Friday Evening, Eight O'Clock by Nino Gugunishvili ♥ Book Tour & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Friday Evening, Eight O'Clock by Nino Gugunishvili ♥ Book Tour & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)

Tasha is a dreamer in search of a new dream.

She's bored with Pilates. She's never tried yoga. She doesn't even have a driver's license. She lives a pretty ordinary life as a freelance writer who battles the occasional flow of melancholy with the regular flow of martinis. Nestled into her couch, her television remote in one hand and a cold adult beverage in the other, she's found a favorite way to pass the hours on a Friday evening. It's comfortable and familiar, but it's not exactly an exciting way to live. With two of her closest friends, a bossy mother, an eighty-two year old grandmother, and Griffin, her fat yellow Labrador at her side, she knows that there has to be something better out there. But where?

When she gets an unexpected offer to relocate to France to write a magazine column, she thinks her circumstances are improving. But life in a new country isn't all pêches et la crème. Now far away from her comfort zone, Tasha must find the inner strength to start a new career and navigate the bizarre and unknown world of professional jealousy, intrigue, and conflicting personalities in a very foreign land.

It's enough to make a girl yearn for those quiet nights on the couch.

• It almost began like a game. I just came from a trip to a winter resort with my closest friend, where we caught a terrible flu. We both stayed at our homes and she texted me saying, she was working from home, just like Carry Bradshaw and wouldn’t mind reading something to entertain herself. I jokingly suggested writing something for her and that’s how it all started. Every single day I wrote several pages on a certain topic and sent them to her. Then, another friend joined and we even created a closed group on facebook where I posted each and every day. I remember standing on my apartment balcony when a phrase came out of nowhere to me: “Balthazar Hamish woke up in a grumpy mood that morning” which eventually became the first sentence of my future book.

• I kept my writing in secret for quite long. Very few people knew about it. When finally I decided to reveal it, it was a huge surprise for many people around me, even my family members and especially to a friend of mine who had absolutely no idea what was going on. Totally unaware, one evening she invited me out for a coffee and that was the moment when she saw the book for the first time. I will never forget her bewildered and shocked impression. I agree, it was unfair and too cruel from my part, but I have to confess, when it concerns my writing, I’m getting superstitious. Countless times I’ve been horrified by the thought of some cyber-hackers getting into my laptop and stealing my work from me. I was super-hyper cautious, changing my email password every week, forgetting it and changing it again. Oh, and I forgot about sticker notes! They were my best friends! Yellow Stickers in particular!

• Long after I finished working on the first draft I didn’t have a title to my novel. I wanted something simple and easy to remember, the kind of title that would give a certain feel of the story, catch an atmosphere and keep the readers intrigued. Actually, I almost stole it from a friend of mine who whenever we decided to dine out, always suggested Friday Evening, Eight O’Clock for our gathering so it hit me, that this should be the title of my novel. By the way we still meet every Friday at eight.

• During the period of writing, I started long morning walks in the park with my cocker spaniel whose name is Figu. Without any permission from me, he somehow popped into the story in my book and transformed into a Labrador -retriever Griffin.

• I really do not know why Tasha - the main character of the book, a young freelance journalist whose life changes one ordinary evening after an unexpected phone call, has no last name. Every other character has a first and a last name; Balthazar Hamish, Liz Foster, Fabien Blanchard, Darren O’Keefe... Tasha has not. That happened unconsciously, irrationally, I don’t know the reason why. Weird isn’t it? But then again, isn’t the whole writing process irrational?

Balthazar Hamish woke up in a grumpy mood that morning. He had a terrible headache. His nervous young assistant, Clarissa, and a fashion editor, Chloe, were looking down at the magazine layout, spread out in huge sheets on his office desk. Clarissa always seemed to be a little afraid of him and his fat old cat, Baltimore.

Where did she get that awful velvety coat and ankle boots? She apparently is not at all a fashion addict, or a shopaholic, he thought. Still, she worked in a fashion magazine. What the hell is that? He looked down at one of the headlines printed in bold.

“A True Tale from an Unromantic Goddess”! Balthazar felt suddenly irritated. It’s a sophisticated magazine, for god’s sake. I don’t need more sentimental or feminist crap out here. That title sounded artificial and kitschy to him, as did the whole idea of aspiring foreign authors working for a magazine on a regular basis. It was Liz’s brilliant hunch, of course.

Liz Foster, his deputy! Stubborn and selfish! The whole damn thing about this magazine project was a total waste of time and possibly money. Shark heads in the top management of the publishing house were longing for Balthazar’s blood. He knew it from the very beginning of it all.

“Clarissa, could you please send reminders to all for our meeting later?” Balthazar tried to say it louder word by word. Clarissa looked at him and blinked. She was terrified by his presence and wanted to leave the room—the sooner the better.

“Tea maybe?” she asked, grabbing an opportunity to leave this uncomfortable place. She had to make tea for her new boss, make notes, organize staff meetings, and be optimistic about her new life and brand new dream job as a secretary at this damn, hellish magazine!
Working with Balthazar made her feel dizzy. She tried hard to overcome her nervousness and pretend to be confident, but her hands were almost always shaking.

“Tea would be great, thank you!” he responded quickly.

Clarissa walked out the door, leaving Chloe and Balthazar alone. Chloe, stylish and cute, looked at Clarissa, amazed but silent. A while later Chloe left, too.

Balthazar’s headache was getting intense. He opened the locker and took out a painkiller, swallowing it without water. Baltimore sat in his lap lazily. All Balthazar wanted was a cup of a dark tea, but his eyes were already glued to the printed text.

Nino Gugunishvili holds an MA in arts and has worked in film and television industries. Friday Evening, Eight O’Clock is her first published work of fiction. She lives in Tbilisi, Georgia.