It only took me 5 years to complete it, but I finally published my first novel, Depths. Can't believe it took as long as it did to finish, but it's finally done.
I started it originally just to document something I was going through at the time and it took on a complete mind of its own.
Hell, when I first started writing it, I wanted it to be a ghost story. I finished the first draft of it and hated the supernatural element that I had incorporated for the first 1/3 of the book and had to completely rewrite most of the book.
Basically the book is about a man going insane, told through first person. He's seeing things, having visions of himself and the girl he loves dying, and he's trying to figure out what's happening to him. I won't go into too much here, you can check out the link above and see for yourself.
But I'm glad it's done, and in the first day it's already at #28 for psychological thrillers which is awesome.
I'm expecting to get some comments that people don't understand the book, or it's too violent or depraved or something like that, but I want to confront the worst things imaginable: things that do happen, or could happen to create as intense of an experience as possible.
Most of the book is inspired from dreams that I had, or things I was experiencing it. I did go through a lot of what happens in the novel, (definitely not all, there's plenty that I didn't do) so I don't feel like what I wrote is extreme for the sake of being extreme. I felt that each "disturbing" aspect of the novel was necessary, a vital clue to the puzzle of what's going on with the character.
I've already started working on my second novel which I hope to get published within 6 months. I had a lot of ideas already ready to go, and plenty of short stories already written, but this new idea... I think it's perfect.
It'll be told through a more straight-forward narrative than Depths, and deals with a sexual assault and the aftermath of the incident. Of course there's going to be blood (it's me after all) but it's going to raise a lot of questions and be very ambiguous.
Well that's all for now. I'll keep you posted on any updates. If you're interested, the link to the novel is above and there's one below.
Yours truly,
C.S. Burkhart
http://www.amazon.com/Depths-C-S-Burkhart-ebook/dp/B010913GO6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1435293461&sr=1-1&keywords=horror+books
