A teenager in an adult’s body. A rebel in the guise of an ordinary citizen. A lady with very unladylike language. A dreamer with a rational mind. A woman born into the wrong era, she still believes that chivalry’s a feat to define the perfect man.
Zoya spent years doing volunteering work all across Europe, from cleaning school basements in Northern Russia to excavating Stone Age artifacts in Euskadi (the Basque country) and renovating castles from the middle ages in Southern France. She always dreamed of working with ‘Doctors without borders’ somewhere out in Africa, but ended up doing an ‘ordinary job’.
Her greatest passion is devouring each and every book that comes within her reach.
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Goodreads Perfect Opposite
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Author Blog
Twitter: @zoyatessi
Goodreads Perfect Opposite
Facebook Zoya
Facebook Perfect Opposite
Author Blog
Twitter: @zoyatessi
Their wishes were simple and modest. Fate had other things in store though, and she can be a real bitch sometimes.
- All he wanted was to get the job done and somehow to endure those long months playing nanny to a spoiled little rich girl. Without strangling her with his bare hands in the process. Well, it is going to be much easier said than done.
- All she wanted was to escape the past and live like any other nineteen-year-old girl. Her plan definitely didn’t include the arrogant, tattooed savage, with his awful mohawk hair and lack of social graces, whose only mission was to stick real close and mess up her life.
But, people aren't always what they seem to be, are they?
Book Trailer
Q) What inspired you to write this story?
To be honest, I have no idea where that inspiration came from. I’d had the idea for the story rolling around in my head for some time, but at the start I didn’t plan to write it in book form. In fact, when I started writing, I was doing it for myself and wasn’t planning to publish it. Writing the story was mainly for my personal satisfaction. And when I started – I just couldn’t stop.
Before I started to put words on paper, I had more than half of their story in my head. A bunch of situations and dialogues were already there in my mind, sitting and waiting to be written down. The other part, the one I didn’t have in my head, came along while writing up the story, mostly the aspects connected to Alex’s and Sasha’s thoughts and their dialogue. The only factor I didn’t ‘have’ when I started writing was the ending, which came to me while I was developing the flow of the story.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
Well, I’m not quite sure. About one year, I guess.
Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?
Not knowing how the story will end. Funny, I know, since I was the one writing it, but I had more than twelve chapters under my belt before the ending came fully formed to my mind. It was really exciting, writing a book without even knowing what would happen in the end.
Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?
There isn’t really ‘least favorite’ thing. I loved it all. But, the hardest part was choosing the title. I suppose a title like ‘Summer’s Day’ or ‘Blue Sweater’ wouldn’t raise much interest, right? I had some ideas, but the real challenge was choosing the best from all of them. It had to be interesting, catchy, and above all it had to make people want to read a book. Also, it had to be short and to give readers some insight into what goes on in the story. At one point, I had a list of thirty titles that met all those requirements. I thought about the title for months, discussed options with my editor, thought of pro and cons for each one on the list, but in the end I took the list and just threw it in a trash can. The thing is, just as the story formed like magic in my mind (I was traveling home from work one day, and poof, there it was), the title just came to me.
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
A rocks star. Any popular male rock star. I would love to know what’s going on inside their heads.
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
Well, it is, or better said – was, a bottle of wine I bought in Moscow ten years ago. I was keeping it for some special occasion ( like my wedding, hah). I opened it last week when ‘Perfect opposite’ hit #4 in NA and YA Kindle Free store during 3 day free book promo and got 10.000 downloads in those 3 days. That wine was disgusting, by the way. Now I have only some old carrots in there.
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
Well, I do have some future adventures in store for Sasha and Alex, but I’m not sure that would mean sequel in the sense of picking up the story where we left off. Maybe it’ll be a story from Alex’s point of view. I’m not sure yet, because for now I’m working on another book which will be a bit different to ‘Perfect Opposite’. It’ll be a paranormal YA novel, in which the main story’s set in the present, but flashbacks are going to take us back a few centuries. The story is, once more, about a far from ordinary young couple, unique in their own very special way. I’ll admit to being a little concerned about how readers will accept the main hero in this book, when they learn about his very troubled and, let’s say, bloody past. But, we’ll see. That’s all I can say for now.
