Interview with Liza O'Connor!

Please Help me welcome a funny and very unique author, Liza O'Connor to the blog! I've got Liza in the interview hot seat, so this could get mighty interesting :) 

Tell me about yourself, and your writing.

I'm Liza. I'm a nut.

 A cracked, yet adventurous nut. Sometimes I can be serious, but eventually something irreverent, silly or downright funny will pop out. If Stephen Colbert and Sandra Brown had a baby, the result would be me. I tend to have suspense, romance, and humor in my writings, regardless of what genre I'm writing.

How long have you been writing?

I believe I was taught how to write in the first grade. Turns out writing about imaginary friends and their antics to amuse your friends gets you in serious trouble with their parents. I can't tell you how many friends I lost due to early writings. Parents have no sense of humor or ability to tell fact from fiction when they are protecting their darlings.

How many published books do you have, and what genres?

I've spent the last 8 years doing nothing but writing. Didn't try to publish, so I have an immense amount of unpublished works. Finally, due to some serious and persistent nudging by the fabulous author Rebecca Royce I finally began the hard work of publishing. Saving Casey, (Old woman dies and returns in the body of an seventeen-year-old troubled girl) came out November 2012. Worst Week Ever (a week of humorous disasters with a delightful and determined young heroine who has fallen for her billionaire boss) will be coming out July 15th, and then Ghost Lover (two brothers fall for the same young woman and the ancestral ghost has to intervene to put matters right, only he falls in love with her too.)

Worst Week Ever is part of series called A Long Road to Love, so Oh Stupid Heart and Coming to Reason will follow.

Do you write in multiple genres or just one?

I write in multiple genres. My favorite is a late Victorian Mystery series, but I've also written several sci-fi romances (twenty is several, right?) However, right now, I'm focused on publishing Contemporary novels.

Are you a plotter or do you write from the seat of your pants?

I just let my characters do what they want and type really fast trying to keep up with them. I suppose that classifies me as a pantser, but honestly pants may or may not be involved. It's entirely up to my characters.

What is a typical writing day like for you?

When all I did was write, I would take my dog on a 3-5 hour hike, then come home write for five hours, then take my dog on a 1 hour walk, come back and write until bedtime.

Now that I'm publishing, I wake up, check my emails, write blogs (like this one), plan promotions, (like this one), edit books (like Worst Week Ever), Tweet, Facebook comment, Crit fellow writers stuff and have mine done in return, visit fellow author blogs and leave comments that are meant to be funny, but may not be, and before I know it, its midnight.

My old days, before I decided to share my stories with the world, was far less complicated.

What is something you'd like to accomplish in your writing career next year?

I would like readers to become addicted to my writing, so much so, they tell their friends about it and they become addicted too. Then I can open up a virtual rehab center and they can help proof my stories so I can get them out faster.

If you could have one paranormal ability, what would it be?

The ability to turn people nice. If all we had were nice people, there would be no wars, no starving people, no shootings of innocent children or bombings. But then my stories would be very dull indeed.

If you could keep a mythical/ paranormal creature as a pet, what would you have?

I would want a miniature dragon that could guard my fish from the evil raccoon that is systematically eating my pets.

Tell us a little about your latest release.

Worst Week Ever is a fun, high calamity novel about one week in Carrie Hanson's life. She works for an ill-tempered, petulant, unreasonable billionaire boss who discovers while she's away for a month improving his Taiwan facility that without her, his life is pure misery. After a bad start, he displays his best charm, and God help her, she falls in love with him. Never mind, they are like two different species. Back together they enter the week from hell where anything that can go wrong will do so in spectacular formation.

What is something that you absolutely can't live without?

Curry flavored popcorn. I'm addicted to it.

Could you ever co author a book with someone?

I don't think that would work, since I just type what my characters say. What if my characters told the other author something they hadn't told me. It would be the equivalent of cheating on me.

What are some of your other hobbies outside of writing?

Currently, I only have time for hiking and gardening.

But once I get this publishing thing under control, I will probably resume doing adventurous things like white water rafting

 and kayaking.

