Linguini Casserole Minicooper, Jr in the flesh
LC Cooper was born “Linguini Casserole Minicooper, Jr” on July 3, 1976 in the back of her parents’ RV during a stop to use the bathroom in Yeehaw Junction, Florida.
Her mother, Carla, and father, Carl, both granola-munching tree-hugging disco-hippies were stuck in the transitional musical wasteland of the mid-70s, With lousy role models polluting the political and cultural landscapes, Carl and Carla followed the craze of giving offspring absolutely ridiculous names. Since “Dweezil” and “Moon Unit” were already taken, Carla decided on the name “Linguini Casserole” for the meal she had right before her baby girl was born.
Carla, thinking she was about to fart out gas from the greasy Italian food, grunted, and out popped little “Linguini Casserole.” Carl, disappointed he didn’t get a son, insisted on the suffix, “Jr.” Cleaned up and out, the happy little trio trotted off in their RV for the beaches of Florida’s east coast. Though it was only seconds before Yeehaw Junction faded out of sight in the rear-view mirror, that magical crossroad would remain a fond memory for everyone – everyone with the exception of little “Linguini Casserole Minicooper, Jr.”
Growing up in the sprawling oasis of Satellite Beach, Florida certainly had its challenges. Not much of a beach-bunny, Linguini Casserole did a lot of running. She had no choice, the kids in the neighborhood, also bored out of their skulls, passed the days away by teasing and chasing Linguini Casserole. She hit the “Terrible Twos” pretty hard. Most folks believed that the quirky behaviors were normal, but she seemed overly determined to beat the holy-living snot out of her parents whenever possible.
By the age of 3, she was called “LC”, which was part of the lawsuit’s settlement against her parents. They also had to stop building mud replicas of “Devil’s Tower” in the family’s living room. They also quit scaring “LC” with late-night attempts to signal the home planet with their booming Wurlitzer organ and flashlights.
LC learned to channel her aggression and anger by earning a black belt in Taekwondo and by writing for the local newspaper. In this manner, anyone she couldn’t catch and beat the crap out of for teasing her would get reamed in one of the columns she wrote. At the tender age of 14, LC became the youngest staff writer ever for Central Florida’s “Today” newspaper. To this day, it remains unclear whether or not LC earned the promotion and subsequent relocation to Orlando or her parents paid off the newspaper’s senior editor. Rumor had it that Carl and Carla could no longer take the physical trauma of being LC’s “sparring partners” in her quest for Taekwondo mastery. Regardless, the day after LC’s promotion to the “Today” paper, Carl and Carla disappeared – sold their home in Satellite Beach, and changed their names. The last LC heard, her parents were sharing a cabin in a forest with some nutbag named Ted Kaczynski.
LC took this opportunity to evolve yet another aspect of her life. At 6′ 2″ tall, LC felt that her last name, “Minicooper, Jr,” didn’t fit her. This last bastion of teasing disappeared when, on her 20th birthday, LC formally changed her name to “Cooper” – dropping both “Mini” and “Jr” from her last name. To celebrate, LC thumbed a ride back to Satellite Beach, FL, and performed a strip tease in front of all the uptight and snotty wives preparing the Patrick Air Force Base’s Officer’s Club for its annual ball. Court records show she believed she was auditioning for a part.
Soon thereafter, LC married her parole officer, Billy Bubba Finkelstein on May 19, 1997. Accustomed to ridicule, but not at all interested in enduring it again, LC chose to retain the last name of “Cooper.” Newlyweds LC and B.B. (as Billy Bubba is affectionately known) enjoyed the next couple of years traveling the world while getting to know each other. Not realizing they would set the trend years before Hollywood’s celebs got on board, LC and B.B. came up with a unique approach to gathering souvenirs as they trotted the globe. They adopted a child from each country they visited. The Finkelstein-Cooper family grew by leaps and bounds virtually overnight. They lost track, but after about 30 or so countries and kids, LC got another itch – one not cured with yet another shot or cream.
