By Cassie Ciopryna

Getting yourself back out there in the dating world might suck. But hey, at least you’re not on ABC’s The Bachelor. Your dates could be like this:

You’d have to come up with a witty/cheesy/cringe-worthy pick-up line upon first meeting. “Hi, I’m Suzie and I know you’re a pastry chef. I wanted to say you can ice my buns anytime!” *wink* STOP SUZIE WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?!

You know who this guy is, and that at least 20+ other girls are also having their first “date” with him the same night as you.

You’d have to wear a cocktail dress for your first date.

You hope to get a rose at the end for assurance that he likes you. I mean, a rose? At least make it a sexy flower like a Gloriosa daisy.

You watched him fall in love (most likely) with the last Bachelorette, AKA his “ex,” and loved how he treated her so much you just HAD to get your chance to date him, too. For about 3 minutes until another girl “steals him.” Is this prom? Am I back in high school? Can’t talk to my date anyway so I’ll just get drunk on Pinot while lookin’ like a princess. Wait! Actually, this might not be a bad idea.

If you get said-rose at the end of the date, you know – and live with – all the women he is simultaneously dating. This is basically the same as multiple wives. Which, let’s face it, is weird and gross.

If you don’t get said-rose at the end of date, you drunk-cry in public.

Your whole office of co-workers knows the next day that you had a date that didn’t end well.

Cat-fighting and flirting on repeat is exhausting. And you can’t even go home to your own bed.

Your allotted date time is so short, you have to look for signals, messages and signs of interest like a crazy person. It’s a weird game of what you can discover in 4 minutes and then replay over 4 days’ worth of time.

So suck it up and get out there! It doesn’t seem painful at all now, does it?

(From Never Liked It Anyway, the number one destination for all things break-ups and bounce-back! It’s the place to buy, sell and tell all things ex! Sell your breakup baggage, tell your story and join the community of rock stars bouncing back better than ever! )

Before there was Fifty Shades of Grey, there was an erotic trilogy written by the then “queen of the vampire novel” – Anne Rice . Now, twenty years later, Rice is back with the fourth book in her Sleeping Beauty series – Beauty’s Kingdom.

Twenty years ago, at the end of Rice’s original trilogy, Princess Beauty rode off into the sunset with Prince Laurent, and two former pleasure slaves were finally free to choose each other. Now, in the kingdom of Bellavalten, the old regime of erotic slavery is seemingly at its end after its queen and crown prince perish at sea. At the urging of old friends and lovers from their days of captivity, King Laurent and Queen Beauty return to Bellavalten to take the throne and usher in a golden age of erotic servitude.

“Fifty Shades of Grey changed everything,” says Rice in an Amazon Book Review article. “Women are out of the closet as sexual beings in a new way. Women were not only reading erotica but writing it.” As a result, “The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy has experienced a renaissance. The trilogy went mainstream. Readership greatly increased. And I found myself thinking about a new book—a new opportunity to take my characters forward, improving and refining their fantasy world for my readers. Beauty’s Kingdom was soon born, making the trilogy into a quartet,” Rice says.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, Beauty’s Kingdom is a delightful, immersive read, all at once playful, campy, explicit, erotic, and provocative.”

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Anne Rice is one of the bestselling authors of all time, perhaps best known for her popular and influential series of novels, The Vampire Chronicles, revolving around the central character of Lestat.

In addition to her vampire novels, Rice has authored books in the series New Tales of the Vampires, Lives of the Mayfair Witches, Christ the Lord, Songs of the Seraphin, The Wolf Gift Chronicles, several miscellaneous novels, etc. Her erotic fiction, the Sleeping Beauty series, written under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure, includes The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment, Beauty’s Release, and the latest published this week (April 21, 2015), Beauty’s Kingdom.

Beauty’s Kingdom was selected by Amazon editors as one of their “Best Books of the Month.” However, Ann Rice isn’t the only one who writes vampire fiction. If you love vampires, we know you’ll love one of our favorite handsome and totally hot immortal – ARIS. For more great reads, check out  The Infinity Diaries Series!

