The inspiration behind Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds

Originally, I intended The Settlers Chronicles series to be three books following the third colony from Earth as they gained their independence on an alien world. This group sent out in a colony ship and were set up to fail from the start--spoiler alert, they don’t fail or even give up.

As I mapped the books out, a little detail kept bugging me--what happened to the first two colony ships? Answering this question didn’t fit within the three books I had outlined. Of course my characters would care and be curious about their fellow settlers on the other ships, but I carried on writing book 1 and book 2 uncertain how I’d answer the question.

Out on a walk one day, it dawned on me what I had set up over the course of book 2 and how that could play out on the other colonies. Cutting my walk short, I raced back to my desk to jot all these ideas down (I have learned I need to write ideas down before they vanish). I’m not going to tell what the idea was as I want everyone to read the book, but I will share my major inspiration.

As a teenager, I watched Alien on TV, commercial breaks and all. The movie terrified me and I loved it. Even after a recent viewing, it still remains one of my favourite movies of all time. For a movie made in the 70’s it doesn’t feel out of date and the xenomorph is just as terrifying as ever. In the same space horror vein is Pitch Black and I’d argue it’s equally as good, there are also Alien books--Alien: The Cold Forge is awesome and I’d love to see it in a movie form. 

What I enjoy about this style of space horror is very specific--facing an unknown monster in a confined space (in fact, I enjoyed The Abyss for the same reason).

There’s something about facing an unknown, physical threat on a spaceship or colony (alien or not), something you can’t quite see, that draws me in. How do the people deal with the situation? How do they fight the threat? How will they survive? Will they survive?

At its heart, Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds is this kind of space horror where the heroes need to grapple with the questions above. The colonists on Thesan send out a group to investigate what happened to the other two colonies. As they depart, the only thing our heroes know for sure is that no one on either colony is responding to any attempt to contact them. 

Of course, things don’t exactly go well…

As a tangent - I also took the opportunity to include a robotic cat, simply because I wanted to.