Here’s the chapter no one asked for, Chapter 20 of The World Will Be Waiting! This one is NSFW. Hope you enjoy! 😘
A few of my favorite things
Happy Saturday! Since my last update, Nick and AJ canceled their appearance at ’90s Con due to the Hong Kong concerts BSB added to their tour, but I’m still gonna go and have a great time seeing friends and other celebrities from my childhood. I’m most excited about meeting the cast of All That, which was one of my absolute favorite shows as a kid and helped turn me into a BSB fan. The first time I saw the Boys perform (on TV, not in person) was when they sang “As Long As You Love Me” on All That in early 1998. Brian became my favorite Backstreet Boy about one minute and forty-nine seconds into the video below, when he stepped forward to sing his solo and flashed that beautiful smile of his. I didn’t even know his name yet, but I knew I loved him. 😍 The rest is history.
Speaking of my work in progress, Chapter 19 of The World Will Be Waiting is up! This is a pretty cute chapter, in my opinion. It also has dinosaurs in it! Next week’s chapter will be romantic – perfect for Valentine’s Day! Let me know in the comments if you would like me to post it in time for Valentine’s Day instead of waiting until the weekend. 😘
Good luck to Kevin and Kristin’s Kansas City Chiefs in the Superbowl tomorrow!
Life is good, and karma’s a bitch!
After all the drama in November and December, this has been a great week for the BSB fandom. It was so very satisfying to see Nick finally take steps to get the stage five clingers out of his life. Go get ’em, Nick! I also loved seeing the guys together in South America, performing shows for huge stadiums full of 40,000+ fans. I especially loved seeing them all topless in the pool! 😍
How blessed are we to have these five boys in our lives?
After weeks of indecision, I also bought passes for ’90s Con in March to see Nick and AJ! I had been thinking about going but didn’t want to make a decision before I knew what their plans were for the 30th anniversary in April, since I can only take a few days off of work. But a few of my friends from the fandom are going, and I believe God gave me a sign that I should go, too. True story: I had a horrible nightmare about the guys last Saturday night, the kind of nightmare you’d probably expect me to have more often, given the content of the fanfics I write about them. Thankfully, my stories rarely inspire dreams, and this one had nothing to do with what I’ve been writing. But it was bad. Like, the worst. At least it was a lucid dream, and I managed to wake myself up before I got to the worst part. But before that, I thought (in my dream), “Well, I guess I won’t be going to ’90s Con now.” So when I woke up and reassured myself that it was only a dream and the boys were fine, I decided this was God’s way of telling me to take a weekend trip to Hartford because, hey, life is short. Besides, I’ve never been to Connecticut before. So I’m super excited about that! Who else is going?!
Onto the update! Chapter 18 of The World Will Be Waiting is up! It has dinosaurs in it! Enjoy!
I’ve had a good writing day today, which is why this update is coming so late in the day – I couldn’t tear myself away from the chapter I’m writing long enough to post this one. I hit page 300 of the story this week, and my writing streak is still going strong at 379 days. I don’t really know what target I’m aiming for now that I’ve made it over a year, but I guess my goal is to keep the daily streak going until I’m done with this novel. I have quite a ways to go yet, but it would be cool to be able to say I wrote every day from the beginning of the story to the end. I love this story and am happy writing it for my own enjoyment, but as writing fanfic has become an increasingly lonely hobby in this fandom, I very much appreciate those of you who take the time to let me know you’re reading and tell me what you like about it. Thank you for your support!
Happy Birthday, Nick!
I love when my update day falls on a Backstreet Boy’s birthday. Happy birthday, Nick! 42 was full of highs and lows, but I hope there’s nothing but highs ahead for 43!
Not only is today Nick’s birthday, but it’s also an anniversary here at Dreamer’s Sanctuary. Twenty years ago today, I posted the first chapter of Broken. I can’t believe it’s been that long or that I’m this old, but yeah… my “baby” is twenty!
I’ve already written blogs on the significance Broken and its sequel By My Side had in introducing people to my writing and molding me into the writer I am today, so I won’t go too deep into all that again here. I reread both novels three years ago when I was writing the retrospective blogs for my site’s twentieth anniversary, and while they are definitely a product of the time and my age when I wrote them and don’t reflect my current writing style anymore, I really enjoyed revisiting them. Broken Nick and Claire are still my favorite couple from any of my fanfics, and their stories will always have a special place in my heart.
