Scavenger Falters by Liza O'Connor, bk2, releases

Many years ago, I began writing the SkyRyder series. That was back when I didn't publish or socialize, I just wrote novels. I did belong to a crit group (romcritters) but otherwise, it was just me and my PC. 

I liked to try new things, so for the SkyRyders series, I wrote each chapter twice, allowing both my main characters to see the event from their POV. I did this for the entire book. 

Needless to say, that almost crashed my PC back then and not even my sister wished to read every event twice. So I set the book aside and wrote the Adventures of Xavier & Vic, my Victorian Sleuth Series. 

Then one day I returned to the SkyRyders and decided to go through the repetitive chapters and decide which character told that particular event better and I'd discard the other. It was a tedious process, but I loved the story, so I had no choice but to save it.  

Once I had normalized the story with only one POV per happening, I sent it off to critters, changed matters per their excellent advice, then moved on to writing other books. (Including several more about the SkyRyders only darker and more sexual.) 

That was my life for ten glorious years. I would write, hike with my dog Jess, and garden.  Those were the best years of my life and I wrote in whatever genre a story wished to unfold. That means I've written books in almost every genre imaginable. 

Three years ago, I took up the gauntlet and began to seriously publish. Scavenger Falters will be my 28th novel. It is the continuance of Alisha's life in the SkyRyders Corp.  I hope you enjoy it.

Scavenger Falters

By

Liza O’Connor

Alisha Kane, the Corps’ best flyer, is promoted to colonel, in charge of teaching the Corp’s SkyRyders her extraordinary flying maneuvers. The man she loves, Logan, continues to place the Corps first and insists they both remain focused on their work. 

For Alisha, this means ferreting out the best flyers in a Corps that has systematically forced great flyers into mediocrity. Logan focuses on learning Alisha’s flying techniques so that he can become the hero the East Coast desperately needs. The result includes fractured ribs and broken hearts, but through it all, they never relinquish their love of the Corps.

EXCERPT

Logan gathered her in his arms, and it felt so good, so warm and safe. Yet, Alisha knew it was all a lie. There was no warmth or safety within his arms, because he was too damned stubborn to admit the love between them was right. 

“Hush,” he soothed. “You don’t want to upset your gramps now.”

“Don’t even try to distract me with Gramps. If he knew why I was crying, he’d kick your butt.”

“You’re probably right there,” Logan admitted. “As much as your grandfather and I like each other, he knows I’m too old for you.”

She struck his chest with her fist. “Stop saying that!” she demanded. “You’re not too old! And I’m not as young as I look. And our ages don’t matter. We love each other and that’s all that matters.” So she was twenty-one and he fortysomething. Who cared in a world where neither of them were likely to live for long?

Colonel Logan captured her hand in his and turned her so she faced him. “It isn’t even close to all that matters. It doesn’t even make the top five priorities.”

“Name one thing more important!” she demanded.

“Your career in the Corps.”

“I don’t care about my career…”

“Then you’re a fool. You have a rare ability to make real changes and contributions to the Corps. Look at your first two battles. Without you, hundreds of Ryders would have died. Ginnie, Jersey, and Philly—all dead if you hadn’t been there. And don’t say anyone could have stepped up to the challenge because you know that’s not true. At this point in time, there’s only you, and until your techniques can be taught and transferred to other Ryders, there is nothing more important than your contributions to the Corps.”

Alisha wanted to tell him he was wrong, but how could she? She’d only convince him she was a petulant child. Would she really place her own happiness over the lives of hundreds of Ryders? A part of her wanted to do just that, and her selfishness shamed her to the core. She never hesitated to risk her life for the Corps—why was this sacrifice so much harder?

Because when you’re dead, the pain stops. Living without Logan will be a never-ending agony.

She pushed away the thought and sighed heavily. “All right, I’ll concede that my contributions to the Corps should take precedence right now, but can’t I have both? Is there some law that says I must be unloved while I save the world?”

Colonel Logan gave her a sad, gentle smile and stroked her face. “You’ll never be unloved, Alisha. Everyone who meets you will love you. And someday, when you can risk a few distractions in your life, you’ll meet some young man and fall in love again.”