The summer heat starts May 1st! Our favorite group of hunky heroes have come back to face their most daunting villain to date. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow square off against Ultron, a genocidal artificial intelligence designed to protect the world—played by James Spader.

The film is expected to surpass the $1.56 billion that the original Avengers movie took in, and a big reason why is all the eye candy up on the screen. Chris Hemsworth’s muscles have gotten even bigger, Robert Downey Jr.’s charm is even flashier, and Chris Evan’s patriotism has even more red, white, and blue. We can’t wait to watch this dream team don the spandex and kick some butt!

Watch the trailer below for a little sneak peak!

We’ve all had that wonderful
experience reading a book–you know the one where we can’t help but dream of seeing a story come to life on the big screen. “This would make the best movie!” we tell our friends, and we even consider actors we would love to see in the lead roles. Then something magical happens and some executive in Hollywood decides to echo your sentiment and greenlight the story for the silver screen.

The studio informs you that so and so has been cast as the lead role and you have mixed reactions. You’re nervous, but optimistic, and will hold back all judgement until you actually see the film.

Months of waiting (maybe even years) are over and you find yourself sitting in the dark movie theatre, anxiously awaiting the roller coaster of emotion you are about to go on. When suddenly, there is only a drop. A long, slow, boring, uninteresting drop, with no recovery in site. They’ve ruined your favorite book! How could they change the character/s so much? How could the ending be so completely different. . .and WRONG? Why does this movie suck so badly???

We’ve compiled a list of our top 5 Good Books that were cruelly turned into Bad Movies. If you haven’t seen any of these films, consider yourself lucky. We still hope that you will read the books because they are worth it. Besides, sometimes you just can’t beat a good book no matter how hard you try.

1. The Scarlett Letter (1995, starring Demi Moore and Gary Oldman)

The 1995 film “freely adapted” from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel starring Demi Moore and Gary Oldman is frequently cited as the worst film adaptation of a classic book ever made. The movie was a box office bomb, a failure with critics, and even garnered some of those infamous Razzie awards for the most terrible movies of the year.

2. Queen of the Damned (2002, starring Aaliyah and Robert Townsend)

Ann Rice fans couldn’t wait to see another vampire film after the success of Interview with the Vampire. What they got was a shock to their system more painful than a wooden stake through the heart. The Queen of the Damned fell flat on its face, mostly due to its terrible casting, a changed storyline, and terrible dialogue. This film is about as campy as they come. Add in the fact that star, Aaliyah died in a plane crash shortly after filming, and this movie is loaded with negative vibes.

3. The Great Gatsby (2013, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire

Who thought it would be a great idea to include songs by Lana Del Rey and Jay Z to a film about the early 20^th century? It’s like watching one giant music video that completely lacks the fire and intrigue created from the book. The visuals might have been impressive, but nothing beats the story you get on your own with the book.

4. The Da Vinci Code (2006, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou)

What makes Dan Brown’s novel a best seller is evidently not present in this dull and bloated movie adaptation. Anthony Lane of the New Yorker said, “The Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith.”

5. Eat Pray Love (2010, starring Julia Roberts and Billy Crudup)

The scenery is nice to look at, and Julia Roberts is as luminous as ever, but without the spiritual and emotional weight of the book that inspired it, Eat Pray Love is too shallow to resonate. The film is mostly a bore; never giving us a compelling reason why its heroine does what she does, or how she became quite so tiresomely self- absorbed.

What are your thoughts? Agree with our list? Have your own you’d like to add? Leave us a comment below!

I was raised in a large, loving family; but, unfortunately, we were very poor. As a result, my dream was to marry a rich man, so that I could have everything I had to go without as a child.

However, love arrived before my rich man did. I was married and expecting a baby by the time I was sixteen. Dustin, my husband, was seventeen. He was a carpenter and worked for his father’s construction company. Every winter he was out of work, and it took all the money he made in good weather to get us caught up on our enormous stack of bills.

Many times we went cold and hungry. I started working when our baby was only ninteen months old, and even then, it took every penny we made to survive.

