reviews_and_ramblings | The Inside Reader: Ally Blue

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir Mitchell

If not the first, Ally Blue was for sure among the first M/M romance authors I read when I started this adventure (read, my LiveJournal). She was for sure the first "angst" M/M romance author, but don't worry, lately she delivered also some funny romances, though always with a "serious" undertone. Ally Blue has many layers as an author, so I bet you will be glad to have the chance to see also her reader's persona. Welcome Ally!

Ally Blue's Inside Reader List

Hello all, Ally Blue here. I'm excited to be sharing my list of top ten favorite books with Elisa and her readers :D I have to confess that I'm not much of a romance reader, gay or straight. Hell of a thing, right? I mean, I write it, I feel like I ought to read more of it. And I do read it. But my favorite books -- my comfort reads, the books that have affected me strongly one way or another -- have generally been in other genres. Go figure. So here are a few of my particular favorites. There are more, a LOT more, but these are my favorites today :)

1) Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon. I don't remember exactly when I first discovered this book. Ten years ago? Twelve? In any case, the blurb on the back cover intrigued me, so I took it home, and I don't think I did a damn other thing until I'd finished reading it. This book… How to describe it? There's a little bit of everything here. Adventure, comedy, mystery, horror, fantasy, magic, drama, gritty realism, even the very innocent sexuality of a boy on the verge of teenage-hood just beginning to feel sexual urges he doesn't quite have words for or know what to do with (nothing remotely explicit, so no worries about underage sex, y'all!).

This is one of the best books I've ever read, second only to Lord of the Rings to me. I've read it at least ten times, I think. The way McCammon blends the brutally realistic with the fantastical reminds me very much of Pan's Labyrinth, for those of you who've seen that film. Only Boy's Life has a much happier ending *g*

Mass Market Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Pocket; First edition (May 1, 1992)
Publisher Link: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Boy's-Life/Robert-McCammon/9780671743055
ISBN-10: 0671743058
ISBN-13: 978-0671743055
Amazon: Boy's Life

In me are the memories of a boy's life, spent in that realm of enchantments. These are the things I want to tell you.... Robert McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in his award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch readers universally. Boy's Life is a richly imagined, spellbinding portrait of the magical worldview of the young -- and of innocence lost. Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson -- a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake -- and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him. From an ancient mystic who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown -- for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance....

2) Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. My parents gave me the box set of LOTR for Christmas when I was fourteen. I've often wondered if they regretted that, because it set off an obsession that remains to this day. I've read the entire trilogy probably twenty, twenty-five times. When I was younger, I could have told you exactly how all the hobbits were related, and I had all the "after" story in the appendices memorized, though more urgent, everyday things have pushed all that out of my head at this point. Even now, I cannot get through the Gray Havens scene and Frodo's subsequent voyage across the Sundering Seas in the book without crying. Yeah, I'm a sap, so sue me. LOL.

There's a reason why Frodo's character is an archetype in literature. Because this character, this unassuming, regular-person Orphan Who Saves The World, strikes a common chord in us all. I think the reason why Frodo's story is particularly poignant is because he himself doesn't get his happy ending, or at least not the way he expected it. His ending is bittersweet, because, to paraphrase his quote from the book, sometimes someone has to give things up in order to save them, and this time that someone is him. I think that's a message that means more to us as we grow older.

Hardcover: 1214 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co; 1 edition (March 1988)
Publisher Link: http://www.hmhbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=697042
ISBN-10: 0395489326
ISBN-13: 978-0395489321
Amazon: Lord of the Rings

The three volumes that make up Tolkien's epic classic The Lord of the Rings are here presented in their standard cloth editions including large format fold-out maps and an extensive appendices. Set contains The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, with jackets and a box designed by celebrated illustrator Alan Lee.

3) Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I was already a Heinlein fan before picking up this book. Which is probably a good thing. This isn't a "beginner" Heinlein book, I think. It's an "advanced" Heinlein book, if that makes any sense. Or maybe I'm totally off base. The hardcore sci-fi set might argue with me, but oh well. That's how I look at it. Anyway, I started out with his older books, the "juveniles" -- Time For the Stars, Farmer In the Sky, The Rolling Stones, that sort of thing. Fun little space adventures, pretty much. Then I read the first part of The Number of the Beast in Omni magazine when I was in tenth grade. There was OMG SEX!