“I will not,” she replied, her voice quivering with emotion. “I will never love anyone but you.”

“You think that now, but trust me, time will heal.”

Alisha couldn’t listen to any more of this. He had made it clear that nothing had changed. He refused to see there might be a compromise, a way she could contribute to the Corps and be happy at the same time. However, to listen to him demean the intensity and durability of her love for him: that was more than she could bear! She ran from his room and down the hall.

Her heart ached with a paralyzing intensity as she entered her bedroom and leaned against the door. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hurt so much, she truly couldn’t breathe. She slid to the floor as gray dots appeared in her vision. Her last thought before blacking out was: So you really can die of a broken heart…

SALES LINKS

The SkyRyder’s Series, Book 2

Scavenger Falters

AMAZON

The SkyRyder’s Series, Book 1

Scavenger’s Mission

AMAZON

About the Author

Liza O’Connor 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.

OTHER BOOKS BY LIZA O’CONNOR

SCIENCE FICTION

The Multiverse Series

Sci-Fi Soap Opera with humor, romance, and science

The Gods of Probabilities

Surviving Outbound

Surviving Terranue

Surviving Sojourn

Artificial Intelligence Series

Sci-Fi/Romance

Public Secrets

Birth of Adam

The SkyRyders Series

Sci-Fi Romance

Scavenger’s Mission

Scavenger Falters-releasing Dec 30^th 2016

Scavenger Vanishes-coming 2017

Click here For ALL Novels by Liza

Social Networks 

Facebook    Facebook Author Page   Twitter  Multiverse Blog

Scavenger's Mission's getting great reviews.

Scavenger’s Mission

By

Liza O’Connor

How does one go from Debutante, to street girl, to Scavenger?

As far as Alisha was concerned, debutants were the most useless creatures on earth. Nor were they allowed to choose their friends, or more importantly, their husbands. 

Her parents couldn’t care less if she didn’t want to marry the President of the Americas. Never mind the ass was old and gave her the creeps every time she’d had the misfortune to be in his presence. Her father wanted the lucrative connections that came with becoming a part of the President’s family. To ensure a successful engagement, her parents kept the creep from ever talking to Alisha. Her mother even took on the task of entertaining the jerk…mostly in her bedroom. 

By checking the house monitors early each morning, Alisha learned her parents intended to drug her that evening and she’d wake up married to the creep. She wasted no time climbing out a window and running back to Capital. 

Finding her Gramps took several days, and she wouldn’t have found him at all without the help of Denny, a young, but savvy street kid who had befriended her the day she arrived.

She had hoped her Gramps would take her in, but when she found him, he was nearly dead. Denny stole a Ryder’s wind-catcher so she could take it up and see if she could fly it. If she could, then she could earn serious money as a scavenger.

Alisha was up first time and knew without a doubt that she was meant to ride the skies. Denny kept her Gramps alive for the week she taught herself enough to scavenge. And despite some problems here and there, for the first time in her life, Alisha was happy. 

And then she crash landed and a colonel of the SkyRyders too her back to his fort…

Scavenger’s Mission

By Liza O’Connor

Blurb

Meet Alisha: A young woman who refuses to live the life her parents want.

In a single month, Alisha Kane has gone from a wealthy debutante to street girl to scavenger.  While testing her new flying skills in the Cully Canyon, Alisha incurs a near-death crash landing. She’s “rescued” by a colonel of the SkyRyders and her life changes forever.

Meet Logan: A SkyRyder colonel in charge of a sleepy fort with little to do other than arrest the occasional scavenger.

For the first time in his life, Logan’s attracted to a young woman, only she’s probably a scavenger and he’ll have to arrest her.  But first he offers her a shower and food while he checks on his crew. His videographer has captured her extraordinary flight through the Cully and her flying is astounding!

He forgoes arresting her and puts his career at risk by asking MAC to assess her skills and integrity as a potential SkyRyder. If he can get Alisha into the SkyRyders, it will be his greatest contribution to the Corps.

Meet MAC: The Artifical Intelligence that runs the SkyRyders Corps. 

