Toxic Diamonds @Liza0Connor

On occasion a reader will insist that the main premise of this story is not credible (a young woman chooses to dress in men’s clothes and declare herself to be a young man). Their reasoning being that surely people would realize she was a woman.

Evidently, Victorians were not terribly observant people, for in real life, quite a few women dressed and pretended to be men. Not surprising, given how limited life was for Victorian women.

Here is a very fine example: Margaret Bulkley took her uncle’s name: James Barry and dressed as a man so she could attend medical school and become a doctor:

She not only became a doctor, but she also became the highest ranked doctor in the British army. She was also the first doctor to perform a successful Cesarean in which both mother and child lived. 

It was not until she died, that the charwoman hired to clean Barry for burial discovered ‘she’ was not a man, but a woman. Barry’s regular doctor suggested he was a hermaphrodite. The charwoman strongly disagreed, pointing out the evidence (stretch marks) that Margaret/James had born a child. (Given Margaret’s age at the time, it was more likely from sexual assault than consensual. Historians now believe the child was raised as her younger ‘sister’ with only her older siblings and, of course, her mother knowing the truth.

When the charwoman took her story to the press, all information about Margaret/James Barry was quickly sealed with plans to keep it so for a hundred years. A researcher gained access to the documents in 1950.

As for my character, Vic, I chose a model for my cover that visually could pass for either sex.

I attributed her with a low voice and provided her with chest compressor so she doesn’t appear to have breast.  She even pins a filled sock to her pants’ crotch.

Also, Vic is tall for a woman with a boyish lanky body. In fact, her hips refused to spread during the birth of their child, Cannon. (Xavier & Vic secretly marry in book 4.) Dr. Connors had to perform a Cesarean to save both her and her baby’s life. Fortunately, he had read up on Dr. Barry’s Cesarean and knew what to do.

So, my premise is not only reasonable, but has been proven so by Margaret/James’ real-life, not to mention a great many wives who chose to dress as men and go to war with their husbands. (That’s a documented fact as well.)

Determining whom to trust is getting very hard, indeed. This may be the most trying cases imaginable. Director Stone has gone missing and it appears Ministers of Parliament are involved. Xavier is arrested and placed in a jail meant to kill him, while Vic, disguised as a woman, attempts to locate the Minister of External Affairs and ask for his help.

Everyone is called in to assist: Jacko, his wife Alice, their son Pete, Samson the Crime Lord, David and Claire, Tubs and his wife Sara, the boys: Cannon and Ham, plus the bloodhound Arroo.

The Wasp, who escaped punishment for her attempts to murder her bigamist husband’s first wife last year, is back. Vic discovers love letters between Ben, their terrible male secretary, and the Wasp. Worse yet, he shared Xavier’s financial advice with the Wasp, making her and her husband very wealthy.

With Stone missing, and Barns and Meyers stretched to their limits, Vic decides it’s time to train more of the Scotland Yard officers in intuitive and deductive reasoning. While only half the class makes it through her two-day course, everyone is pleased with her results.

Finally, be warned: Vic’s sister, Claire, is becoming more difficult than ever. Gregory thinks she is going mad.

Two in the morning, Vic and Xavier were surreptitiously following a drunken spy. Not an easy task, given Xavier had not been allowed to have Davy, his carriage driver, accompany them. This meant he and Vic had to take turns following the young man while the other one drove the carriage up side roads to keep pace with the drunken fool. Even a fool, deep in his cups, would catch on that something was afoot if the same carriage either lurked behind him or constantly passed him and then pulled to the side of the road.

Finally, the boy stopped and stared at a warehouse by the docks. Before the young man could enter, a young girl stepped out of the shadows. Had Barringbarn sent him on a fool’s errand? Was the boy only looking for female company?

Then Xavier heard what sounded like a muted explosion and the young man collapsed to the ground.

Xavier pulled his gun and looked around for trouble, but the dock appeared empty. Even the young girl had run off when she heard the gunshot. Women in the docks would risk their lives for a coin, but otherwise, they looked out for themselves.

Just then Vic pulled up with the carriage and jumped down. “Why did you shoot him?”

“I didn’t,” Xavier snapped, “I’m not sure what happened. There was a young woman who stepped out of the darkness, blonde, I think, but I couldn’t tell you more. An odd explosion came from somewhere close to her location, then the boy collapsed. Any chance you saw where the girl went.”

Vic snorted. “Dock women know to run when trouble starts. I didn’t even see her, so there’s no way we’ll catch her. Let’s just grab the body and drop it off at the Minster’s house. The man’s so stupid, he will probably bellow at the corpse for an hour before he even realizes the fellow is dead.”

“No, he’ll, no doubt, demand I find the girl.” Xavier sighed heavily. This was supposed to be a simple grab and interrogate. In fact, they were not even the ones who were supposed to interrogate. The minister of Internal Affairs made it very clear they were to gag the fellow and bring him directly to his house. 

Book 8

Toxic Diamonds

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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 has given her lots of fodder for her humorous 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.

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 a CrimeLords’ War, stop a female Russian spy, and locate Xavier.

