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1.01 Intro to Warriors
41 Plays2 months ago
In this prologue episode, Laura teaches Jerrica all about the history of how Erin Hunter came to be, and the many authors and one editor who has been involved with the group.
References:
How they came up with the name
Vicky finds Firepaw tedious to write about
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Laura posts about Warriors and other books on TikTok as glomdii
Laura is glomdi on Twitch, Bluesky, and TikTok
Jerrica is stealthy. You cannot find her.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Never Grow Up' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
This is Never Grow Up, a show where two grown-ass adults discuss their love of middle-grade fiction. I'm Snowstorm, a.k.a. Laura. And I'm Sparkleheart, a.k.a. Jerrica.
What is 'Warriors 101'?
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to Warriors 101. Intro to Warriors is Warriors for Beginners. We're going to talk about Aaron Hunter and who they are. And don't worry, this is not an 8 a.m. class, so you can sleep in.
00:00:41
Speaker
This is the best of classes where you can listen anytime your heart desires and pause it and shut it off if you're sick of it. Please don't do that. I miss you. We don't exist when you turn us off.
00:00:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm. We're like your TV.
00:01:03
Speaker
I don't think that's what they meant. Okay. Okay.
Creation and Inspiration of 'Warriors' Series
00:01:09
Speaker
Okay, so, yeah, we're going to talk about Aaron Hunter and how Warriors came to be because this, for one season, is a Warrior Cats podcast because I finally convinced Jerika that Warriors is great and now she loves it.
00:01:26
Speaker
Love is a strong word. We'll see how it goes. Right now, I am not opposed. Well, no, first first I was opposed, then I was not opposed, and now I'm like, okay, this seems all right. So let's see if we can up that meter.
00:01:44
Speaker
Well, when we finished recording the last episode, which, spoiler, we did that way before this, um and by that I mean the next episode that you will listen to Into the Wild, book one, um you said that you were very intrigued and really wanted to know what happened next.
00:02:06
Speaker
i also never remember what I say on podcasts. I will remember it for both of us. And apparently it's already recorded. So yes, it is. Okay.
Industry Insights: Working Partners Group
00:02:19
Speaker
Warriors is published by Harper Collins, but the original pitch for Warriors was created by Working Partners Group, which is a company that develops book ideas and creates, um brings them to the draftable stage and then pitches them to publishers. I am going to be honest. I didn't know that companies like that existed. i thought that you just wrote the book and found an agent and the agent went to a publisher for you.
00:02:54
Speaker
I also did not know that was a thing. And now I'm thinking, why in the fuck don't we do that? Because I am not an author. But we don't have to be authors. We just have to come up with ideas and sell them.
00:03:09
Speaker
It does sound truly amazing because I could come up with an idea. i just can't write it. I could write it.
00:03:20
Speaker
Wow, I thought I was going to have a butt in there, but I guess not. but Oh, here we go. I could write it. I just need an idea. so so we should actually become authors.
00:03:34
Speaker
Um, that's not true. I have lots of ideas. oh yeah I have ideas, but i don't have stories, if that makes sense. Yeah. I sit down to write and I have this these these concepts, but I'm like, I don't know what the story is. So I have a hard time writing it. know But if you knew what the story was and you told me, then I could probably write it.
00:03:57
Speaker
And maybe we should try that sometime when we have extra time in our lives. but Okay. Extra time.
Victoria Holmes and Her Role in 'Warriors'
00:04:06
Speaker
well Working Partners came up with the concept of Warriors, which was just, at that point, a group of feral cats in different clans. and they recruited Victoria Holmes, who was an editor at the time.
00:04:28
Speaker
and She was a little reluctant to write the series because she while she loves animals, she was more of a dog person. So, o yeah. So he kind of decided that she would create the stories for it and then other people would write the stories. So they need to find writers now. And she also edits for them.
British Influence and Thematic Elements
00:04:56
Speaker
So essentially the process is she does like the outline for it. She sends it off to whoever's writing at the time, which there are two main people who write for it. And then they send it back to her and she edits it.
00:05:07
Speaker
So Vicki Holmes was born in England. Yay! Yeah, yeah so this is all these people are, um we get these books from across the pond, as they say. That makes me feel so much better.