Because it promised its graduates really cool and exciting careers in burger-flipping and door-greeting, LC settled her family in Murfreesboro, Tennessee to earn related degrees in journalism and recording-industry management from Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). True to its reputation, the degrees from MTSU proved economically worthless enough to propel LC into unfulfilling and unrewarding jobs in retail and restaurant “management.”
Undaunted by this low point in her life, LC proved her resilience and used the few hours each week she had for sleep to earn a Masters Degree in Education from Tennessee State University (TSU). It only took 4 years of teaching “English as a Second Language” in Arizona’s public schools to piss her off enough to turn her attention back to her first love. Older, wiser, and weary of the daily challenge of surviving the thrill of hand-to-hand combat in public schools, LC dusted off her Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, rolled up the sleeves of her favorite muscle T-shirt, and cranked out her first novel.
Winning critical acclaim for her first action/adventure story, the harrowing tale of Chippy the Sunflower Farmer, LC Cooper’s second novel secured her notoriety, but no fortune. LC refocused her energy on producing her second novel, Legacy. Already a bestseller in Monrovia, Legacy is poised to launch LC Cooper into the untried waters of movie production. Recently, Quail Egg Entertainment purchased an option for Legacy‘s screen rights.
Legacy’s description reads:
“What happens to a middle-aged restoration mechanic when he stumbles upon an insidious secret left hidden within the shadows of an evolutionary nightmare? Legacy, a fast-paced adventure novel of 67,000 words, is the tale of one man’s quest to realign the natural course of history.
Collin Roggero’s passion for restoring World War II aircraft soars when he discovers all the parts of a pristine German jet fighter in a long-forgotten section of a National Air and Space Museum warehouse. Gripped by a consuming curiosity, he further unearths the discarded elements of a 50-year-old conspiracy. A series of seemingly-unrelated coincidences, bizarre dreams, and sinister experiences in the Painted Desert of Arizona and Nova Scotia draw him to the enigmatic genetics firm, EvoCo. Events rooted in the final frantic days of World War II follow a carefully orchestrated plan that culminates with the 2005 landing of the Cassini-Huygens probe onto Saturn’s mysterious moon, Titan. Collin is determined to put natural evolution back on track before a past evil becomes humanity’s future.”
LC Cooper closes with, “Legacy is the evolution of my creative experiences. I thread together holes in the facts of World War II and space exploration with recent advances in genetic engineering. With this backdrop, Legacy delivers intrigue and a profound double-cross while preserving faith in destiny.”
Legacy, an excerpt:
“It is an ME-262!” shouted Collin happily as he recognized the nacelle of one of its two jet engines. Something else caught Collin’s eye, a distraction that told him that the ransacking wasn’t the work of an ordinary GI or thief interested in war memorabilia.
Toward the back of the crate, a canister, a tube of sorts, about six-feet long, lay neatly on its side, waist-high, atop two small crates. Collin, now more than curious, moved into the large crate to inspect further the canister. “It’s not a drop tank,” Collin said, puzzled at the fact that this tube didn’t have a twin; another tube like it that would have evenly distributed the content weight underneath the jet’s wings. And it didn’t have the usual tear-drop shape expected for something strapped to a plane’s exterior. It wasn’t a bomb either as there were no tail fins, a fuse, or rounded edges to minimize wind resistance.
From these clues and his vast knowledge of WWII machinery and supplies, Collin did reason that this was constructed to transport something, but not on the jet. Similarly, the construction seemed solid – like it wasn’t meant to be opened.
“Maybe it’s a compressed gas tank of some kind,” he thought. Collin couldn’t find hinges, a lock, or a handle that would identify how the cylinder opened. A cap was welded onto each end, so they weren’t screwed on. Otherwise, the only other physical feature was two welds running the length of the cylinder – on opposite sides from each other.
Rolling it over for further inspection, Collin heard a rattle coming from within the cylinder. “It’s hollow…and now apparently empty. As I thought it would be,” sighed Collin, smugly. The thief had somehow removed whatever had been inside this cylinder. Lightly shaking and slowly rolling it further, he could tell that the cylinder had some structure within it because the rattling would stop or change direction at certain times as Collin moved it.
