Lamar Giles Talks Found Family in 'Sanctuary: A Bad Batch Novel' (Interview)

Lamar Giles recently sat down with us to talk all about his recent novel Sanctuary, which is his first full length Star Wars book as well as our first novel all about The Bad Batch. Our chat ranged from talking about how he got into writing thanks to his mom, how his uncle fostered his love of Star Wars, and why fans and creators alike connect so deeply with the family of Clone Force 99.

Check out our full conversation below or in audio on The Youtini Show, and be sure to order Sanctuary now!

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Eric: Welcome to a very special episode of The Youtini Show! Today, I’m sitting down with the author of The Getaway, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, SPIN, Fake ID, and of course, his first of what we hope are many Star Wars books, Sanctuary: A Bad Batch Novel. He is also a founding member of We Need Diverse Books and a contributor to more anthologies than you can count: it’s Lamar Giles! Welcome to the show.

Lamar: Thank you for having me.

Eric: Of course! As we're recording here, we are about two weeks into Sanctuary’s lifespan. We're gonna talk a little bit about how you got into writing and how people are loving the book, but before we get into all that, I'd love to just talk about your beginning.

Ahead of your first novel, Fake ID, you talked a bit about your journey growing up as a reader with authors like Stephen King. You read IT at age 11, which is pretty unique, I gotta say! What was it about reading at that young age that made you think, “I really wanna do this myself”

Lamar Giles

Lamar: First of all, my mom really fostered a home of readers.

My mom's a factory worker, so her big thing was she didn't want us to be factory workers. She's like I'm doing this hard work so you could do something different. So I want you to work on your minds, and the way you work on your minds is reading. That was always the thing.

I ended up winning a writing contest in fourth grade – the first time I won anything – so I adapted this persona of I must be the writer in my classroom. Other kids were the athletes. Other kids were the super smart kids. But I'm the writer. And I just stuck with that all through school.

In high school, I'm writing for my school paper, and as I'm doing this, I'm reading stuff by Stephen King, mostly, because [in] the town I lived in, there wasn't a bookstore nearby, so Stephen King books were the sort of things you could get from the grocery store.

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So I'm picking up paperbacks, and it feels like this man's doing magic with words, 'cause how do you make someone scared by what you put on the page? I just wanted to learn how to do that trick. I never thought it would be a career. It was more like I just really want to know how to do this neat thing.

It's like my basketball friends who watched Michael Jordan perfect his fadeaway. It was like I just wanna know how to do it, and then it snowballed from there.

Eric: That support system is so key. We hear so many folks that wanna go do something, and if you have parents or folks that just believe in you and see you from the beginning, that is absolutely invaluable.

Now you mentioned you had friends getting into Jordan, and that young age is also the time a lot of us get into Star Wars in the first place. So how did that part of it happen for you? Was it a movie in the theater? Was it just an afternoon in front of the tv? What was that moment like?

Lamar: It wasn't a theater, 'cause I was born in ‘79, so I missed a lot of the theatrical stuff. I was just too young. But when I was about six years old, I remember Return of the Jedi being on some TV channel – whether it was cable at the time or network stuff, I can't remember.

But it was just the one scene that just sizzled its way into my brain. It's Luke over the Sarlacc Pit giving Jabba the ultimatum, and then he does the thing where he jumps off, grabs the plank, does the flip, catches the lightsaber and that?! I play-acted that in my house so much with anything I could find to double as a lightsaber.

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And my uncle Jerry, he passed away several years ago, but he was the sort of guy who back then would record movies on VHS tapes – it'd be the tape with the three movies on it you've written. So he had all the Star Wars films on various tapes, and so he walked me through it.

He's like “You like that one? You gotta see the original, and you gotta see Empire.” From there, I fell in love, and it's been a part of my life since I was six years old. So it's 40 years now.

Eric: I love that. Return of the Jedi was also my favorite as a kid, and that green lightsaber is the iconic moment. The snap, the sound of it is unlike any other lightsaber when it ignites and man, just one of the absolute best.

Now as you then continued growing up as a Star Wars fan and as a writer, was there ever a conceivable dream that these passions were gonna coincide? Did you dare to think I could probably combine these in 40 years?

Lamar: No, I'm gonna be honest with you. There was no way. There was nothing in me that thought I would ever get to contribute to Star Wars, and it's simply because I came into the industry not understanding all the ins and outs and how stuff like that happened.

So in my mind. I'm a working writer, I've got some novels out, I've gotten some praise, but I'm not a huge star. I'm not a famous writer. I thought that's what you had to be for anyone to ever notice you or for you to ever make contact. But the thing that changed was around 2017 – that would've been 40 years since the original film – they started doing From a Certain Point of View anthologies.

