Forgotten Blog Tour: A Day in the Life of Cat Patrick

I was lucky enough to be asked to kick off the blog tour for Forgotten by Cat Patrick, the amazing debut novel about a girl who has no memory of her pasy, but remembers her fuure. Read on for A Day in the Life of Cat Patrick.

I hope this guest post doesn’t bore you to tears because as it turns out, I have a pretty normal life. For that reason, I will attempt to include only highlights from a typical day. These are as follows:

Wakeup: 5:30 a.m. if I’m lucky; 6:15 a.m. if hubby and I stayed up late watching reality TV. I pop my feet into slippers and head downstairs for…

Breakfast (wow, this is riveting stuff): Usually something packed with protein like a mini wheat bagel with almond butter, a cheese stick and a hardboiled egg. I’m off the sauce—caffeine—as it gives me migraines, so now I’m drinking decaf English Breakfast tea with milk, no sugar.

By 6:30 a.m. at the absolute latest, I’m in my home office. I’ve usually got a blanket on my lap because I’m always freezing. I check emails, Facebook, Twitter, the blog…then I get to it. I edit manuscripts or work on new novels, or even sometimes answer interview questions until…

8:30 a.m., when hubby leaves for work. I take over with our twin daughters, who have hopefully been fed and watered by this point. Between now and about noon, we do things like read books upon books from their bookcase; build with LEGO bricks; go for walks to look at rocks, slugs and ducks; put on tutus and have dance parties; color and paint; squish clay and scooter around the house or the neighborhood. At not quite 3 years old, sometimes “we” are bossy, but we are always very cute, offering Mommy at least 15 belly laughs a morning.

From about noon to 2:30-ish, the girls have lunch and either naptime or “yaptime.” One of my daughters recognizes the value of rest and the other prefers to sleep for 15 minutes then tell stories for an hour with the help of her stuffed lovies in her crib (imagine me glowing with pride at her young storytelling prowess).

During this time, I work/eat/exercise/shower/read/tidy the house/laugh at the stories I’m hearing on the monitor, which often involve slides at the park and “humongous” dogs. You can see why my motto is “lunch is whatever can be made in under five minutes.”

The afternoon is a repeat of the morning with the girls, only we tend to go out more because where I live, the afternoons are the sunnier part of the day. Then it’s dinner/bath/bedtime for the girls.

After toddler bedtime, I go back to work for awhile until hubby gets home. Often on Saturdays, he has Daddy Duty and I work the whole day, which is both luxurious and torturous because I’m missing out on that family time. But we make up for it on Sundays.

Sometimes I ask the girls what they think I should write about, and they give responses like “snakes” or “Barbie” or “a burrito that’s sick and needs to go to the doctor.”

Maybe if I ever move to picture books…

There are mornings when I have help: a nanny comes for three hours on Mondays and my mom donates two other mornings of her precious time, so that’s when I really hunker down and get productive.

But really, my days are very much centered around my kiddos. Because as much as I love writing, I live for those little monkeys.

Of course, that’s not to say I’m not a tiny bit excited for preschool to start next fall (she types guiltily…).

If you’re still awake, I thank you kindly for reading.

Cat Patrick

Thank you, Cat, for such a cool post! Forgotten is released on 6th June (TODAY PEOPLE!), and you can buy it from Amazon UK and Amazon US. And if you need convincing of why, you can read my review, and my interview with Cat Patrick. Be sure to check out Cat Patrick's website.

Continue reading Forgotten Blog Tour: A Day in the Life of Cat Patrick

Interview with Photographer Josefine Jönsson

Remember when the cover for Entangled by Cat Clarke was revealed? Remember how everyone reacted to how beautiful it was? Well, I was lucky enough to interview the strikingly beautiful photographer AND cover model for Entangled and Forgotten by Cat Patrick, Josefine Jönsson!

N.B. All photos used in this post are copyrighted to Josefine Jönsson and used with her permission.

Thank you so much, Josefine, for letting me interview you! I absolutely love your photos! Can you tell us a little about yourself and your photography?Thank you, very glad you like them!

I started photographing in the beginning of 2006, back then my very best friend Harriet used to model for me. This was also when my love for photography first started and by then I was ever so eager to experiment with different lights, locations and models. I learned a lot by taking self-portraits, this way I could test new things that I wasn’t ready to test on other models. If I failed I could just throw the photos away and make it better next time. But taking self-photography is a great way of letting your creativity flow and that is what I like the most by modelling myself.

