Sergei loved to read books from an early age - and he did read a lot. So much in fact that at the age of ten, it dawned on him that he was quite capable of writing a novel himself. As luck would have it, he’d just gotten himself a decrepit mechanical Consul typewriter which his father had scavenged from his workplace. It took Sergei six months to produce twenty typewritten sheets, and that was the extent of it.

Several more attempts at novel writing followed, culminating in a whopping five chapters that Sergei wrote at the age of sixteen. He then went into medicine and studied to be a doctor, happily working in the field for quite a while and earning his fair share of authority and respect.

In 2011 however, Sergei remembered his childhood attempts at writing and decided to pen a fantasy novel centered around his own family. After nine years of toil, his first book was finally born. He was so proud of his literary baby that he very nearly started submitting it to publishing houses… which he’s now very happy he didn't.

After completing a writing course, Sergei realized that his first work was not good enough even just to read to his own family. At that point, he started trying his pen at other genres like action and combat fantasy, until finally he realized that he really should be writing about what he knew best – but maybe giving his medical knowledge a slightly different slant. And having worked in medicine for twenty-five years, Sergei believed he knew his profession quite well.

This is how The Odd Doctor came about: the story of a surgeon who finds himself teleported to a magical world. As he watches the work of local doctors, he finds various ways of helping them improve, in order to make the local medicine more accessible. He teaches them new skills they’d never thought of before, mindlessly pumping their patients with the energy of magic.

And it looks like this time Sergei has got it right!