Juliet Madison – Guest blog and giveaway

5 Things My Character Probably Shouldn’t Have Done

Kelli, the character in my novel FAST FORWARD, gets herself into a lot of tricky situations, and here are the top 5 things that might have been best for her to avoid… But first, here’s an overview of the plot to give you an idea of the set up:

Aspiring supermodel, Kelli Crawford seems destined to marry her hotshot boyfriend, but on her twenty-fifth birthday she wakes in the future as a fifty-year-old suburban housewife married to the now middle-aged high school nerd.

Trapped in the opposite life of the one she wanted, Kelli is forced to re-evaluate her life and discover what is really important to her. Will she overcome the hilarious and heartbreaking challenges presented to her and get back to the body of her younger self? Or will she be stuck in the nightmare of hot flushes, demanding children, raunchy advances from her husband and hideous support underwear forever?

So, the top 5 things Kelli probably shouldn’t have done are…

 

1. Gone bungy jumping after eating eggs for breakfast

She didn’t really want to go bungy jumping in the first place, but there’s a reason why she feels she has no choice – she thinks it will catapult her back to her 25 year old self. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

But after a gourmet birthday breakfast served up by her geeky husband and son she’s never met before, Kelli feels a little queasy when it comes to taking that leap of faith…

“Take a deep breath, Kelli,” Ben instructed. “And then allow yourself to simply fall forward.”

I didn’t know whether to cry or vomit, or both. I imagined my half-digested yolkless eggs going on a bungy jump of their own, only without the cord, landing in the water below with a big splosh. That made me want to vomit even more.

 

2. Thrown herself at the boyfriend from her youth when she finds him in the future

Imagine this… you’re a guy, you’re with your gorgeous new girlfriend out on the town, and some strange middle-aged woman runs across the busy road and launches herself at you, declaring to have come from the past and saying “I know you still love me”?

Yeah, not the best way to win a guy over is it?

Poor Kelli, she’s had to leave her boyfriend behind in the past as now she’s married to someone else; the nerd she used to tease in high school, but she’s not quite ready to accept her new reality. Not only does she cause a bit of a scene with their reunion, but she trips over a cafe table and falls onto the back of a large man who has forgotten to pull his trousers all the way up, who then falls onto someone else, creating a human sandwich.

Nice one, Kelli.

 

3. Tried to squeeze into the dodgy SlimFX Magic Suit to look slimmer

As a 25 year old model trapped in a body twice her age, Kelli’s never needed support underwear. Until now. In order to fit into her favourite red dress she’s kept for 25 years so she can wear it to her 50th birthday party, she’s going to need a little help.

Enter, the original SlimFX Magic Suit (unfortunately she hasn’t yet discovered the new and improved version 2.0).

Problem is, she soon discovers she might need a support suit to fit into the support suit, and that could go on and on. She’d be her own Russian doll.

Despite the challenges, she gets it on, but can’t breathe, so she has to try to take it off. That’s when the real challenge begins…

I grabbed the edge of the fabric again, pulling as hard as I could, but only managed to squash my face, my upturned nose now practically touching my forehead. I must have looked like one of those criminals who cover their face with stockings. I could rob a bank in this thing, only I’d need an accomplice—or a guide dog—to show me where the hell I was going and possibly an oxygen tank feeding me air through a straw.

Oh my God! What was I going to do? My mind swirled in one chaotic haze, as panic rose within and the chances of getting out of this predicament alive seemed slimmer by the minute. Unlike my abdomen.

Crazy images flashed through my mind of Will finding me passed out on the floor of the bedroom, the magic suit still covering my head, arms still stuck up in the air … paramedics whisking me off to hospital …. Will waiting anxiously outside the operating room and the doctor emerging with an expression of defeat, pulling the mask off his face in resignation.

‘I’m sorry, Mr McSnelly. We did everything we could. We managed to remove some of it, but couldn’t get it all, I’m afraid. The situation was too far advanced and she couldn’t fight any longer. I’m very sorry.’

Will would collapse in tears and the doctor would go back to the operating room and sign my death certificate. Cause of death: Asphyxiation by SlimFX Magic Suit.

 

4. Been mean to her sister when she was younger

Kelli’s sister Kasey is the complete opposite to her. As a child, Kasey was obsessed with bugs and would spend hours in the garden studying them and collecting them, while Kelli would spend hours teasing her. The sibling rivalry continued into adulthood, and they have a big argument the night before Kelli’s 25th birthday – the night before Kelli wakes up in the future as a 50 year old.

Kelli’s in for a few shocks in the future when she sees her middle-aged sister, and let’s just say, Kasey is responsible for a huge scientific discovery that makes her a kind of celebrity in her own right, with no financial worries at all and a hot husband to boot. Take that Kelli. 😉

 

5. Stood behind her daughter who’s in labour

If it wasn’t enough of a shock for Kelli to wake up double her age and find out she’s a mother to two grown children, she discovers she’s about to become a grandmother too…

This couldn’t be happening. Real grandma’s knitted and had short curly mauve hair and stored tissues up their sleeves, didn’t they? I was too young for this. Two children and a grandchild-to-be all in one day? I needed Valium. Preferably intravenously.

And when her daughter goes into labour while wearing a fairy costume at Kelli’s fancy dress party, the maternal instincts she never knew she had kick in. She takes her daughter to the hospital, along with her costumed-up husband and son-in-law, but unfortunately takes position behind her to support her back and help her walk through the doors of the hospital…

“Quick, inside before another one comes!” Jason urged, draping his wife’s arm around his neck and the other one around Will’s while I held onto her back as we scurried rather pathetically towards the entrance.

We entered through the automatic doors when Diora stopped suddenly in pain, the broken corner of her wing poking me in the eye.

“Ouch!” I instinctively flung my hands at my eye, but Diora lost her balance so I quickly returned my hands to her back, squinting my injured eye madly with the pain. “Holy hell!”

When Diora regained her ability to stand, I finally opened my eye to find hospital staff looking at us with a combination of shock and amusement on their faces. You’d think they’d never seen a woman in labour before. Then I realised it wasn’t every day you saw Superman, Dumbledore, a pregnant fairy with a vomit-stained dress and broken wing, and a middle-aged wannabe model with a ripped dress and deformed eye walking through the doors of a hospital.

 

As you can see, Kelli goes through quite a lot in one day! And there’s plenty more where that came from. But these challenges are necessary for her to learn a few lessons and discover why she’s been launched into a future that is the opposite of what she wanted. Hopefully Kelli finds a light at the end of the tunnel!

 

Fast Forward is published by Harlequin Australia’s digital imprint, Escape Publishing.

Juliet Madison is a naturopath-turned-author with a background in dance, art, internet marketing and perfume sales (yes, she was one of those annoying people in department stores who spray you with perfume). Nowadays she prefers to indulge her propensity for multiple careers by living vicariously through her characters. She likes to put these characters into extraordinary situations and take them on a challenging journey to discover their true passion and inner strength, weaving in some laughs, tears, romance and sometimes a touch of magic along the way.

Living near the beach on the beautiful south coast of New South Wales, Australia, Juliet spends her days homeschooling her son and running her internet business, and her nights writing fiction while doing her best to avoid housework.

Visit Juliet online:

Website http://www.julietmadison.com
Blog http://www.julietmadison.wordpress.com
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/julietmadisonauthor
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/juliet_madison
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/julietmadison/
Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6889443.Juliet_Madison

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For the chance to win a digital copy of Fast Forward by Juliet Madison, just leave a comment below. Good luck!

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