What is the Obsidian Rim? by SFR Author Jody Wallace

Early this year (2019), Jessa Slade (w/a Elsa Jade http://www.elsajade.com/) contacted me about a project she and Maggie Lynch (https://maggielynch.com/) were helming. Like Thieves’ World and Heroes in Hell, they envisioned a shared world concept set in the far future, after the devastating effects of war had destroyed nearly all of the “Salty Way” galaxy except for the outer rim. How would humanity have endured after achieving great heights of civilization and technology only to be forced back into hardscrabble survival on a limited number of M-class planets?

Obviously, humanity would have endured in part in the traditional way—via romances and making some babies! Thus the authors in the shared world would be writing adventurous romances (Not generally with babies, though, because adventure. And guns.) about the explorations, the danger, and the joys to be had by the humans inhabiting the Obsidian Rim .

So far we have launched eleven books in the series, from revolts on mining plants to intergalactic shenanigans with princes and mob bosses to the discovery of sentient beings whose intelligence rivaled or possibly surpassed our own.

CATS ARE SENTIENT BEINGS
ON THE OBSIDIAN RIM

I’m talking about CATS, of course, in the Cat Ship Trilogy that is my contribution to the Obsidian Rim’s offerings. Though Jessa and Maggie were very firm about certain aspects of worldbuilding (stories would take place in the Rim itself, no alien intelligence, no messin’ up other people’s ideas), cats did not count as alien intelligence because they’re already among us, bossing us around. 

Thanks to the premise of Maggie’s books, wherein the q-bombs that destroyed the universe also enhanced a few humans with limited but useful abilities related to stellarship navigation, I decided that same effect could be extended to cats, who finally learned to communicate their superior intellect to their waitstaff, aka two-leggers.

I also decided that humanity in any civilization is going to need somewhere to take the trash, and thus Trash Planet was born.

CATALYST

Cats and trash. What more could you want out of an adventure romance series? Find out more about Catalyst at http://jodywallace.com/books/catalyst/ and encourage me to keep editing Catapult, which is the second in the series due to come out in a month or two.

So a little more about the various offerings. Maggie Lynch’s Cryoborn Gifts series and the first book, Gravity, instigates the whole world with a pirate heroine crashing on a mining planetoid and getting accidentally involved with an escaped miner who just wants to save his children. The next book (and series) belongs to Elsa Jade with Rock Rift  and the Edge of Sunrise series, wherein the miners who got crashed into in the first book plan and execute a revolt from their masters—that is, if the sexy secret agent from a doomsday type cult doesn’t spoil it for them. Third in the release list is Traitor’s Code  by Jane Killick (the Freelance series) where a sort-of innocent freelance stellarship captain gets involved with the prince of an agricultural planet in a deep conspiracy that may involve his entire family.

The fourth series we get to taste, Pipettes and Plows, is the science adventure from Shree C Aier, Coexistence  which relates, like Traitor’s Code, to the food issues that the inhabitants of the entire Rim have in the absence of places to raise plants and animals when a sheltered scientist and a farmer are sent to the edge of the galaxy for research. Next we delve into the world of mercenaries for hire, nanobot tech, and space royalty with Mercenary Royal and the Dead Suns series  by Shona Husk when a pampered princess must learn to become a dangerous mercenary if she’s to survive a plot by her family’s rivals.

Sela Carsen’s Fate’s Favor series begins with Ace’s Odds, set on the glitzy Gizem space station where the mob boss’s daughter and a desperate smuggler team up to keep her family safe—or tear it down from the inside. My own Cat Ship series involves a garbage picker on Trash Planet who finds a man in the garbage—and a talking cat. Last but not least in the series countdown we have the Ghost Planet series by CJ Cade and her book Hunter Green where a down on her luck waitress tries to hide on the strange planet of Vorona, but the leader of the only settlement there doesn’t want her bringing her bad luck to his attempt at a new life.

The Obsidian Rim adventures strike a rich balance between romance and science fiction, more Romancing the Stone than 9 ½ Weeks in space. As readers we love to read all across the romance genre, and as authors we are adoring the experiment of the shared world and larger-than-life intergalactic quests. Books from different authors have links to each other, sly little mentions and connections, but the Obsidian Rim novels do not have to be read in order to make sense. I hope you’ll pick up a book and visit some day soon!

Jody Wallace

Author, Editor, Cat Person, Amigurumist of the Apocalypse

www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com

Jody Wallace grew up in the South in a very rural area. She went to school a long time and ended up with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. Her resume includes college English instructor, technical documents editor, market analyst, web designer, and general, all around pain in the butt. Ms. Wallace writes sf/f romance with occasional forays into contemporary romance. She resides in Tennessee with one husband, two children, four cats, one bearded dragon, and a lot of junk. When not writing, she crochets things she shouldn’t and drinks too much coffee. At all times she is ruled by the eternal Meankitty of the Soul.