00:05:24
Speaker
Why? Are you picturing the cats with little British accents now? Well, now I am. i don't know. Like, i don't want to get political here, but.
00:05:37
Speaker
Oh. I'm, um well, I'm an Anglophile, so I love British culture. Doctor Who. Doctor
00:05:49
Speaker
that Yes, that that's not that. the I mean, yes, I do love Doctor Who, but like, yeah, I thought so. But yeah, I love British culture. So and not just like.
00:06:02
Speaker
so and like all of Britain, like England and ah Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man. Northern Ireland, which is a weird situation, but yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
And Wales is where the fifth season of Being Human took place. No, the, yeah, the fifth.
00:06:26
Speaker
Wales is also where they filmed ah a lot of Doctor Who when it came back in 2005. That makes sense. so ah Vicky Holmes grew up on a farm riding horses. She learned to ride horses when she was two years old.
00:06:42
Speaker
So she's a horse girl. She is. And I'm a little bit jealous because i can't afford anything having to do with horses other than media.
00:06:55
Speaker
Horses are expensive. Well, they're also animals that have their own lives. like Like they're busy. They're too busy for me.
00:07:08
Speaker
I mean, Yeah. like I don't know. I just like... It's like, oh man, I wish I could own a horse. But like... I don't... You shouldn't own any creature, i don't think.
00:07:23
Speaker
I think or you know exactly what I mean. Yeah. yeah Yeah, maybe I do, but that doesn't i stop my mouth from moving and saying things. Can we say, though, like, actually, I agree with you because the concept of, like, owning your dog or your cat, for some reason, I find it very strange. And I think more of it as, like, the protector of your dog and your cat. Because I recognize that legally you own them, but in my head, I'm like...
00:07:52
Speaker
I feel like that gives people the mindset of like, I can do whatever I want to my dog and cat. Like you see videos of people like doing things that clearly make them uncomfortable and the people feel okay doing that because like, this is my dog. I own him. Where in my head, I'm like, my cat is like,
00:08:11
Speaker
an independent creature who i provide food and shelter to and i have to respect like whatever he wants like like i'm not gonna let her eat glue like she wants to but you know and she doesn't want to be pet yeah like you you don't own your children so how are you gonna own your pets that's that's all i'm saying Okay, I would like to be the protector of a horse, but I um am poor and horse people i in my head are rich.
00:08:47
Speaker
I looked up at a trail ride around me because I wanted to give myself a little treat and the cheapest one was like $125 for like a half hour trail ride per person.
00:08:59
Speaker
Not terrible. s but It's more than I can afford for it eight people. Oh, okay. Well, yeah.
00:09:11
Speaker
Because I don't think everyone in my family would want to spend $125 half-hour trail ride. Okay, so Vicki Holmes, she became she studied English at the University of Oxford, and then she's such a horsey girl that she had to take a year off to work with horses. But after that, she became a teacher and was like, that actually is not for me. So that's when she joined Working Partners as an editor.
00:09:39
Speaker
So like I said before, she had like trouble figuring out what to do with these cats because... As we've seen, she's a horse and dog person. um But then she started thinking about them as having human issues. And something clicked with her. And she decided, ok as long as I write this as a group of cats with Shakespearean problems, would be cool and fun. All right.
00:10:12
Speaker
So that's like the whole concept behind um the stories in here. So automatically, you know, it's going to be a great series, right? Sounds and very intriguing.
00:10:26
Speaker
She's also fascinated by just like religion in general. So she also decided, okay, well, these cats got to have something that, you know, and some religious structure to them. Yeah, some sort of spirituality.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah. So that's how StarClan was created. And it's not a spoiler to say that StarClan looks over these cats and...
00:10:53
Speaker
There's a lot of debate over whether that's a good thing or not, and some cats don't believe in StarClan, and some cats do, and some cats know they exist but don't like them very much. So I think she has done a good job representing a group of four secluded clans and with their Shakespearean problems and religious troubles.
00:11:18
Speaker
Damn. Damn.
Managing Continuity in 'Warriors' Series
00:11:21
Speaker
um She recruited two people who would be the main author of these books, Kate Carey and Cherith Baldry. And then some other people join have joined the team and left, and that's in later years.