O_O

Yeah. So. I ran right out to the bookstore and bought that sucker. MORE sex. Lots of sex. Well! Teenage Ally wanted more sex books. So I see that this Stranger In A Strange Land book he wrote sounds like it had a LOT of sex in it. All right! I bought it, oh yes I did.

That book? Changed my life.

Okay, maybe it didn't change my life. But it certainly opened my eyes. It shifted my world view in ways I think I'm still realizing. Which sounds silly, I know. It's only a book. A sci-fi novel by a man who certainly stirred up his fair share of controversy in his lifetime. But this was my first exposure to the idea that this world might be bigger and more interesting than I'd ever imagined. That a family could be whatever you make it. That the human body is beautiful and not everyone thinks it's something to be ashamed of and cover up. That love, in all its forms, is good. Heinlein had his problems and prejudices, just like everyone, and this novel isn't perfect, but it always has a place in my heart because it opened my mind in ways no other book ever did, and that's a good thing.

Mass Market Paperback: 438 pages
Publisher: Ace; 5th THUS edition (May 15, 1987)
Publisher Link: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780441790340,00.html?strSrchSql=0441790348/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land_Robert_A._Heinlein
ISBN-10: 0441790348
ISBN-13: 978-0441790340
Amazon: Stranger In A Strange Land

Here at last is the complete, uncut version of Heinlein's all-time masterpiece, the brilliant novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind grokking and water-sharing. And love.

4) Desertion by Clifford D. Simak. I wish I could remember which of my many collections of sci-fi short stories contains this little gem, but I can't. I have LOTS of short story anthologies. It's a great way to discover new authors and great new tales, IMHO. One of my anthologies boasts this neat little story. The plot, in a nutshell, is about a man who's running a program to turn people into native Jovian lifeforms, so that human beings can establish themselves on Jupiter. The pressure on the planet's surface is, of course, way too much for the human body to take, so they are using technology they've successfully used elsewhere to turn people into Jovians. But the transformed people never come back. So Our Hero decides to transform himself and his dog to go out and find out what's what. And we, the reader, find out why no one comes back -- not because they're being eaten by nasties or anything, but because the Jupiter that looked hellish through human eyes is a paradise through Jovian ones. The Jovian bodies are strong, their minds quick, their senses far more acute than human ones, and they can't bring themselves to go back.

The first time I read this story, the revelation of what was going on truly shocked me. After that, I read it again immediately. Then I read it again. I've re-read it many times since. What keeps me coming back isn't the story's message, which I found a bit heavy handed even as a teenager. No, the thing that kept me re-reading over and over -- and still brings me back to it even thirty years later -- was the sense of some tremendous discovery just over the horizon for our heroes. I wanted to be a part of that so badly I could practically taste it. The lure of the unknown, of exciting new knowledge just beyond our reach. Don't we all feel that? Don't we all want it? I sure did. I still do. So I keep coming back to Desertion and its sense of impending discovery.

http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/2009/05/17/desertion-by-clifford-d-simak/

Paperback: 576 pages
Publisher: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. (May 2002)
ISBN-10: 0810842459
ISBN-13: 978-0810842458
Amazon: The Road to Science Fiction: From Heinlein to Here (Volume 3)

Now in paperback! Cloth edition previously published in 1979. Volume 3, From Heinlein to Here, covers the period from 1940 to 1975, beginning in the Golden Age of Science Fiction and ending at a time when SF book publication was just beginning to explode and SF films (2001: A Space Odyssey; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, E.T.) would soon dominate box offices.

5) Books of Blood by Clive Barker. More stories I discovered as an adult :) I know technically there are, I think, six volumes (the last three have different names in the U.S.) but I'm only including the original three here. All of the stories in these collections are excellent. Barker has a gift for unique plotlines. I have two particular favorites, though, and anyone who's talked to me for any length of time has probably heard this before: "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament" and "In The Hills, The Cities".

