Liza O'Connor's favourite character

Continuing our theme of authors' favourite characters, please welcome Liza O'Connor, who's going to talk about...

Drogan

I’ve a great deal of characters I love in The Multiverses Series, but my favorite is Drogan, because in book 1 he saves his people from extinction when he is just a two-foot-long child and transports them to a new world where they will thrive. Then later, in book 4, he saves all the humans on Terranue, although most of them don’t even realize that.

So let me tell you a bit about Drogan…

First, I’ll tell you what Drogan isn’t: He’s not human, but neither is he a merman. He’s a water based, blue-skinned humanoid. Yes, his toes and fingers have a thin layer of skin between the fingers that goes about halfway up the digits to improve swimming in the ocean. His nails are sharp curved claws, which make it easy to grab fish. He also has both gills and lungs so he can swim deep in the ocean or walk on dry land.

When Drogan reaches his full height (slightly taller than a human) he joins the crew of an Outbound ship. Unfortunately, no matter how nice he is, the crew hates him and Captain Longfellow has to drop him off on a space station.

Drogan comes very close to dying on the station, but the Gods intervene and he’s rescued by a pack of dire wolves the station uses to quell riots. Turns out the dire wolves are much nicer than the humans who live on the station. Upon learning about poor Drogan, the wolves share their food and water and keep him safe from harm during his stay in their basement lair.

Once he recovers, Cass, the ghost, helps to sneak him back onto Longfellow’s ship. She can’t enter him into the ship’s database because ghosts can’t type. So Drogan is not technically a crewmember and thus is never paid for his work, but on the positive side he remains healthy and better yet, Zousan’s evil father Cronus stops trying to kill him since he believes the fellow is already dead.

Finally, when Sojourn comes on board, Drogan makes his first friend among the humans. And they’ll remain friends forever. Thus proving, the inability to make friends was not Drogan’s fault, only the rest of the crew are a bunch of hateful Xenophobes and jerks.

What I love most about Drogan is that despite his amazing brilliance, he does not value his life over others and is most humble and caring to all. This is an unusual for someone this smart. Extreme brilliance usually comes with arrogance and a lack of empathy.

Drogan’s total focus is on preserving The Path of Light so all creatures will have a happy future. This is his calling, and he is willing to die for it, which he proves over and over. I cannot count the times he nearly dies or does die. Fortunately, he is highly valued by the Gods, and they have directly saved him, or instructed others to do so many times.

Someday in the future, I have great hopes he will meet a female who will be his mate forever. His chances are much greater in the Search for Sentients Series, because he will be top science officer, many of the crew will be female, and there won’t be a single Xenophobe in the crew of what is unquestionably the finest ship that humans have ever flown.

Drogan designed it so they can cross both dimensions and multiverses with ease. He understands quantum physics better than any sentient alive.

Excerpt from the Gods of Probabilities

Drogan’s father, Emperor Osan, has brought his baby son, Drogan, to the scholars to be tested to see if he is the child of the prophecies. Korak, the head scholar reveals the results of the tests Scholar Hemp ran on Drogan.

***

“Drogan scored the highest thus far in friendliness and non-aggression.”

Osan scowled. “He has only known his mother and myself thus far.”

“Those are excellent qualities for the one to be sent among other species.”

Osan nodded. He was still thinking his son would become the next emperor. For that role, friendliness and non-aggression were the worst traits he could wish for the boy.

“And his mental acuity?”

“Seventy-eighth.”

“What? My son was manipulating dimensions within four days of his hatching!”

Hemp smiled at him. “Yes, he’s very bright.”

“But according to you, not as bright as seventy-seven other primitives.”

“We are calling them Gods’ Gifted. Primitive has such negative connotations.”

Osan nodded. “I agree with the change in terminology, but I believe you have incorrectly judged the depth of my son’s intelligence.”

Hemp smiled. “Entirely possible. The Gods may have gifted your son with skills and understanding we cannot even fathom.”

Korak leaned forward. “What this means is that your son has every qualification to be our diplomat to the universes beyond.”

“Except there are seventy-seven others who could do it better,” Osan muttered.

“No!” Hemp cried. “None is more qualified than Drogan. It is my task to identify the one the Gods meant for us to send off-planet, and of the few friendly and amiable Gifteds, your son ranks highest in all categories. Plus he has excellent credentials, being your son.”

Osan closed his eyes, giving in to the power of the Gods. “So he is truly the one?”

Both Korak and Hemp smiled and nodded.

***

And that’s how Drogan came to be on a ship with a bunch of Xenophobes.

If you want to know more about Drogan he can be found in book 1 and 4 of the multiverses, and of course, the upcoming In Search of Sentients Series

Book 1: The Gods of Probabilities Amazon

Book 4: Surviving Sojourn Amazon

Shortest Author Bio Ever:

Liza is different.

Don't Expect Aliens To Look or Think Like You - by Liza O'Connor

The chances are, a sentient alien WON’T look anything like us.

