Hey cHEwY gum gums

Happy National Burger Day!

I might celebrate by eating a burger or two haha. You may have noticed my instagram (@oliverwinfree) has a lot of burgergrams. Why am I obsessed with burgers? I think it stems from my childhood, where I craved McDonalds and KFC, and ended up with boring Thai food instead haha. I have vivid memories of having a happy meal and biting into a cheeseburger, thinking this is the good life 🙂

One of the joys of travelling for my books is visiting new places and checking out the coolest burger places (and if it’s a different country, a McDonalds haha).

I was recently asked why food is a major aspect for most of my books. Food? I checked my books and food does feature a lot through my stories, including my first one, Thai-riffic! I mean, my first break was a story called ‘Hot and Spicy’ where my parents bought Thai food to school. It got published in the Growing Up Asian in Australia anthology. Thai-riffic! has loads of references to Thai cuisine. The Other Christy was all about baking treats.

So what is it about food and my books? Well, I like writing about family and friendships, and food brings people together. One of my classic sayings is that when a person comes to a new country, they may lose aspects of their original culture but food is something that they cling to. Food is a link back to your mother country, your history and memories.

Then I think about my own writing workshops and I have an exercise about mentioning your favourite foods. Because everyone has a favourite food right? You can draw all the senses through food too. So yeah, you can’t go wrong with putting food in stories.

So anyway, I am having a character obsessed with burgers in my upcoming cHEwY creation, Don’t Follow Vee (hoping to bring it out next year). This is such an easy character to write because surprise surprise, it’s another one based on me haha. But it also gives me an excuse to do some ‘research’ and visit plenty of burger places that could appear in the story. Same thing can happen in your own writing too!

All this talk is making me hungry haha. Time for a burger or three. Come follow me on Instagram or Twitter for more random cHEwY adventures hehe

O.W