00:11:36
Speaker
um they came up or they knew they had to come up with a pseudonym because this is a children's series and even in an adult books it's more complicated to have multiple authors on the book covers um especially since the way it works is that kate will write a book and then charis will write a book so like they're completely separate from each other gotcha So they came up with the name Aaron Hunter because they they wanted and a last name that started with either H, I, or K. And the reason for that is because they wanted their books near the Redwall series by Brian and Jacques.
00:12:15
Speaker
So they chose Hunter because it just seemed appropriate for cats. Sure. um And they said Aaron had a Celtic feel to it.
00:12:28
Speaker
It's an Irish name, so yeah. Well, I just, I thought that was kind of funny because, like, sure, it's Irish, but it's very, like, mundane. So it's just kind of funny to me that, like, when I see the what name Aaron, I don't think Celtic, you know?
00:12:43
Speaker
Although my sister's name is Aaron, so maybe that's why. Maybe. Aaron is, like, also the Gaelic name for Ireland, so... Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool.
00:12:55
Speaker
So yeah, Aaron Hunter was born. Vicky would do the plots and the editing, but she was also responsible for making sure there was continuity, which...
00:13:08
Speaker
Is also, um we'll just say that's a big job and we will forgive her for the very many continuity issues throughout this series.
00:13:19
Speaker
There are like 60 books written by multiple authors and
00:13:25
Speaker
Hard.
Popularity and Scope of the Series
00:13:26
Speaker
60? There's 60 of these things? So as of right now, there are nine arcs with six books each, but then there are super editions, there are there's manga, and there are short stories, and there are field guides.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yikes. People love warriors and they need to keep reading them. So they're like, well, we'll make two books a year plus a super edition. Sure, why not? Two books a year seems very doable.
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, that's why they have um two authors on it. No, I'm saying that, yeah, but like even so even one author, like that feels oh very doable. I mean... If they were doing six a year, that would that would make me get a little twitchy. Or one a month like Animorphs.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yikes. Yeah, I mean, that was... Animorphs are like 120 pages, so at least they're very short books, but still, just coming up with 12 concepts a year seems like a big idea. Like, fleshed-out concepts, you know? Obviously, you can come with concepts easily, but... Yeah.
00:14:42
Speaker
Vicky was also responsible for making sure that all of the voices were consistent, so like... but The voice, like author voice, not the voice of the actual characters.
00:14:55
Speaker
Obviously. Well, you looked like you were like... No, You looked like you were a blanket on that one. Nope, I was just expecting and you to explain it.
00:15:07
Speaker
okay. So i was just waiting for it. Vicky was only part of the series until 2017. And I say only, but that is 14 years because the first book came out in 2003. So it's a long time on one series. And then she left Warriors behind? Yeah, she left it behind. um i think it was because of health issues.
00:15:34
Speaker
I did not write that part down. Um, okay. Yeah. So she was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. So she stepped away entirely from warriors and she was writing on her own books, but like part time because then, you know, yeah, she didn't have to have as strict of a schedule and 2024.
00:16:05
Speaker
Vicky announced that she was, quote, allowed back onto the Aaron team next year for a very exciting cameo role in an upcoming publication. And I don't know what that was because it that's all it says here. It doesn't say what it was, but I i have an idea of what it was, but it's a spoiler for for very late in the series. The title of it is a spoiler, so I don't want to give it away. Okay.
00:16:33
Speaker
But it said sounds like she's doing better. Yeah, so, like, obviously that's good. Some fun facts about Vicki Holmes.
00:16:43
Speaker
As a child, her nickname was Mouse. And so on the Warriors website, her name was Mousepaw, which is very funny to me because paw is an apprentice name.
00:16:58
Speaker
but But then she also said that if she was a cat, she would be a RiverClan medicine cat named Mouse Whisker. Wow.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's cute! Her favorite cat is Ravenpaw, and you can't know about the other favorites because they are also spoilers. Which one was Ravenpaw?
Kate Carey's Pseudonyms and Departure
00:17:21
Speaker
Ravenpaw is the one that was friends with Firepaw and Graypaw, who was a little like skittish and just generally nervous all the time. Okay.
00:17:38
Speaker
Someone asked her who her least favorite cat to write about was, and she said, writing about Firepaw can be tedious. The main character of the series.
00:17:52
Speaker
Wow. Right. Some of the other books that she has written, i think for each of the authors, I'm just going to give like a ah quick little mini and huh because i think it'll be fun. So are are sorry. Not that she has written books, all series that she has worked on. So like, cause she's an editor.