Toxic Diamonds — The Queen’s Diamonds have been stolen, Director Stone of Scotland Yard is missing, and there is a toxic gas that may kill hundreds of Londoners.

A Despicable Crime — Just when you think Crime Lords cannot behave worse, they step up their game, and I’m sorry to report that Xavier’s father caused this debacle.

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Dance or Die @Liza0Connor

Why does Steel remember matters differently

then what actually occurred?

The brain is actually a terrible recorder of past events. Especially events that a person recalls frequently. For example, if the person, let us say Steel, had withheld information from his college and the students accompanying him to the Middle East to excavate what might be the first major agricultural sites of mankind, it is possible upon recollection, he would forget the withheld information entirely. In his mind, that never happened. Upon further recollection of the horrifying events that occurred, he would alter more facts each time he recalls the situation. The two young women who were raped by insurgents who entered their camp, were no longer raped. They were just spoiled, angry young women who ignored him when he told them to go to the house, rather than stay in the car.

Being a traumatic event he’ll recall it often and each time he’ll change details, each time softening his guilt and pushing the blame to others.

In a way, this altering of memories can make traumatic events tolerable. But it can also result in a person who never takes responsibility for his own actions and thus he repeats the same mistakes again. Nor is he consciously aware of what he is doing.

This really happens. Researchers have proven this over and over. It’s why past memories can be so easily manipulated by suggestions from a psychiatrist. But what most people don’t realize is that everyone changes their memories every time they recall an event in their past. It might remain mostly true or it might not be even recognized as the same event by others who witnessed the original event.

True story: When at college my roomie and I joked about kidnapping a cute friend of ours. We laughingly plotted out the various ways we could go about it. There was another participant to our conversation, Kim, and this event, plotting to kidnap Steve, altered in her memories and became a real abduction that impacted the rest of her life. We reconnected through facebook many years later and she brought up the time when we kidnapped cute Steve and she shared how much that impacted her life (negatively).

 

I had no idea what she was talking about. Neither did my former roomie. So I contacted Steve on facebook and asked him if recalled us ever kidnapping him.

“No, but sounds like fun,” was his response. So I contacted Kim and gave her the goods new. We never kidnapped Steve, and she could lose the guilt. That resulted in a great deal of anger and a defriending.  Evidently, this trauma had become the cornerstone of her life and she was NOT giving it up.

So don’t linger on negative events in your past. If you do, they will begin to consume you.  However, when you make a mistake, derive what you can from the lesson, and then move on. Revisiting it over and over can worsen matters.

Dance or Die

By Liza O’Connor

Contemporary Suspense/Romance

Blurb

Tess Campbell, mafia princess has fallen in love with a British prince, who is protected by a Secret Service agent during his stay in America. Two weeks into their budding romance, Tess’s father, a psycho mafia don, kidnaps and nearly kills the prince and his Secret Service agent, believing she has taken both as her lovers. The brutal assault reveals the true character of each man and Tess must face some hard truths, even as she takes control of her destiny to build the finest state park in the country.

Excerpt for 

Dance or Die

“Are you talking about the helicopter incident in the Middle-East?” Tess asked.

“That’s an excellent example. The CIA and the British Intelligence had warned Steel that the area was rife with insurgents and to attempt entry would be suicidal—advice that he kept from the school and the kids traveling with him.

“Three weeks into their trip, their campsite was raided. The insurgents tied up the men and made them watch as they gang-raped the two women. Then they gathered up all the gear, food, and water and left them there to die.”

Tess was shocked. This was nothing like the story that Steel had told her.

“Their driver returned in the morning and found the men bound and the women unconscious. Steel called the American embassy on the man’s phone and demanded they send him new equipment and better protection at once. They told him he was in a war zone and to get out. Steel told them to fuck off and hung up.”

“Dear God!”

“Fortunately, his students had no intention of staying and called the American Embassy back, begging for rescue. So the driver was given firm orders upon where to take them to await pickup. Steel was furious when he’d learned what they’d done and he promised to ruin all their careers if they didn’t stay. They all believed being alive was more important than staying to work on his site. Given Steel had no food, water, shelter or equipment, he went along as well, condemning his students the entire drive there.”

Steel had made it seem like he was the victim and that the deaths were other people’s fault, which was exactly what he was doing now as well.

“The driver warned everyone to the house, but the girls were in too much pain to be removed from the jeep. So the men ignored the driver and hung around the jeep.”

“Which made it a target for the enemy helicopter,” Tess said.

“Yes. The jeep blew up, killing the girls instantly. The young men ignored Steel who was yelling to hide behind a small fence. Two ran to the house and the other two ran for the hills. They survived. Amazingly, Steel did as well. They found him hiding against the fence with the driver’s body protecting him.”

“That is nothing like Steel’s version.”

“Well, that’s the four students’ version and why Steel was fired at once. And the reason he was fired from his most recent position was that once again, he withheld the warnings he’d received from the CIA, but this time, they called the head of the university and relayed what had happened the last time Steel took students into a war zone. They fired him and the woman who was responsible for ensuring all university travel locations were properly cleared. He’d evidently convinced her he knew better than the CIA.”