Basically what I’d like to express with my photography are my dreams and memories, doing this by scouting locations I find timeless, as well as creating my own characters. I do find my self-photography a lot more different than my other work with models, as I take my self-portraits for myself rather than to anyone else. I guess that is why they’re filled with more emotions than my other work.

Not only did you take the photos for the covers of Entangled by Cat Clarke and Forgotten by Cat Patrick, you are also the model. Is it difficult to take self-portraits?
I’ve been taking self-portraits for quite some time now, but now and then I find it quite hard. Sometimes they turn out how I like them to turn out, but other times they don’t. And finding the right angles sometimes is hard! Working with a remote sure make it easier, but sometimes the focus drives me insane. To achieve a certain emotion is easier when taking self-portraits as you know exactly what you want, but also a lot harder when you’ve have to do it all yourself!

Are you approached about using your photography for book covers or do you have to submit?

Being a member in a photo agency makes it easier for clients to find my work, but I’ve been approached personally also about selling my photos for covers.

When using an older photo rather than taking a new one for book covers, how do you decide which photo to use?

It is not usually me who decides which photo to be used. But it depends on the book, because sometimes I think my older work fits the cover better than my newer photos.What is the process from photo to book cover? Do you just take the photo, or are you involved in actually designing the covers?

Most of the time the clients see a photo they’d like to use, then it is a photo I’ve had on the agency or on my own website. But they can also request a shoot where they decide how the photo should look like. I am not involved with designing the photo, even if it would have been fun. But I guess it is for the better, I am not good with designing anyway.

Your photo _heartbeat II. had a few edits before making it to the cover of Forgotten, the most noticeable being the edits to your top. Why were the changes to the sleeves made?

Yes, actually I didn’t know this until I saw the cover. I have no idea why they decided to change the sleeves, but I guess they had good reasons for doing it. Personally I prefer it without the sleeves like the original, but it’s up to the designer to decide.

_heartbeat II.


You have also had photos used on the covers of The Dead of Summer by Mari Jungstedt and Kwetsbare Vrouwv (Willing Flesh in the UK) by Adam Creed. Out of the four covers that feature your photography, which is your favourite?

I really enjoy the cover of Entangled, which has also gotten the most feedback. But the cover for Mari Jungstedt is also a favourite of mine.


Click for larger views.

Outside of book covers, what can people expect from your photography? What do you hope they will see?

I always explain that I rather speak with my photography than with words, because this is how I express myself the best. And hopefully they will enjoy looking through my thoughts, dreams and memories resembled as photography.

_playing with fire.


_hearbeat III.


_autumn sleep II.


Who or what inspires you in your photography?

Dreams and tales inspire me a lot, also when seeing a certain location gives me several ideas, so nature sure inspires me a lot. A few photographers I am inspired by are Carl Bengtsson and Jimmy Backius.Are there any more book covers featuring your photography coming soon that we can look forward to?

Yes! There might be two, but one I am sure about, I believe it is in Dutch though!

Thank you, Josefine, for such a fascinating interview! Look at those beautiful photos! Oooh, I love them! You can see more of Josefine's photography on her website, her blog, or her deviantART page. I highly suggest you go check them out!

If you haven't yet, but the covers have piqued your interest, you can read my reviews of Entangled by Cat Clarke and Forgotten by Cat Patrick.

Continue reading Interview with Photographer Josefine Jönsson

Interview with Cat Patrick

Today I'm honoured to share with you an interview with the wonderful Cat Patrick, the debut author of Forgotten!

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Oh boy...where to start? I drive a minivan and live in the suburbs but am still clinging to my youth with the help of black nail polish, white Converse and an obsession with writing about the incredibly complex and wonderful lives of fictional teenagers. I’m addicted to Starbucks, in love with Arcade Fire and nothing writing-wise without my baby name book (for characters), Thesaurus.com and my copy of National Geographic’s Brain: The Complete Mind.

Forgotten is such an exciting and unique novel. How did you come up with the idea for it?

