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Kilt, Stripper, Ex-Con & More
Author Summary: The Cop and the... is a series of fun and flirty short stories that chronicle the misadventures of Officer Mindy Harding. This first volume contains: The Cop and the Kilt - an introduction to Mindy, her sexy-but-disapproving partner Maxwell Stone and a rather memorable encounter with a drunk and disorderly on her first day as a police officer; The Cop and the Stripper - a story of revenge gone wrong as Mindy attempts to get payback but finds that getting one over on Stone isn't so easy; and The Cop and the Ex-Con – a stranded Mindy goes looking for a ride, but when a hot ex-con shows up willing to give her one, she's not entirely sure what kind of ride he's offering.
What I have to say: There are so many reasons why these stories are so special to me! But, first off, the thing I’m super excited about is that the main character’s name is “Mindy.” And it’s not a coincidence! Rachel named her after me!!! I’d also like to believe the main character’s physical attributes (like her blonde hair and blue eyes) are based after me too . . . but I’m not quite so sure about those parts so I’ll just have to quietly keep giving myself that bit of credit in my own head.
And speaking about taking credit, the only other thing I can take credit for is a twitter chat that Rachel and I had with Jaime (Two Chicks on Books) when the first story started to take shape. After Rachel wrote this totally hilarious story about Demon Ryder and her Ab-man Aximander, she asked us for another sexy, physical, dude-attribute that she could write about. And I said, “Rock. Hard. Thighs.” Yep, she took that and totally rolled with it! So, in the first story in The Cop and the Kilt Mindy has this serious problem with drooling over dudes’ Rock. Hard. Thighs. One of the dudes is her total douche-bag partner (Mindy's a cop) and the other is the dude in a kilt (best part). It’s a totally brilliant story and I can’t help myself from reading it over and over again!
After Rachel wrote The Cop and the Kilt, she later gave me a heads up whenever she had another short story she was finishing up that told us more about Mindy’s unfortunate (or not so unfortunate!) escapades in these amazing short stories! And the best part about every single one of these stories is that every single time Rachel would send one of them to me, it always seemed to arrive just when I was going through a difficult time in my life and I needed something to brighten up my week/month/year/lifetime. (I’d like to think it wasn’t just a coincidence that I’d get one of these stories just when I needed it the most, if you get my meaning. Or, if it WAS only a coincidence, then it was the MOST awesome coincidence ever!) And each story is just fabulous! So unbelievably awesome! Some of the moments in the stories had me laughing so much and so hard that I was actually crying! And, even though some of the stories had me feeling really bad for the main character and the situations she got herself into (because “things” kept happening in ways she totally did not intend!), I loved it! And I just loved Mindy more for them and I just couldn’t help but admire her. She is so very different from me, that I feel like she could be my slightly rebellious twin . . . the twin who I always wanted to be like even though SHE’s always getting herself into trouble (yep I was putting myself in Mindy’s shoes while I was reading because, well, because she’s Mindy!) OK . . . maybe not quite! Mindy does take quite the extreme leap in The Cop and the Ex-Con, but I love it! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it all!
I’m more than a little excited to see there’s a brilliant new cover for this book! And that chick on the cover is HOT! Which means, once again, I’m jealous of my rebellious twin-Mindy! LOL! And I’m even more excited that I now have the eBook on my Kindle and on my phone so I can re-read them forever and ever and ever! Rachel’s still working on The Cop and the Tattoo Artist, and I can hardly wait to read it! But since I know she puts a lot of pressure on herself to work on her other “works” during NANOWRIMO, I’ll just have to be patiently waiting!
To top all this awesomeness off, Rachel is an absolutely fabulous writer! I’m in awe by how amazing her writing is, and I hope one of these days I get to read a full on novel by Rachel Clarke.
Rachel says she plans make these awesome short stories available on Amazon, and I think that’ll be awesome because you all will get the chance to put them on your eReaders too!
But, for now, you can read them on her website
rachel-clarke.com/stories.
by Douglas Rees, Vivi Barnes, Marni Bates, Eldritch Black, Karice Bolton, Naomi Canale, Cecily Chase, Rachel Clarke, Shanyn Day, Tara Gonzalez, Laurie McLean, Lynda K. Scott, Linda Wisdom, Carol Wolf
(Chapter 6 in Love Stinks!)
by Rachel Clarke
My take: I don’t read Anthologies very often, more like, almost never! But when I heard that Rachel was writing a short story for an Anthology, I knew that I’d read it the moment I got it in my hands, and I did! I have yet to read the other stories in Love Stinks!, so I’m only writing a small review of Love Bites by Rachel Clarke.
I don’t want to say too much to prevent from spoiling, so I’ll try really hard to be careful. And, I don’t want to judge the main character, Shelby, too harshly from this story because this story takes place on her least favorite day of the year…Valentine’s Day…so she was pretty much in a sour mood right from the beginning of the story. But I absolutely love her best friend, Brie! She’s upbeat and quirky and loves and supports her friend as she tries to make the day good for Shelby. But I really don’t care too much for Brie’s boyfriend, Dan...in my opinion, he’s a jerk. Anyways, in the process of trying to make Shelby’s day better, Brie takes Shelby to a party and what happens in the party makes the whole story so much fun. The ending totally rocks! It makes the story phenomenal. But I really wish we could find out what happens with Shelby! And find out if THAT Valentine’s Day ended up being her absolute best or worst day ever. Pure brilliance!
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