Instead of celebrating the publication of her second novel FAT CAT, which just hit stores yesterday, Robin Brande has been keeping a low profile, opting to go hiking in the Alps --- partly doing research for her next book, but also partly hiding out in fear of her book's dreaded release date. Below, she explains why she's so anxious about this usually exciting occasion, and shares details about what she considers to be the most personal work she's ever written.Usually when an author has a new book coming out, it’s all countdown widgets and promo bits and contest giveaways and “guess what --- almost here!”
A few author friends of mine noticed I wasn’t doing any of that. “What’s the deal? Don’t you care?”
“Oh yeah, I care --- too much. Which is why I’m going into hiding.”
Because out of all the books I’ve written, both published and as-yet unpublished, FAT CAT is the most personal one by far. It makes me feel like I’m baring my butt to the world.
Sure, the book is full of romance and comedy and cool science --- those were the easy parts to write, even though the science took a lot of research and personal experimentation. When Cat talks about making a lentil and barley loaf --- trust me, I ate that. Wild rice and pine nuts and dried cranberries? Zucchini muffins? Mmm, ate all that. I ate everything Cat eats in the book.
More important, I stopped eating all the things she stopped eating. No more processed foods. No more chocolate. No more salty snax. I even gave up (brace yourselves) coffee, which for me is like giving up air. But if Cat had to ditch her Diet Cokes, the least I could do was skip Starbucks for a while. Even though it made me want to cry.
But the fat parts of the book. Ugh. So personal and hard to write.
Because I’ve been that girl. And that woman. Off and on for years upon years, I’ve been up and down in my weight, felt the pudge pile on and then deflate again --- those of you who have had weight struggles know what I’m talking about.
And a good stretch of that fat time was during high school and college. I won’t reveal my top weight, but trust me, it was intimidating. And I kept it up there through long stretches of superfatty eating, followed by weird diets I’d find in women’s magazines, followed by losing my mind and breaking down and eating a whole box of Little Debbies in one sitting. Good times.
So when Cat talks about how she feels about her body, that comes from my heart. When she talks about her love of cookies and ice cream and all the great comfort foods --- yeah, word. And about some of the humiliations she’s suffered --- yep, I was there.
But she also gets to experience what I have, which is the gradual whittling away of the excess, until one day you’re surprised to find how strong and light and energetic you feel, how clean, how free of all those chemicals you were accidentally pumping into your body along with the box of this or bag of that. I know how great it feels to feel great, and that’s an experience I wish I could have had back in my high school and college days. In a way, I wrote FAT CAT for the girl I was. She would have been all over Cat’s experiment.
Plus, it was fun to give Cat some guy trouble, since I never had a scrap of that myself when I was younger. What good is it to be an author if you can’t insert your fantasy high school romantic situations into a novel? Come on now. Seems like a fair payoff for having to give up Starbucks for so long.
So, the book came out October 13th. In the weeks right before that, I was hiding out in the Alps, hiking from hut to hut and sleeping in bunk beds next to a bunch of German and Austrian strangers. Which, I might as well tell you, is part of the research for my next book. Being a mountain adventurer might not feel as personal to me as being a fat girl, but I’m throwing myself into the research and writing that book as much as I did into FAT CAT. I know it’s going to be a lot of fun.
And guess what? This time I’m not giving up coffee.
-- Robin Brande
