Merry Christmas! I hope everyone who celebrates it had a great holiday!
We’ve finally made it to the last Thursday of 2025 and the last in my series of Throwback Thursday blogs to coincide with my site’s twenty-fifth anniversary! I had a hard time deciding what to do for my twenty-fifth blog. My original idea was to count down my favorite Christmas chapters, but I already did something similar last December by sharing my favorite festive fics. Then I considered doing a “white elephant” inspired blog featuring a few of my favorite random chapters that didn’t fit in any of the other blogs, but I honestly didn’t have time to think it through thoroughly enough to put that list together. I did think about doing a list of my top five favorites out of all my fanfics, but it felt overwhelming trying to narrow twenty-five years worth of writing down to a top five. That’s why I opted to write twenty-five top five lists this year instead of trying to do a single top twenty-five list. Truthfully, I love every piece of fanfiction I’ve posted since Broken for one reason or another, and it would be too hard for me to try to rank them. But, in the end, I decided to blog about the five fics I’m most proud of.
5. Heroic Measures
Although I look back fondly on most of my stories, they are far from perfect. There are things about almost all of them that I wish I’d done differently. But Heroic Measures is one of the few fics I’ve written that turned out about as “perfect” as I could have possibly imagined it. By that, I definitely don’t mean that it’s the best piece of writing ever, just that it’s among my personal best. It’s a well-plotted, well-paced novella – the perfect length for the story I wanted to tell. Each of its ten chapters moves the plot forward with no filler, which is quite an accomplishment for a wordy author who loves writing long fics! I also love the balance between the Backstreet Boys and the main characters from ER, who each get their moment to shine as their paths cross one fateful morning. And, finally, I’m proud of the effort I put into researching and writing the medical aspects of the story. While this type of fic is very much in my wheelhouse, it was still a challenge for me to write. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to bring this relatively short story to life. But I’m very glad I did!
4. Curtain Call
I purposely used the word “favorite” instead of “best” in most of my Throwback Thursday blog titles because “best” can be such a subjective term when it comes to describing any kind of creative work. I felt that the word “favorite” fit better because it implied that each list was based on my own personal feelings and preferences rather than any specific criteria I used to rank my top five. But, as I wrote before, picking favorites can be hard, too! My favorites may change based on the day, what kind of mood I’m in, and how recently I’ve revisited a particular story. That being said, if you asked me to name my all-time favorite fanfic I’ve written, nine times out of ten, I would probably tell you it’s Curtain Call.
For me, Curtain Call was one of those rare, magical, lighting-in-a-bottle experiences that all fiction writers hope to have. I pretty much rode a wave of inspiration from the moment I first came up with the idea until the day I finished the last chapter. As far as I can remember, I never really had writer’s block with that story. And, considering its length, I wrote it pretty quickly, knocking out ninety chapters and over 250,000 words in about fifteen months. I wish I could do that now!
And, yet, Curtain Call shouldn’t have been an “easy” story to write. Its subject matter – terminal cancer – was a hard, heavy topic to tackle, especially while one of my friends was dying of a different form of the disease. The fact that I had already written a Nick cancer story didn’t make it easier; it actually made it more challenging because I was not only trying to top Broken but make Curtain Call different enough to set it apart. That was the main reason why I decided Nick had to die in the first place. (Sorry, Nick.) But I rose to the challenge and managed to write a story that was even better than Broken.
Curtain Call is the first of my stories that I could reread and almost forget that I was the one who wrote it. Instead of cringing with embarrassment and constantly wanting to edit it, I could actually escape into the story and enjoy reading it for no other purpose than my own enjoyment. And, fifteen years later, I still feel the same way about it. That is why Curtain Call is one of the fics I’m most proud of.
3. Song for the Undead
I don’t have the best track record when it comes to finishing collaborations. In fact, prior to 2015, only a couple of my multi-chapter collaborations were complete: Fight for Survival and Visions of the Past, both co-written with my friend Rachel in 2000, both coming in at under 40,000 words. So, the fact that Rose and I actually finished writing our over 350,000-word zombie apocalypse epic, Song for the Undead, automatically puts it in my top five for projects I’m proudest of. It took us seven years and a lot of patience and perseverance to see this story through to its planned ending, but we did it!
But that’s not the only reason I’m proud of Song for the Undead. I’m also proud of it because it was something completely different from anything I’d ever written before. I had never tried writing a true horror novel, and the closest I’d come to an apocalyptic tale was an ill-fated collab called Blood Red Moon, which was a Deep Impact rip-off about characters trying to survive a massive comet on a collision course with Earth. We never got far enough to reach the post-apocalyptic part, so that was uncharted territory for me in Undead… which was also teaming with zombies. Although I’ve always been a fan of horror, I actually hadn’t watched all that many zombie movies prior to writing Undead. But I threw myself headfirst into researching for this project, watching films and reading books to learn more about zombie lore and zombie apocalypse tropes. I accumulated quite a collection of zombie media and had so much fun immersing myself in the post-apocalyptic world that Rose and I built.
