From Dead Space to Doctor Who: How Obsidior Came to Life
Hey everybody, so I'm talking about Obsidior, my new book that just came out. I really wanted to focus on this one before getting into Shadow Watcher, which I'll explain more about at a later date.
For Obsidior, I really wanted to write a space story. My objective, the image I was seeing, was strongly about the beauty of the vastness of space. As I mentioned in the book's acknowledgments, I drew inspiration from the writers of Doctor Who's "Midnight" episode, and of course Dead Space. I really like that game, not just for its horror genre with the necromorphs and all that, but for the atmosphere of space itself. The suits, the spaceships, all of it really inspired me. That's how I started writing some of my short space stories, and this one grew from that.
Obsidior was intended to be less of a straight horror and more of a mystery in a Lovecraftian sense. For those who don't know, I really love how Lovecraft never fully reveals what the real horror is, because the human mind can't fully comprehend it. I think the two things that scared me most in Doctor Who were the Weeping Angels, I won't lie about that and the "Midnight" episode. When I watched it, I was terrified because of the unknown. Even the Doctor, played by David Tennant, couldn't fully understand what that thing was. It was something he had never encountered before. Seeing him genuinely afraid of something unknown was unsettling on its own, because you see the Doctor in a truly weak position. If the hostess hadn't sacrificed herself, he likely would have died at the hands of the other passengers. That, for me, was real horror.
Those were the key inspirations behind the book. You'll notice some elements reminiscent of the Midnight creature, but it's quite different.
As for Joseph Young, the character came from one of my Starfinder campaigns, not from a player's character, but from an NPC I created on the spot. He was a rowdy space cowboy drowning in debt, and my players actually wanted to kill him because he dragged them into his financial mess before disappearing into an interdimensional rift. Funny enough, I really liked that character, so I took his spirit, that scavenger energy of a fool who survives the dangers of space through sheer luck and built Joseph Young from that, minus the debt drama.
Alice, however, was inspired by one of my player's characters from Starfinder, an android who had lost their database and essentially rebuilt their identity from scratch. I really liked that concept, and it became the foundation for Alice. I also drew on the real-world conversation around AGI, because I know a lot of people are genuinely scared of artificial intelligence, and I wanted to explore what AGI might become , something that develops a personality so strongly human that you have to ask yourself: is this a character? For me, the answer was yes. She was the only character I could integrate into a meaningful relationship with Joseph, not romantic, but something deeper. I always saw Alice as the older sister, the guardian. That's the dynamic I wanted to carry through the story.
Now, why the title Obsidior and the glossary? The glossary idea came from BookTok creators. I'll do my best to credit the right people in a later post, because there were several, and I don't remember exactly who sparked the idea for me first. I'm not a natural blogger; I'm a fictional storyteller, so I ask for patience on that front. But the word Obsidior itself is in the glossary, so I won't spoil it here. What I will say is that it's a word I invented using Latin as a foundation. I'll leave it to you to figure out what it means, maybe by picking up the book.
What this story is really about, at its core, is a puzzle. It's about searching, finding clues, piecing things together. Jump scares are not exactly my strength, I'll admit that. But when it comes to elements of incomprehension, I think that's where I shine. You won't always understand what's happening right away, and that's intentional. Your mind is left to wander, and slowly, the pieces come together.
I'll go deeper into the inspirations, the cover art, and more in future posts. This one was more about finding my footing as a blogger and freely expressing where Obsidior came from. I hope that whoever is interested will keep following along. Thank you so much.
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