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When THE END turns out to be THE BEGINNING–Guest Liza O’Connor
In what states can old people go out gracefully?
If you wish to die with dignity, you should move before you ever get sick to one of the three states that can realistically help you.
Oregon, Vermont or Washington
Be aware you’ll have to establish residency before anyone will touch you with a ten foot pole and that can take up to a year.
Montana and New Mexico laws are so conflicting that getting a doctor to assist may be impossible. While a court ruling allows doctors the right to assist in suicide if they get the patient’s written permission, it is still considered a felony crime.
Did you know $170 billion, of Medicare is spent on patients’ last six months of life? Six months of torment and pain that most would have preferred to escape.
Turns out, the more educated you are, the more likely you will request death with dignity.
Another interesting tidbit is that not everyone who gets the lethal prescription needed to die actually takes them. More than half do, but a great deal of patients use it as the back-up plan, hanging on as long as they can, but knowing they have an out, if the pain becomes too much.
In Oregon, the number of patients requesting Death with Dignity increases each year.
While the law allows anyone over the age of 18, mentally able, and a resident of the state to have the right to die, if they are fatally ill, the core ages requesting to die are age 66 to 74, with the median age of 71
79% of deaths are due to malignant cancers.
63% of the people dying have private medical insurance which doesn’t surprise me. This group will be likeliest to receive ‘medical care’ that cannot actually save the person, and often does great harm. Thus a person has more incentive not to be tortured and watch all their saving be siphoned off to doctors rather than leaving it for their spouse and children.
Honestly, after reading the massive paperwork required to legally die, I can understand why Cass didn’t even try to move to another state. She would have traveled all the way to New Mexico only to discover the right to die with dignity had been revoked. Then she would have flown up to Oregon and discovered by the time she became a citizen (1 yr) and filled out the mass of paper work she’d already be dead.
No she’s satisfied with her home alone plan.
Saving Casey
By
Liza O’Connor
Book 1 of the
Requires Rescue Series
Contemporary Suspense
BLURB
When 80 year old Cass Goldman learns she has inoperable cancer, she decides to end her life, peacefully on her terms. So imagine her horror when she wakes to find herself in a hospital with strange rich people staring at her. It’s not until the doctor arrives to examine her that she realizes she’s no longer old. She’s in the body of a seventeen year old teen named Casey.
Unfortunately, her new body comes with some serious baggage. First of all, the kid has burned every bridge imaginable. Secondly, those ‘people’ in her room are her outrageously rich parents and while the Dad seems friendly, the mother wants nothing to do with her. The moment they take her home to a horrifically huge mansion, which she dubs Tara, she’s abandoned to the care of the butler.
While Cass is determined to turn this train wreck of a life around, doing so is far harder than she expected. In fact, without help, she’ll end up dead just like the last occupant of this body. Thankfully, her dad has his hunky head of security become her body guard. Between her eighty years of life lessons and hunky Troy’s help, she just might live long enough not to be jail bait.
EXCERPT
Tears flowed again, not for Cass’s death, but for the distress her dear friend would suffer.
“Better than watching me die in a hospital,” she muttered and willed her tears away. She placed the letter in an envelope and put two stamps on it, uncertain of the going postal rate. It changed so often.
She then went upstairs and gathered the bottles of painkillers she’d acquired over her lifetime. Most had expiration dates from years ago, but hopefully they could still kill her.
Returning to the kitchen, she placed the garage door clicker on the table as promised. While pouring green tea into a large plastic bottle, she called her dog.
Jess didn’t respond.
“Jess, here.”
Her small, beautiful old dog entered, tail down, eyes worried.
Did her dog know what she planned? Did he not wish to take this journey with her?
Did she have the right to do this to Jess? But who would want her twenty-year-old dog?
Tears streamed down her face and she sat down on a chair so she could pet her faithful friend. “You don’t have to come. You can stay here. I’ll put out enough food for you to survive until they come find me. I’ll ask Victoria to find you a good home.”
Jess whined and pressed his head against her legs.
“It’s okay. You’re not ready. But I gotta go while I still have a say about the path I’m taking.”
Leaning over, she kissed the dog’s soft forehead. “I love you and I always will.”
Her tears fell into Jess’s eyes, making him pull back and whine again.
She gathered her plastic bottle of tea, placed her three large containers of painkillers in her pocket, and headed to the door. Jess followed right behind her. Before she opened the door, she studied her dog. “You sure you want to come?”
He wagged his tail twice.
A sense of relief eased her pained heart. She didn’t want to leave her dog. Jess would be miserable without her.
“Come on then. Our last journey.” She led the way and locked the door behind them.
SALES LINK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liza O’Connor is a nut.
