Bookaholics Book Club is one of our favourite facebook pages to follow and the blog attached to it is great – interesting, thorough reviews of stuff we like to read 🙂 And so we’re really excited to have Misty from the club here at Aside from Writing for our very first blog writer interview!

Hi Mist, welcome to Aside from Writing, can you tell us a little about yourself and the Bookaholics Book Club?

Hi! Thanks for having me. Well I’m 26, married with three (mostly) lovely children. I love to read books and then tell people about them so in mid-2010 I set up a Facebook page to do just that, six months later I decided that wasn’t enough and I had to give my opinion as well so I set up my blog to run alongside it for book reviews. My Book club is what keeps me sane from the kids and is a great community (I hope!) where people can come and talk about books they like or get suggestions for new ones to discover.

 

You’ve just celebrated the first year of the blog. What prompted you to start writing it and was there anything particular you wanted the blog to achieve?

Mostly I just love sharing books and my blog gives me the opportunity to do that, I write honest reviews that help people decide if a book is for them and I help promote books by having author guest spots. I didn’t really have any big goals for my blog when I got started, just that someone would read it!

 

What’s been the best part of running the blog? Any particular highlights for your first year?

Honestly, getting that very first follower felt like a huge milestone, it meant there was someone, somewhere who was interested in reading what I wrote and I wasn’t talking to myself! I’ve had a great first year discovering this big book blogging community I didn’t know was there and making new friends all over the world!

 

And the hardest parts?

Definitely the amount of hours I’ve sometimes had to put in, whilst I love my blogging hobby it can take up more time than I’d realized it would when I started and I’ve found myself putting together posts late into the night when I just wanted to go to bed but it had to go up… ever since I’ve discovered the ‘schedule post’ feature my life has been a lot easier lol! Writing a review for a book I didn’t enjoy is also a hard thing to do, trying to say why I didn’t like a book without being spoilerish or sounding like I’m just blasting the book is a hard balance.

 

What’s an ideal day for you – and how do you fit the blog into that?

Hmm an ideal day for me is spending time with my kids, reading good books, getting some me time and generally being a domestic Goddess, of course there just aren’t enough hours in the day for all that so my house is a tip lol

Now that I know I can write blog posts in advance and schedule them, I usually try to get my regular ones written at the start of the week and I always give myself a night or two away from the computer, just to relax and spend time doing other things so I don’t end up resenting it for taking up all my time and wanting to quit something I love.

 

With the wide content you cover on the blog and the facebook pages, you must meet a lot of authors – what do you like best about the engagement you get with them writing the blog?

I definitely love that lots of authors are so accessible on Facebook and Twitter so I can ‘Meet’ them; I’ve certainly had some fan girl moments when my favorite authors have responded to me, you don’t get that with movie stars! I’ve also met a lot of new authors along the way and discovered books I might not have discovered otherwise.

 

And what’s the best bit about connecting with fellow readers?

Just the shared excitement about our love of books, I don’t really know anyone in ‘real life’ that are hardcore readers like me or even like the same books, so if I want to talk books I have to get online to do that and social networking sites are great for finding other booksessed people who understand my passion.

 

What genres/authors do you love to read? 

Mostly I read paranormal books, for any ages! But I also like YA fiction, things on mythology and some women’s fiction and I’m a huge fan of Dystopian and post-apocalyptic books. Some favourite authors are Maria V. Snyder, Rachel Vincent, Richelle Mead and James Dashner.

 

Any ‘must have’ books that you want to get hold of in 2012?

I’ll try to keep it short lol I’m super excited for The Kill order by James Dashner and The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead… there are tons more but it’s best I stop there lol

 

Random Questions:

If you could be a character from any book – who would it be and why?

Rosemarie from Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, that girl kicks butt! But she also makes mistakes and lets her mouth run her into trouble, she’s not perfect but she’s loyal and determined, certainly someone I’d be happy to be.

 

Favourite fictional world – where would you live?

Every summer I wait patiently for my Hogwarts letter but sadly it doesn’t come L

 

Best super-evil baddie?

Voldemort!!

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Thank-you for taking time to talk to us today and being our first interview!

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If you like the sound of Bookaholics Book Club check them out!

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