Hang gliding is really fun too.  

What is something you've always wanted to do, but haven't done yet.

I always wanted to bungee jump in New Zealand. However, when I was in New Zealand, while rafting, we stopped and watched people bungee jumping from the bridge. Turns out it didn't look like fun at all. The poor girl didn't just have a glorious fall and then a gentle stop. Instead she's whiplashed back up and falls again, then back up again and falls again. Finally, she hangs head down above the river and waits for the boat to get her down. And waits... By the time they arrived, her head was blood red and the size of a basketball. Instead of looking like a fun experience, it looked like a great way to acquire bone alignment problems and a major migraine. So I crossed it off my list for life. However, going down a 21 foot waterfall was incredibly fun. 

If you were on the staff to have a book adapted to movie, what would you pick?

Worst Week Ever. It's non-stop disasters would make for a great summer comedy romance

Worst Week Ever

by Liza O'Connor

New Adult, Humor, Contemporary

BLURB

What do you get when you put a hardworking, can-do middle-class young woman together with a egoistical, outrageous, billionaire boss, then throw in the worst week of disasters imaginable?

Book 1 of the 3 book series A Long Road to Love.

Worst Week Ever.

Trent Lancaster spends one month without his Executive Assistant, or as his drivers refers to Carrie: 'Trent's brain, left hand, and right hand'. He's had a miserable month without her at his side and to ensure it never happens again, he intends to marry his brilliant beauty. Only given all the times he's threatened to fire her, he's not sure she even likes him. However, the future of his company and his happiness depend upon him succeeding, so Trent begins a slow one week seduction that happens to coincide with Carrie's Worst Week Ever when everything that can go wrong does so in hilarious form.

(Hilarious to the reader--Carrie is not having much fun this week.)

EXCERPT

The door burst open and Trent strode in, followed by a man dressed in a black suit, carrying a tray of food. “Good, you’re finally awake. Saves me from having to throw cold water on you.”

Trent sat on her bed as he pointed to the desk. “Put her breakfast there.”

“On the one of a kind, heirloom desk, which has been in your family since 1845?” his butler asked.

“Yes.”

“No!” Carrie yelled over him. “Let’s put it on the bed stand.” She pushed the Tiffany lamp further back to make room.

“Thank you, miss,” the butler said as he placed the silver tray on the stand and then stepped back. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” her grumpy boss snapped. The moment the butler stepped into the hall, Trent slammed the door closed and glared at Carrie. “Do not countermand my orders to the staff. They’re impossible enough already.”

She chuckled. “I’m sure they say the same about you.” The tantalizing aroma of her food caught her attention. Unable to resist, she peeked beneath the silver lid.

Trent sat a foot away from her on the bed and sniffed at her plate. “I told the cook she’d be fired if you didn’t eat it.”

“If you actually said that, you should go downstairs and apologize. You appear to have a wonderful cook and should value her.”

He shrugged. “She’s okay. Not as good as the last one though.”

Unwrapping her fork from a swaddling of fine linen, Carrie dug into the egg-white omelet. Her eyes rolled in ecstasy. “God, this is fabulous!”

“Really?” He moved closer and stole her fork so he could try some.

She expected him to smile at first taste. Instead, he became annoyed. “Come on! Your taste buds can’t be that jaded.”

His eyes narrowed. “It’s very good. Far better than the crap she feeds me.”

Carrie shook her head and swiped the fork. If the cook prepared Trent mediocre meals, she understood why. During her first six months at Lancaster Chairs, Trent had threatened her with unemployment on a daily basis and she’d hated it. She nearly grew to hate him, would have, except his remarks always lacked sincerity, as if he’d learned them rote.

Once she’d consumed a quarter of the omelet, she offered him the fork. He smiled and shook his head. “You finish it. The cook will serve me my gruel later. Probably spit in it for good measure.”

AMAZON

Worst Week Ever

Author 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.

Author Links

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT 

LIZA O'CONNOR

Liza's Blog and Website   Facebook   Twitter

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