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BOOK 3

Dance or Die

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.

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https://www.lizaoconnor.com/p/liza-oconnors-books.html

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Scavenger Vanishes @Liza0Connor

Scavenger Vanishes

By

Liza O’Connor

Protecting your colonel.

If you are a captain of the SkyRyders, you have considerable power. But if you want to remain a captain, then you had better protect your colonel from any damage his stupidity might cause.

 Colonel Dryer refused to allow Alisha to take her clothes with her when she got herself demoted from Colonel to a buck private. (General Powel was clearly not amused when she crossed him.)

To make matters worse, Dryer demanded Alisha return the sleepwear to the other female cadet who had loaned her the clothes.  Alisha had already been cold, but now she couldn’t stop shivering and feared she was literally going to freeze to death.

Had she done so, MAC would have been one very upset AI. He would have no doubt court-martialed General Powell and had Colonel Dyrers put in prison. Dryer clearly had no idea how important MAC believed Alisha to be. Nor did Captain Benson. He simply addressed this as a ‘protect your colonel’ moment. So Benson and the cadets wrapped Alisha up in blankets and carried her to the medical site, explaining her near-death in a way that in no way implicated Colonel Dryer:  She had been lap-dancing them when she started shivering uncontrollably. So they brought her to the medic ward.

That way Colonel Dryer wouldn’t be implicated and they would all live another day!

Scavenger Vanishes

By Liza O’Connor

Blurb

Stationed on opposite coasts, Alisha and Logan must each face their own demons and challenges. On the West Coast, Alisha loses her rank for butting heads with General Powell and soon discovers the life of a private can be utter hell. On the East Coast, newly promoted General Logan discovers his soldiers do not recognize his authority to command. In an effort to retake control of the East Coast Corps, Logan authorizes unthinkable actions. When Alisha faces a life-threatening crisis, will Logan rise above his own troubles, or will she discover love and rescue with her best friend Jack?

EXCERPT

When Alisha woke, she thought she was in heaven. Everything was white. As she focused on the fluorescent lighting, she changed her mind.

“Good, you’re awake,” Sandy said as she placed a thermometer in Alisha’s mouth. “That was a pretty stupid stunt you pulled last night.”

Alisha stared in confusion as Sandy proceeded to give her a lecture on hypothermia. When the medic finally pulled the thermometer from Alisha’s mouth, she tried to sit up. “How did I get here, and what were you told happened to me?”

Sandy gave her one of those “don’t even try to pull the wool over my eyes” looks. “You were brought in by several of your young men friends, who said that while giving them lap dances you had started shivering uncontrollably.”

“Lap dances!”

“Look,” Sandy said. “I don’t give a damn if you screw every man in this camp. In fact, it’s rather refreshing to hear of a female Ryder with a worse reputation than Jack’s. However, take some advice. It’s winter. If you want to do lap dances, don’t do them outside in the buff. You don’t have enough body fat to protect you from the cold.”

Alisha was speechless. She was going to kill Benson.

“Now, your captain is here to take you back to your quarters. I need this room in a half-hour. Anything you wish to do before that is not my concern as long as you keep your activity limited to the exam table, and don’t play with the supplies.”

The second Benson entered the room, Alisha hit him with a jar of cotton swabs. “You told the medic I was giving you a lap dance?”

Benson rubbed his chest where the jar had struck. “It was all I could think of. Don’t throw anything else, and I’ll explain,” he promised.

Alisha couldn’t imagine any explanation that would satisfy her, but she let him approach.

“I knew you were going into hypothermia, but if Colonel Dryer were implicated, I’d be done for. The colonel would no doubt receive a reprimand for his part in it, but he’d still be my colonel. Except now he’d be a pissed-off colonel, and I’d be his rabbit. So I had to come up with something the medic would believe that in no way implicated the colonel, but would explain how you came to be wearing no clothes. Given your reputation, I said lap dances.”

“What reputation?” Alisha demanded.

“Well…” Benson smiled awkwardly. “You know…”

“No,” Alisha replied. “Tell me.”

“Well, first there was Colonel Logan, then you dropped Logan for Sparkes, which we all understood, then there was Ben, then there was you and Colonel Logan in the tunnel, before Sparkes found you. Then you and Logan right before he left, and then Tucker in tunnel this morning.”

“You can stop now,” Alisha said. No wonder the medic had believed Alisha wanted to sleep with every man in the camp. Rumor had it that she had slept with every man in the camp. She sighed. “So now we add lap dances to the pile of BS.”

“I didn’t see what harm it could do.”

“No, you’re evidently right. My reputation is pretty well dragging the bottom. I must be the biggest joke in the Corps.” She looked up at the ceiling, trying not to cry.

“No!” Benson assured her. “We know you’re something special. Normal conventions don’t apply to you, any more than normal aerodynamics or Corps regulations. You do your own thing and we just watch and marvel.”

SALES LINK

The SkyRyder’s Series, Book 3

Scavenger Vanishes

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, skydive 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

Scavenger Vanishes

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