Well, here we are again. Me hitting the reset button and making another go of having a consistent, online presence. The beginning is always fun. Hopefully it actually amounts to something this time.
Given this is the first official blog post, and there may be people who aren’t familiar with me reading it, I’ll start with the basics.
I write fan fiction, and will soon be making the occasional Halo machinima. I call myself Obsidian Productions. In real life, I am author S. A. Lusher. I wrote a series of sci-fi action-horror stories called The Shadow Wars that spawned fifteen novels, three novellas, and nine short stories. If you’re interested, the series is complete, and you can pick up the first entry for free on the Amazon Kindle. After writing myself nearly into a coma trying to finish it up, I finally decided to move my original projects into the background, to figure them out and work on them at a slower pace. Admittedly, it’s not going super well. It’s taking a little while to figure out what the fuck I actually want to do, and on top of that I’ve had several setbacks over the past few years that make it a lot harder to stick to it. At some point, I do fully intend to follow The Shadow Wars with a series that picks up a decade later called Kane’s War. I’ve got some really cool ideas for that.
So, that’s my real life, original writing. If you want, you can actually read the entire series over on my secondary WattPad profile, but it would be awesome if you’d be willing to purchase them.
As for what Obsidian Productions is…
Here’s a brief history. I began writing fan fiction in January 2004, and, with one notable exception, never stopped. I’ve written millions of words worth of fan fiction over the past fifteen years, and I plan to write millions more. I’ve got a lot of ideas and I just genuinely love writing fan fiction.
So, the big question: What can I offer you? I’ll write out a list of everything I currently have on offer. After that, we’ll get to the more normal of my newsletter, which I call The Near Horizon because I think it sounds cool. (The more normal portion being current event updates, where I’m at with my varied projects, what’s on my mind, what’s upcoming, etc.)
Let’s get started.
THE THING 2 - INFECTION [W | F]: A novelization of the 2002 video game sequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing. Complete.
THE THING 3 - ASSIMILATION [W | F]: A sequel to the aforementioned novelization. Complete.
STATE OF DECAY [W | F]: A novelization of the video game. Complete.
GONE HOME [W | F]: A novelization of the video game. Complete.
SEE YOU AT THE BOTTOM [W | F]: A depressing Recess fan fiction. Complete.
GATHERING DARKNESS [W | F]: The first in my True Terror series, of my Classic Halo Universe. Complete.
BISHOP’S WAR [W | F]: The first in my HALF-LIFE series. Complete.
THE DOOM CHRONICLES [W | F]: An epic length full novelization of the entire DOOM universe. On hiatus until 01.01.2020.
AND THERE WAS ANOTHER [W | F]: A KotOR fan fiction. On brief hiatus.
THE WILL TO LIVE [W | F]: A Halo winter-survival fan fiction. Part of the Classic Halo Universe. On brief hiatus.
NERVES OF STEELE [W | F]: The main pillar of my Classic Halo Universe. In progress.
THE SHADOW WARS: As mentioned above, 15-novel Sci-Fi/Action/Horror series. Complete.
DEAD WINTER: A post-apocalyptic action/horror novel. Zombies and ice. Complete.
PROJECT SYN: A Sci-Fi/Horror novella. Mercenaries fighting monsters in an isolated location. Complete.
LIBERATION ROAD: A Mystery/Horror novella. A man becomes trapped in a remote area in Kansas and hunted by a monster. Complete.
FINAL MESSAGE: A Sci-Fi/Mystery short. A technician investigates a solar research vessel and makes an insane discovery. Complete.
DEAD FRAMES: A Mystery/Horror novella. A private eye discovers what could be the first real evidence of paranormal activity. Complete.
HAZARD LIGHTS: A Horror short. A man confronts unthinkable terror after pulling over to help a stalled car. Complete.
BENEATH: A Horror short. Two men encounter an evil entity never meant for our world in a parking garage. Complete.
SHADOWS: A Mystery/Horror novella. A skeleton crew in an office building fight against an impossible entity. Complete.
LIVING DEAD: Very old Halo Horror fan fiction. Part of The Rookie universe. Not very good, but still available.
THE ROOKIE CHRONICLES: Very old Halo fan fiction. Part of The Rookie universe. Not very good, but still available.
ADRIFT: Very old Halo Horror fan fiction. Part of The Rookie universe. Not very good, but still available.
THE ROOKIE CHRONICLES 2 - BLACK OPS RISING: Very old Halo fan fiction. Part of The Rookie universe. Not very good, but still available.
THE LONG WALK: A Rock Raiders short story. I will eventually adapt Rock Raiders into a full story.
HALO MUSIC VIDEO MACHINIMA: I’m presently working on this. I hope to have it out within the next month or so.
NOT ALONE: I made a Mystery/Horror Halo machinima back in 2016, and got about 2/3 of the way through a sequel. After posting the music video, I’ll put this up and finish the sequel.
I also made two kind of random videos and uploaded them to YouTube. The first is a really basic teaser trailer I cut together of The Langoliers. The second is a recut of a scene from Rick and Morty.