Not a real nut, but she is prone to being a smart ass at times, and not surprisingly her heroines say odd and inappropriate things in her book, as well. So even in a suspense novel you can expect to laugh along the way. That’s because Liza loves to see humor in the crazy world around her.
Saving Casey was actually the first book Liza published. Having recently reclaimed her rights to the book, she is happily re-publishing it as her 18th book. And because her books sell better when in a series, she using Saving Casey to kick of a new series called Requires Rescue. It will be different from her other series where the same characters show up in each book. This series will be about strong women who are trying to go it alone, only when help is offered, they have the good sense to accept the helping hand, because in all of our lives, there will come a time you need someone else to help you. Being strong doesn’t make us invincible. Book 1 is Casey/Cass’s story. Book 2 will be about an entirely different young woman who desperately needs help before she’s murdered on the streets of NYC. Book 3, well the plot is super unique, and more books will follow.
You’ll be able to read the series in any order you want, but in each case, you’ll have a strong young woman, a guy stepping up to help when no one else does, and danger galore with humor stuffed in anywhere I can.
I hope you’ll come along with me so you can laugh, love, and get revenge.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT
LIZA O’CONNOR
I’ve got a bad feeling about this… Sci-Fi Fantasy Saturday for 1-25
Greetings from the frozen Northland! I used to live in Montana, where THE ELF MAGE is set, and I decided to leave there because it just got too cold in the winter. So today I woke up to -3 (-16 with the wind chill) here in Pennsylvania, and in Missoula, it’s 22 degrees. What’s up with that?
Anyway, as I sit here bundled up in my chair and just my fingers sticking out so I can type, I wanted to share a snippet of THE ELF MAGE, part of the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series. This piece is near the beginning of the third book, just after the elf prince has been abducted by persons or elves unknown and the clan nearly destroyed. Daven Talvi, whose pride helped bring things to this point, has come to after being knocked out in a fight, in the queen’s enchanted home, finding himself alone and everything in shambles:
Astan had many times expressed his concern since the queen came to live in the forest with the clan, worried that Grigor had not perished alone in the forests, and that he would return to avenge his dead master Bartolomey. But Daven had counseled his son not to take action, to wait and watch. Astan disagreed, but obeyed his father, as duty required.
And look where that has brought you.
Truly Daven had underestimated the evil Grigor held within him, the sense of blackness that still pervaded the atmosphere inside the queen’s home. As a fullblood elf, well-trained in the ways of divination, Daven perceived several mental voices, several personas who had left the barest impression of themselves behind, an impression of menace and ill-will.
Something about one in particular felt familiar to Daven. Something he had not felt for many years. Something so vague he couldn’t put a name to it yet. But he would.
***
And thus begins a transformation that will lead to the biggest battle this clan has ever endured…that may be the end of them all.
For more on the series, visit the Clan Elves page or my tab above, or check it out at Amazon.com .
For other amazing snippets from sci-fi fantasy authors around the world, check out this week’s edition of SFFS here!
No sense in working without an angle…SFFS for April 13!
This week’s snippet goes back to one of the elf queen’s human friends, Lane Donatelli. For those who’ve read the YA Clan Elves series, you’ll remember Lane is a former foster-care child who compensates for his anxiety with food, especially cupcakes, and he’s a master computer whiz.
But he also needs to pay his bills:
Lane retreated to the Cave, his carefully-constructed getaway inside the apartment, four computers ensconced in a space enclosed by walls built from an assortment of cardboard boxes, crates and storage bins. Once upon a time, his whole life had been centered within these artificial walls, very much like Crispy had constructed his own “safe” place, his agoraphobia keeping him inside the apartment until his therapist—and a generous helping of elven magic—had invited him back into the world.
Lane’s egress into the greater world had taken a different form. Plopping down in his well-padded manager’s chair, he noted the blinking icon that indicated he had email waiting for him. Clicking on it, he revealed seven notes from fans new to his recently-published digital book, The Elf Princess.
He’d taken the adventure he’d shared with Jelani, Astan and the others, and written a thinly-disguised version of the story, careful to set it near Butte instead of Missoula, to protect the clan’s existence in the Montana woods. The manuscript had been rejected by a dozen agents as “too outlandish,” proving to Lane that truth was indeed stranger than fiction. Finally, he’d tapped one of his gamer buddies online, they’d whipped the manuscript into shape for e-publishing, and he’d published it himself.
His gamer friends spread the word, and as they were a widely-diverse group, Lane had sold a good number of copies already, a fan base developing almost without his effort.
“Now if I can only figure out how to leverage this into a fully-paid appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con…”
***
THE ELF GUARDIAN is the fourth book in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, available at Dragonfly Publishing and at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, at Apple ITunes and most other online outlets. Find out more about the series at the tab above or at the home of the Clan Elves online.
