Behind the Battle Lines

A "behind the scenes" glimpse of Sardis and the Battle for the Library

The Birth of a Library

It was late summer/early fall 2023 and I knew I wanted to create a Substack. After my long hiatus from writing, I was no longer certain about my “voice” or what I wanted to write. I wasn’t even certain about my audience. What I wanted was a place to discover my writerly self. I wanted a place where I could feel free to try different things and experiment with little to no pressure. Substack, from my research, seemed like the place to be.

The “theme” of a library came naturally, because that’s a space where a person can reasonably expect to find all kinds of books on all kinds of subjects. I didn’t feel as if I was limiting myself only to fantasy or sci-fi. So, I began to brainstorm titles. I suck at titles.

One day, I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop. It was afternoon and things were slow. Quiet. A young woman worked on her laptop near me, an open notebook by her elbow.

I was stumped. I had two options in front of me, The Forgotten Library or… Honestly, I can’t remember now what the other option was.

In desperation, I called out to the young woman and asked if I could get her input on something. This is the South. You can get away with stuff like that. I think if I tried this in New England or New York, I’d get arrested. Anyway, she heard me out and said that “The Forgotten Library” was the better title. I thanked her and never saw her after that day. Maybe she was angel in disguise.

With a Library must come a Librarian and so the “conceit” was born. My Substack would be a library of stories from different dimensions and realms, headed by a mysterious man named Sardis.

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But then it got deeper…

My friend

S.R. Crickard

one day suggested that I do more than just have a guy named Sardis who appeared in stories from time to time or only existed in a descriptive paragraph. She encouraged me to write more about him, to really flesh out the conceit. Thanks to her, I wrote a couple stories where Sardis shows up exclusively.

And then I got the idea of a serial. I wanted Sardis to go on a quest of his own, instead of merely being a background character in one. After some brainstorming, a bare bones version of the plot of Sardis and the Battle for the Library was born.

The serial was supposed to be longer.

Originally, I was going to use this serial to introduce new places for my stories to take place. It would start in Hammondville (Baxton County) and then go to other dimensions where I would later set other stories. In my head, this was a way of expanding the universes of the Library.

I had ideas of a “fantasy” type location and a “sci-fi” location on a colony world. However, I couldn’t come up with good enough reasons for Sardis to go to these places. I realized I was in danger of losing the real thread of the story for the sake of introducing new locales.

So, I dropped the “fantasy” world but kept the “sci-fi” element because it worked more naturally. And instead of a colony world, I opted for a space station where political intrigue is a normal topic of the day. Because of my background as an epic fantasy author, I couldn’t help having something “epic” happening, even if Sardis was only on the edges of that story.

The serial was originally meant to debut August 2024.

Originally, the serial was supposed to come out last year. However, it was proving difficult to write. Sardis didn’t want to entirely cooperate, and I think I was struggling with the interior problem. The exterior problem was developing as it should, but I struggled to connect with Sardis on an emotional level. So, the publication date kept getting pushed back.

Also, in late June/early July, I discovered I was pregnant. The symptoms of pregnancy further derailed my writing, and then when I lost the baby, that derailed me even further. Sardis and the Battle for the Library was officially rescheduled for the following year.

Actions have consequences.

I struggle with endings. Originally, Sardis gets off scott-free and everyone is just ever so happy with how things turned out.

I hated it.

I hated it because life is messy, and actions have consequences. Sardis couldn’t effect his people in the way he did and then just move on as if nothing happened.

That sort of ending seems to be a little too in vogue, honestly. A character who has done terrible things either gets to do one good thing and then die (escaping his consequence), or something happens that waves the consequences away. Maybe it’s revealed that the character was manipulated or didn’t really do it. Either way, it’s a cop-out and, frankly, lazy writing.

I know it was lazy writing on my part. When I was completing the “zero draft,” I was so sick of writing the story that I just wanted it to end with as little complication as possible. I fixed it all in edits.

Trust the process.

I am still figuring out how to do serials on Substack. My first one, Under the Roses, was written all at once and then each week, a chapter was put through my critique group ahead of that chapter’s publication. (My critique group, by the way, is through The Catholic Writers Guild.)

Sardis and the Battle for the Library was done in a similar way, but with a big difference. This time, after I wrote it, I gave it to beta readers. Though, because they were the first to see it, they probably should have been called “alpha readers.” Out of the three readers, only one of them read the story to its conclusion, which immediately highlighted a problem with my beginning.

After fixing that, and other issues, I began putting the story to my critique group a chapter at a time. After each chapter was critiqued and edited, it was scheduled for publication.

It wasn’t until very late in the story that my critique group uncovered a major problem. I had inadvertently created a plot hole. And because I had already published earlier chapters, I couldn’t go back and fix the lead-up. Luckily, we came up with a solution that worked with the set-up I had already created and eliminated the plot hole that way.

This was the sort of problem I was afraid would happen in this method. In my next serial, I am going to try to have the whole thing put through critique before it ever comes to Substack in order to catch any “global” problems.

What is the future of the Library?

Sardis’s personal journey isn’t over yet, so I imagine there will be another serial. And then there’s Malo. In case someone comes across this post without having read the serial, I won’t say too much about him, other than his story surely cannot be over.

At the moment, I have no plans. I’m working on something completely different for my fall serial. When I have the inspiration for it, I will return to Sardis.

What are your thoughts about Sardis and the Battle for the Library? What did you love, or even hate about it? What would you like to see in the future? Are you a member of Team Sardilla? Feel free to comment below!

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