00:18:16
Speaker
My God, baby. We're going to come up with a warrior name for your cats. She's a year old now, right? She's three. What? Oh, you didn't get her as a kitten. No, I didn't get either one of them as a kitten. Okay. I was thinking you got her as a kitten. I raised a child. I don't need a kitten.
00:18:34
Speaker
I'm good on that. Okay. so some of the other books she's worked on is Heartland by Lauren Brooke. Jerika, I love Heartland so much. And guess what? It's a horsey book.
00:18:46
Speaker
I was about to say that. Oh, okay. It sounds like a horse book. I was literally reading it last night and I was like, Amy, stopping such a jerk to your sister.
00:18:59
Speaker
She is. Okay. She is. She worked on Animal Ark, Hope Meadows, and Dolphin Diaries. So I'm going to go ahead and say that she is just really into animals.
Cherith Baldry's Contribution and Background
00:19:15
Speaker
Sounds like it. She also worked on Puppy Patrol by Jenny Dale and The Darkest Age by A.J. Lake and some other books, but those are the ones. Those are like the main ones.
00:19:29
Speaker
Now, for Kate Carey, who is ah the author of the first book, Into the Wild. Kate Carey was born 1967. Whoa.
00:19:42
Speaker
sixty seven
00:19:46
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And also in England, she has a Bachelor of Arts degree and... Oh, she has a Master of Arts degree. Sorry, i was just reading in order.
00:19:58
Speaker
the ah She has a Master of Arts degree. After of earning her degrees, she moved to Scotland and lived there for 12 And that's where she started writing, except in 2004, she moved back to England.
00:20:14
Speaker
She was hired on Warriors after she sent a writing sample into Working Partners in 2001, and they matched her up with Vicki Holmes because she had the style that they wanted for the books.
00:20:29
Speaker
Unfortunately, in 2024, she announced that she would not be writing as part of the Aaron Hunter team but anymore. I could not figure out why. um i don't want to make a guess because I have literally no idea why, so I'm just not gonna. but Star is her final book in the series, and then after that,
00:20:56
Speaker
We don't get any more Kate Carey, which is very disappointing because I was looking over like the list of who wrote which book and I think that I like her books better.
00:21:08
Speaker
This was a bit unfortunate. Jericho, do you want to know about about her adorable cats?
00:21:18
Speaker
Go on. I'm kidding! Because she has a brother and sister, cats named Flower and Mew Mew.
00:21:31
Speaker
she also has a cat named Bartholomew. That's good. Which I do not approve of puns and cat names. But this time I decided to share it anyway because I figured that you and the audience would like it. People seem to like it a lot. You don't.
00:21:52
Speaker
approve of puns in general so um sometimes puns are like funny in the eye roll kind of way but in general yeah I don't I'm not a fan usually and somehow you and I are still friends even though i apparently committed an egregious pun that you haven't still have not forgiven me for Which pun? I don't remember.
00:22:20
Speaker
Oh. Ja-close. Yeah, ja-close. No, that's an example of a good pun that I think is really funny. Oh, so you're just giving me shit this whole time then? Yeah. Oh, okay.
00:22:34
Speaker
Because it's ridiculous. like that. um Let me tell you about Blog Clan, okay? Okay? Okay.
00:22:45
Speaker
So Kate Carey started a website called BlogClan, and I'm so sad that I never knew about it as a child because I should have include this in the intro episode. I had a Warrior Cats fan site from 11 13 years old, and i would have loved checking out BlogClan, I missed it, so...
00:23:13
Speaker
But on BlogClan, she went, or her pseudonym was CakeStar.
00:23:25
Speaker
but then But then her warrior name was listed as Crooked Fang. So I guess she had two names on it. She loves pseudonyms. Yeah. She said her favorite part of writing the book is the prologue because it holds so much potential for the rest of the book. And it's like a major novel within the book itself.
00:23:46
Speaker
Which I can kind of see right i comparing her books to like the books she didn't write. I can like kind of see it how I think that she...
00:23:59
Speaker
i The excitement is there, you know? Versus the other books. Not that the other ones are bad or anything. Just like hers are like extra special. Here's why I say Kate Carey loves pseudonyms, because she has written under several.
