the site in order to comment or review.  You can become a registered reader by clicking here or registering on the sidebar to the right.  I apologize for this extra step and hope it won’t deter anyone from leaving feedback; it should help keep the site clean and free of spam.  Thanks for your support!

Undead Update!

It’s the first story update of the new year – AND the new site! Chapter 103 of Song for the Undead is up!  It’s a long and eventful chapter, hopefully worth the wait!  Enjoy!

If you like Undead and my co-writer Rose’s writing, check out her brand new site and my affiliate, Double Rainbow Fiction!  There you will find more of her stories, as well as our other collaborations.

Also, time is running out to vote in the Felix Awards and the Best of BSB Fan Fiction Awards.  If you haven’t voted yet, click the links below to cast your vote!

Vote for The Felix Awards! (Voting ends January 20.)

Vote for The Best of BSB Fan Fiction 2012 Awards! (Voting ends January 31.)

eFic Update!

I’ve converted my latest complete novel, Secrets of the Heart, into eFic format.  You can now download it as an EPUB, MOBI, or PDF file on the eFics page for use on your e-reader or tablet.

I also figured out how to fix some of the issues the other eFics were having (the Kindle/MOBI versions, anyway) with the table of contents not showing every chapter.  I updated all of the eFic files with versions that should work better, so if anyone was bothered by this glitch before, feel free to re-download.

The only issue I had with them this time around was the covers not displaying properly on my Kindle Fire.  After looking into this, I discovered this is a Kindle issue a lot of people have experienced and not related to Calibre, the program I used to convert them.  Repeated syncing, clearing data from the Amazon Kindle app, shutting down and powering back on, and waiting awhile seems to fix this.  If you need more detailed instructions on this, leave a comment, and I’d be happy to try and help!

I hope you’re enjoying the new site!  If you have any feedback on the site or updates, click the title of this or any updates post to leave a comment!

New Year, New Site!

Happy New Year, and welcome to the NEW Dreamer’s Sanctuary!

I have spent countless hours recreating every page of this website from scratch in order to bring you a more modern, user-friendly space to read stories.  I am now using WordPress to maintain Dreamer’s Sanctuary, which means a better design and more flexibility for all of us.  You should be able to navigate the site using any platform, browser, screen resolution, or mobile device.  You will also have the option to leave feedback through a review form at the bottom of each story chapter, instead of relying on email, etc.

This is an upgrade in many ways, but because it involved so much work, I have had to downsize some aspects of the site.  The changes are summarized below.

Hosted Stories
Unfortunately, I am no longer going to be hosting stories.  My apologies to my hosted authors, but it just wasn’t feasible to move all of the old hosted stories to the new site, and with sites like Absolute Chaos that allow anyone to register an account and easily upload their own stories, I just didn’t see the need to continue hosting them on my site.  However, the hosted stories are still online and will be able to be accessed through an archive – more on that soon!

My Stories
All of my stories written in the last ten years (2003-present) have been moved to the new site and can be accessed through the Stories tab up top.  Anything older than 2003, formerly housed in “The Vault” on the old site, is not posted on the new site, but remains online and can be accessed through the archive.

The Dreamer’s Sanctuary Archive
This is a site I created to archive all of the old stories and outdated pages that I did not want to move to the new site, but still wanted to preserve.  You can continue to read these stories and view these pages through this site.  They will no longer be updated, but they also won’t be removed.  (Also, I WILL continue to post chapters of currently-in-progress hosted stories to this site, in order to preserve as many complete stories as possible.)  You can access the archive through a link under the Site tab or by going to dreamers-sanctuary.com/archive.html.

Because this is a brand new site, links you’ve used in the past to access certain parts of the website may have changed.  Please let me know if you encounter any broken links or have trouble with any part of the new site.

I hope you enjoy the new Dreamer’s Sanctuary!

Welcome to my sanctuary!

I’m Julie, and BSB fanfiction is one of my favorite ways to escape from the real world for a while. I fell in love with the Boys in 1998 and first discovered fanfic in ’99. I’ve been reading, writing, and dreaming up stories ever since. I write a variety of genres, but I’m best known for my angsty medical dramas. On this site, you will find my stories, along with links to some of my all-time favorites by other authors. If you read something you like, please leave a comment and let me know! Enjoy your escape!