Tag: #bookreview

Hello lovelies!!!😍 Today, I am sharing an interview I conducted with an awesome author, Misty Mount, author of The Shadow Girl!😍📚💜💯 She is such a kind, supportive and talented author that I dream to be like one day! You can find my five star review of her book here. I LOVED her book so much and was thrilled will she agreed to an interview. Before, I even agreed to give my honest review to Reads & Reels Misty went out of her way to give me positive feedback and be kind to everyone in the book community. I wasn’t surprised her novel received so many five stars because of how talented she is and I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next!😍💙💜📚💯 So enough with me jabbing my jaws! Let me share more about Misty!!!😍

Amazon Links: U.S. Amazon Link / U.K. Amazon Link

Misty’s author page You can find Misty on Twitter @MistyAMount

📌Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I’ll start by saying yes, Misty Mount is my real name. Most people think it’s a pen name or have a laugh about it. 🙂 I’m a wife and mother to a kindergartener and I also have partial guardianship of my sister who has special needs.

📌Can you tell us about your new book, The Shadow Girl?

In short, I’d say it’s a coming-of-age novel focused on a lonely girl who suffers from anxiety and depression. She feels so inconsequential to the world around her that she begins to feel herself physically disappearing. I’d say it’s realistic fiction for the most part, with a large mystery at its core and some fantasy elements blended in.

📌Are any of the characters in The Shadow Girl inspired or based off a real life person/persons?

Yes, definitely. There’s a part of me in each character, but I’m the most like Zylia. Either one of us could be the poster child for social anxiety disorders. Other than her, I didn’t really base any characters specifically on one person; however, I dropped in pieces of my family and friends into the action and dialogue in an effort to make it realistic (and for an inside joke here and there).

📌What are your hobbies and interests?

I’m basically boring. I love to read and write and occasionally draw. I’m into everything geeky, my favorites being Star Trek, Doctor Who, and almost anything superhero related.

📌Do you have a day job or do you write full time?

I would love to have more time to write, but I suppose I’ll have to retire first. In the meantime, I work as a personal care assistant for young adults with special needs.

📌When did you first start writing and when did you finish your first book?

I’ve been writing stories and books since I was five. My mom kept some of my handwritten manuscripts that were stapled or taped together to make “books.” My first actual published book wasn’t until I was fourteen.

📌How did you choose the genre that you write in? Where do you get your ideas?

I’ve always been captivated with mystery stories, and I guess it’s for that reason that all my own books have ended up focusing around a mystery in one way or another. I usually take something I know inside out (like struggling with anxiety, for example), then slap a mystery around it to make an interesting story.

📌Do you work with an outline, or just write?

I always start with an outline where I work out at least a few chapters in advance. Then, I usually get too eager to bring those chapters to life before finishing my outline completely, so I end up going back and forth from the outline to the draft.

📌Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

There are so many books, actually, so I’ve decided to pick one of many to share. I read Harriet the Spy when I was around 10 or 11, and it infected my life to the point that I wanted be Harriet. I started eating tomato sandwiches every day, just like she did in the story. Even though I secretly found them mushy and disgusting, I never once betrayed my love for Harriet by saying so out loud. (Until now. Sorry Harriet.) I also began carrying around a notebook just like her to write about anything and everyone I saw. This lasted for years. Around 14 or 15 years old I finally started to be embarrassed by surreptitiously jotting things in the corner of a room while everyone else wondered what in the world I was doing.

📌What inspired you to become an author?

In kindergarten, my teacher read a story to the class and I was hanging on the edge of my carpet square until the very ridiculous and anticlimactic ending. I was so disappointed by the way the story finished that I couldn’t relax until I had rewritten it at home using my best crayons. I’ve been writing ever since.

📌Can you tell us about your challenges that you have faced with becoming a published author?

I think one of the biggest challenges was opening up my writing for others to see. That was really difficult for me, letting potentially critical eyes rove over what had always before been my private words. Then there were the publishing house rejections that all authors face. Those definitely stung and made me feel like giving up at certain points.

📌What do you enjoy most about writing?

I love escaping into a world that I’ve created and that I can control. I find it incredibly relaxing and fun.

📌If you had to go back and do it all over, is there any aspect of your novel or getting it published that you would change?

I need a time machine to go back to age fourteen. That’s when I had my first novel published and had a wonderful opportunity placed in front of me. But I was too young to take advantage of what I had. I was incredibly introverted and overly sensitive to criticism, which led me to shrink away from my good fortune and hide in the shadows for two decades.

📌Have you written a book you love that you have not been able to get published?

I’ve written some novellas that I personally feel attached to, but in all honesty, I’ve fully accepted the fact that they are not worthy of being published. 🙂

🌟Thank you so much everyone for viewing my post and big thanks to Misty for doing this interview with me!😍