The first one, Jacqueline Ess, I believe is in volume two. If you make the mistake of analyzing the plot, it doesn't hold up, really, but that's not why I like this story. I love it because Barker nailed the female voice. At least for me he did. There were moments when I felt like he could have been inside my brain. And I have to admit, I did like the "goddess" aspect of Jacqueline's character. She was wonderful and terrifying. When the one true love of her life was trying to find her and saw a painting someone had made of her on a wall, a fertility-goddess type thing with men cowering at her feet and staring at her in pure worship, a scary little part of me wanted to be her O_O

The second, "In The Hills, The Cities" (from vol. 1 I think) I loved for many complex reasons. The first, and most obvious, is because of the plot itself. WHO but Clive Barker could come up with a story like this? Two cities, each strapping all their able-bodied members together naked into a giant, and then the two giants duking it out? Come on! Crazy. I loved it. Of course it works mostly because Barker is a master of his craft. He puts words together in ways that make you see precisely what he wants you to see, and part of you really, really wishes you could unsee it even while another part of you marvels at the spectacle. This story was also my first direct exposure to a gay couple in fiction. The two protagonists of this tale are a gay couple on vacation, discovering that they maybe don't like each other as much as they thought, and trying to make it work anyway. At one point they stop the car by the side of the road (because they're lost, I think) and they have sex in a field. It's short, non-explicit and truly lovely. That little scene sowed the seeds of my current interest, now that I think about it, so blame Clive Barker for everything!

Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade (October 1, 1998)
Publisher Link: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780425165584,00.html?strSrchSql=0425165582/Clive_Barker'#39;s_Books_of_Blood_1-3_Clive_Barker
ISBN-10: 0425165582
ISBN-13: 978-0425165584
Amazon: Books of Blood

With the 1984 publication of Books of Blood, Clive Barker became an overnight literary sensation. He was hailed by Stephen King as "the future of horror," and won both the British and World Fantasy Awards. Now, with his numerous bestsellers, graphic novels, and hit movies like the Hellraiser films, Clive Barker has become an industry unto himself. But it all started here, with this tour de force collection that rivals the dark masterpieces of Edgar Allan Poe. Read him. And rediscover the true meaning of fear.

6) The Call of the Wild by Jack London. One of the first books I ever fell in love with as a child. I read the damn thing literally to pieces. My second -- third? -- hardback copy is currently taped together on my bookshelf. I'm not exactly sure why this book spoke to me the way it did when I was young. Partly because of the adventure aspect, I suppose. I was always a sucker for a good adventure story. If I'm honest with myself, maybe it's also because Buck was a social animal -- a dog -- perpetually in search of a home and a family. Now, that never resonated with me in any literal sense. I had (still have) a family. But like many children whose interests and thoughts are a bit… shall we say, "out there" from the norm, I felt somewhat set apart from my family. I didn't really have friends growing up. I think maybe my younger self identified with Buck because of that. I dunno. As an adult, I feel like I've found my place in the world. But it's harder when you're young. Sometimes, you just want to run with the wolves.

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Mass Market Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Aerie; Unabridged edition (May 15, 1990)
ISBN-10: 0812504321
ISBN-13: 978-0812504323
Amazon: The Call of the Wild

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords. This edition of The Call of the Wild includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Dwight Swain. Kidnapped form his safe California home. Thrown into a life-and-death struggle on the frozen Artic wilderness. Half St. Bernard, half shepard, Buck learns many hard lessons as a sled dog: the lesson of the leash, of the cold, of near-starvation and cruelty. And the greatest lesson he learns from his last owner, John Thornton: the power of love and loyalty. Yet always, even at the side of the human he loves, Buck feels the pull in his bones, an urge to answer his wolf ancestors as they howl to him.

7) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Just the first three. I know, I know, "trilogy" = three. Those of you who are familiar with THGTTG know that the books are a "trilogy in five parts": The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, The Restaurant At the End of the Universe (my personal fave *g*), Life, The Universe, and Everything, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. I only count the first three. So Long and Thanks For All the Fish was pretty decent, but not up to par with the others, IMO, and Mostly Harmless sucked hairy donkey balls. But books 1-3? I loved. LOVED. Love to this day. Will love until I die. I still get an ab workout laughing whenever I read them, and who doesn't love to laugh?

