Today we are interviewing Liza O'Connor... please come join us !!
Krista: Tell me about yourself
Liza: Well, I was raised by feral cats, one of which had
rabies, which is why I have a DOG now, and we take therapeutic hikes throughout
the beautiful woods of NJ.
Krista: Hold on. That’s not the bio I have on you.
Liza Bio
Liza lives in Denville, NJ with her dog Jess. They hike in
fabulous woods every day, rain or shine, sleet or snow. Having an adventurous
nature, she learned to fly small cessnas in NJ, hang-glide in New Zealand,
kayak in Pennsylvania, ski in New York, scuba dive with great white sharks in
Australia, dig up dinosaur bones in Montana, sky dive in Indiana, and raft a
class four river in Tasmania. She’s an avid gardener, amateur photographer, and
dabbler in watercolors and graphic arts. Yet through her entire life, her first
love has and always will be writing novels. She loves to create interesting
characters, set them loose, and scribe what happens.
Liza: That’s true too.
Krista: More or less true than the
feral cats?
Liza: It’s factually true, which I suppose
makes it ‘more true’ to some people. But as a writer I am free to state my
truths in clever ways. I use those feral cats to explain my lack of proper
social skills, my propensity to get in trouble by pushing boundaries, and state
emphatically that my parents could have done better raising me.
Krista: That’s a pretty common
attitude.
Liza: Yes. Unfortunately, we don’t
come out of the birth canal with instructions attached to our butts explaining
precisely how we need to be raised. So normal human parents just do the best
they can. However, feral cats should not be allowed to raise happy cute human babies,
especially feral cats with rabies.
Krista: Does that explain why so
many bad things happen to your characters?
Liza: Maybe. My main characters tend
to have a weird sense of humor and get into a double dose of trouble.
Krista: Would you like to share your
troubles?
Liza: Nope. The only time you’ll get
a hint of my troubles is when I speak of them metaphorically, or write about
them in my books. I was born happy and once I ditched the feral cats, I
returned to being happy.
Krista: If you could, would you go
back and attach some instructions to your newborn butt?
Liza: No, the feral cats would have
probably just used it as a cheap diaper anyway.
Unlike my characters’ lives, I can’t
change my past. Nor would I if I could. I am very happy where I am today. And I
believe my past makes me a better writer.
Just like all my adventures give my
characters the ability to do things, my past traumas give my characters
difficulties to overcome.
So I don’t want to change a thing.
Krista: If you had a child, would
you want to raise her the same way.
Liza: Absolutely not. However, my
fear I would become a feral cat with rabies if I became a parent prevents me
from having anything but a dog.
Krista: No husband?
Liza: Tried that, turned out worse
than the feral cats.
Krista: What could be worse than a
feral cat?
Liza: A hippopotamus. Do you know
they kill more people than any other animal in Africa? The reason is they
attack for no apparent reason, and you don’t see them coming until they’ve
rammed the bottom of your boat, knocking you into the water. Then they’ll grab
a hold of you and hold you under the water until you drown.
They make terrible husbands. So I’m
sticking with my dog, Jess, who is a real dog, not a metaphorical one.
Krista: Well this went darker than
I’d anticipated.
Liza: Much like my stories. I
usually start with the intent of writing comedy, but then night comes and the
monsters come out.
So I end up writing humorous
characters in deadly situations. Sadly, funny trauma is not an accepted
standard genre.
Krista: Maybe it should be. Saving
Casey sounds like a fabulous novel.
Liza: Thanks, it’s classified as a
Young Adult Suspense Thriller, but that should be Mature Young Adults, so I
don’t traumatize them into a fetal position.
Saving Casey by Liza
O’Connor
Long Blurb:
Having
been diagnosed with cancer, Cass Goldman decides to opt out of any futile
medical care and end her life. While she has some thoughts on afterlife, she
never expects to reincarnate into the body of a seventeen-year-old girl named
Casey Davidson.
When
she awakens in a hospital, Cass discovers two disturbing facts: One, she is now
inside the body of a troubled teenager, and two, the former owner of this body
committed suicide, but only Cass knows that. Everyone else believes Casey has
survived, but suffered a complete memory loss. Cass has two choices: to take on
Casey’s life and turn it around, or to confess the truth about her
reincarnation and end up in a mental asylum. Given this second chance to life,
Cass decides to take on the future life of Casey—the frightening ghoul-faced
teen with short, black, spiky hair.
Every
person around Cass has an ulterior motive and discovering the truth of Old
Casey’s life is more complicated than the “new math” she is forced to learn in
school. In addition, Cass has to contend with raging teenage hormones and the
prior crimes of Old Casey, which she might not remember, but everyone else
certainly does. However, her biggest frustration concerns her feelings for her
father’s rugged security specialist who sees her only as a teenager and doesn’t
want to explore the mutual attraction between them.
As
determined as Cass is to turn this life around, Old Casey’s enemies are just as
determined to end her life. She has no idea whom she can trust, but she’ll
never survive going it alone.
Excerpt:
Upon settling down on the toilet, Cass noticed the floor to
ceiling mirror facing her and screamed at the sight of the creature within it.
Short black hair spouted about its head, black circles surrounded both eyes and
fell like triangular knives down the cheeks. Black lips, stretched in horror as
if in a nightmare. Pulling up her pants, she moved closer to the mirror.
She was a ghoul, an honest to God ghoul!
The door crashed open and her father stared at her, fear
and panic clear in his eyes.
She touched her face. “Please tell me these aren’t
permanent.”
His panic remained a second longer as her words filtered
into his brain and then he pulled her into his arms. “Don’t worry, we will get
them removed—if you want to…”
“If? Oh, I definitely want them removed,” she said.
How can I turn around my
life if I look like the walking dead from a low-grade monster movie?
SAVING CASEY BUY LINKS
BonoBooks Amazon Barnes&Noble
Check out the Saving Casey Trailer:
You can find our fabulous author
Liza O'Connor
here...
Liza, it was a pleasure having you here today and please come back any time !!
Readers, thanks for stopping by today and make sure you get your copy of Saving Casey !
Until next time, happy reading~
Krista
Ha, very funny interview, ladies. :)
ReplyDeleteSee, I can really make trauma funny. It should be a standard genre. Humorous Trauma. Whose in charge of deciding genre classifications?
ReplyDeleteI know about feral cats, but I went on to marry my 2d husband and we raised a normal son. Unfortunately, he married a feral cat. Great interview. I tweeted.
ReplyDeletelol. He marries a feral cat, I marry a hippotamus. Species should remain in their own slot.
DeleteFeral Cats can be tamed, it just takes a lot of patience.
ReplyDeleteLiza can make anything funny, even trauma.
Great interveiw
Thank you Nancy. Feral cats with rabies cannot be tamed. Don't try. you'll end getting shots. I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
DeleteWe had one once. We didn't want her, but the cat lady (true, we had one) next door had to seek homes for them all. She picked us to take the crazy one.
ReplyDeleteDamn thing hated us for about 3 years. Then one day she sort of came around. Or maybe realized there was no way out.
We had her for 13 years. She was an adult when given to us...hissing. In a cage. So she lived a long life.
Casey got cat scratch fever didn't she? Is that what happened?
Dana
Ah, the real feral cat vs. the metaphorical one.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference. The real one being so much nicer.