Life is incredibly diverse, just look at some of our sentient beings on Earth

We shouldn’t expect other sentient beings on other planets to look like us. In fact, we don’t resemble any of the top 24 sentient beings on Earth, not even our cousin primates. And while they may or may not pass our human test for sentience, (depending on who evaluates the test), I’m quite certain we’d fail any test the other animals established to determine sentience. Can we communicate emotions by changing the color of our skin? No? On the Octopus’s test it’s a required feat.

We’d also fail the memory test run by the elephants and sheep.

While the dolphin and killer whales are not only adept in their languages, they have taken the effort to learn to hand signals, whistles and voice commands of the humans at Sea World who make them do stupid  tricks all day. Since none of us understand a word of their languages, we’d fail their language tests.

Then there is my dog Jess. I am a hundred percent confident that she fully understands the English language. But do I understand dog? Not at all.

And if the ant were to derive a test, the ability to track and communicate with the nest would be extremely important. We would fail dismally.

Any of the animals above could realistically become the top sentient being on another planet. Just because our ancestor climbed out of tree doesn’t mean that will happen elsewhere.  If a planet is covered in water, it is more likely the Octopus, squid, dolphin or killer whale who would swim up and claim dominance. My money is on the Octopus. Seriously, who needs a prehensile thumb if you’ve got a great many gripping tentacles?

Nor should we expect all sentient beings on other planets to be water based like us. (In case no one has mentioned this, humans are mostly comprised of water.)  However, on Titan, sentient life could be methane based. And since we’ve no idea how it might form itself, we might not even recognize it as a living creature. Or even see it. A great many of our sentient animals such as the Octopus are great at blending in with the background.

As for the most likely to become space travelers: I vote for the Octopus.

Its brain has many complex features like ours, it’s very smart with amazing problem solving skills. Add to this, it has longer, more flexible arms, plus it has NO BONES. This would make it an excellent candidate for traveling in space. As any astronaut will tell you, bones deteriorates in low gravity.

Also, Octopi can adapt to almost any environment. And their ability to hide in plain sight is phenomenal. They could make themselves look like a piece of furniture or a pillow on the couch. While the Octopus can live out of water for a short time, any ship built for them will certainly be filled with water, which would lower radiation exposure during travel.  Throw in some crabs and fish, and they have a replenish-able food source.

I’m sure you’re thinking, hold on, won’t the ship short out with all that water. Not if a flexible, non-leaking barrier seals all the electronics.

So if someday you are sucked up into a ship belonging to aliens, don’t be surprised if the aliens look rather like the octopus.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Liza O’Connor has recently published book 1, The Gods of Probabilities of her first Sci-Fi series The Multiverses, and yes, there are sentient Octopi, as well as an Ocean dwelling humanoid with gills.  Book 2, Surviving Outbound, you meet a sentient blue cow, and in book 3, you meet an entire herd of the sentient bulls and cows. In book 4 Surviving Sojourn, you’ll discover one of the humans, is actually a different species that looks quite similar to us, but has the ability to alter their size. You’ll also discover two highly intelligent T. rexes, but don’t ask to dine with them. They aren’t friendly at all and would prefer to dine on you than with you.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT

LIZA O'CONNOR

Investigate these sites:

Liza’s Multiverse Blog

Liza's Blog and Website   Facebook   Twitter

A Thing About #Scribd #publishing

Last week I posted about leaving Kindle Unlimited (Amazon's book subscription service) on the 15th July, although not because of the new payment scheme. Instead, KU had failed to achieve my hopes for it in other respects. I was getting borrows at Scribd that paid me a set rate, and I'd just uploaded my titles to Oyster (another book subscription service where you can also buy the book). Things looked peachy.

The very next day, Smashwords and Draft2Digital sent out emails to say that Scribd were dropping pretty much all of the romance titles listed on their site. 

From D2D's CEO:

"As we all know, the concept of a subscription service for books is extremely new. There are several models on the market now for effectively monetizing subscriptions, and none of them exactly matches what we’re used to from traditional sales royalties. As the market experiments with different approaches, there are bound to be some missteps and false starts along the way. In fact, we should expect this business model to evolve even more in the near future.

Scribd took a significant risk putting in place a model that paid authors the same amount as a retail model for each book read by a subscriber. As we all know, romance readers tend to be incredibly avid readers. In trying to cater to this voracious readership while under this progressive payment model, Scribd has put itself in a difficult place. In a bid to better balance these operating expenses, Scribd is immediately slashing the volume of romance novels in its subscription service.

If you are receiving this email, then you are a Draft2Digital author who has published books in the romance genre to Scribd. This means that some or all of your romance novels are likely going to be delisted from their service today. (Books that are priced at free will not be removed.)

While a large number of romance novels will be removed from Scribd, it isn’t all of them. We aren’t privy to the exact guidelines Scribd is using to decide which romance novels will remain, and it’s our understanding that they remain in flux at Scribd. However, over the coming days, we will be working closely with Scribd to resolve the exact criteria and share them with you so that you’ll have the opportunity to restore all of your titles to the service. 

