From Travel to Fiction: How I Wrote a Novel Inspired by my Trips

What prompted me to start writing fiction?

I’ve always been an avid traveler, but the idea of writing fiction novels inspired by my travel only came to my mind a few years ago.

So, what prompted me to start writing fiction? Well, two things.

First, reading the Crazy Rich Asians series by Kevin Kwan. This turned out one of my favorite book series of all time. Kwan did a fantastic job portraying life in Singapore through an array of well-developed fictional characters. I learned so much about Singapore from these books… Sure enough, I wanted to write something similar about countries which I knew well and bring my books to the readers. I thought it would be really cool to have people reading about places which were dear to my heart and learning about them.

Second, I spent a lot of time working and traveling in Africa. This was the continent which always inspired me. I had so many adventures there that I was sure I could write a book about them. I also thought that it would be nice to add some scenes in my home country, Ukraine. Soon enough, I had an interesting plot in my mind. All I needed was to start writing.

How did I come up with the plot?

This happened quite naturally.

In a continent like Africa, there’s no shortage of book plots… One just needs to keep their eyes and ears open, and ideas will come.

Here’s how my idea was born.

One day, I was at a meeting with several high government officials in Tanzania. One of the participants of the meeting mentioned that he had been to my home country Ukraine. This was totally unexpected, so I asked with interest: What were you doing in Ukraine? He explained that he had studied for his undergraduate degree in the Soviet Union many decades ago. Some months later, I heard the same thing from several other senior officials, this time in a different African country.

I was so intrigued that I could not help but do some research. As the result, I found out that the Soviets had been actively promoting ties with African countries to enhance their power globally and encouraged knowledge transfer through various university programs. The African students who went to study in the Soviet Union at that time were generally part of African elite. They came from prominent families.

All of a sudden, I had an plot. What if a young African man (let’s call him Solomon Malekano) came to study in Ukraine many decades ago, eventually got married to a Ukrainian woman, had a child born, but never told his Ukrainian family any concrete details about his African background? Not even the country he came from? He could have his own reasons for keeping this a secret.

Then one day, Solomon gets killed and the connection to Africa is seemingly lost forever. The Ukrainian family has no idea about the tremendous wealth he had come from. They live very modestly, essentially trying to make ends meet, and have no way to ever visit Africa to investigate. Until, five decades later, an opportunity finally comes up to travel to Africa and potentially look for the missing relatives…

This became the plot of my series (currently two novels published and the last one in the works).

My book series

My first book, Secrets We Keep, takes readers on a journey with a determined young woman navigating her career in international development and a family mystery in Africa. The book features Anna Levenko, Solomon’s granddaughter, who lives in Ukraine but lands a job at a top international company in Washington DC. When her work takes her to Africa, she gets an opportunity to start investigating where her late grandfather might have come from. She also manages to find true love along the way (not without a major heartbreak, of course). When writing this book, I incorporated a lot of my favorite moments in Africa, such as a gorgeous sunset in Zanzibar and a boat ride to the Bongoyo island from Dar es Salaam. I also added a few glimpses of expat life in Tanzania.

My second book, The Dream Lives On, just came out in February 2025. It’s a brand new book and a sequel to Secrets We Keep. Anna and her family want to continue the search for Solomon’s family in Africa, but they still need some more clues. And now the search is million times more complicated: the war in Ukraine starts and turns their lives upside down. Anna’s father goes to fight in the battlefield, her mother and grandmother are hiding in the bomb shelter… Will the family survive? Will their dream of finding their long lost African relatives vanish, or live on?

A few thoughts on the publication process

As I quickly discovered, getting a book published is not easy. Especially for a brand new author who has never published any books before.

In order to publish with a major publishing house, you need to go through an agent, but agents are extremely selective. Most of them already have plenty of clients who are either famous authors or celebrities and they might take one or two more, max.

From what I have seen, agents rarely accept new authors, unless they’ve written something absolutely spectacular. Imagine: agents receive messages from hundreds and thousands of writers each day, all asking them to represent their books. Making your book stand out is very difficult. You need to spend weeks and months polishing something called a “query” which describes your book in 2-3 paragraphs. Essentially, you have a couple of seconds to grab the agent’s attention with this short message. If the agent doesn’t get hooked, they immediately move on to another message.

There are also medium/small publishers, which are more accessible, but getting them interested in your book is also not easy. They also receive many queries. Finally, there is a self-publishing path, which is also an option, but then you have to contract the developmental editor, the copy editor, the cover artist and anybody else you need yourself. Not ideal, especially when you have no experience with the process.

I spent some time navigating the publishing process and eventually figured out what I needed to do. By now, I published two books with two different publishing houses. My first one is published with the Wild Rose Press, the second one – with Next Chapter Publishing. I was glad that the publishers were driving the publishing process, I think it would be hard for me to do it on my own.

Book writing vs travel blogging

In addition to writing fiction inspired by my travels, I also write a travel blog. I personally find both of these activities very interesting and am planning to continue both. Each one has their own unique features.

With blogging, I like the fact that I don’t need to look for any publisher. I just put my ideas in my post, review a few times, add some photos, and click: “Publish”. It doesn’t take a long time to write a blog post, I can do it in a day or a couple of days. Marketing is straightforward and mostly involves optimizing SEO and posting on Pinterest and other social media platforms. I like the fact that by now, I’ve written up a lot of posts on many places which I visited, especially Uzbekistan where I’m currently based for work. I’ve heard from people that they’ve used my recommendations for settling in Tashkent, and I’m glad I was able to help.

With books, things are very different. It’s a much longer and more complicated process to bring books to the readers. It takes me about a year or more (depending how much free time I have) to write a book and then another year to get it edited and published. Marketing a book is a whole different level than the blog (very complicated, time-consuming and expensive). You also need to get reviews for your book so that other readers can check them out and hopefully want to buy the book. But in the end, I like the feeling of holding my own book in my hand. I like the idea of calling myself a published author. It’s also nice to see my own books on my book shelf. With the book, I feel a big sense of accomplishment. It’s something tangible which will always be there.

The Final Word

My second novel just came out, so I’ve started working on two new books. One will be the final book in the series about Ukraine and Africa. The second book is a totally new novel inspired by my travels and life in Uzbekistan. I’ve already lived in Tashkent for almost two years and discovered a lot of interesting things which I can reflect in the new book. I’m starting to develop the characters and the plot.

All in all, I love writing about travel. Whether this is a blog post or a fiction novel, writing gives me an opportunity to relive the happy moments and share them with the readers. Hopefully, one day they will see these places as well.