Thank you! I’d always wanted to write a novel and was just waiting for the right story to tell. One morning, when my twin daughters were five months old, I was doing something in the kitchen when suddenly I forgot what I was doing...inconveniently right in the middle of doing it (so much so that I still can’t recall what it was). I thought to myself what a tragedy it would be to have amnesia, then I started thinking up scenarios where it would be especially difficult. Getting up with twins in the middle of the night...waking up with a stranger...GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL! Then I thought, “Yeah, but what if instead of remembering the past, you remembered the future?”

My husband’s job is forecasting entertainment trends; I ran the idea by him and watched his eyes light up as I talked. I started writing Forgotten that day and finished it less than two months later.

There are parts of Forgotten that are reminiscent of the movie 50 First Dates. Were you inspired by the movie when writing your novel? Do you mind the comparisons?

I have a theory that there are really no original ideas, as much as we’d like to think that there are. In creative writing classes, everyone writes on the same topic and every story is different. In that way, I don’t mind comparisons—I’ve heard Forgotten compared to 50 First Dates, Memento, and even Time Traveller’s Wife without the time travel—but as much as I appreciated their stories, I wasn’t directly inspired by them.

I was most inspired by the idea of forward memories: how it would be wonderful and awful at the same time to remember your future.

What research did you have to do for Forgotten, if any?

I didn’t do any beforehand, but while writing, I did a lot of random one-off research to make the story and the characters as believable as possible.

For example, I’m still (thankfully) in touch with my high school creative writing teacher and he was a wonderful resource for things like typical junior class schedules and course requirements. One of my brothers used to work at a retirement home, so he was helpful in the scenes about London’s grandmother. And my high school boyfriend’s brother is the chief of police in my hometown: I asked him about how one might go about digging up a body.

There are quite a few serious issues covered in Forgotten. Is it important to you to cover such important subjects in your writing? If so, why?

It’s important to me to actually say something in a novel, but I never wanted Forgotten to come off as a message book. I do think that teens are smarter than some fiction gives them credit for, and they’ve got tough stuff going on in their lives, so it’s worth presenting the bigger issues because not only are they open and capable of understanding, but they can also relate.

How was your route to publication?

The road to publication of Forgotten was, so I’m told, abnormally fast. Yet for me, an impatient person, it was painfully slow. I wrote the novel in two months; when I was nearing the end, I researched a list of agents who I thought might be interested. On a chilly February morning, I was feeling particularly giddy about the state of the novel and, thinking that it would take awhile for him to get back, I emailed a pitch to my top pick. He wrote back in seven minutes, requesting the entire book via email. After doing a nervous/happy freakout dance, I promptly called my husband and asked him to fake sick and come home to watch our girls for the afternoon, which he did. I finished the book around 10 p.m. and sent it off to the agent. He liked it; he signed me up. We did several rounds of edits to get it ready for sale, then in August, 2009, it went to auction with (a shocking) six publishers bidding. Ultimately, Little, Brown bought it in the U.S., Egmont in the U.K. and several others worldwide. Since then, there’s been editing/copyediting, cover development, marketing planning and a whole lot of me tapping my nails, anxiously awaiting the worldwide launch of my first book.

Forgotten is your first book. How does it feel to know your debut novel will soon be in the hands of readers?

Exciting/terrifying/thrilling/amazing/exhilarating/overwhelming.

There have been a fair number of gorgeous covers for Forgotten on the internet, for the different editions in varying countries. Being from the UK, I have to say I love the cover designed by Josefine Jönsson. Which is your favourite?

I love each of the covers for different reasons. The US cover is incredibly striking with the massive print and the shadowy girl (plus I recently met the cover model, who is just lovely and also a Cat). The Australia cover is very dreamlike to me, with the swirling field of red flowers. It makes me so happy. And I adore the dark and mysterious UK cover. That “vibe” is what I’d always envisioned for Forgotten. I think the literal translation of the two sides of London’s brain is amazing and the windy, desolate backdrop is just perfect.



Tell us about how you write; do you write in a particular place? Do you have any music playing? Do you have any must-haves with you while writing?

We moved recently, and I took the opportunity to create my perfect writing space. My office is light grey with a wall of white bookshelves and two big windows that let in lots of natural light. I shut the door to block out sounds of lively toddlers playing with Daddy or Grandma, and listen to nothing but what’s happening in my brain (I love music but it’s way too distracting for me to have on in the background). I’m always cold, so I usually have a blanket wrapped around me and a latte next to me, too. I’m most productive in the morning; often I roll out of bed and write in my PJs for a few hours until hubby goes to work. My brain tends to shut down from three to five in the afternoon, so you’ll never catch me writing then. But I do think it’s important to write everyday to stay involved in your story.