Upon seeing her arrival, MAC upgrades Alisha’s test. Her flying skills are not just excellent; they exceed what was previously thought possible. MAC classifies her as its top asset and soon she proves her value.  

But…the SkyRyders remain a male dominated Corps where Alisha’s sense of right and wrong often clashes with her superiors. How long can a rebellious young woman survive in a regimented Corps?

Excerpt

Alisha soared into the canyon of Cully River. Rocky cliffs, over a thousand feet high, stood on each side. Farther above, the walls widened, reducing the wind speed, but here, near the water, her wind-catcher traveled at exhilarating speeds reaching nearly two hundred miles per hour due to the narrow wind channel.

Her newly designed slats enabled her to fly just above the water. Previously, at these speeds, without the slats, the smallest snag of her toe against the river’s surface would have sent her rolling to her death. 

As she approached the canyon bend, she shifted the angle of her slats so their front tips pressed against her stomach. A moment later, she tugged ever so lightly on the two front panels of her wind-catcher, increasing their lift capability. Her body soared upward as if an invisible hand had reached down and tugged her to a safer level, where the winds were only a hundred miles per hour, so she could survive the deadly bend in the Cully River Canyon. 

With a single hard tug on the right toggle, she turned within the wider canyon walls. She smiled, pleased with her modifications to her catcher. She recalled the first time she had run the Cully at night. She’d come within inches of crashing into the granite wall at this bend. 

The near-death experience had scared her into avoiding the cliffs for several days while she modified her wind-catcher to be more responsive to turning. Now, with her latest improvements, she possessed such control that next time she planned to take the bend at water level.

Even the idea sent chills down her back. To fly the Cully at night was dangerous, but to take its bend so close to the river…unthinkable! Yet these dances with the impossible made her only more determined to enhance her equipment and improve her flying. Nothing was impossible with the right equipment and flying skill.

LINK

The SkyRyder’s Series, Book 1

Scavenger’s Mission

AMAZON

About the Author

Liza O’Connor 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.

OTHER BOOKS BY LIZA O’CONNOR

SCIENCE FICTION

The Multiverse Series

Sci-Fi Soap Opera with humor, romance, and science

The Gods of Probabilities

Surviving Outbound

Surviving Terranue

Surviving Sojourn

Artificial Intelligence Series

Sci-Fi/Romance

Public Secrets

Birth of Adam

The SkyRyders Series

Sci-Fi Romance

Scavenger’s Mission

Scavenger Falters-coming 2017

Scavenger Vanishes-coming 2017

Scavenger's Mission by Liza O'Connor Post #1

Scavenger’s Mission

By

Liza O’Connor

How does one go from Debutante, to street girl, to Scavenger?

As far as Alisha was concerned, debutants were the most useless creatures on earth. Nor were they allowed to choose their friends, or more importantly, their husbands.

Her parents couldn’t care less if she didn’t want to marry the President of the Americas. Never mind the ass was old and gave her the creeps every time she’d had the misfortune to be in his presence. Her father wanted the lucrative connections that came with becoming a part of the President’s family. To ensure a successful engagement, her parents kept the creep from ever talking to Alisha. Her mother even took on the task of entertaining the jerk…mostly in her bedroom.

By checking the house monitors early each morning, Alisha learned her parents intended to drug her that evening and she’d wake up married to the creep. She wasted no time climbing out a window and running back to Capital.

Finding her Gramps took several days, and she wouldn’t have found him at all without the help of Denny, a young, but savvy street kid who had befriended her the day she arrived.

She had hoped her Gramps would take her in, but when she found him, he was nearly dead. Denny stole a Ryder’s wind-catcher so she could take it up and see if she could fly it. If she could, then she could earn serious money as a scavenger.

Alisha was up first time and knew without a doubt that she was meant to ride the skies. Denny kept her Gramps alive for the week she taught herself enough to scavenge. And despite some problems here and there, for the first time in her life, Alisha was happy. And then she crash landed and a colonel of the SkyRyders too her back to his fort…

Scavenger’s Mission

By Liza O’Connor

Blurb

Meet Alisha: A young woman who refuses to live the life her parents want.