Everyone thought we were too young when we got married, and said it wouldn’t last, but we proved them wrong. We are living proof that all young marriages don’t have to end in divorce.

We’ve had more than our share of rough times, and there were many days we could have given up; but all the bad times only brought us closer. We weanted to be there for each other.

Next month we weill celebrate our eight anniversary. Sometimes I wonder how we had the strength and determination to solve all our problems, but when I look at Dustin, I realize that I truly did marry a rich man–rich in love, tenderness, and support. That worht more to me than any amount of money. I’ll never trade what I’ve got for any kind of material wealth.

Who says you can’t live on love? Certainly not me!

Submitted by Crystal B. from Tulsa, OK

Previous submissions can be found here on How I Know I’m In Love

How do you know that this crazy, wonderful feeling is the real thing? Share your experience with others. Tell us in 300 words or less. Send your submissions to trulovebooks@gmail.com and we’ll go over each submission. If we select yours, we’ll feature right here on our site and we’ll send you a free romance e-book!

By Katherine Sharma

In adult gatherings, the demise of a marriage or long-term romantic relationship is a common topic. There may be revelations about physical abuse, affairs and addictions. However, sometimes, like the murderer in the news whom everyone describes as a “good son” or a “great neighbor,” these relationship deaths take people by surprise.

Do doomed relationships really leave so few clues? Of course not. We just aren’t paying close attention to other people’s interactions–or at least not paying attention to what counts. According to famed marriage researcher John Gottman, who has won TV news and talk-show appearances, numerous print articles, and even a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller Blink, there are four markers of relationship failure that are highly predictive of divorce (94%): criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.

Conflict is natural and even healthy in relationships; it is the unhealthy ways of dealing with conflict that cause problems, per Gottman. So, if couples consistently resort to criticism (attacks on personality or character), defensiveness (shifting blame or responsibility), contempt (expressions of disrespect and superiority) or stonewalling (a refusal to listen or discuss), long-term togetherness is in jeopardy. From other experts come these observable clues to a relationship unlikely to last: a coupling of extreme opposites (who may attract short-term but eventually repel over insoluble differences); a control freak partner jealous of anyone or anything outside of the relationship; unkind or verbally abusive behavior; and a demand or expectation of change in a partner’s authentic self.

Wondering about the health of your relationship? Try this little quiz: http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/relationship_quiz.htm

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Make sure your liver and your heart are ready to go this weekend because Outlander is set to premiere on Saturday, April 4. The love story of the millennium continues and for super fans of the show, you’ve got reason to celebrate.

As many of you may or may not know, Outlander tells the story of Claire Randall (played by Caitriona Balfe), a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is immediately thrown into an unknown world where her life is threatened. When she is forced to marry Jamie (played by Sam Heughan), a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior, a passionate affair is ignited that tears Claire’s heart between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

If you’re planning a party with friends to watch the premier or upcoming episodes, you might want to consider serving a little whiskey, the drink of choice among the show’s characters. We recommend pairing some of these great Scottish blends with a loved one and a comfy sofa. That way, women get to watch the show and the men get to reap the benefits. Consider these whiskeys just for fun:

• Compass Box Hedonism–One hundred percent grain whisky is a rarity today but was an everyday occurrence 100 years ago. The lost art of grain whisky is revived as these older barrels are sourced from distinguished distillers like Cameron Bridge, Carsebridge, Cambus, Port Dundas and Dumbarton.Price: $80

• The Dimple Pinch–Haig, Scotland’s oldest surviving Scotch whisky distiller, produces this fifteen-year-old blended whisky. Started in 1893, it is known as much for its taste as it is for its distinguished bottle. The famous, triangular, dimpled container was the first three-sided bottle to be registered as a trademark in the U.S.Price: $45

• Buchanan 18 Year Special Reserve–A classic blended scotch that has withstood the test of time since 1884, the 18 Year Buchanan Special Reserve is, well, special. With a nose of allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, prunes, tangerine zest and honeyed tree fruit, it immediately draws you in with its rare complexity.Price: $70

If you have anything left over in the liquor cabinet, make sure you save it for Sunday night’s premiere of Mad Men!