Find more delicious low-calorie snippets at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday today!
SFFS for 1-19: On TV people and why they just aren’t like the rest of us…
Another clip this week from THE ELF GUARDIAN–
Once this paranormal investigator gets hold of the idea of studying the Montana Vortex, she’s determined to come to the Bitterroot forests, which strikes fear–or at least serious concern–into the hearts of those humans fortunate enough to know the elf clan.
Crispy in particular is worried that the new prince could be a target, since the royal family had almost lost him to kidnappers once. But Lane, in his usual laid-back way, sets Crispy straight about it here:
***
“Have you ever seen this woman?” Lane dropped the letter onto the desk and turned to the second of his four slaved computers, and ordered it to search for the lame investigator’s show.
Avoiding the lens of the web cam, Crispy edged closer to peer around the corner at the monitor’s wide screen, which displayed a woman who could have walked a Hollywood red carpet, tall, platinum blonde, wearing heels four inches tall and a skirt that didn’t seem much longer, if the expanse of leg in between was any indication.
Lane found his eye distracted by those legs, especially because the photo was shot at an angle as if the cameraman was kneeling down low—not an “up-the-skirt” angle, something a little more “queen of the world.” He didn’t know much about fashion, but the jacket and skirt Chiara wore had that bland, useless look in an off-green color that had to mean it cost twice as much as any normal person would pay for it.
Besides, I shop at the Salvation Army—what do I know from looking beautiful?
He rolled his eyes.
“She’ll fall down in the woods,” Crispy commented.
“In those shoes? You betcha.”
***
Find out more about THE ELF QUEEN, THE ELF CHILD and THE ELF MAGE at the tabs above, or at http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com. You can buy the books at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and a host of other sources–find them at Dragonfly Publishing, Inc. The Elf Guardian is expected out this spring. Can’t wait!
Find more great science fiction and fantasy snippets at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday’s main page. I love this group of authors–what great imaginations!
SFFS for September 8– how do you get to be a super-elf?
Today’s entry at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday hearkens back to the most recent book in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, THE ELF MAGE. Elf Vez and his mother have been reunited after a long separation, and he hopes to learn magic and win power from her. But first he must come to understand the power structure of the clan–and he knows that most of what he’s heard so far has been lies:
Vez had been taught mages had greater power than any individual elf of the clan, but they were not taught by the Circle, those old dried up witches who believed they controlled their little elven world. They controlled nothing. This, his mother Veraena had told him, saying that several powerful mages existed in and about the mountains, elves who had evolved past ordinary magic and elven skills, and they were the reason the elves still lived.
“Long ago, Vez, very special nians and neris studied the traditions of the clan, and learned the deepest secrets the Lady of the Forest had to share.” In the reflected firelight, her face lit with excitement as she shared the tales. “When they’d learned all the Elders could teach them, they went to the earth itself, which taught new lessons. Clearing the mind, clearing the heart, becoming one with the essence of natural things opened the door for them, the santwarja.”
“A true door, Mother, a gateway to a higher existence?” Vez remembered his heart racing with elation. What marvelous creatures these Intalus must be, how powerful, how able to help others, to improve the status of all elves.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility–or so they say. And power can be used for good or for evil. Which might Vez choose, if he has the opportunity to study this great magic? Find out in THE ELF MAGE.
Find out more about THE ELF MAGE at the Clan Elves tab above, or at http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com –buy links at Dragonfly Publishing, Inc.
Find more great science fiction and fantasy snippets at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday’s main page–enough to keep you inside from the rain all morning!
Ah, sweet revenge…SFFS for July 21
Greetings, science fiction and fantasy fans! 
Today I’ve got a selection/snippet from the opening of THE ELF CHILD, book two in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series:
He wanted her dead.
All the years he’d been alive, Grigor Biren had wanted…something. An ever-changing, vast ‘something’ that seemed to be just out of reach. He had never been able to define exactly what would leave him satisfied.
Until now.
He wanted her dead. Jelani. The elf queen. The child of elven Linnea and human Vincent Marsh, who’d grown up to return to Montana, to the Bitterroot Mountains, to ruin everything.
And from there evolves a bitter plot that drives that story through the end of book two and into the beginning of book three. But I guess it’s good to figure out your motivation, right?
More snippets from the series are available at the Clan Elves tab above and also at the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot webpage. The books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Smashwords and many other outlets, or order it from your local indie bookseller! (We support local bookstores!!)
More snippets from other talented sci-fi/fantasy writers are available at the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday page, so don’t miss a one!
Montana’s a gorgeous place…even in SFF snippets!
