caroljudy which was very difficult, because the picture seemed to show a young lady with Downs Syndrome. I see this morning that the account has been suspended. I just mention it because this might be the start of a new type of lj spamming. There's been some discussion on my flist and elsewhere about what defines the new and massive sub-genre(s) called 'Dark Fantasy', 'Dark Romance', 'Urban Paranomal Gothic' etc.
I think Daniel Davies has got quite close here:
As far as one can tell, both "Dark Fantasy" and "Dark Romance" are for books about having it off with vampires, but it's not clear what the difference is - logic would suggest that one of the two categories is more explicit about the actual vampire-knobbing than the other one.
In his comments someone says:
"Dark Fantasy" follows adventure-story genre conventions and "Dark Romance" follows romance genre conventions. In adventure stories the relationship with the love-interest(s) is secondary to the story, while in romance the relationship is the story and the action is there to drive changes in the relationship.
In audible it's called 'Paranormal Fantasy' and the most recently released titles are:
'Wild Ride'
'Love Bites'
'Burning Wild'
'Wolfbreed'
'Nice girls don't have fangs'
They all have pictures of red lips and necks on the cover. So, 'having it off with vampires and werewolves' basically.
And - jumping to a new topic - I liked these links from
andrewducker which seem to me to be related to each other:How taking an acting class changed me
by identifying and magnifying the many feelings already below the surface, we slowly learned how to be “present” instead of acting... I made some small changes, like being entirely honest about how I felt in trying situations... and can honestly say that I am better for it.
Well-being associated with real conversation not small talk
the happiest participants (z = +1.5 SD) spent about 25% less time alone (58.6% vs. 76.8%) and about 70% more time talking (39.7% vs. 23.2%). They also had roughly one third as much small talk (10.2% vs. 28.3%) and twice as many substantive conversations
Like a lot of people (I am guessing) I consider myself very bad at small talk, but I do try and force myself to act as we are supposed to. Perhaps I should stop trying to act like I think I am supposed to, and start making more authentic conversations. I don't mean I never have real conversations, but perhaps I should stop feeling so obligated to talk small, or more confident about talking the way I enjoy.
Finally - just started The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Anyone read it? Is it any good? It's read by Julian Rhind-Tutt from Green Wing, in a very dry and humorous way.