As I embarked on a blog tour to promote The Destiny of Shaitan, one of the first exciting reviews I received was from Misty Rayburn. She got me! She totally understood the nuances of what I was trying to say, perhaps even better than myself in many ways. What attracts a prolific book reviewer from Columbus, Ohio to fantasy inspired by Indian mythology? I wondered. Here, next in my Reader Avatars series, I pose Misty a few questions to find the shared links.
a. What is most important thing for you in
this life? To make a difference. I have a bad back so sometimes I feel
absolutely useless. I think everyone wants to be useful, to have that
feeling of being special.
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| Misty Rayburn |
b. What makes you happy? Lots of things! My
pets, playing games with my friends on the weekends. I have a fiancee who
is wonderful and he cheers me on to do crazy things like start a book blog.
The book blog itself brings me a lot of happiness. It fulfils what
we talked about before. I also have a passion for photography.
Before my back started getting bad, I was a concert photographer and when
I didn't have a show to shoot, I'd take pictures of anything. Mom's
flowers in the yard, my cats and dogs. Everyone was fair game!
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| The Red Maple on the side of Misty's house |
c. Which book/ non-fiction/ prose/ movie had
the greatest impact on you. Why? Beyond Justice by Joshua Graham has had
the greatest impact on me. It was the
first book I reviewed for The Top Shelf and the response from my readers was
just mind blowing for me. It was then that I realized that people cared
about what I thought and that maybe this thing was gonna work. Here I am
a year and eight months later and some of the books in my review pile I'm
shocked that I even got sent to me.
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| Top Shelf |
d. Do you believe in life on other planets? Absolutely!
If there's life here, why can't there be life somewhere else?
e. What do you like/ challenge about The
Destiny of Shaitan? The
pop culture references! Adding the mythology was great
too. You took familiar things and mixed them with the unknown. I
know I didn't know every myth you used and when I got to the end where you
explained, I was in awe.
A personal thanks to Misty from me for being so awesome :)
Misty Rayburn is a graduate from Capital
University with a BA in English Literature. She was a live event
photographer, covering a lot of Columbus’ local scene but a back injury kept
her out of the scene for two years. While recovering, she created The Top
Shelf. Misty doesn’t have a TBR list, she has a mountain! Do visit Top Shelf, its a great resource for readers & authors alike! You can find Misty here
