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Alex Shaw took more than a decade to write his first book Hetman. He lost a third of it in the process to a computer crash. But he was determined to see his work published, even at his own cost. Nataliya Kravchuk If someone strives to be a writer, the chances are they may eventually become one. Alex Shaw is living proof. It took him 12 years to write and publish his first novel, “Hetman,” which came out in July and can be purchased through www.amazon.com and other internet shops. Much of the story is set in Ukraine.

Although the word “hetman” is the title of chief military commander in Ukraine and Poland in the past centuries, the novel has nothing in common with history except the name. The fiction is set in several countries in 2006, including the United Kingdom, where Shaw is from.

“I’ve always heard that the name hetman is not just historical but a word that mean charismatic and strong military leader,” Shaw explains. “In the book you have the character Bull Pashinski, who is trying to be a military leader. That’s why I gave that title to the book. But also because in English it is very similar to the word hit man, assassin.”

Thrillers, exciting stories about spies are the very type of books the author likes to read himself. He has read tons of them and realized that most of them are based in the same places – London, New York, Moscow. “No one is really writing about Kyiv,” he puzzles. “I wanted to write a story that was set somewhere interesting and thought that a new and exciting place was Kyiv. I think perhaps it wasn’t very commercial. But for me it was exotic.”

The book, done in black, white and red, has Kyiv’s famous Rodina Mat (Motherland) statue on the back. Shaw believes that the statue resembles Lady Liberty, but is actually taller than her American cousin. “The reason I put it on back cover is that people would look at the book and think ‘Oh, New York.’ Then they would look again and realized it wasn’t New York,” Shaw says.

Shaw calls Kyiv his “second home,” where he lived for four years between 1996 and 2000, and where he met his wife Galia. Shaw met her on his first day in Kyiv. They got married 7 years later. Now the family lives in West Sussex, England, and is bringing up an 9-month-old son Alexander.

With degrees in acting, writing and drama teaching, Shaw was head of drama at Pechersk International School in Kyiv and then started his own human resources consultancy. He was only 24 when he came to Kyiv. His experiences in Ukraine’s capital are mirrored in the book: The main character Aidan Snow has the same passion for Kyiv that Shaw himself does.

“Kyiv, he loved her,” one chapter reads, referring to the city in the female gender. “She was graceful, cultured, beautiful, yet overlooked by the west. He had not abandoned her for the holidays as had his fellow teachers but stayed to savor the hot Ukrainian summer.”

Summer is the season when the story starts and – as author decided – the season when the book came out. The main character, Aidan Snow, was a member of the SAS, the British special forces. In 1996 he was injured during a special operation in Poland. Ten years later, he leaves the army and attempts to build a new life. He comes to Ukraine to teach and relax under the guidance of his friend Jones.

One day he sees someone in the street and recognizes the man who had tried to kill him 10 years before. So Snow ends up trying to tell people there is a killer running loose in Kyiv, a killer who is trying again to murder Snow.

Aidan Show is a foreign teacher, like Shaw was. The character jogs each morning, just like the author had done. In one episode Snow is running down Pushkinska street and Maidan, dodging up Kostyolna street, entering Volodymyrska Hirka Park, Andriyivskiy Uzviz and then through Podil to the Dnipro river, guiding the reader through the heart of Kyiv.

Actions also take place in the luxury Premier Palace hotel and in poor Troyeshchyna and Petropavlivska Borshchahivka districts, on main street Khreshchatyk, in the State Security Service headquarters on Volodymyrska street, in Mars Strip Bar and in the British Embassy in Kyiv.

Shaw makes a reasonably accurate description of regular clients of Eric’s Bierstube bar in the late 1990s. “There had been the usual faces, the TEFL [English] teachers sitting in one corner trying it on with their most promising or largest-breasted students and the so-called ‘serious business men’ on the other, downing shots as toasts to clinch deals. The rest of the clientele had been made up of either ‘new Ukrainians’ trying to look casual in their ‘Boss’ suits or local university students sipping slowly.”

Shaw hopes the book will become popular among Kyiv’s expats, and some of them will even recognize themselves. “There is always one character who thinks he is very sexy and women love him. He goes to the bar, drinks a lot, comes up to a Ukrainian girl and hugs her. I put that character in Mitch Turney,” Shaw says. “Not all expats are like that of course. Young, single men may be more like that.” Apart from the typical expat character, the book features other stereotypes, including a matryoshka, or the Russian doll, from Uzviz, burning samogon, borshch and salo.

Shaw always dreamt about writing, and started his first novel in Kyiv in 1997. It took 10 years to finish, and he had to rewrite a third of the book which he had lost to a computer crash. He couldn’t find a publisher, and spent his own savings to have it printed. He won’t be stopped now, even if the book flops.

“If the book isn’t a success, it won’t stop me, I’ll continue. Because I really enjoy the process,” he says. Now he writes at night when his son is asleep and calls himself “a full-time writer and father.” His second novel, “Cold Black,” is almost finished now. It keeps some of the characters from his first book, but deals with the global problem of oil supply.

“My story is about how someone in the Russian government wants Russia to be selling oil and not the Middle East,” he says.”It’s a big conspiracy.”

Alex Shaw can be contacted via his website: www.alexshaw-hetman.com