antebellum [t. riddle]

final authors note

the end is here!

first off, i cannot thank all of you enough. the support you guys have given me over the course of writing this has been unimaginable. i started writing this for me, and i genuinely never expected anyone to care, especially not on this scale. 

when i started writing antebellum (or as some of you might remember next best american record), i think we were mid pandemic, and i desperately needed something to fill the void that isolation and quarantine left me with. i've always loved reading and writing and any medium that would allow me to experience my emotions through another person, and when i was crafting this story, so much of myself bled into sicaria that it made me feel sick to write about her lol. 

i know antebellum is no masterpiece, but there is so much of my time and effort in it that is genuinely feels like part of me. i read it back and cringe but i could never bring myself to delete it. its made me a better writer (as you can def tell if you compare earlier chapters to later ones HAHA) it lingers in the back of my mind, even when i haven't opened this app for months, i think of it. other ideas for books i've started (facfic and otherwise) have spawned from discard scenes.

one day (hopefully), i'll go back and fix everything that needs to be fixed. there were so many plot threads i ended up dropping, that i really did have plans for when i started writing. i love antebellum, and i want to fix it. i just don't have the time right now. if i could go back and start over, i'd write it the right way— plan everything out perfectly so there'd be no inconsistencies— but the past is the past. 

i'll never be able to say sorry enough for how long it took me to finish it. i know some of you were waiting, and your prodding really did help me keep updating even when the motivation was lost, so give yourselves a pat on the back. this was nearly five years in the making. i think when we went back to living life normally, i didn't have the emotional need to keep writing, but if felt obligated to sicaria and to all of you to finish what i'd started for her. i didn't like the idea of leaving her in limbo, even though she's not real, but she's me in the ways that matter. 

i also feel like writing the last part felt like closing a chapter of my life, as dramatic as it sounds. i never finish things.  i don't know how they end because i want them to last forever. that's why it was so hard to finish antebellum— i didn't want it to end. i don't know if i'll ever stop thinking about antebellum. it may sound silly, but writing this genuinely saved my life. i've done everything i can to make sure it ended how i wanted it to. 

until writing the last chapter, i didn't know whether or not i was going to let sicaria live. i only decided as i wrote the final sentences. it felt trivializing to let her survive after all she'd gone through, but then i realized, i can do whatever i want with her. i wrote a short chapter of how i thought the weeks following her death would go, but then i realized i was writing the rise of voldemort, and even though his name is in the title, this is not tom's story. 

letting her die would make it about him. this is sicaria's.

if i ever get the time, i'll start editing— probably as a separate "book", just because i want to keep all the comments on this one. i also have three epilogues planned, but i don't have timelines for those yet. hopefully, by may, but again, don't wait up. 

feel free to use this as author q&a!

i love you all more than i should love strangers. i hope you all have been thoroughly entertained at my glorified diary entries. 

thank you forever

— s