Please Note: If you write in other genres, understand that those books will not be affected by this policy change.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and assure you that we are working with Scribd to explore alternative solutions to this challenging problem, always searching for new terms that could restore our full catalog to their service. 

Believe me, this situation is just as difficult for Draft2Digital as it is for you. We also stand to lose a significant portion of our revenue due to this change. More importantly, we regret that we couldn’t give our authors more notice, but unfortunately we were informed quite late in Scribd’s decision-making process. It has been our highest priority throughout these discussions to preserve as many of your books in the service as possible, and we will continue to pursue that goal going forward."

You can also read a blog post by Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, HERE. His recommendation right now is not to leave Scribd. *snorts*
~
Of course, this isn't the fault of SW or D2D, who are also going to suffer as a result. Why has this happened? Because romance readers are voracious and Scribd are losing money over it. I don't think cutting the titles is a good solution (ignoring my own disappointment at losing a venue that was paying me a good rate, especially compared to KU). If they cut romance titles, the romance readers will leave. At the moment, none of my titles have been culled but since Scribd has since said they will 'rotate' romance titles, it could happen any time. I've now got to decide whether to leave things as they are, pull my titles as protest, or relist my romance titles without the R label should they get pulled, risking the ire of readers who don't like all those girl cooties and kissing, having lost my main audience (fortunately - or perhaps not - several of my stories have romantic elements rather than full blown romances). Problem is, my biggest seller was my time travel romance Keir. I can only assume that listing it as space opera has so far saved it.

But there's another issue. Many of my fellow authors found their paid titles being pulled, while their FREE ones remained. WTF?! So Scribd is essentially charging their readers to read books that are totally FREE through other vendors. Outrageous? Completely. Why the heck should you pay a subscription fee to read free books while being denied the full choice of a range of titles Scribd would actually have to pay for? That seems unfair on readers and authors both.



I understand that Scribd is a business and that the aim is to make money, and not lose it. But this seems such an extreme, knee-jerk reaction. I don't fathom the logic. Of course, one alternative is for them to stop paying authors as much, a tactic already employed by Amazon with KU and using a general fund, the division of which decides how much is paid by borrow (now complicated by their pay by page read scheme, which literally makes my head ache trying to work it out and another reason I'm just going to steer clear). It seems every time something of this nature happens, it ends up hurting authors. 

Once again, just as it seemed I might actually be able to start making a living wage from this writing thing, another door slams shut. Suddenly exclusivity at Amazon doesn't seem such a high price, with over 90% of my sales there and other retailers falling by the wayside. Just this week I tried dropping the price of my novella When Dark Falls to try and get it moving, but to no avail. It's enough to make me seriously reconsider if I'm ever going to get anywhere.

But as I've said before, I'm a stubborn woman, and publishing is in a constant state of flux. I'm still writing, still selling books, and still getting mostly positive reviews. I'm not going to let another set back...well, set me back, lol. Guess I'll hang in here a bit longer and see what comes of this latest upheaval in the publishing world...


You can also read Greta's post on the Scribd palaver HERE which also covers Amazon's latest (and in most people's view harshest review cull).


Update: As of this morning, all but one of my titles have disappeared from Scribd. I'm going to be removing that and all my links to Scribd as a result. I knew it was too good to be true.



Status update

Keir's Fall is still with my editor. Right now I'm taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo with a target of 30K spread across several short stories that need completing, including a superhero story and a fun space opera. Depending how it goes, I may also be finishing up a sequel to my paranormal romance short Hallow's Eve, and two unfinished SFRs that I really should have got done by now. The problem with not having a publisher and set deadlines is I start to drift. Camp NaNoWriMo at least gives me a deadline to work to.

Keir's term at NetGalley is over, and while I had no idea what to expect or what might be considered average, I was surprised and pleased by the results. Keir had 66 downloads, currently resulting in 13 reviews (with a range of ratings, but including one review at Geeks In Highschool where the reviewer totally got what I was aiming for. Love it!). I was also told that I'd had a good response and review rate. Again, I'm surprised and pleased by that news. My awesome cover by Danielle Fine also got 36 thumbs up and only 3 thumbs down. ^_^
At the moment I'm considering putting Tethered up there, but I'm not yet sure. When I have to decide whether to spend my budget on the possibility of reviews or putting it toward artwork/edits for another title, it's a tough choice!

Happenings

Next week Liza O'Connor is my guest here at Spacefreighters Lounge with her new and debut scifi release The Gods of Probabilities. You can read my review for it HERE. 

It's the final week of the SFR Brigade Summer Cafe, and we have our second and last round of Space Opera. Go HERE to follow along and enter for the grand prize bundle. 

I have less than two weeks before my not so little monsters break up for the seven week summer holidays. I'll be posting a few teasers from my books over those weeks, but you can also follow along on Tumblr from the 22nd July to see how I transformed a pair of Monster High dolls into my characters Keir and Quin - I'll be posting each Wednesday (providing I've figured out the scheduling correctly!). I'll also be posting my summer reads and reviews over at Critique de Book HERE every Wednesday from the 22nd.

Stay shiny!