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I saw that, in these anthologies, they're reaching out to 40 writers. And I didn't get a tap on the shoulder for the first one or the second one, but I'm like with that many writers…I'm having a pretty good run right now…maybe my agent can talk to somebody who knows somebody else.

And eventually that came around when they did the Return of the Jedi. I didn't think it would ever be more than that – I was just really grateful they thought of me for that one.

Eric: That anthology – you wrote Twenty and Out about a couple of Death Star technicians. Now we've heard stories about the excel sheet of characters and people calling dibs on certain people throughout the film, and it sounds chaotic. How did you land on those technicians? Like at what point in the process were you like, these are my guys?

Lamar: So it's interesting, because I already told you that Return was the movie that introduced me to the Star Wars universe. I knew that movie in and out.

They tell you to try to pick three different characters in case there's overlap, and we gotta figure out if two people want the same thing, so immediately I decided, I'm just gonna try to pick. obscure characters so I don't have to worry about overlap. And I always wondered about those guys and, because they're only on screen for 1.3 seconds. I always had a curiosity about them.

And this is also the point where some of my general fantasy and science fiction interests have to do with the more mundane working of really expansive universes. I always say I would love to know what it's like for the Jedi to have to do a Costco run.

So it seemed like those two guys were perfect in the sense that I could really get into the heads of a couple of Imperial guys who were everyday guys. They don't know any of the big names we know, they don't have anything to do with a lot of the big action, they're just going to work and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. And the team loved the idea, so you pretty much got exactly what I aimed to do.

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Eric: That's what's so cool about those anthologies. We have people now that'll watch the movies and now that we know those guys because of stories like yours, those scenes take on a whole new different life.

Some of the times it's really tragic 'cause you see the Death Star blow up and you're like, “Oh no! I know some of those guys!”

Lamar: Oh yeah. Like those retirement plans they had didn't go their way. I love stuff like that.

Eric: Now let's get into a little bit let's get into Sanctuary: the main event. What was your reaction upon learning that you'd be a part of the team behind the story of Clone Force 99? What is that moment like?

Lamar: So it's a mix of reactions because I don't necessarily have the job right away. I'm contacted, would you be interested? So of course the answer is yes. But there are conditions, and the conditions you have to keep in mind this is:

Season two has aired to completion, right? Season three hasn't come out yet. I don't know if there's even a trailer. So the conditions are you need to write a season two story, and it cannot contradict anything that came before it or anything that comes after. So that second part is really…how do I know? I haven't seen season three. I don't know what's happening. And it's not like they're giving me the episodes – I'm not getting secret episodes. So there's this challenge, and then the question is: Do you think you can do it?

And I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. It's easy. Of course. It's nothing.

And they're like, okay, so you have a month to pitch us something.

So it becomes this thing where I'm studying. I have to go back and watch everything. I'm talking starting in Clone Wars up through the season two finale, trying to figure out a place where I can set a story and then what that story would be. I'm really panicking, because I'm like a week into it, and I don't really have anything. But then I'm also getting to the Pabu episode, and as soon as I get through that episode and see that the next episode goes completely away from Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech to Crosshair being in prison, I'm like…we don't know how much time has passed.

That's the place.

And then as soon as I had that, because of the sea surge in Pabu – we see every year how communities have to rebuild from disaster – I had almost the whole story right there.

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Eric: Wow. So a mixture of literally what the writers did in order to do a great bottle episode of Crosshair mixed with real world knowledge about disaster relief just made a Star Wars story in your mind.

Lamar: Exactly. I had almost all the pieces and was able to develop a pitch that the story team was into.

Eric: The miracles surrounding how Star Wars gets made are always just so fascinating. It's especially odd for me because at its core, The Bad Batch is really like a spinoff of a show that is a spinoff of a movie sequel, right? It's all the things that we hear shouldn't work when it comes to emotional storytelling, but it really does. I think it's one of the most emotional stories we have in all Star Wars.

Now from your point of view, as someone that's obviously been with them for so long, what is it about these characters that fans and creators really latch onto?

Lamar: There's something about action families in all of science fiction and fantasy. It doesn't necessarily have to be a blood bond though – I guess technically with the Batch that is the case – but the idea that you have this group of people whether they're actually family or they're found family who go on these dangerous action missions together.

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And depending on where you are in the story, you don't know who is gonna make it – who's gonna come home and who's not. I feel like it's the same sense you have in the Original films with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and the original droids. It's this idea of this family. I love them, and I'm with them enough where they start to feel like family to me too.

With Bad Batch fans, there's a lot of familial connection. I feel it. Certainly I have a different level of it now than I had before, but I did feel it even when I was just a viewer.

