Today is April 30, 2022. I am in my hometown, Kharkiv, Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The air raid alert just ended. I hear distant artillery (or what I consider distant artillery).

My name is Victor Shepelev. I am 39 years old.

During the day, I volunteer in frontline Kharkiv, delivering food and necessities to those in need in my district. At night, I work my regular job as a software developer/architect. At late night, I am writing.

Tomorrow, May 1st, I am starting to write a novel called “Going to Yalta after the apocalypse.”

It is not about this war or any (real) war.

I planned it for three years. The decision to start writing it publicly on May 1st, 2022 was made long before the war. I don’t know if it is appropriate to proceed with writing a novel at these times. I will try to do it, nevertheless. (Actually, I planned to write two books this year. The second one, which was dedicated to my beloved programming language Ruby, I will not be writing.)

By the initial “public writing” plan, I wanted to do some 300-word pieces for some 200 days in a row (aiming towards a moderate-sized 60k-word novel). I still want to follow this plan, maybe with some days skipped, depending on the situation.

Anyway, I’ll be publishing small 300-word pieces as soon as they are written. You can subscribe to this Substack if you are interested, or follow me on Twitter.

The novel is a post-apocalyptic road story, happening in alternative Crimea in alternative 2003 year after, well, the apocalypse. I initially planned to lean into the “weird horror” genre, but now it probably will be less horror-y (there is enough death and mutilation in our everyday news) and be more generic “weird fiction”.

It would bear some darkness, though. Not hippies and unicorns post-apocalypse.

This text is an “out-of-universe” intro, not the part of the novel itself. Tomorrow I’ll publish (hopefully) the next one: the “in-universe” intro. So, subscribe!

PS: To emphasize: the novel would be a work of fiction, NOT related to our current reality. And please don’t subscribe just to “support a heroic Ukrainian who does this amidst a war”, I am doing it for myself, and I am not heroic at all. My city is well-defended, my district wasn’t bombed lately, I am writing it from the comfort of my kitchen and with no immediate danger that I know of.

Also, beware of my English. It is my third language after Ukrainian and Russian, and I don’t have an editor (yet).