But my favorite part of Song for the Undead is the cast of characters we developed and the relationships they formed with each other over. I never used to be a big fan of AU fanfics because I felt like the brotherhood the Backstreet Boys have would be missing. But it turned out to be a fun challenge for us to start with the five guys as strangers (except for Brian and Kevin, whom we kept as cousins) and build that brotherly bond between them from the ground up. I’m proud of the found family we created over the course of this story, as well as the personal friendship that grew between Rose and me as a result of writing it together.
2. A Heart That Isn’t Mine
In some ways, my experience writing A Heart That Isn’t Mine was similar to every other story on this list. Like Curtain Call, the idea for it came in a flash of inspiration, and once I got far enough into the story, I was able to finish writing it relatively quickly, considering its length. But, like Heroic Measures, it took me a surprisingly long time to get past the first few chapters and feel comfortable enough to start posting it. And, like Song for the Undead, it contains characters and a plot twist that I’m really proud of – and that’s what puts it so high on this list.
What is there to say about AHTIM that hasn’t already been said? I already wrote about the mixed feelings I have for this story in a previous blog, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much in this one. I’ve also blogged about its characters and various aspects of its plot, from the intense medical drama to the horrific twist and all the sweet bromance in between. I’m proud of all of those elements. But I’m also proud of myself for pulling it all together to complete this project because, as I’ve also said before, it wasn’t an easy story to write. I probably spent more time literally pacing around the room, agonizing over what I had to write next, than I spent actually putting words down on the page. The content was disturbing to me, but it was also so compelling that I couldn’t quit. I kept coming back to my computer to write more because I just had to get the rest of the story out of my head.
All that said, I enjoyed the challenge of creating this fic, and I still enjoy the finished product. I’m also proud of the reaction it got from the loyal readers who left me feedback along the way. While I always value my readers, their support was especially important to me with this story. Not only was it one I was apprehensive about posting, but it was the first big project I’d posted since the little hiatus I took after finishing Sick as My Secrets. If it hadn’t been received as well as it was, it would have been a lot harder for me to get back into my writing groove and go on to write everything I’ve written in the six years since. But, as it turned out, A Heart That Isn’t Mine was the perfect comeback story to kick off the current era of my writing journey.
1. The Broken Series
It’s been almost twenty-three years since I started it and eighteen years since I finished it, but when I think of the fanfic projects I’m most proud of, the Broken series is still the first one that pops into my mind. It may not be my best work anymore, but it was when I wrote it, and to this day, it still feels like my magnum opus. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, Broken was my breakout story, the fic I became best known for within the BSB fandom. It and its sequel, By My Side, made me the writer I am today. My writing style developed and matured so much over the five years I spent working on this series. To this day, I still draw on the lessons I learned from writing it. Lessons like:
- It shouldn’t take seventeen chapters to get to the point of the story, even if it ends up having 150 of them.
- Don’t make your characters do uncharacteristic things for the sake of drama (a.k.a. The “Siberia” Rule).
- Exercise caution when naming characters after your online friends/readers. It can get weird when you meet them in real life years later, and they bring up certain scenes you wrote about them and their favorite Backstreet Boy.
Despite its many flaws, the Broken series will always have a special place in my heart. As these blogs have shown, Broken Nick and Claire still rank high on my list of favorite characters I’ve written. Altogether, their story totals over a million words spread across two novels, 353 chapters, and nearly 2,500 pages, which I wrote and posted over the course of five years. What felt like an impressive feat for me back then seems almost impossible to me now, but, somehow, I did it! I’m proud of the work I put into this series, as well as what came out of it.
I never could have imagined back then that I would still be writing BSB fanfic as a forty-year-old woman, but here I am, still devoting time each day to the hobby I have loved for over twenty-five years now. At this point, I don’t find it as inconceivable that I might continue this into retirement. Why not? Here’s to another twenty-five years!
As I wrap up this retrospective blog series, I want to thank everyone who will read these words. Whether you’ve been around since the beginning or only recently stumbled across my site, I appreciate you being here. Your clicks, comments, and kudos motivate me to keep writing, and your support and encouragement mean the world to me. Thank you for celebrating Dreamer’s Sanctuary’s twenty-fifth anniversary with me this year. I hope you’ll stick around for the fiftieth!