Binding Arbitration by Elizabeth Marx: Character Interview

 

 

 

 

Title: Binding Arbitration

Author: Elizabeth Marx

Genre: Romance, Family Saga, Contemporary/Chick Lit

Publisher: Self Published

Paperback/Ebook

Pages: 477 

 

 

Purchase:  

Amazon (Kindle) | Amazon (Print) | Barnes and Noble | iTunes | Sony eReader | Diesel |

 

 

Book Description:

 

Through the corridors of the Windy City’s criminal courts, single mother Libby Tucker knows exactly how far she’ll go to save her cancer-stricken son’s life. The undefeated defense attorney is prepared to take her fight all the way to the majors.

 

Circumstances force Libby to plead her case at the cleats of celebrity baseball player Banford Aidan Palowski, the man who discarded her at their college graduation. Libby has worked her backside bare for everything she’s attained, while Aidan has been indulged since he slid through the birth canal and landed in a pile of Gold Coast money. But helping Libby and living up to his biological duty could jeopardize the only thing the jock worships: his baseball career.

 

If baseball imitates life, Aidan admits his appears to be silver-plated peanuts, until an unexpected confrontation with the most spectacular prize that’s ever poured from a caramel corn box blindsides him. When he learns about his son’s desperate need, it pricks open the wound he’s carried since he abandoned Libby and the child.

 

All Libby wants is a little anonymous DNA, but Aidan has a magical umpire in his head who knows Libby’s a fateball right to the heart. When a six-year-old sage and a hippy priestess step onto the field, there’s more to settle between Libby and Aidan than heartache, redemption, and forgiveness.

 

 

I’m Aidan Palowski, a.k.a. Band-Aid Palowski, former closing pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Now I’m pretty much a stay at home dad, but I run my clubhouse like any great manager runs his team with this one abiding policy the players make the manager, it’s never the other way around. Here’s one of my newest rookies.

 

 

What was the scariest moment of your life?

Two moments were the scariest and both times were when I thought I’d lost Libby. The first time I did lose her and six years of what should have been our lives together. It wasn’t like I was pining away for her the whole time. I was too ticked at her for that. I guess, I thought if I had enough women I’d forget about her, but she was the itch, the one that I could never scratch out. She was always in my peripheral, like the ache of a memory of what my life was supposed to be. The second time, well, you can read about it, it’s too painful to talk about here, but it happens at the end of Binding Arbitration. 

Do you play any sports?

If sports were a religion I’d be a cardinal or the pope. I’m a jock and even though I’m not on the field anymore everything’s a contest for me. Much to Libby’s chagrin, I keep mental stats on every game I play and darn if that girl can beat my pants off me in pool. I mean, she literally beat my pants off, think of Prince Harry’s recent debacle and you get the picture. The sad thing is I was trying to win. I’ve only ever lost a pool game to one person, her! I should have known the first time she whipped me at IU.

This loss to my athleticism is so infuriating that I even hired this big time pool shark to give me pointers, the first time Libby leaned over the table the guy looks at me and catches me checking out Libby.

He sighs in disgust. Picks up his coat, and the check of which the ink is hardly dry and points at my head with a pool stick. He says, “Ain’t no way you ever beating that girl at pool. All you thinking about is the horizontal surface.” He stands alongside Libby while she makes her shot and then leans over and examines a few places where the felt is pilling on my very expensive pool table.

“This ain’t the place for that kind of game.” He raises a wiry eyebrow in confrontation to me. “I mean would you play baseball at Soldier Field?”

Libby shrugs her shoulder and pouts. “He would if I challenged him to a game of strip baseball.”

What can I say?  I might be a Big Ten All American but…. “Baseball isn’t my best sport.” I wink at Libby.

 

Libby snorts. “Neither is pool.”

All I can say in my defense it that she was wearing the above T-Shirt and that later I did confirm that she didn’t have a bra on!

 

If you could apologize to someone in your past, who would it be?

 

That would have to be Cass. Even though I know he’s forgiven me, I still regret the years of his life that I missed. Yes, I did think that Libby gave him up for adoption, but I should have had the guts to find him, to make sure he was alright. I missed his first words and the day he walked and the first time he smiled and that kid has the most beautiful toothless smile a six-year-old could have!

If I came to visit early in the morning would you impress me as being more like a chirpy bird or a grumpy bear?

Me? I’m a chirpy bird, the chirpiest bird you’ve ever heard sing. Libby is the grumpy bear, until I give her coffee or unless I…. Wait a second, are my kids going to read this? Duncan and Donut are really smart, but I have not prepared the whole birds and the bees talk yet. 

Do you have a favorite quote, quip, or saying? What is it?

“In the great department store of life, baseball is in the toy department.” It only took me thirty years to realize the truth of it. 

Is there a piece of advice that you have received that has really stuck with you? If so, what was it?

I’ll tell you what I’ve learned—loss with its unlimited power to destroy—can be overcome with love. And love was the thing that bound Libby & me together. Our love was never arbitrary; it was contingent upon our souls’ discretion and once we found it, it wasn’t easily abandoned. 

I hope you’ll take a chance on me and read about our journey in Binding Arbitration, but just be prepared Libby can be a real pistol. I said that to my agent Fletch on day, and he said, “Who are you kidding she’s an AK-47!”

Windy city writer, Elizabeth Marx, brings cosmopolitan life alive in her fiction—a blend of romance, fast-paced Chicago living, and a sprinkle of magical realism. In her past incarnation she was an interior designer, not a decorator, a designer, which basically means she has a piece of paper to prove that she knows how to match things, measure things and miraculously make mundane pieces of furniture appear to be masterpieces. Elizabeth says being an interior designer is one part shrink, one part marriage counselor and one part artist, skills eerily similar to those employed in writing. 

 

Elizabeth grew up in Illinois, but has also lived in Texas and Florida. If she’s not pounding her head against the wall trying to get the words just right, you can find her at a softball field out in the boonies somewhere or sitting in the bleachers by a basketball court. Elizabeth resides with her husband, girls, and two cats who’ve spelled everyone into believing they’re really dogs.

 

Elizabeth has traveled extensively, but still says there’s no town like Chi Town.

 

Find the Author:

 

Website | Email: elizabethmarxbooks@gmail.com | Blog

 

 Facebook | Amazon Author Page | Twitter

 

 

 

Also check out Cutters vs. Jocks!

 

On the idyllic campus of Indiana University, Little-Libby-Nobody runs into Band-Aid, All-American-Athlete, and fireworks explode. Libby and Aidan spiral into a collision course of love at first sight versus lust you can’t fight. As the game plays out and their affection grows, they soon realize that labels like cutters and jocks can’t keep them apart.

 

But when Libby and Aidan find themselves in trouble they have to confront the reality of where they each fit in the others’ world. Libby believes superstar jocks don’t take cutters to Rose Well House, in the center of campus, at midnight and pledge their undying devotion beneath its sparkling dome. And Band-Aid imagines there’s no place for a pregnant, small-town waitress in his bull-pen or the major leagues. What happens when worthy opponents refuse to play their hearts out?

 

Full Tour Schedule

 

Sept. 22nd- Laurie's Non-Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews

(Character Interview/Giveaway)

Sept. 23rd- A Bibliophiles Thoughts on Books (Excerpt)

Sept. 24th- Blood, Lust and Erotica (Excerpt/Giveaway)

Sept. 25th- Herding Cats & Burning Soup (Review/Giveaway)

Sept. 26th- NightlyReading (Excerpt)

Continued

 

3 Trade Paperback copies of Binding Arbitration

23 ebook copies of Binding Arbitration

TOUR WIDE 

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