Thanks to Caroline Burau for stopping by with a guest post on her cover for Sugarfiend and an excerpt from the book! Please check out her tour page on CLP Blog Tours for more information and a giveaway!
**Guest Post**
My husband, Jim, and I came up with the concept for the cover of Sugarfiend. Originally, I had more grandiose plans involving a very expensive layer cake, then realized when you’re working with a limited amount of space, the simpler the better. Also, I was kind of broke.
The cake toppers were the cheesiest, cheapest I could find. The cupcakes (we bought four of them) were each the size of a small kitten, and smelled amazing. Unfortunately (and ironically) I was on a veggie and fruit-only detox that week. Working with those cupcakes and knowing I couldn’t eat any of them was a special kind of hell.
Jim, who has never had an epic internal battle over whether to eat a cupcake, or any other food, sensed my angst.
“Would it kill you to just have one?” he ventured.
“You did not just say that.”
“Sorry I blew up.”
I was and still am very pleased with how we placed everything. The plastic girl drowning in frosting is my leading lady, Estelle, and she has dived head-first into her biggest sugar binge, ever, with the help of too much booze and and all-you-can-eat cruise. Jim, who is a pro photographer and videographer, took the shot and later placed the title and author graphics in Photoshop.
Mercifully, the shoot took less than an hour, and we only needed to goof around with one cupcake. Having eaten only twigs, berries, hummus and carrots for almost a week, I was just the slightest bit edgy. I plucked the cake toppers out of the cupcake, placed it on a plate in front of Jim, and ordered him to eat it. Immediately. The other three, I wrapped neatly (while breathing them deeply), I placed in the freezer.
“How is it?” I asked him as he wolfed the thing down, perhaps a bit in fear for his own safety.
“It’s terrible,” he moaned.
“Oh, really?”
“No,” he sighed. “It’s freaking awesome.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
“Nobody’s making you do this detox, Estelle.”
In that face of that logic, Estelle would have totally eaten a cupcake right then, but I’d like to think I’m a little more evolved at this point, so I resisted.
For about four hours.
Then I ate two.
**Excerpt**
January something, somewhere in the Caribbean.
It’s karaoke night here on the SS Sugar Shock and I’m absolutely killing. I’m a star, a queen! A legend in my own mind.
Loretta Lynn never struck me as someone who would know exactly how many calories there are in one M&M (seven the in plain, twelve or so in the peanut), but if this song I’m singing at top volume is any indication, the woman does know heartbreak. Heartbreak and lyin’ and cheatin’. Therefore, I could absolutely be wrong about the M&Ms.
I’ve been wrong before.
Like when I thought James was something more than just a thirteenth-stepping chubby-chaser. Or like when I thought Bill was worthy of even touching the hem of my size-14 potato sack. Or like when I thought I could ever, for even one minute, abstain from sugar without eventually going batshit crazy.
As I round the corner from the verse to the chorus, I try to get a read on my audience. Suddenly, I experience one of those moments where one’s initial feeling of triumph gives way to the possibility that I actually have toilet paper stuck to my shoe or asparagus in my teeth, if I ever ate asparagus. Or that everyone in this place is completely on to the fact that I am in the middle of batshit crazy.
Women like you are a dime a dozen, you can buy ‘em anywhere.
For you to get to him, I’d have to move over, and I’m gonna stand right here.
The waitress with the pretzel-stick thighs looks pensive. My twin bunkmates Rhonda and Roxanne look bored and worried, respectively. But, that’s how they always look. There’s nothing much to read in Rhonda’s face that couldn’t be found in ten minutes of any given episode of The Jersey Shore, but Roxanne’s face is really saying something. It’s saying, I think, that this journey I’m on was doomed from the start. It’s saying that whatever I boarded this ship to do I’ve long since overdone and that what’s needed now is a little restraint. What’s needed here is better judgment. Moderation, for crying out loud!
But I don’t do moderation. I’m an all-or-nothing girl.
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