Alex J. Cavanaugh's Genre Favorites Blogfest

Welcome to another Monday!  Two more weeks until my first speaking engagement at AuthorFest of the Rockies, just shy of a month before my next speaking engagement.  Funnily enough, both ended up falling on weekends when Cons are also being held, so I'm trying to figure out if I'll be able to attend my first fan con in October.  I can just miss a couple hours, right?

I am behind on responding to comments, but hope to catch up today.  Sorry about that!  You know I'm good for it, though, right??  I will always respond and visit you guys back; sometimes I may just be a little late about it.

Moving on, today is Alex J. Cavanaugh's Genre Favorites Blogfest.

Favorite Movie Genre:

As with all these genres, it's hard for me to pick just one, especially as I tend to go through phases where one type of thing consumes me, then is replaced by something else.

For this category, I will go with...wow, I just waffled right there after having chosen one.  Let's see.  My favorite movie genre right now is action movies.  Sometimes I'm in a horror mood, sometimes in a comedy mood, but right now I'm liking me some action movies.  They're like empty calories.  I don't have to think while watching them, and right now I need to be able to phase out and watch a movie, take in some explosions, enjoy some cheesy one-liners, absorb the fantastic special effects, etc.  I need a little snark in my action movies, thus I really enjoy Iron Man, for instance.  You can't beat Robert Downey, Jr. for snark.  Plus, he's hot, and there some ass kicking.  What more can a girl ask for?

 Favorite Music Genre:

I'm going to say a pretty widely encompassing genre for this one: rock.  It can be hard, alternative, mainstream, whatever.  I enjoy something with a good, hard, rhythmic beat, something that makes me want to move, sometimes to sing along, and always to feel that pulse running through me.  Sometimes I need it angsty.  Sometimes I need it sexy.  Sometimes I need to be taken back to my teenage years.  Rock can do it all.

Favorite Book Genre:

My automatic response tends to be horror, because that was my all-time favorite genre for, well, two decades, really.

However, I would consider urban fantasy my current favorite (inclusive of YA).  There are several UF authors whose books I automatically snatch up when they come out, and I can't say that about any other genres at the moment.  As with action movies, I expect a little snark and sarcasm to really get me into the story.  I especially like those UF books that are moving away from the vampire theme, or who have that as a minor portion of the story, rather than the main.  I enjoy UF because of the often clever ways they wrap supernatural creatures into the world we live in now, especially when they do so believably.

My Guilty Pleasure:

I'd have to say my guilty pleasure is horror comedy.  You know the type?  Lake Placid, Tremors, movies with horror factors that make me laugh, and not simply because they're cheesy, though they do all tend to have a "spoof" factor to them, as well.  They have main characters with great comedic timing: Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward in Tremors; Oliver Platt and Betty White in Lake Placid.  But in those movies, it wasn't just the main characters.  The entire casts worked so well together, played off each other, delivered their lines perfectly, that I couldn't help but love them, no matter how cheesy the giant ketchup filled worms might have looked.  I've now added Cabin in the Woods to this genre.  The people in the control room were hysterical, so callous and yet so funny.  I like it when the jumps are interspersed with laughter.  I cheered when I finally got to see the Angry Molesting Tree from the white board (though I was taken down a notch when I watched Evil Dead and saw how molesty the original AMT was...unpleasant).  In short, these are the horror flicks that don't take themselves seriously, yet still deliver.

Those are my favorites; what are yours?  Do you have a strong favorite in each, or are they interchangeable for you?  Do you go through phases?

May you find your Muse.