Guest post: A Soccer Heartbreak By Liz Crowe
So, anyone that knows me even a little knows that I’m a BIG rugby fan. But, today, just for you, I have best-selling author Liz Crowe as a guest, talking about football!
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I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with a nice Belgian beer, listening to a bunch of soccer parents yammer about recruiting, since we are at a premiere ‘”showcase tournament” for the Wenchling’s Region 2 tournament (they are 2 and 0 so far, one more game tomorrow then we will likely play through to the semi finals).
I am also in deep mourning over that U.S. Men’s soccer World Cup match tonight. Oh dear lord in heaven those boys….tsk…tsk…tsk….seriously guys when the ref ads FIVE MINUTES to the end you, um, “play” for FIVE MORE MINUTES. But I am 100% sure that they are right now being harder on themselves than I could ever be on them.
Anyway, I digress.
I love the game of soccer—futbol—football whatever you want to call it. It’s full of drama, athleticism, dudes in shorts prone to ripping their shirts off when they score. What is not to love?
Of course, I get it that some folks don’t value the fact that a “tie” in a major, international game “matters.” But at this moment, after all the drama of a match that was lost, tied, won, then tied again I don’t have the energy to explain “why” it is potentially okay that they ended with that tie (damn that Ronaldo).
I fell in love with the game when I lived in Turkey the year that national team made an epic run to the semi finals (2002) and then after 2 years in England I was hooked. We sort of got lucky (depending on your perspective) that our youngest child, born overseas, turned into a Major Soccer (girl) Stud. So we are hooked.
It felt natural that I would turn my love for the sport into a trilogy of books. I have a handful of super-experts at my disposal in the form of my daughter’s club team coaches, and I love to contemplate the lives of the men who play this game. Hence…The Black Jack Gentlemen, the soccer team of Detroit.
My favorite teams are a mix of “obvious” and not so much.
Real Madrid (La Lia)
Juventus (Serie A Italian)
Bayern Munich (Bundelig)
Everton (England Premiereship)
Besiktas (Turkey)
And right now I am BOUND AND DETERMINED TO BE A FAN OF THE U.S. MEN’S NATIONAL TEAM! We already have our ticket requests in for the U.S. Women’s World Cup games in Toronto next year!
My current favorite player? Graham Zusi, rookie midfielder on the US men’s team although he had a fairly unimpressive game. Bless him.
Cheers,
Liz
MAN ON ….. .99 during the 2014 World Cup!
Bad boy of European football, Nicolas Garza is about to hit American shores with a vengeance. Signed by the Detroit Black Jack Gentlemen as lynch pin for their expansion club, Nicco only half believes he’s making the right move. But with a past full of ghosts and rotten behavior chasing him from his homeland, he has no real choice.
Parker Rollings is a college soccer superstar, but his parents’ plans for their only son do not include professional athletics. When the Black Jacks approach him to finalize their roster, Parker leaps at the chance to keep playing, leaving behind medical school, stability and his first and only college sweetheart.
Nicco and Parker face off as bitter rivals for a coveted starting spot at midfield and are forced to channel their negative energy into something positive for the sake of the group—and themselves.
All eyes are on the fledgling team in its debut season. It’s crucial that the Black Jacks prove all the doubters wrong. They must make a good showing in the league and with new fans. But player drama, club dynamics, and misplaced priorities may tear it apart before it even begins.
Man On: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-manonblackjackgentlemen1-1551511-341.html
RED CARD….. FREE during the 2014 World Cup!
AMAZON WILL NOT MARK RED CARD DOWN TO FREE. IT’S .99 THERE STILL. JUST FYI.
Red Card: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-redcardblackjackgentlemen2-1551513-148.html
Free will makes us human.
Choice makes us individuals.
Love makes us unique.
Metin Sevim has it all. At the pinnacle of international soccer playing success, he has managed to craft a perfect world for himself along the way.
When fate strips him of free will and the ability to choose his own path, he retreats from everyone and everything, destroying his hard-won career in the process.
Dragged back from the brink by his desperate family, Metin reluctantly agrees to coach the Black Jack Gentlemen Detroit soccer team but remains debilitated by memories and loss. When a surprising friendship emerges, it renews his passion for life, providing much needed solace… and extreme complications.
A saga of family dynamics and gender politics that cuts across cultures and circumstance, Red Card illustrates the human capacity for forgiveness through the life of one man as he attempts to rebuild his shattered existence.
SHUT OUT….. .99 during the 2014 World Cup!
A submissive once, a submissive forever?
A man on the run from the only life he’s ever known, Brody Vaughn is poised to accept the Black Jack Gentleman’s newly vacant goalkeeper’s position. It’s a desperate move, but one he must take to regain his emotional equilibrium. Reeling from his Mistress’s rejection and on the ragged edge of a total breakdown, he arrives in Detroit. Numb with thinly veiled grief, he walks into the club’s front office completely unaware that an encounter with true destiny awaits him.
Sophie Harrison has seen it all–as Domme, sub, and victim. Now that her complicated circumstances have landed her as legal counsel for the expansion Black Jacks team, she holds herself aloof in body and spirit. Nothing and no one gets past her fiercely guarded walls. Until the day she looks up to greet the new goalie standing in her doorway, his raw combination of vulnerability and strength making her breathless.
Two people, horribly scarred by the excesses of the BDSM lifestyle and hiding from their true selves, meet across a desk over a simple contract. All bets are off.
Shut Out: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-shutoutblackjackgentlemen3-1551515-147.html
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Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger and beer marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe lives Ann Arbor. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
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