Eric: I think you nailed it. I think that you saw all the online reactions when it was airing when people are like I miss the characters. They talk about them like they’re family members that they haven't seen in a while, especially after the end of season two with Tech. People are like I miss him even though you can click a button and he’s back.

There's such an intense connection between these fictional characters. They, like you said, choose to be together, because they could conceptually, after the Clone Wars, split off and do their own thing. They choose to remain together, and I love that.

Lamar: And that's part of the conversation I like to have in the book. That's still a possibility, right? At any given time, any of them could decide, “Y'all wanna do something different?”

So why are they still together? They love each other, obviously, and there could be additional reasons, but I won't spoil anything.

Eric: In one of the preview excerpts that came out, there's a really great conversation that Hunter has in this realm. So if you haven't picked up Sanctuary yet, one: pause, do that, but two: go check that out 'cause it's exactly what you're talking about.

Speaking of those longer conversations with Hunter and the mental journeys of the characters, were there any characters that surprised you while you were writing them? Obviously it's a different experience being in the mind of Hunter and Tech rather than just watching them speak dialogue.

Lamar: Honestly, I was really surprised at how touched I felt writing Wrecker. We know Wrecker. He's boisterous. He's a really fun character to write. But I had a moment or two – I won't spoil anything for anybody that hasn't read it – but there was a conversation where I got to express Wrecker saying, “Hey, I know everything there is to know about fighting…this thing that's happening right now is new to me, and I wanna spend some time getting to know about that.”

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And so it's really touching to think about a big strong guy who can take on any battle expressing that I really wanna to know more about the galaxy that's not war, not anger, not violence. I wanna know about the softer sides of the galaxy, and I really enjoy giving him that moment and then a couple other moments where he gets to know some other characters in ways we might not have expected.

Eric: He was a huge standout for me reading Sanctuary. I wrote in our review on the site that he really gets to expand in a really beautiful way. The show does that well, because in Clone Wars when they come in, there's the big one, the sniper, the tracker – they fill their squad like a video game – and the series does a nice job of making them more three dimensional.

But with Sanctuary, I thought you did a wonderful job really getting those quieter moments that you can only get in novels. We've seen that with Luke and Han and some of their books, but this book really got to get into those quieter moments that really touched us in the show.

Lamar: Thank you. I'm glad it came across that way. That was a goal. Like I said, I didn't get as many moments for Wrecker as I may have wanted, so I'm glad you brought up Hunter, because Hunter feels like the character I identified with most, because he's the big brother and the father figure of the crew. And I'm a dad, so I feel a lot of the stress that I think Hunter feels in trying to keep his family safe.

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Eric: Absolutely. And the Bad Batch are definitely the stars of the book – they’re the main characters – but that being said, you do fill the novel with a number of very memorable original characters from Imperial villains to some stowaways – again, no spoilers there. Were there any particular original characters that became your favorites to write as you got them more and more involved in the story?

Lamar: I'll say this and I'll be careful not to spoil it, so I'll just say the character's name and not necessarily the context, but there's a character named Gayla. It’s no secret the name is a play on my wife's name, so I got a chance to write this character and Gayla's backstory.

The characters surrounding her were super fun to write, and I had to create a lot of new characters because of the mandate I was given, which is you can't contradict anything that's coming after which – not having not seen season three – the only way I could do that was to create characters I knew could never be in season three which are these newer characters.

So Gayla and people she knows were incredibly fun to introduce to the galaxy, and while I don't have another Star Wars job lined up – I don't have any power in what I'm about to say – I do hope it's not the last time we see those sets of characters.

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Eric: I could not agree more. I think that there are some times in Star Wars or in any kind of IP literature where you see the author put in a character and you have a tough time inserting them into that world in the same way that whether it be the dialogue or descriptions. But I felt like some of these characters felt like the season three characters that got a little darker, that had a little more like gray area in them. And I can almost see the animation style with the folks that you wrote.

I think one of the hardest things about writing Star Wars seems to be that tone and also just the pace, and honestly you nailed both absolutely perfectly. Sanctuary is frankly one of the best paced Star Wars books I've read in many years. So I just gotta ask, how did you manage to make this book feel exactly like a slightly longer episode of the series?

Lamar: I guess the summarized answer would be terror. I was terrified.

And I'll explain what I mean here. Because I had to create new characters, you just never know how that's going to go. And the necessity of writing a novel is you gotta have 75,000 words. That's a lot of space to fill.

And so as I created these new characters, I had to have scenes where I break away from the characters we all know and love to spend time with these other characters, and so I think what helped in the pace – and it didn't feel like this when I was writing it – I was really nervous about this.