00:24:13
Speaker
ah Signs of Love, she wrote under Melody James, which is just like a teen romance series. Pippa Morgan's Diary is under Annie Kelsey, which is a middle grade drama. And I could not figure out why she used these pseudonyms, which really bummed me out.
00:24:32
Speaker
Hmm. Because Aaron Hunter makes sense, obviously, because it's this group. But i I couldn't find why she used Melody James and Annie Kelsey.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, that is kind of weird. Maybe she was trying to do it on the DL? Maybe. i don't know. Because she also wrote Bloodline under her own name.
00:24:56
Speaker
And that's an unofficial sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Which I own and I'm going to read at some point. Bloodline, not Dracula. Because I didn't care for Dracula.
00:25:09
Speaker
I don't like novels told in letter form is what I've learned. I've read a... I read a book by Meg Cabot, who did the Princess Diaries, and it was all in emails.
00:25:26
Speaker
o i E-mails and notes and stuff like that. What did you think of it? It was interesting. Like, I know a lot of people like him. I'm not, like, knocking it or anything. Just...
00:25:41
Speaker
I read a lot of really buzzy books like that, and I was like, after some time, I'm like, oh, there's a connection between all these books that I really disliked. yeah Buzzy books?
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, like popular books. Oh, okay. Not books about bees? No. No. um Kate Carey also wrote some Seekers books, which is the book series about bears that Aaron Hunter published. And I don't think I finished it, but I read a lot of them and I actually really like those. So I'm going to finish them.
00:26:24
Speaker
That one only had two arcs, though, which is only 12 books, which is very sad. I think those ones weren't very popular. No one likes the bears, huh? Yeah, which I can kind of see why, because it's a lot of traveling. Like,
00:26:40
Speaker
i i don't know. I just like that, I guess. But the bears do a lot of traveling and not as much plot as the cats do. so Oh, bears are different.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah. Which, a fun fact about Seekers, because we're not going to get to that for 12 years, um Aaron Hunter was considering, like the collective group obviously, was considering what book series or what animal would be the main character of their next book series. And they really wanted to do horses.
00:27:14
Speaker
But for what they had planned, decided that horses are too skittish and would just run away from the problems. They went with bears instead. Yeah. Which, i like, it bums me out so bad because I think a horse series by Aaron Hunter would be fantastic.
00:27:32
Speaker
But it would like, to be wild horses. Yeah. would be amazing. Like, what's that? would be from... movie Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron. Yeah.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I love that movie. I love it I've never seen it. We will watch it together. We're going to watch it
00:27:56
Speaker
Aaron Hunter is also coming out with another cat series. And I think like in 2026. And I'm so excited about it. Like cat series that's not Warriors by Aaron Hunter.
00:28:10
Speaker
Crazy. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, if they did
00:28:18
Speaker
giraffe series or a camel series or a llama series, I would be into it. Because camelids are my favorite animals. Um, I wonder if a giraffe is in one of their other books because they also...
00:28:37
Speaker
They also have two other series, Brave Lands and Bamboo Kingdom, which has a multitude of animals in it. Do you think that giraffes live near pandas?
00:28:54
Speaker
I know that they do not. Okay, that's disappointing. Pandas live in China. Giraffes live Africa. Yes.
00:29:04
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that. didn't know that about pandas. Okay. China and the surrounding areas, yeah. Oh, yeah, because that's why China lends pandas out to zoos and they cost a lot of money. Mm-hmm. Cherith Baldry, the second author.
00:29:23
Speaker
well The third ah author, but second writer of Aaron Hunter. So if you were shocked by the age of Kate Carey, listen to this. Cherith Baldry was born in 1947. She's like 80 years old.
00:29:38
Speaker
Jesus. and she grew up on a farm with cats. So obviously was destined to write cat books.
00:29:50
Speaker
Um, yeah. ah This is just fun. After getting married, the first cat she got was a gray tom named Tomlin.
00:30:02
Speaker
Tomlin? Yeah, so I guess that's pun also.
00:30:08
Speaker
Because it's a tom.
00:30:12
Speaker
I know, you don't like tom and she cat. It's weird, yeah. But no, almost like the first thing that pops in my head is Lily Tomlin. don't know who that is. She's an actress.
