by Liz Matis
The Tao of Liz, at http://www.taoofliz.blogspot.com
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My idea for Playing For Keeps stems from my teens when despite Title IX and a 1978 lawsuit ruling in favor of a woman sportswriter who was banned from going into the locker room at the World Series, women were subject to discriminatory practices.
My Uncle Fred was a baseball writer in the sixties and seventies and though he had no problem with
women sportswriters he believed they didn’t belong in the men’s locker rooms. And not because he thought they would ogle the men but because at the end of the day women were ladies and should not be subjected to the crass locker room culture. Now, he came from at different time—hell, he wore Clark Kent type glasses, wore a suit and sported a hat. Though he didn’t think women should be allowed in the locker room I never considered him sexist.
For example, at my grandmother’s house on Thanksgiving Day I was spared from cleanup duty when my Uncle Fred called me into the living room with the other men folk to watch football. I was only nine years old and I still remember it clearly. It left an indelible mark on my female self that women did not have to be relegated to the kitchen. In fact when I got married I had a holiday rule with my husband that when it’s my family’s house I help with the cleanup and when it’s his family’s house—he cleans up.
Anyway, when I decided to write a romance I wanted to write about a heroine I wished I had the guts to be and Samantha Jameson was born. I gave her a hunky football player to challenge her every step of the way. ~ Liz Matis
PLAYING FOR KEEPS
BOOK TRAILER
Fresh from the battlegrounds of Iraq, reporting on a bunch of overgrown boys playing pro football is just the change of scenery she needs. If trying to be taken seriously in the world of sports writing wasn’t hard enough, Ryan, her college crush, is only making it harder. As a tight-end for the team she’s covering, he is strictly off limits.
Ryan Terell is a playmaker on and off the field, but when Samantha uncovers his moves, he throws out the playbook. Just as he claims his sweetest victory, Samantha’s investigation into a steroid scandal involving his team forces him to call a time-out to their off the record trysts. But then a life threatening injury on the field will force them both to decide just how far they’ll go to win the game.