My writing has certainly evolved in the twenty years since I started Broken, but the lessons I learned while writing it and its sequel continue to have a lasting impact on me now. I’ve been thinking about these stories a lot lately as I write The World Will Be Waiting because it has the same themes of trying to move on after a traumatic, life-altering experience and navigating a career and a new relationship with a physical disability. I doubt I would have written this story or its predecessor, My Brother’s Keeper, had it not been for Broken and BMS. They definitely paved the way by giving me the confidence to tackle the topics these stories explore. I’ve said it to myself before, but Broken Nick learned to walk again so that Quadriplegic Kevin could roll. LOL
It’s fitting that I’m posting Chapter 17 of The World Will Be Waiting today, on Broken’s anniversary, not only because Chapter 17 was an important chapter in Broken, but because I also drew some inspiration from By My Side when I wrote it. This chapter contains the first sex scene of the story. I will be the first to admit that I am not a smut writer; I don’t write sex scenes very often and still find them awkward when I do. (I will also admit I left a really cringey sentence in this chapter specifically because it made me giggle every time I reread it – I’ll leave you to figure out which one it was.) But I knew going into this story that I would have to include some because Kevin rediscovering his sexuality seemed like such an important part of the overall plot. And I knew this because the same was true for Nick in BMS.
I was only eighteen years old when I finished Broken and started writing BMS. I had gradually moved from reading fairly PG-13 teenybopper fanfics to more mature romance fics that included detailed sex scenes. As I made my initial outline for BMS, I remember thinking, I want to try writing a sex scene at some point, but it won’t be for this story. Having come across the term “devotee” in my research, I was hesitant to write my first ever sex scene with an amputee character, I guess because I worried it would come across as fetishy. Of course, as I’ve since learned, whenever I vow I’ll never do something, I will inevitably do it at some point down the road. I did eventually write my first sex scene – three of them, if I remember correctly – in BMS because it felt too important to gloss over in a story about a guy with one leg learning to love himself again as he found love with a woman. Getting over that hurdle helped me gain the confidence to keep writing scenes like that when they seem necessary for the story I want to tell instead of always “fading to black” like I had prior to BMS. So thank you, Broken Nick, for continuing to inspire me all these years later.
Just for fun, I leave you with these screenshots from my Sims 4 game of Nick and Claire loving life and Kevin and Natalie… falling in love? ❤️ Thanks for following my characters, old and new, over the years!
365!
Today, my writing streak made it to 365 days! Between My Brother’s Keeper and its sequel, The World Will Be Waiting, I have added something to this Kevin story every day for the past year. I didn’t think it was possible for me to stick with it this long, but ever since I figured out a writing routine that works for me, it’s actually been easy. It helps to have a story that I really care about and want to work on consistently. Maybe once this one is done, I’ll try it with Guilty Roads and see how far I get. 🙃
Chapter 16 of The World Will Be Waiting is up! We are now solidly into the romance part of the story. I promise the other Boys will be back at some point – I just started writing the “recording in London” part last weekend – but for now, the focus is on Kevin and his new relationship. These next few chapters have a sweet “slice of life” feel, which is so far from my norm that I really enjoyed writing them. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them!
The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home
Thanks for the comments on my last chapter of The World Will Be Waiting! Chapter 15 is up. This is one of my favorite chapters so far. In 2015, I drove down to Lexington with a couple friends to see Kevin and Brian’s induction into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, and we went to Cathedral Domain, the camp where Kevin grew up. It’s a really cool place, and it was fun reminiscing on that trip as I wrote this chapter. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it!
Welcome 2023!
Happy New Year! I hope the first week of 2023 has treated you well. So far, my resolutions are intact, and I’m feeling good.
Chapter 14 of The World Will Be Waiting is up. I hope you enjoy it! I always appreciate hearing any feedback you have. Thanks for reading!
Happy New Year!
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!
How That Bitch Stole Backstreet Christmas
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:
🎶 You’re a mean one, ABC… 🎶
🙃🙃🙃 IYKYK. pic.twitter.com/EQShi0kMwY
— What Happens On The Backstreet (@WHOTheBckstreet) December 15, 2022
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!
Love is on its way…
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!