Some books begin with an idea.
Beyond Borders began with a life.
I did not spend my early years planning to write a memoir. I was too busy living the story that would eventually become one.
The Black Sea came first.
Then the ships.
Then ports, countries, borders and the long distances between them.
Later came logistics, operations, leadership, a move to the United Kingdom, Brexit, customs, and the unexpected journey of building international customs operations in France.
For years, these were simply parts of my life.
Only much later did I understand that, together, they formed a story.
The journey before the book
My professional life has never followed a straight line.
I began at sea, where the world became larger with every voyage. Life aboard ships taught me discipline, responsibility and the importance of doing your part when others depend on you.
When I left the sea, I did not leave those lessons behind.
They followed me into ship supply, food production, warehousing, logistics and supply chain operations. Each new role added another layer of experience. Each transition required learning something new.
Then came the move to the United Kingdom.
Starting again in another country changed the direction of my life. There were new challenges, new responsibilities and new opportunities. I began again at warehouse level and gradually rebuilt my career.
Then Brexit changed the landscape of international trade.
For many businesses, it created uncertainty.
For me, it became another border to cross.
Experience from shipping, logistics, food operations and customs began to connect. What had once seemed like separate chapters of my career became the foundation for something larger.
Eventually, that journey led to international customs leadership and the creation of Omega Customs Solutions France SAS.
When experience becomes a story
For a long time, I did not think of these experiences as material for a book.
They were simply things that had happened.
Some were difficult. Some were rewarding. Many only revealed their importance years later.
That is one of the strange things about looking back: moments that seemed ordinary at the time can become turning points when viewed from a distance.
A first voyage.
A decision to leave the sea.
A new job.
A move to another country.
A promotion.
A crisis.
An opportunity that did not look like one at first.
Beyond Borders grew from the desire to understand how those moments connected.
The book was never intended to present a perfect career or a simple formula for success. Real journeys are rarely that tidy.
It is a story about continuing.
About learning.
About beginning again when necessary.
And about discovering that the experience gathered in one part of life may become valuable somewhere you never expected.
Why write it now?
There is a right time for some books.
I could not have written Beyond Borders at the beginning of my career because I did not yet understand the journey.
I could not have written it after leaving the sea because too many chapters had not yet happened.
The book needed distance.
It needed experience.
It needed borders.
By 2026, the story had reached a point where I could finally look back and see not a collection of unrelated jobs and decisions, but a path.
That did not mean the journey was finished.
It meant there was finally enough of it to understand.
From private memory to published book
Writing a life is different from remembering one.
Memory is personal. A book must become meaningful to someone who was not there.
That required choices.
Which moments mattered?
Which details belonged to the story?
Which experiences might help another person facing a change, a setback or a new beginning?
The aim was not to record everything.
It was to find the thread.
That thread became the movement suggested by the title itself: beyond countries, beyond professions, beyond expectations, and beyond the boundaries we sometimes place around our own lives.
Publishing the book made that private journey public.
That was a strange feeling.
A life that had existed in memories, conversations and family stories could now be opened by someone I had never met.
The first book of the house
Beyond Borders also became something else.
It became the first published title of Val Publishing House.
That gives the book a special place in the history of the house.
Val Publishing House was created to give books the time, attention and care they deserve. The first title could not have been more personal: a book about the journey that eventually made the publishing house possible.
In that sense, Beyond Borders is not only a memoir of where I have been.
It is also the beginning of what comes next.
Beyond the final page
A published book does not end the journey it describes.
Life continues.
Work continues.
New borders appear.
The person who wrote the final page is already moving toward experiences the book cannot contain.
Perhaps that is how it should be.
A memoir is not a monument to a finished life.
It is a record of one part of the road.
In June 2026, Beyond Borders became a published book.
The journey that created it took decades.
And the journey beyond it has already begun.
— Valentin Petkov
Author of Beyond Borders and Founder of Val Publishing House