I started with the ending on that one.

I just felt so inspired, you know?

Doffing my hat to Susan.

Snerk.

when a mommy’s honeypot and a daddy’s manroot find a cozy little citadel

Bwah!

Drako and Cayenne, indeed!

Someone actually submitted a manuscript to me in which the heroine's name was Cayenne. I also had a Cinnamon once. And Drako was a big favorite. Sigh.

erika, you hit just the right tone there. And the Mekong Delta, too! Hee.

It'll be a sad day for writers like that when all the veterans of The Nam are retired, at least until people are fucked up from the middle East. Another one...this time count the cliches.
“Do it again, Flynn,” the captain growled, “and I’ll have your shield.”

“But sir...” The detective said, with only a slight flinch in his steely gaze.

“You’re a loose cannon. I don’t like loose cannons, and neither does the chief”.

“I get results, Captain. You know I do.” It was cold comfort since his wife had been butchered so cruelly, but he had not missed getting a clearance or conviction in two years. Technicalities happened to weaker cops. He knew he skipped three ranks for a reason and now, at twenty-three, was the youngest homicide cop in history, in any jurisdiction, ever. That, and his perfect French and mastery of ten martial arts, seemed to make Quantico a no-brainer but he wouldn’t want it any other way. No special treatment for this senator’s son.

That, and his perfect French and mastery of ten martial arts, seemed to make Quantico a no-brainer but he wouldn’t want it any other way. No special treatment for this senator’s son.

BWAH! erika, you know what's scary? You could have entered this one in the cliche challenge, too. This one has every cop cliche in the kitchen sink.

(cough) Megan Russert.(cough) Although they just told us she was good. We only saw her in one interrogation actually, and by then her big trick was "I'm sad and demoted." Ooh, not quite all! But I am confident that this book? would totally have a "This time it's personal," mano a mano in it.

OK, this is really more cliche send-up than bad writing per se, but I couldn't resist playing around a little more with good ol' Rod Shaft:

Galloping Cliché

Captain Kincaid shook his head as the tall, black-haired man galloped past on an equally black charger. “There goes another one of those damn romance heroes.”

“How do you know?” Lieutenant Simmons asked.

“First, he’s a duke, rich as Croesus, with no heir, not even a distant cousin.”

“And yet he’s here, getting shot at. I see your point.”

“And they’re always cavalry.”

“That they are. Funny, that. Our cavalry isn’t all that impressive.”

“Yes, but these author-women seem to prefer stallions to competence. Strange--you’d think the phallic implications of a rifle or a cannon would be just as good as those of a horse. Oh, and did I mention that one is a spy, too? Spends half his time behind French lines.”

Simmons’s voice rose in disbelief. “A spy? But shouldn’t a spy be a little more…er…nondescript?”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But somehow old Shaft pulls it off.”

“Shaft?”

“He’s the Duke of Ravenscliff, but Shaftington is the family name.”

Simmons sighed. “And he’ll get the girl, won’t he?”

“Of course.”

“What’s a real man to do?”

Susan, that's a riot!

Thing about stallions in battle? INSANE idea. All someone needs to do to send the stallions bananas is dab a rag across the rear quarters of a horny mare, and the stallion? Not controllable.

"He's a complicated man. No one understands him but his woman." Susan, I'm not sure if that's why you called him Shaft, but in my head it is.

The Shaft thing is a running joke with DH--he wanted me to have a character named Rod Shaft, and since I write Regencies, it had to become Rodney Shaftington, Duke of Ravensomething.