What's in a genre?

Okay, so I was trying to be witty with the title and well...it didn't work out so much. Ah well, onward and upward!

Every day around this time ( six in the freaking morning, ugh) I'm usually wracking my brain for a topic to blog about. This of course is happening while I run around the kitchen still half asleep, making the girls their breakfast and barking out orders for the day. Panic usually bubbles up and I end up freaking out, positive I will fail to come up with something.

This morning that didn't happen. I trudged downstairs, made myself some oatmeal and SPROING it just came to me. Talk about genres today. So here we go!

I've always been a reader. Even as a little girl, my mother made sure to instill the love of books in me. Smart woman! Maybe not so much for my husband, as I'm constantly spending money on them, lol.

Anyway, when I was in high school, and lacking in funds, I read my mother's leftovers, which most of the time were historical romances. She went through a huge Jude Deveraux phase for which I'm eternally grateful as I found one of my all time favorite books that way, A Knight in Shining Armour. Sigh...I still have the paperback sitting on my bookshelf twenty years later.

Shortly after I had Kendall, my tastes started changing, although only slightly, if that makes any kind of sense. I remember searching through Amazon for something new to read and coming across a book titled Outlander. It was a historical fiction, set in Scotland with a time travel twist. Sounded interesting, so I gave it a whirl. HELLO! I fell in love. I mean, SERIOUSLY in love. To this day, James Alexander Malcom Mackenzie Fraser is in my top three list of favorite heroes. Who can resist a broadsword wielding, kilt wearing, muscled up Scotsman with a smartass personality? I sure as hell can't. I whipped through that series like a starving woman at an all you can eat buffet, and then reread the entire thing all over again, several times over. Sigh...Yes, they are that good.

Fast Forward to a couple years ago. My best friend and fellow avid reader, Sarah, introduced me to a little book she said she just couldn't put down. I remember her calling me and confessing that she'd read the book quickly and just couldn't get past it. There was something about that book that stuck with her, made her obsess over the characters. Yeah...that little book? Twilight. I devoured the first three books in that series in a week and waited, impatiently I might add, for a year for the fourth and final book. Edward, is my second favorite hero. Just thought I'd throw that little tidbit in there for ya.

Can you see a pattern here? I like series. I like falling in love with a character/s and following their journey through several books.

After finishing the Twilight series, I was in desperate need of something else to read, and whatever book I found, it had to have vampires in it. I was hooked. That's when I discovered JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood. (Insert heavenly sounding music here please). I'd struck gold. The Warden's books are filled with uber sexy, muscled up, Alpha males hell bent on making the reader slobber all over herself when reading. I highly suggest a drool bib. And yeah...book four, Lover Revealed––it's my fav. Butch...he's...SWOON....Thud. (Middle child pulls out the smelling salts to revive her pathetic mother and helps her back into her chair.) Phew! Sorry about that. As I was saying, Butch is my favorite hero. EVER! Sigh...

While I'm waiting for the next installment of the Brotherhood, I've read two more series which I'm excited to pimp. If you haven't read the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning, you need to flog yourself and then get to a bookstore. Seriously, it's awesome. Same can be said for Larissa Ione's Demonica series. See a pattern here again? I've switched genres completely. While I will always have a soft spot for historicals as they led me to Jamie Fraser, I'm fairly certain I found my niche in paranormals. I read them, I write them, I obsess over them.

So what do you read? Have a favorite genre, or two? Speak up peeps! It's totally okay to comment :) Have a great day!