With a final roll, Collin found what appeared to be a marking – some kind of stamped or etched identification label. As he bent down to study the marking further, he placed his hands on the cylinder and leaned over it. A soft spot in the metal under his left thumb gave way and Collin heard a distinctive click. The soft spot was camouflage – purposely designed to hide a recessed button.
“Why would someone go to so much trouble?” Collin wondered. “Whatever it is was meant to be hidden from all but the person who did open it. This guy knew exactly what he was looking for and how to open the cylinder, but…” Collin paused, “…he didn’t know exactly what the container looked like, or he wouldn’t have torn all these interior crates apart.”
Intrigued way beyond casual curiosity, against his conservative nature, Collin proceeded with inspecting the cylinder – now looking for an opening. Both the welds running down opposite sides of the cylinder turned out to be fake. One of them contained a hinge; the other on the opposite side covered the seam where the two metal plates joined. Gently applying pressure to the middle of this second “weld” produced another click and the side of the cylinder sprung open – startling Collin. Flailing his arms like a windmill, he tumbled back against the opposite side of the crate among a loud crash of falling metal parts and small boxes.
His heart racing, Collin stood up and cautiously approached the propped-open cylinder; treating it as he would a coiled and sleeping snake. He peered in to see that the cylinder contained three chambers; a large one at each end and the third centered within the cylinder. A glance was all that was necessary to determine that the cylinder was empty.
Disappointed, he reached out to slam down the container’s lid, but it countered by springing open again. Frustrated with the insolent tube’s unwillingness to close, Collin gave up this treasure hunt to see if he could learn the purpose behind such an intricate and purposely deceptive container.
Collin wanted to take a better look at the markings he saw earlier on the outside of the cylinder’s lid. Leaning on the lid to keep it down, Collin put on his reading glasses and the characters “HA234” leapt into focus.
“There it is again,” Collin said, noting a strange rattling sound whenever he shifted or moved the cylinder. “What is causing that sound?” As he rotated the cylinder slightly to look inside once more, out rolled a Canadian coin.
Read more about Legacy and other books by LC Cooper at:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LCCooper
Legacy is available at these retailers:
Amazon.com (both Kindle Edition and Paperback)
Apple:
Amaranthine by Joleene Naylor 
Bonnie
/ January 7, 2011I love the name Linguine casserole. I wish i could have another kid so I could name them that!
Joleene Naylor
/ January 7, 2011Isn’t that an awesome name? LOL!
lccooper
/ January 7, 2011If you think my name, “Linguini Casserole,” is cute, take a listen to Johnny Cash’s song “Boy Named Sue.” I still have lumps on my head that God did not create.
Thank you, Joleene, for posting my bio and excerpt. I enjoy this format. I’d be glad to answer any questions you folks have about my titles.
I stumbled upon FanStory.com just before Christmas. I highly recommend it to you authors and writers who need/want reviews of your works (poems, screenplays, book chapters, short stories). All the feedback is helping me improve my writing skills (although still infantile, I’m progressing toward “toddler.”).
If interested, I have 2 humorous short stories you can download for FREE from Smashwords: “Halloween’s Perfect Storm” (featured on this site as the Story of the Month – thanks Joleene!): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/27799
“Of Yellow Snow and Christmas Balls”: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/33221
Thank you for your time.
With kind regards,
LC
Joleene Naylor
/ January 8, 2011You’re very welcome! Thanks so much for participating in the January Author Samples! I just loved your bio, I think it’s the best one I’ve ever read!
Artswebshow
/ January 8, 2011And to think i got teased for being a ‘North’
That must have been insane teasing.
Great bio here.
Sounds like an interesting book
Joleene Naylor
/ January 8, 2011i recommend it highly; it’s on my to read list 😉
Jonathan Harvey
/ January 10, 2011I enjoyed the bio and the story expert. The bio made me hungry, but most stuff does…