Sugarfiend: Guest post and Excerpt!

If her life is a box of chocolates, acid-tongued, sugar-obsessed Estelle Brown should learn how to pick them better. Her boyfriend’s left her for a bulimic hand model, her roomate’s skipped town, and her boss is in love with her. Fed up and In the middle of her latest of a lifetime of doomed diet attempts – cutting sugar cold turkey – Estelle decides to quit quitting for good, pack her bags, and lose herself on a 7-day Caribbean cruise. But even on a floating monument to binge eating, the diet industry follows her. Across from every buffet is a studio full of treadmills. Next to every plate of fried calamari is a large diet Coke. As a ship full of wary passengers ducks for cover, Hurricane Estelle wages her own personal war against moderation. But the consequences land her in the belly of the beast: broke, alone, and forced to take a job as –of all things-- a detox consultant for the ship. Is Skinny the answer to Happy? Is Sweet n Low the new black? Is that Denise Austin chick … for real? No, no and yes, oddly. But for a Sugarfiend, it’s not the destination that matters, it’s all the cupcakes you get to eat along the way.

I have the author here for Guest post about her characters. Remember to comment here to win a $10 Amazon gift card! Anyone who purchases their copy of Sugarfiend before October 15 and sends their receipt to Samantha (at) ChickLitPlus (dot) com, will get five bonus entries.** 

The characters of Sugarfiend

The best thing about writing Sugarfiend was developing the characters. I love them all like they are my precious kittens -- precious kittens that happen to  have major addiction issues, multiple flaws, and that are sometimes not even remotely cute.

Estelle, the main character, is basically me around age nineteen, on steroids. She bounces from one diet to the next, craves all the wrong foods, all the wrong and men, and is more than a little bit obsessed with fitness guru Denise Austin. When we meet her, she is trying to quit sugar cold turkey, and she utterly sucks at it. When the going gets tough, Estelle goes completely off the deep end. This particular meltdown finds her homeless, jobless, and enjoying (then regretting) the ultimate binge on an all-you-can-eat cruise ship.

Estelle’s friend and boss is a quadriplegic man named Jack. I loved writing from the perspective of someone who lives life paralyzed from the neck down, since I was lucky enough to get to know several “quads” as a home care attendant during college. The handicapped aren’t represented nearly enough in books and film, which is silly because there is so much to explore, and they have so many more challenges than the average person. I’m sad to say that the man Jack is based on passed away while I was still writing Sugarfiend. He was an amazing person, and I miss him.

Gloria, Estelle’s no-nonsense, pizza-loving roommate and partner in crime, is based on a dear friend I lived with for a short time when I was 18. She would like you to know she didn’t pull even half the shenanigans that Gloria does inSugarfiend, but that she is, in fact, every bit as cool. We are dear friends to this day, and thankfully, she loved the book.

Bill is basically a southern version of my husband, Jim. Like Bill, Jim did once own a t-shirt that said “Chicks Dig Me,” but wore it so much it became thread-bare. And, yes, chicks dig him.

There are many more characters to love in Sugarfiend, and most of them also resemble people I dearly love. And I sincerely apologize to those people, but they should probably stop being so memorable and so much fun to write about, or they will end up in my next novel as well.

Excerpt:

I headed to Mama Mia’s, the ship’s Italian buffet. I wish I could put the pasta bar in my pocket and never have to be without it again. The spicy meat loaf is also a little slice of dehydrated soup mix heaven. Whatever would I do when it came time to go back out into the world of foods with limits? I was sitting by my cute little lonesome when the next best thing to All You Can Eat came walking up in semi-snug button-flies and a t-shirt that said, “Chicks Dig Me.”

“You got a hankering for some pizza?” Bill Baker said in his typical twang. He was loaded for buffet bear, but he didn’t sit down. This represented his third attempt to fraternize with me, and he’d learned to expect disappointment, I suppose.

“Did you really just say ‘hankering?’”

“Yes, ma’am".

“Well, sit on down, ya big hayseed.”

“Really?” He checked the chair next to me for alligators, fart cushions, and live  grenades. “I’d be delighted.”

“But what?”

“Huh?”

“You’d be delighted, but what?”

“Damn it, woman, I am delighted. I’m fucking elated. I’ve been talking to you for sixty seconds now and I still have both heads and both balls attached.”

“Am I that big a shrew?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Bill sat down, then took a long sip on his iced tea.

“Well here we are having dinner anyway,” he proceeded on down the icy highway like a truck driver hauling a load of eggs. “And you said it couldn’t be done.”

“Nice t-shirt,” I said, and imagined myself taking it off of him.

Author Bio:
Caroline Burau is a blogger, two-time author, and a 911 dispatcher. Her first book, Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat was a Reader's Digest Editor's Choice and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award.
When she's not writing or obsessing about writing, she's spending her royalties on yoga classes, strappy sport tops, and used books. She lives with her husband, two geriatric cats, and an excitable yellow lab in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

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