Also, Ford Prefect is the BEST character in all of literature. I want to be Ford when I grow up. I want to go back to college just so I can write an English Lit paper on him. He is a (fictional) man -- okay, being from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse -- with hidden depths. I like that. There's a frood who really knows where his towel is *g*

Hardcover: 839 pages
Publisher: SFBC; First SFBC Printing edition (2000)
Publisher Link: http://www.sfbc.com/pages/nm/product/productDetail.jsp?skuId=1000323520
ISBN-10: 0739410121
ISBN-13: 978-0739410127
Amazon: The Hitchhiker's Trilogy

Suppose a good friend calmly told you over a round of drinks that the world was about to end? And suppose your friend went on to confess that he wasn't from around here at all, but rather from a small planet near Betelgeuse? And what if the world really did come to an end, but instead of being blown away, you found yourself hitching a ride on a spaceship, with your buddy as traveling companion? It happens to Arthur Dent. An ordinary guy from a small town in England, Arthur is one lucky sonofagun: his alien friend, Ford Prefect, is in fact a roving researcher for the universally bestselling Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...and expert at seeing the cosmos on 30 Altairian dollars a day. Ford lives by the Guide's seminal bit of advice: Don't Panic. Which comes in handy when their first ride--on the very same vessel that demolished Earth to make way for a hyperspatial freeway--ends disastrously (they're booted out of an airlock). With 30 seconds of air in their lungs and the odds of being picked up by another ship 2 to the power of 276,709 to 1 against, the pair are scooped up by the only ship in the universe powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive. But this (and the idea that Bogart movies and McDonald's hamburgers now exist only in his mind) is just the beginning of the weird things Arthur will have to get used to. For, on his travels, he'll encounter Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-President of the Galaxy; Trillian, a sexy space cadet he once tried to pick up at a cocktail party, now Zaphod's girlfriend; Marvin, a chronically depressed robot; and Slartibartfast, the award-winning engineer who built the Earth and travels in a spaceship disguised as a bistro. Arthur's crazed wanderings will take him from the restaurant at the end of the Universe (where the main dish of the day introduces itself and the floor show is doomsday), to the planet Krikkit (locked in Slo-Time to punish its inhabitants for trying to end the Universe), to Earth (huh? wait! wasn't it destroyed?!) to the very offices of The Hitchhiker's Guide itself as he and his friends quest for the answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything...and search for a really good cup of tea. Ready or not, Arthur Dent is in for one hell of a ride!

8) At The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. Let me preface this by saying, I have all of Lovecraft's stories, so it was hard for me to pick one that was representative to me of what I enjoy about Lovecraft's work. But I think this is the one. It has the cosmic horror, the madness-inducing architecture, the air of sinister mystery, the sense of doom hanging over everything, the purple prose, the very real scariness. All the things that make me adore Lovecraft's stories for the gloriously over-the-top creations that they are. It also has a pretty solid adventure-suspense-mystery plot, which is cool. To be honest, I never liked certain of his mythos tales, such as Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, because let's face it, his racism was showing. Yeah, he was a product of his times and all -- not to mention sheltered, sickly and kind of afraid of people in general, I think -- but that doesn't mean I have to like it now. Lovecraft the man is long dead and gone; what's left behind is his body of work. I choose to read the ones that don't reflect his unsavory ideas. In my opinion, At The Mountains of Madness is one of his best stories. It certainly kept me turning the pages. And now it's going to be a movie! Squee!

You can read online or download for free in one of multiple formats -- legally! -- here:

http://manybooks.net/titles/lovecrafthother06At_the_Mountains_of_Madness.html

Mass Market Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Del Rey; 7th THUS edition (September 13, 1991)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345329455
ISBN-10: 0345329457
ISBN-13: 978-0345329455
Amazon: At the Mountains of Madness: And Other Tales of Terror

A complete short novel, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a tale of terror unilke any other. The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures...and the carved stones tens of millions of years old...and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of the City of the Old Ones. Three additional strange tales, written as only H.P. Lovecraft can write, are also included in this macabre collection of the strange and the weird.

