About me

Oleksa Dracul is my pen name, and I was born and still reside in Ukraine. Currently, I work as a QA engineer, but in my spare time, I immerse myself in creating fictional worlds, all while trying to navigate the connections between them.

For a long time, my relationship with literature was mostly about reading. I never envisioned becoming a writer, and it was almost by accident that I wrote my first book, "Tomorrow Was Long Ago."

The journey began with crafting a description of an ideology for a fictional community within a video game. Instead of settling for a few lines generated by the game, I became curious about the dimensions of their beliefs, their actions, and their identities.

One question led to countless others. Notes, details, events, and characters began accumulating, revealing a rabbit hole far deeper than I had initially anticipated. At one point, a half-serious thought crossed my mind: why not transform all this into a story?

However, I quickly discovered I had underestimated the scale of the tale.

Thus, "Tomorrow Was Long Ago," the inaugural book in the "Project Hope" series, gradually unfolded. The narrative soon transcended its original concept, evolving into a world with its own logic that demanded its own answers.

Writing has become a journey of discovery for me. As I delve into the story, details about the fictional worlds and their inhabitants emerge, prompting further questions, notes, and intricate connections. There's now as much supporting material about this realm as there is text within the novel itself, leading me to create an organized knowledge graph. Whether this truly helps me avoid confusion is a question for another day.

I've always been fascinated by roleplaying and fictional worlds. In a past life, this passion was expressed through D&D and historical fencing; nowadays, it often manifests in story-driven video games and RPGs. It’s no surprise that these influences seep into my writing, shaping how I construct the world, perceive the characters, and examine the ramifications of their choices.

While "Tomorrow Was Long Ago" is complete, the "Project Hope" saga is far from finished. I still have more ideas and plan to continue developing this universe, although I'm hesitant to attach specific timelines to any of it.

After underestimating the scale of that "little story," I now approach such predictions with more caution.