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Anytime I had to break away from the Batch, all I could think about was I gotta hurry up and get back to the characters that everyone loves and knows. And while I'm asking a lot of the reader to stick with these characters they don't know, I'm like okay, I'm gonna drop in some little touchstones that we all know in these scenes, like things that are familiar so you could at least say “Oh, I know the people that these people know!” So maybe they don't feel like complete strangers.

And so it was really always a race to get back to the Batch while being able to give these new characters full arcs and fill out the word requirement I need for a novel. And so the whole time I'm just like…I hope it works. I hope it works.

I had no clue until it came out.

Eric: Oh man, it 100% worked. And I will say also to your credit on those original characters, if I was reading a Bad Batch chapter and then all of a sudden it switched to those OGs, I was like “Cool! I'm also interested in that story.”

I think that balance is what makes some of the episodes very good as well when you go from the Imperials to the Bad Batch. That series does a great job at making everyone interesting enough that when the POV switches, you still wanna keep reading, so you've absolutely nailed that.

Lamar: Awesome. I'm glad to hear it.

Eric: I know you say you don't have a current Star Wars project lined up, but we hope you're here to stay for a very long time. And this is just your first Star Wars novel, but I gotta say, in addition to fantastic writing, you've also been a fierce advocate throughout your career for authors of color and marginalized voices.

We Need Diverse Books

Even going back to Stephen King, you've mentioned previously that while you enjoyed his work, it was hard knowing there weren't as many authors like him that looked like you as you were growing up. So what has it been like seeing that shift throughout your career as the years go on, both in publishing and in franchises like Star Wars, as they attempt to just get a little bit better?

Lamar: I would say in publishing, there have been highs and lows, to be honest. Sometimes it feels like you take two steps forward and then it's two steps back. And the thing that I would say is awesome is to see big globally beloved franchises like Star Wars continue to embrace diverse stories and storytellers.

You can see all the wide variety of stories. It's a big enough galaxy where you could tell stories about any characters in any genre through the end of time. Positive change is never accidental, so it's really wonderful to see something like Star Wars purposely take the steps to expand the galaxy and make it welcoming for storytellers, new characters, new readers. I tell my wife all the time I feel like our grandkids are gonna have great Star Wars stories.

Eric: Absolutely. We look back and only a couple years ago there were so few non-white authors in Star Wars history, and now, like this year, the next book we have is Kwame Mbalia talking about Finn and Jannah, and you're right, positive change is never an accident. So it's lovely to see and also the quality is phenomenal.

Lamar: There's great Star Wars right now. It’s been that way for a while, but my goodness, we're getting some good stories.

Eric: It's so great. I sound like a broken record, because I say it's never been a better time to be a fan, but each year keeps topping it. Sanctuary has absolutely been a part of that this year. And like I keep saying, we couldn't be happier for you to be part of the Star Wars publishing family.

And on that note, Star Wars is so much about the legacy we've talked about, like your legacy of fandom, your legacy as a writer. But at this point, if you’re looking ahead and you got to choose, what do you hope your legacy will be in a galaxy far, far away when they look back and say that's what Lamar Giles did with Star Wars.

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Lamar: Oh wow. That's a heavy question. I think there are two parts here. The first part would be as new fans discover The Bad Batch – and I'm talking about kids that are born today, 10 years from now, stumbling across this stuff – as they discover the series and grow to love these characters, I hope they can still find Sanctuary a fun and worthy addendum.

And then I guess the second part is that if some of these characters that I was able to create for this book end up popping up in the stories of other creators, like if that were to happen…I don't think you could ask for much more in terms of being a Star Wars fan who had the incredible blessing of being a Star Wars contributor too.

Eric: If the quality of the book says anything, there is no reason these characters shouldn't be popping up places. If I were a writer reading Sanctuary, there's no way I wouldn't want to gobble them up and throw them in something else.

If y'all haven't read Sanctuary yet, you're gonna wanna be in the know for when they pop up in the future. After all, we love our easter eggs in Star Wars, we love our references, so make sure you get all those and pick up Sanctuary wherever books, eBooks, and audiobooks are sold.

But Lamar, before we get outta here, where can folks find you online? Where can they follow along? Where can we see your next Star Wars announcement pop up when it obviously comes?

Lamar: It's my name, lamargiles.com. The website's there, you'll see everything. And I'm mostly active on social media like Instagram and Threads.

If you look for Lamar Giles, I'll be easy to find and you'll see plenty of Sanctuary photos wherever you go to make sure you're in the right place.

Eric: Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. This book is such a gift that I'm sure it's gonna keep on giving as people keep picking it up.

Welcome to Star Wars. We hope you're here for a very long time.

Lamar: Thank you, sir.

Eric: Absolutely.

Sanctuary is available now wherever books are sold.

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