In a single month, Alisha Kane has gone from a wealthy debutante to street girl to scavenger.  While testing her new flying skills in the Cully Canyon, Alisha incurs a near-death crash landing. She’s “rescued” by a colonel of the SkyRyders and her life changes forever.

Meet Logan: A SkyRyder colonel in charge of a sleepy fort with little to do other than arrest the occasional scavenger.

For the first time in his life, Logan’s attracted to a young woman, only she’s probably a scavenger and he’ll have to arrest her.  But first he offers her a shower and food while he checks on his crew. His videographer has captured her extraordinary flight through the Cully and her flying is astounding!

He forgoes arresting her and puts his career at risk by asking MAC to assess her skills and integrity as a potential SkyRyder. If he can get Alisha into the SkyRyders, it will be his greatest contribution to the Corps.

Meet MAC: The Artifical Intelligence that runs the SkyRyders Corps.

Upon seeing her arrival, MAC upgrades Alisha’s test. Her flying skills are not just excellent; they exceed what was previously thought possible. MAC classifies her as its top asset and soon she proves her value. 

But…the SkyRyders remain a male dominated Corps where Alisha’s sense of right and wrong often clashes with her superiors. How long can a rebellious young woman survive in a regimented Corps?

Excerpt

Alisha soared into the canyon of Cully River. Rocky cliffs, over a thousand feet high, stood on each side. Farther above, the walls widened, reducing the wind speed, but here, near the water, her wind-catcher traveled at exhilarating speeds reaching nearly two hundred miles per hour due to the narrow wind channel.

Her newly designed slats enabled her to fly just above the water. Previously, at these speeds, without the slats, the smallest snag of her toe against the river’s surface would have sent her rolling to her death.

As she approached the canyon bend, she shifted the angle of her slats so their front tips pressed against her stomach. A moment later, she tugged ever so lightly on the two front panels of her wind-catcher, increasing their lift capability. Her body soared upward as if an invisible hand had reached down and tugged her to a safer level, where the winds were only a hundred miles per hour, so she could survive the deadly bend in the Cully River Canyon.

With a single hard tug on the right toggle, she turned within the wider canyon walls. She smiled, pleased with her modifications to her catcher. She recalled the first time she had run the Cully at night. She’d come within inches of crashing into the granite wall at this bend.

The near-death experience had scared her into avoiding the cliffs for several days while she modified her wind-catcher to be more responsive to turning. Now, with her latest improvements, she possessed such control that next time she planned to take the bend at water level.

Even the idea sent chills down her back. To fly the Cully at night was dangerous, but to take its bend so close to the river…unthinkable! Yet these dances with the impossible made her only more determined to enhance her equipment and improve her flying. Nothing was impossible with the right equipment and flying skill.

LINK

The SkyRyder’s Series, Book 1

Scavenger’s Mission

AMAZON

About the Author

Liza O’Connor 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.

OTHER BOOKS BY LIZA O’CONNOR

SCIENCE FICTION

The Multiverse Series

Sci-Fi Soap Opera with humor, romance, and science

The Gods of Probabilities

Surviving Outbound

Surviving Terranue

Surviving Sojourn

Artificial Intelligence Series

Sci-Fi/Romance

Public Secrets

Birth of Adam

The SkyRyders Series

Sci-Fi Romance

Scavenger’s Mission

Scavenger Falters-coming 2017

Scavenger Vanishes-coming 2017

PUBLIC SECRETS is on SALE for 99 cents from 10 1-7

Don’t Miss Out!

Public Secrets

Book 1 of the AI Sci-Rom Series

By

Liza O’Connor

Blurb

Carla Simon is a best-selling novelist besieged by death threats and lawsuits because her stories keep turning out to be true. She is considered an extraordinary researcher, uncovering facts unknown by field experts.

The truth is far simpler and more disturbing. Carla has a software program that “fixes” her mistakes and rewrites her novels so they are error-proof both in presentation and in content. The result is beautifully written and completely accurate stories about real people and events.

Some of those people want her silenced forever. When a woman, mistaken for Carla, turns up dead in New Zealand, she must face the hard truth about her program. But first, she has to survive the assassin who has never failed to deliver on a contract.