00:30:25
Speaker
Oh, well, why would I know her? Um, man, I can't think of anything at the moment. Oh, she was in Big Business.
00:30:39
Speaker
Okay. Never heard of that. Oh, she was Rose in Big Business. Holy fuck. Yeah, I love her. What the hell is Big Business?
00:30:51
Speaker
You don't know big business. It's a a movie where there are two sets twins born and the hospital accidentally swaps them so that they grow up with the wrong families.
00:31:05
Speaker
Weird. It's like a 90s movie, so of course it's weird. it's an 80s movie. She was the voice of Miss Frizzle.
00:31:21
Speaker
From the bus show? I didn't watch that. The Magic School Bus, yeah, from the bus show. i didn't watch that. But, okay, so, anyway, her husband, listen, listen, I'm really proud of this fun fact that I dug up, and you better also think it's fun. So her husband was a, just, scientist. I couldn't figure out what kind of scientist, just a scientist, and And he wrote a book. I'm pretty sure this is from him because I had to dig deep to find it. He wrote a book called The Battle Against Bacteria, A Fresh Look. Why am I proud of this?
00:32:00
Speaker
I don't know. But I'm just, I was happy that because I had to go to several different things because it was like, Oh, she was married just on her wiki page. It was like, oh, she's married to the late Peter Baldry, a scientist. And I was like, oh, a scientist. Come on, give me more information than that. So I looked him up and literally the only thing I could find was this book. And I was like, it says he was a scientist. So sure. Battle against bacteria.
00:32:27
Speaker
Why not?
00:32:32
Speaker
It's probably going to be very sciencey and not like actual battles, huh? Oh, yeah. I will not read it. She also, she lives in England, but for a while she lived in West Africa while they were um teaching, her and her husband were teaching at a university.
00:32:53
Speaker
um but then they returned to England and they had like kids and their kids grew up and left and all that. She has a cat called Bramble and Sorrel, which means nothing to you, but will mean everything to people who have read Warriors because there are two main characters with the names. The first part of the names are Bramble and Sorrel. So... Isn't there is it is it Bramble Pelt?
00:33:20
Speaker
From, yeah, My Brother, My Brother, and Me. Yeah. Yeah. Bramble Pelt is not the name of the cat in Warriors, though. Okay. i won't I won't tell you what it is yet. You have to wait until Series 2. Great.
Beyond 'Warriors': Other Works by Baldry
00:33:34
Speaker
right For her, it's funny after hearing how Kate loved writing the prologue, Cherith thinks that's the most difficult part of the book to write and puts it off sometimes until she's further into it. Interesting.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah. Some of her book series, Saga of the Six Worlds, sounds so good and I have to read it. I'm just going to read you the description of it, okay? Please do. It sounds interesting.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, so a simple farm boy is led by a mystical phoenix to a book which contains the word of God and faces great danger when he takes it from his home world on Baron to the planet Center so it can be copied and shared.
00:34:22
Speaker
what the fuck I That's why I want to read it That sounds wild. Yes! So, like, maybe we read that for a book club at some point or something, because, like, I gotta read this book, it or I'll just read it by myself.
00:34:37
Speaker
And I'll talk to you about it. ah The other series, Eagles Mount Trilogy. Okay, listen to this. Vare, a brave young pine marten, had hoped to show off his skill with a sword at the Water's Meat Summer Fair. But after his father is killed by a gang of thieves, Vare learns that his destiny will take him to Water's Meat for a more important reason.
00:35:06
Speaker
marten is what was in Inkheart. So I was immediately um obsessed with this. What is, I don't know what that is. it's kind of It's in the, like, weasel family.
00:35:20
Speaker
Okay. So, yeah, it's amazing. um And she also contributed some Seekers books. She wrote the Abbey Mystery series and then, like, a handful of just ah solo novels.
00:35:33
Speaker
Those are the three, like, main people working on the books. And everyone else, all the other authors do, like... Short stories or super additions. None of the other ones work on the main series consistently.
New Authors and Series Expansion
00:35:51
Speaker
So who took over for Kate when she left?
00:35:55
Speaker
Jerrica, you're not goingnna be happy about this. Uh-oh. Because up until this point, all of the errands have been women. But now we got a man on the team. All right.