That’s it as far as content goes. Not much for 15+ years of work, but most of what I wrote over that decade and a half was crap, and it is safely either deleted or locked up somewhere. You aren’t missing anything.
Now, as for where you can find me online.
WATTPAD [Obsidian Productions | S. A. Lusher]
Now we get to the fun part, the part where I can talk about my plans for the future. Let’s talk about all the things that I hope to do. Not in too much detail, given I want to hold some back, but I still greatly enjoy the theatrical tease of future content. So here we go.
CLASSIC HALO UNIVERSE: Nerves of Steele might be the longest ever Halo fan fiction. The current reigning champ is over 1.6M words, so yeah. I have a SHITLOAD of ideas for this story. True Terror, which began with Gathering Darkness, presently has three more sequels planned, with a few more waiting in the wings, so to speak. The next of which is, if you haven’t guessed it from the cover art, SCP: Containment Breach. I plan to write that this Fall. The Will To Live will go on for quite awhile. It’s got four parts and only one is finished so far. I do have other ideas, but I want to keep them quiet for now.
HλLF-LIFE: I’ll probably write Bishop’s Lament, the sequel to Bishop’s War that covers HALF-LIFE 2, in 2020. This one has roughly nine story ideas right now, and will for sure have more. I do have an end to this series in mind, but it’s a long way out.
THE DOOM CHRONICLES: This has eight total parts, including Episode Zero. The first three are complete. Part Three, which covers DOOM II: Hell on Earth, begins 01.01.2020. I plan to at least finish that episode during that year, and it will be a long episode. If there’s time before 2021 hits us, I’ll write the next Episode, which isn’t anywhere near as long. Again, ending planned, but it’s a WAYS out.
AND THERE WAS ANOTHER: So, this started off as a bit of lark, but is now over 100K words, with probably another good 20-30, maybe even 40K left in it. I do have ideas for several sequels to this, and I’ll probably write them.
NOVELIZATIONS: Although it’s absurd, I do actually want to rewrite my novelization of the The Thing video game. I want to launch a series for it similar to my HALF-LIFE or DOOM series. As mentioned above, I want to adapt the game Lego Rock Raiders. I actually began planning this in 2017, but fizzled out when I became overwhelmed. I really want to do this one. I also have interest in novelizing the game Unreal II: The Awakening, the The Suffering series, the Red Faction series, and the F.E.A.R. series. But those are kind of far out.
OBSIDIAN CLASSICS: I want to write a trilogy set in the Aliens Vs. Predator universe. I will, at some point, re-release my 2013 rewrite of my original 2004 Unreal Tournament/The Thing fan fiction, Dreary. I have an idea for a Terminator fan fiction. I actually really want to write a story set during Quake 4. I might do a series set in StarCraft, but we’ll see.
STAND-ALONE: I really, really want to write KotOR III. I have an awesome idea for this story. I want to write some stories set in the Dead Space universe, the first being a side-story to Dead Space 2, which then leads into the second story, which is my own re-imagining of Dead Space 3. I have a killer idea for an action-horror series set just after StarFox 64. I want to do a sequel series to Friday the 13th. I want to write my own version of Halo 4, 5, & 6.
MACHINIMA: Shit. I’ve got a lot of ideas for machinima. Some of them are adaptations of other games. Mostly they’re horror-related ideas. I don’t think I’m very good at making machinima, and it’s a rather time-consuming process, so these will be slow to come out.
I have other ideas kicking around, but that’s the bulk of it.
Now, as for the more specific goals that I have…
I intend to finish And There Was Another within the next few months. This should be very doable.
I intend to finish The Will To Live this year. This one is less certain, but I will try.
I intend to finish Book 01 in Nerves of Steele by the end of the year. If time permits, I will write Book 02.
I intend to launch and finish True Terror 2 - Containment Breach by the end of the year. I can probably do this.
I intend to launch my Halo music video, and the Not Alone Trilogy by the end of the year. If time permits, I want to get out at least one more project. Honestly, I have no idea if I’ll be able to do this, since machinima production is such a large unknown to me.
Now, with regards to my farther out goals, past 2019, (because I’m so reliable and that’s such a good idea to talk about…)
As I said above, I want to finish The DOOM Chronicles: Episode Three in 2020, and I hope to finish Episode Four as well.
Provided all the above Halo stuff is done, I will very likely write the next HALF-LIFE story in 2020.
I want to write at least one more Nerves of Steele and one more True Terror book in 2020.
I am hoping to get more practice in with machinima and begin to more reliably produce content that year.
I will probably attempt to tackle a new project, totally unrelated to any of the long-running series I have going on, because I have ideas I’d really like to get to. It’ll be whatever I’m really feeling when I actually have some free time.
And that’s it, really. The only other thing that I’ll likely be doing is resurrecting my Talk series. Game Talk. Machinima Talk. Book Talk. Basically it’s just me talking about games, books, and machinimas. Typically ones that I like.
If you’ve read this far, then thanks! I appreciate any and all support that my readers give me. I’m hoping to pick up the pace with my writing this summer, and keep it going. I’d like to produce a lot of fun content and hope to make people happy.
-Obsidian