Guest Post and Giveaway: The Down Blog Tour With Ally Blue

A big welcome to author Ally Blue on the Down blog tour. Ally talks about how the book came to be, and she’s also brought a giveaway with her from Riptide Publishing. Just leave a comment right here by Midnight Eastern time on Saturday, April 25, 2015 for the chance to win a $15 Riptide Gift Card. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Don’t forget to add your email so we can contact you if you win!

Good luck!

Hello, all you lovely readers! My name is Ally Blue, and I’m here at The Novel Approach today to talk about my first full-length horror novel, Down, which releases TODAY from Riptide Publishing. I’m super excited about it. I cut my reader teeth on horror, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to stretch my creative legs by writing it. Thank you to Riptide for believing in me and my work!

Big thanks as well to The Novel Approach for letting me come here today to tell y’all how my latest book came to be. Like the origin stories for most of my books, it’s kind of an odd, sideways tale. A while back—a couple of years ago, maybe more—I was watching a case study on TV about a woman with a Krukenberg tumor. Briefly, a Krukenberg tumor is a particular type of metastatic ovarian cancer in which the primary site is in the gastrointestinal tract. In this particular case study, I remember quite vividly the narrator saying that the woman’s ovary was “completely replaced” by the tumor cells.

Replaced. Completely.

Just think about that for a minute. It’s pretty horrifying, isn’t it? Having a part of your body totally taken over and replaced by an invader. That idea got into my head and started the wheels turning. I thought to myself, what if something got into people’s minds and replaced them? Not physically, but mentally, personality wise? What if these “mind weeds” (as I called them to myself) could replace even your thoughts with something alien? What if you couldn’t trust anything you saw, or heard, or experienced? What if you had no idea what was real? Which thoughts or feeling were your own, or belonged to something else?

Yeah, it was a very strange idea. As per usual, that idea morphed and changed and became pretty different in the end. But that’s where the first seeds of Down were planted. From a case study on a specific ovarian tumor. Inspiration is a funny thing.

If you read Down, I’d love to hear what you think of it! You can contact me via my website, allyblue.com, on the About Ally page. Thanks for listening, everyone, and happy reading!

Blurb:  Seven thousand meters below the ocean’s surface, the crew of the BathyTech 3 mineral mining facility has found something remarkable: a rock-like sphere of unknown material and origin.

For Mo Rees, the discovery calls to his inner explorer and adds color to his dull miner’s life. Even better than the promise of new knowledge is the unexpected connection he forges with Dr. Armin Savage-Hall, leader of the team brought down to study the thing.

For Armin, the object is the find of a lifetime. It could prove his controversial theories and secure his scientific reputation. And Mo is a fascinating bonus.

Then crew members start behaving strangely. Worse, they start to change: their eyes glow purple, their teeth sharpen. Then the violence begins, the brutal deaths. As BathyTech descends deeper into chaos, the surviving crew works desperately to find the cause of the horrors around them. What they uncover could annihilate the human race. And they can’t stop it.

Buy Link: Riptide Publishing

About the Author: Ally Blue is acknowledged by the world at large (or at least by her heroes, who tend to suffer a lot) as the Popess of Gay Angst.

She has a great big suggestively-shaped hat and rides in a bullet-proof Plexiglas bubble in Christmas parades. Her harem of manwhores does double duty as bodyguards and inspirational entertainment. Her favorite band is Radiohead, her favorite color is lime green and her favorite way to waste a perfectly good Saturday is to watch all three extended version LOTR movies in a row.
Her ultimate dream is to one day ditch the evil day job and support the family on manlove alone. She is not a hippie or a brain surgeon, no matter what her kids’ friends say.

Connect with Ally: •Website | •Twitter: @PopessAllyBlue | •Tumblr | •Facebook fan page | •Facebook profile page | •Group blog | •Goodreads