Not familiar with the songs we reference? Find the soundtrack here!

This is fiction, people. Rachel Connor doesn't exist, and neither does Sudden Silence the band. Nick Carter does exist, but he's a punkass who probably doesn't have an insecure bone in his body and has probably never crushed out on a girl, ever. Frank the bodyguard doesn't exist, and if he did, he and Nick probably wouldn't have such a tragically co-dependent relationship.

But tragically co-dependent bodyguards make for good fic, and so do smitten popstars who love kick ass chick rockers. So sue us.

All of Sudden Silence's songs are real, and if we had more webspace, we'd have links to sound files. If you want to find them yourself, they're a mixture of That Dog, a terrific, but unfortunately now defunct, group from Southern California, and, get this, the Josie and Pussycats soundtrack.

Hey! We liked Josie and Pussycats, just stop laughing now. (Weird fact we did not know until after we started writing this - the lead singer for That Dog wrote some of the tunes on Josie and Pussycats. Fic makes for a small world sometimes.)

Rachel has a back story, which thus far, has never been published on the web, and lives in a few notebooks scattered around the Pumpkin Coach's bedroom. Rachel's back story involves Damon Albarn from Blur, who does exist, and does live happily in London with his daughter Missy and his baby's momma, Suzi. (Yes, the Pumpkin Coach is still coming to terms with this chain of events!)

Rachel exists in the same universe as Em Evesham, who shows up to direct a video, and Kate Sutton, who shows up in some emails. All of Em and Kate's back stories, which have just about zero to do with this story, will or are part of "Tragical Fiction Tangents" - i.e. other fic that we've written! Read it if you want, you don't have to.

Most of what we write about Nick we've made up. Those of you on some of the boards are going to see some things that look familiar because we thought they were amusing. Like Thor. Yeah, you know what we're talking about. Any references we make to the BSB boards are done totally with love and affection.

The Pumpkin Coach started this story, and The Paperbag Princess tagged along for the ride. Because Nick really is the cutest Backstreet Boy, isn't he? At least he's the one with the most personality.

Read at your own risk. There's sex, we'll warn you about it. We don't think it's going to warp anyone's life to read it.

And if you are so moved, we'd certainly like to know if anyone is reading this besides our friends. You can email us at tragical.fiction@verizon.net.

If you'd like to recieve a notice when we update this story, please join our update list below. Thanks for reading!

Recent awards we have won... *blush*

Other awards are listed here.