BUY LINK

AMAZON

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Book 2: Birth of Adam

AND DON'T MISS THE LATEST RELEASE!

Poignant Post Apocalypse SCI-FI ROMANCE:

Scavenger's Mission-- Alisha goes from debutante to scavenger to SkyRyder in a single month. Her ability to fly is extraordinary. But is she ready for the male dominated regiment of the SkyRyders Corps?

About Liza

Liza O’Connor was raised badly by feral cats, left the South/Midwest and wandered off to find nicer people on the east coast. There she worked for the meanest man on Wall Street, while her psychotic husband tried to kill her three times. (So much for finding nicer people.) Then one day she declared enough, got a better job, divorced her husband, and fell in love with her new life where people behaved nicely. But all those bad behaviors have given her lots of fodder for her books. Please buy these books, because otherwise, she’ll become grumpy and write troubled novels instead. They will likely traumatize you.

You have been warned.

Mostly humorous books by Liza:

Humorous Sci-Fi series

The Gods of Probabilities — In the Multiverses, anything can & does happen. Join the bickering Gods and the sentient beings they oversee.

Surviving Outbound — Earth is doomed, but the odds of surviving outbound isn’t much better.

Surviving Terranue — Welcome to Terranue. Prepare to be baked, pummeled, and frozen. But first you’ll have to survive the black death growing in the cliffs.

Surviving Sojourn — You know you have reason to worry when a hyper-grown one-year-old is made captain of the ship.

Humorous Singles:

Ghost Lover —Two British brothers fall in love with the same young woman. Ancestral ghost is called in to fix the situation. And there’s a ghost cat that roams about the book as well. (Humorous Contemporary Romance)

Humorous, Suspenseful, Romances

Saving Casey — Cass wakes up in the body of a troubled teen who has burned every bridge imaginable. Her only choice is to turn this life around, but that’s much harder than she ever imagined.

Saving Molly — Molly keeps smiling even when a dangerous gangster is after her.

Disturbing Historical:

Untamed & Unabashed —The youngest of the Bennet sisters, Lydia, tells her story. A faithful, yet provocative spinoff from Pride & Prejudice.

A Long Road to Love Series: (Humorous Contemporary odd Romance)

Worst Week Ever — Laugh out loud week of disasters of Epic proportions.

Oh Stupid Heart — The heart wants what it wants, even if it’s impossible.

Coming to Reason — There is a breaking point when even a saint comes to reason.

Climbing out of Hell — The reconstruction of a terrible man into a great one.

The Hardest Love — Is to love oneself. Sam’s story.

The White Oak-Mafia Series (Thriller, Romance with humor)

A Fortune to Die For — Megan's life falls apart when she wins the lottery.

Unexpected Love — Tess falls in love with the new forest manager after a rough start.

Dance or Die — After a traumatic event Tess must reassess the men in her life.

The Adventures of Xavier & Vic Sleuth series: (Late Victorian/Mystery/Romance)

The Troublesome Apprentice — The greatest sleuth in Victorian England hires a young man who turns out to be a young woman.

The Missing Partner — Opps! The greatest sleuth in Victorian England goes missing, leaving Vic to rescue him, a suffragette, and about 100 servants. Not to mention an eviscerating cat. Yes, let’s not mention the cat.

A Right to Love — A romantic detour for Jacko. Want to see how amply rewarded Jacko was when he & Vic save an old woman from Bedlam?

The Mesmerist — The Mesmerist can control people from afar and make them murder for her. Worse yet, Xavier Thorn has fallen under her spell.

Well Kept Secrets — The problems with secrets is that they always come to light, no matter how you wish to silence them.

Pack of Trouble — Changes are a part of life, but these changes almost kill Vic.

The Darkest Days — Muddled cases make Vic very grumpy.

The CrimeLords’ War — Vic is almost killed twice as she tries to prevent another CrimeLords’ War, stop a female Russian spy, and locate Xavier.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT

LIZA O'CONNOR

Investigate these sites:

The Multiverses of Liza O’Connor

Liza's Blog and Website   Facebook   Twitter