What was most surprising to you during the writing process? And the publication process?

The most surprising thing about the writing process was how quickly my story leapt onto the page when I got really excited about it. When I have ideas for new books, I just start writing...if it’s taking too long or if I’m having to think too much about it, I know it’s not right and I move on.

Everything has surprised me about the publication process because I’m a newbie. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ride so far.

What are you working on now? Can you give us a teaser?

I’m editing my second novel, which will come out June 2012, and working on a third book which no one has seen yet but which I’m very excited about. I can’t give any details yet other than to say that both fall into my favourite niche...what I like to call “strange in Normalville.”

Which authors inspire your writing? What are you reading for at the moment and most looking forward to?

I’m very inspired by fiction crime writers like Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben and Tana French. I am in awe of the heartbreakingly genius character development that authors like Markus Zusak, John Green and Carolyn Mackler are known for. I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman: the man can do no wrong. Right at the moment, I’m reading my own second novel again; I’m not sure what I’ll start next. I am very much looking forward to the next book in the Matched series by Ally Condie.

Anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to spread the word about Forgotten!

Oh, and I’d love for anyone and everyone to friend me on Facebook; follow me on Twitter and check out my website at catpatrick.com.

Thank you, Cat, for such a fantastic interview! Be sure to check out Cat's website, and my review. Forgotten will be released on 6th June 2011, and you can pre-order it on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Continue reading Interview with Cat Patrick

Review: Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Forgotten by Cat Patrick (ARC) - With the intrigue of Memento and the romance of The Time-Traveller's Wife, Forgotten is the perfect YA novel. Here's the thing about me: I can see the future in flashes, like memories. But my past is a blank. I remember what I'll wear tomorrow, and an argument that won't happen until this afternoon. But I don't know what I ate for dinner last night. I get by with the help of notes, my mom and my best friend Jamie, and the system works ...Until now. Everything's falling apart. Jamie's going of the rails. My mom is lying to me. And I can't see the boy I adore in my future. But today, I love him. And I never want to forget how much ...Forgotten is the story of a girl for whom yesterday is lost, today is an adventure, and tomorrow is a memory. An unforgettable read. From Amazon UK

I received a surprise ARC of Forgotten last week, and as soon as I read the press release, I pretty much squealed. It sounded so unique, so fresh, and so exciting! So as soon as I finished the book I was reading at the time, I picked this book. And I have just one word for you: wow!

Forgotten was so much better than I even imagined it was going to be. It was very reminiscent of the movie 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, with the notes that London leaves herself every night. But the difference is that she remembers the future - not see the future in flashes or glimpses, but "remembers" it, like we remember the past. She recognises people she sees today from remembering them being in her future - her mother, her best friend, etc. Which is why it's so odd that she doesn't remember this gorgeous boy who shows up one day at school, and how she has to write notes every night so she knows him the next day - even after weeks of knowing each other.

It's really beautiful seeing London try and keep a relationship going with Luke when she doesn't it's like meeting him for the very first time everyday. She doesn't tell Luke about her memory problem, like she doesn't tell most people. There are a very few people who do actually know, so trying to build a relationship from what is nothing each and everyday, by the help of her notes and what her mum tells her... it's difficult, but wonderful and beautiful to watch.

But it's not all lovely moments with her boyfriend. She has a re-occuring memory from the future of a funeral, but she doesn't know who it is. At first, it's only brief, little moments that she remembers, but then she remembers more details each time. Her mum is the only person she recognises from her day-to-day life, and she has no idea what's going on, but knows it's something big. That along with fighting with Jamie, her best friend, and lied to by her mum over her relationship with her dad, along with trying to live as normal a life as possible with her condition... life isn't really all that easy.

There isn't much more I can tell you about this book without spoiling it, but it is absolutely fantastic! Seriously, I cannot tell you how good it is! Unfortunately, it's just a stand alone novel, though I finished wanting more and more. This is one book you cannot miss out on, it's just amazing!

Thanks to Egmont UK for sending me a review copy.



Published: 6th June 2011
Publisher: Egmont UK
Pre-order on Amazon US
Cat Patrick Website

Other reviews:
Eleusinian Mysteries

Continue reading Review: Forgotten by Cat Patrick