Keshara Moore Wants You to Join The Obsidian Society

When Austin author Keshara Moore started working in 2020 on her postapocalyptic novel, The Obsidian Society, the end of the world didn’t seem too far off.

Like many writers, Moore got her start with Twilight fan fiction and short stories, “never anything where I was like, ‘I would show someone this.'” But working from home in the pandemic gave her time to start writing what would become her debut novel. Now, three years on, it’s finally published. “You’re like, ‘Crap, I can’t believe this is finally over,’ because I did so much work. It’s crazy to think that someone would actually want to read something I’ve written.” 

In The Obsidian Society, protagonist Lettie Valentine’s family founded the titular colony in what once was Salt Lake City after the collapse of humanity. The tight-knit community now contends with roaming gangs, rival colonies, and the Renewed Citizen’s Front, a group that fled Earth and has now returned to negotiate a peace treaty. Yet their arrival threatens to tear apart the fraught bonds holding together everything Lettie knows. 

As she wrote and tried not to go stir-crazy in her house, Moore said her own interest carried her through the writing process. “I can see where a lot of writers fall off. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’m really obsessed with this,’ then two, three chapters in and you’re like, ‘Well damn. I got so much more work to do.’ But there was never a moment like that with this.” 

Despite growing up in the early 2000s renaissance of lesbian novels, as an undergraduate at the University of Richmond she found their library collection left a lot to be desired in terms of diverse and uplifting reads – a gap she hopes to fill with The Obsidian Society. “There is a lot of color, a lot of queerness. I wanted to write a world in a story in which that was the norm,” Moore says.  “Oftentimes, when you have those themes, or have that representation, it gets branded as ‘that’s a Black book’ or ‘that’s a gay book.’ … But there is a lot more to the story. There’s a lot more to the characters.” 

Many of Moore’s friends asked if she based those characters off of them. Moore says she used pieces of each of her friends to create characters that would resonate with readers. “If I were to make the easy choice and have them be based on these stereotypes, I feel like you lose a lot of that desire to further get to know them.” Instead, she wants readers to say, “‘That’s my person right there. I can see a little bit of myself in that character.'” 

Moore plans to turn The Obsidian Society into a trilogy and is already working on the second book. Although the next sequels will lean more into the sci-fi realm, she still wants her otherworldly read to bring representation to the forefront in a fun way. “Let’s level it up. It’s the end of the world, why not?” 

The Obsidian Society

This article appears in The Books Issue.