Sachin Karnik - The Author

Silence. The human mind. Memory. Choice.

Sachin Karnik is a fiction author and storyteller whose work explores psychological mystery, speculative fiction, historical and mythological settings, parallel realities and the unexplained. Beneath these different worlds runs a recurring interest in the human mind, memory, identity and choice.

Writing came to Karnik later in life. After retiring from a career in private service, he first explored writing through nonfiction and blogging before turning to fiction. It was in fiction that he found the freedom to follow characters into unfamiliar situations and discover where their stories would lead.

He did not begin with a carefully constructed identity as an author. He began by writing.

The story begins with a character

Karnik does not usually begin with a complete plot.

He begins with a character.

It may be a thought, a personality, a question or simply a situation that refuses to leave his mind. Once a character takes shape, the story begins to develop around that person.

What happens next is often something he discovers while writing.

Rather than knowing every turn of the story in advance, Karnik allows his characters to lead him into situations he may not have anticipated himself. In that sense, the writing process becomes a journey shared by the writer and the reader.

Perhaps that is also why his stories can move into very different territories.

A story may begin in the present and gradually uncover connections with a forgotten past. Another may ask what happens when reality is not limited to a single version of the world. A mystery may appear to be about something happening outside a character, only to reveal that the more important mystery lies within the mind itself.

The settings may change.

The questions remain.

Beyond the mystery

Memory is one of those questions.

Karnik is interested in the way memory connects the past with the present, while recognizing that memory does not necessarily determine what comes next. People carry their experiences with them, but they also make choices.

Circumstances can shape a person.

Memory can influence a person.

But choice can change the direction of a life.

This interest in choice naturally leads to another question: who are we beneath the identity we present to the world?

People often carry thoughts they never express, memories they never share and regrets they rarely acknowledge. There can be a considerable distance between the person others see and the person who exists behind that outward identity.

That space between the visible and the hidden is where many of Karnik's stories find their tension.

Different worlds, familiar questions

Psychological mystery, reincarnation, parallel worlds, history, mythology and the unexplained may appear to belong to very different kinds of fiction.

For Karnik, they can serve a similar purpose.

They provide different ways of asking questions about being human.

What makes us who we are?

How much of our identity is shaped by what we remember?

How much can circumstances change us?

If we were given another chance, another reality or another path, would we make the same choices?

And if we did make different choices, would we still become the same person?

These questions do not always need straightforward answers. Sometimes a story is more interesting when it leaves the reader with something to think about after the last page.

From one story to another

Karnik's published fiction includes The Roar Within, The Vow Rewritten – A Promise Across Lifetimes, Where Worlds Part – Where Memory Ends, Another Reality Begins, and Out of Sequence.

They enter different kinds of worlds and explore different kinds of stories.

Yet there is a thread connecting them.

It is not necessarily genre.

It is the human being at the centre of the story.

The silence behind a thought.

The memory behind a decision.

The identity behind a mask.

The choice that changes what comes next.

That thread continues to shape the fiction Karnik is writing today.

The storyteller behind the stories

Perhaps the simplest way to describe Sachin Karnik is not by putting him into a single genre.

He is a storyteller interested in what happens when people are placed in situations that challenge what they believe about themselves, their memories and the reality around them.

Sometimes that story may take the reader into another time.

Sometimes another reality.

Sometimes into a mystery.

And sometimes, simply, into the mind of another human being.

Because for Sachin Karnik, the mystery is not always what happens next.

Sometimes, the mystery is why we become the people we become.

Explore the stories

Discover Sachin Karnik's books and enter the different worlds created through his fiction.

Explore Books by Sachin Karnik