9) The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. Yes, I know Interview With the Vampire came first, and is most likely the more important work, if either can be considered important. But I can't stand Louis. Cannot. Stand. Him. I want to smack him upside the head and tell him to stop being such a damn crybaby already. Lestat, on the other hand, I like. He sees the potential in a situation and makes the most of it. He's not a perfect guy. He's certainly not a nice guy. But so what? He's interesting. We, the readers, want to know what fascinating thing he's going to do next. I sure as hell did. He kept me turning the pages throughout his utterly engrossing story. And it really was a terrific story. One adventure after another. That's a good thing, y'all. OH, and wow, I fell hard for Armand in this book. Holy jeebus. The first pretty boy I ever went ass over teakettle for, and he wasn't even real. LOL. I think I'm still looking for Armand every time I go surfing eye candy pictures. It certainly doesn't hurt that you don't even have to step outside canon to slash him *g*

Mass Market Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; later printing edition (September 12, 1986)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345313867
ISBN-10: 0345313860
ISBN-13: 978-0345313867
Amazon: The Vampire Lestat

Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rockstar in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying exsitence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice's best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling.

10) The Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle. One of the many books I bought from the Science Fiction Book Club as a teenager. This story follows a cast of characters from a pre-now present day through an engineered environmental disaster, into the harsh world that follows. As with any good book, it has characters you care about and want to survive. But the thing that stuck with me then -- and particularly sticks with me now, in a time when global warming is a here-and-now reality -- is the premise. Some of the things that happened in the book do seem outlandish to me, but others don't. Such as "dead spots" in the ocean. Algae blooms that spread for miles. Weather extremes. More than that, what rang true for me was the fragile nature of human civilization. It doesn't take much for our entire "civilized" facade to crumble. There will always be those of us -- hopefully more rather than fewer -- who will band together and try to keep law, order and compassion alive. But there will also always be those who'll see a collapse of authority -- or hell, even a blackout, we've all seen this -- as an excuse for anarchy. I think that's what struck me about The Last Gasp. The combination of (mostly) plausible science and (mostly) plausible human reaction. That can be scarier than any horror story.

Hardcover: 430 pages
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing; 1st edition (December 12, 1988)
ISBN-10: 0517550849
ISBN-13: 978-0517550847
Amazon: The Last Gasp

So, there's my list. Hope y'all enjoyed it!

About Ally Blue: Married nearly twenty years, two entirely fabulous children, one entirely fabulous (in a manly way) husband. Been an RN for the last eighteen years. I am originally from the Alabama Gulf Coast, but have lived in the lovely Western North Carolina mountains for over twenty years now, and I love it.

Like so many other female slash writers, I started out by writing fan fiction. Not telling who it involved, as it was real people rather than fictional characters (bad, bad Ally... ). I quickly graduated to original character fiction, and discovered that I liked that even better. It's the hot boy-on-boy action that flips my switch, though, so that's what I still write, for the most part.

My first short story was published in the ezine Forbidden Fruit (go to the links page and check it out!). I have since become a regular contributer to Forbidden Fruit, and have also had short stories published in the erotic ezine Ruthie's Club, as well as a story in the Torquere Press ezine Fresh Off The Vine. My books are available through Loose Id and Samhain Publishing. Check out the "books" link in the menu above for cover art, blurbs, excerpts and purchase info on all my currently available and Coming Soon works.

Adder by Ally Blue
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Samhain Publishing; 1 edition (February 2, 2010)
Publisher Link: http://samhainpublishing.com/print/adder-print
ISBN-10: 1605045411
ISBN-13: 978-1605045412
Amazon: Adder

Music. Sex. Fame. What’s missing? Surely not the “L” word…

Adder has a plan for his life: play his music for millions of adoring fans, who will reward him with money, fame and as much sex as he can handle. It’s a goal he’s been working toward since his teens and is on the cusp of achieving. The idea of a relationship never entered his mind—until a new drummer joins his band. One taste of Kalil, and all he wants is more.

For Kalil, playing drums for Adder is a dream come true, the creative connection he’s always wanted. What he never reckoned on is the deeper connection he finds with Adder. Kalil would rather avoid sexual involvement with a bandmate, but Adder seems just as determined to break through his resistance.

Attraction aside, music and sex are about the only things the hedonistic Adder and the increasingly jealous Kalil can agree on. Still, before they know it they’re on the brink of something deeper, something lasting.

And it scares the hell out of both of them.