Hello everyone! I’ve missed being able to update these last few weeks. Since finishing A Heart That Isn’t Mine, I have started the new pandaskunk story I mentioned back in November, but it’s not very far along yet. I’m still hoping to be able to post at least a part or two before Christmas, but the reality is that I’ll still be writing this thing after the holidays. I hope you won’t mind reading it then. I would just wait until next December to post it in its entirety, but it incorporates recent events in the fandom, so it won’t be as timely next year. Thanks for bearing with me.
As we approach the new year, we are also nearing a significant milestone… besides the youngest Backstreet Boy turning forty, I mean. April 29, 2020 will mark Dreamer’s Sanctuary’s twentieth anniversary! Off the top of my head, I can’t name another BSB fanfic site that is twenty years old and still actively being updated. My site has never been the biggest or the best, but it may be the longest-lasting – and hey, I’ll take pride in that!
To commemorate this milestone, I’m going to start a weekly series of “Wayback Wednesday” posts that will span the twenty-year history of the site and my fanfic writing “career,” spotlighting one of the stories I wrote each year. Newer readers may be interested in seeing where I started (and how far I’ve come since), while longtime readers may enjoy the nostalgia. And for those who don’t care at all, that’s okay too – I just thought this would help fill the gap in updates until I’m ready to start posting a new story.
We begin way back in the year 2000. I started writing fanfic right around this time of year, twenty years ago, when I was fourteen. My first attempt at a fanfic was just a few scenes written in a notebook. I ended up abandoning that story and starting another, which I will get to in a moment, but I later went back to that original idea and rewrote it as Years of Grace, which was published online in 2001.
The second story I started was also the first fanfic I finished and the first one I shared with the world online. It was called Heartache, and it’s the story I’m spotlighting in this first post because it’s really where this all began!