This week’s snippet is from book four of the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, which I’m writing as we speak. 
It’s titled THE ELF GUARDIAN and is due out early next year.
Scenic drive along Idaho-12
The quandary in the beginning of the story is that a defrocked but flashy paranormal investigator named Chiara DeLuna comes to the forest to investigate the Montana Vortex, hoping to make her name again. She arrives just as the elves are about to conduct their solstice ritual– collision course ahead!
Having just returned from Glacier National Park (above, right) myself, I have to confess I’m as twitterpated about the place as Chiara.
The mountain before her rose with the majesty of poetry to a snow-capped peak far above her head. Another sat to the right, and another to its right, a perfectly sculptured range of mountains that looked like something out of a nature documentary. The breeze was ripe with the scent of pine and the wild flowers that seemed to carpet the ground below. Some sort of raptor flew far overhead, a pair of them, she noted a moment later. They cried out to each other, then executed a graceful drive to the ground somewhere on the far side of the hotel where she couldn’t see them any more.
Okay, so it wasn’t Manhattan. The mountains were of rock instead of steel. And the city never smelled like this–never.
Re-energized, she went inside and called the desk to hire a driver to take her out to the vortex. If the hotel was this inspiring, the psychic energy might just be amazing after all.
Little friend at the Montana vortex…
For more information on the Clan Elves series, click the tab above or visit their website, Http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com . For more snippets to make your Saturday wonderful, visit the SFFS site and read all the fantastic bits and pieces filling the creative airwaves today!
A teaser! Snippet for SFFS from book four, still in progress…
This week’s snippet is from book four of the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, which I’m writing as we speak. 🙂 It’s titled THE ELF GUARDIAN and is due out early next year.
The quandary in the beginning of the story is that a defrocked but flashy paranormal investigator named Chiara DeLuna comes to the forest to investigate the Montana Vortex, hoping to make her name again. She arrives just as the elves are about to conduct their solstice ritual–collision course ahead! But first she finds Lane Donatelli, who’s written a “novel” about his friend Jelani and the elves, considering him an expert. When she goes to pick his brain, he realizes she’s much too close to discovering the truth.
Snippet:
“You’re effing delusional, that’s what’s wrong with you.” Lane leaned as close to the table as he could get, his generous paunch in the way. “You see things that aren’t there. That’s why that amusement park haunting was a bust. Why you couldn’t find a speck of alien dust in that mountain community nearAsheville. And have you already forgotten that ghostly schoolgirl roaming the halls of that tornado-destroyed town? Oh, wait. We never saw her on your show. Because she didn’t exist.”
Each example he gave ripped some support out of that smarmy grin, and her eyes grew wider, and when he’d finished, the pen slipped from her fingers. She looked like a different person. Maybe even someone real.
Find out more about THE ELF QUEEN, THE ELF CHILD and THE ELF MAGE at the tab above, or at http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com –buy links at Dragonfly Publishing, Inc.
Find more great science fiction and fantasy snippets at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday’s main page. I love this group of authors–what great imaginations!
Just found a review for The Elf Queen…good stuff!
This is a review by Kenra Daniels at Grave Tells, from last fall; for the entire no-spoiler review see here:
I was immediately drawn into the world Ms. Alexander weaves with brilliant description and multi-dimensional characters. If you’ve ever wondered how Elves deal with disputes over the throne, Elf Queen shows a strong likelihood, including mixed loyalties, subterfuge and politics.
As a Heroine, Jelani Marsh is multi-faceted, dealing with life’s challenges as so many of us do, by keeping her head down and taking the easiest path. Until circumstances force her to question everything about herself, and to come to terms with everything she’s been avoiding. Even as she faces a new way of life, with new problems, she still feels real, human, still the same person, just stronger, growing.
Asten Hawk and Daven Talvi make perfect Heroes, each with his own faults and weaknesses, and strengths. When it comes down to it, they are both prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to save Jelani so she can take her rightful place among their people. Even though they compete for Jelani’s affections, their differences don’t stop them from working together for her best interest. Ms. Alexander manages to keep the secret of who Jelani ultimately chooses until the end, a difficult balance to maintain.
Although Elf Queen is a Fantasy with Romantic elements rather than a Paranormal Romance, I believe it will appeal to readers who prefer less sexual tension in books, and it is entirely appropriate for Young Adult readers.
Nice! Thanks Ms. Daniels!
Bringing the Clan Elves overseas…
Today I post at the web home of Cathie Dunn, talking about why I chose the Bitterroot for my urban fantasy setting. Some beautiful photos of the Missoula and Bitterroot region, and an excerpt from THE ELF CHILD! Come post a comment. 🙂
