Traces – A Novel
Every choice unravels the life she thinks is hers
“Choices brightened. Others guttered. Possibilities erased before they were born.”
~Traces
My Story
I am C.T. Best. I write dark fiction — literary horror that lives inside everyday reality, where perception skews the witness.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve followed stories. Chased after them as they slipped down a rabbit hole, always just in sight and perpetually out of reach. Stories that began with fire and promise, only to be abandoned half-complete.
For years, writing was a private experiment — metaphorical drawers full of beginnings without endings. What changed wasn’t the desire to tell stories, but the chance to live inside them. To move through them.
The sum of those false starts became the groundwork for what I write now: fiction that presses on silence, traces the outline of shadow, and settles into the unease that lingers after the page turns. It lives in the ordinary world, where perception slips and the witness pays the price. That’s the territory I keep returning to — fractures, echoes, and the moments that linger, even if they were never real.
My Interests
Writing
Some of my published and unpublisher works
Reading
Literary inpiration
Music
Musical Context
My Craft
Cobus Best
Aspiring Autor
…Such as it is
I am not a trained writer. I’ve never studied in a classroom, never sat through workshops, and never collected credentials people sometimes expect an author to have. My work comes instead from persistence — from starting, failing, starting again, and often leaving the words unfinished. What I have learned has been through trial and error, and the desire to carry a story through from first line to last.
Over time, I’ve built my own system to keep me steady. It isn’t academic, but it works: a core to hold the story together, spines to keep it moving forward, and rules to discipline the voice. These are not formulas — they’re anchors. They keep me from wandering off into clever fragments or unfinished drafts. They help me follow the characters honestly, even when their paths are unclear.
For me, writing is discovery. The system exists not to control the story but to hold me accountable to it. I believe the best fiction comes when characters reveal themselves, when the story surprises even the one writing it. My craft, such as it is, is a way of showing up — and staying with the story long enough to see what it becomes.