00:36:07
Speaker
We have have Conrad Mason. Okay. is he gay? Is he gay? That's a great question. I don't know. It doesn't say.
00:36:18
Speaker
I'll find out. Okay. My new quest. I hope he's gay. Okay, one of the authors, I'm going to go over the other ones like a lot faster, but we have Clarissa Hutton, who wrote Red Tails Debt, which is my favorite short story, and fuck the haters. It's amazing, and I'll tell you why in this season. so
00:36:46
Speaker
It's very, it goes against canon a lot, so people don't like it. oh But I have reasons for why I don't care that it goes against canon, that ah which I will share.
00:36:59
Speaker
um So she became part of the Warriors team when she left HarperCollins and joined Working Partners, which is very confusing to me because I guess I just don't know how the business works. um HarperCollins, it publishes Warriors.
00:37:17
Speaker
Right. So, yeah, I don't know, but that's what she did. And she publishes under pseudonyms as a ghostwriter, and I could not find what those books were, which I was very sad about.
00:37:33
Speaker
Well, you're not supposed to find what book she was a ghostwriter on. That's the whole point. Yeah, well.
00:37:42
Speaker
I wanted to. ah tried really hard to. I couldn't. When Vicki Holmes stepped away from Warriors, Clarissa stepped in and wrote some novellas and some bonus chapters.
00:37:56
Speaker
And um yeah, I just really like what she's written. So I'm i'm happy that she stepped in. 2025, she so was allowed to start writing her full or her first full-length Warrior books, which is very exciting she published a young readers edition of the three musketeers which is not cat related she also publishes under just claire hutton which there were obviously i could find those books but those were american girl books she published the ron apple books and well that's it that was the end of my list i thought there was more but
00:38:41
Speaker
Some special mentions, because these authors are under the Aaron Hunter name, but don't publish for warriors, but I figured it would be fun to just mention them. Twee Sutherland wrote Seekers, which is the bear books, but also she wrote Secrets to of the Clans, which is a field guide for warriors, so it's like not... It's considered canon technically, but They wrote a prequel series, which goes against a lot of it. So it's like canon, but not canon. One one of those type of things. um
00:39:14
Speaker
She started her own series, Wings of Fire, which is about dragons. That I've heard of. Yeah, so like it it has kind of the same type of followers and warriors where people are like...
00:39:27
Speaker
They will get into it as like kids and then like grow up with it and create their own like dragons and their own. i haven't read it, so I'm not sure and what it is. if it's like, I don't know, clans of dragons or something. I know there like rain wings and sand wings and all that.
00:39:49
Speaker
But. Well, maybe I'll read them and then I'll tell you. Okay. Oh, I'm reading the first book right now. You got to stop reading books or there's not going to be anything for me to cover. i'm sorry. I'm sorry.
00:40:03
Speaker
There are plenty of books. We'll find them. Mbali Izzurlus wrote Survivors, which is the series about dogs that Aaron Hunter did. But also she wrote her own Foxcraft books, and there are only three of them. So it's not like a huge series, but I'm definitely covering those at some point on this podcast because I'm obsessed with foxes.
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a little obvious on that one. Yeah, i own all three of the books. I just haven't read them yet. I think I read the first one a long time ago, but I like barely remember it.
00:40:39
Speaker
And then Rosie Best wrote for Survivors, but has helped with Warrior's fan mail for over a decade before she started doing that, which I feel like is like a dream job.
00:40:58
Speaker
For me. oh okay. For anyone... Fan mail doesn't sound like... No, no, no, no. Listen, because if all of your job is just talking about Warriors and you're a Warriors fan... Yeah, okay.
00:41:14
Speaker
That's fantastic. makes sense. Yeah. um She also later wrote Bamboo Kingdom, which is a I have also not read that one yet, but on the front cover, there's a panda. so And it's called Bamboo Kingdom, so I can kind of get the idea. yeah ah We already talked about Conrad Mason. he wrote a super edition, which title isn't exactly a spoiler, but I don't want to say it yet because I want it to come up later. you know and well It will shock you when you hear it
00:41:48
Speaker
Now, I have saved Jillian Philp for last because we're going to fun it and we're going to fucking dunk on her. All right?
Controversy and Inclusivity in 'Warriors'
00:41:58
Speaker
Whoa. he Yeah. So she wrote Survivors, which is the dog series, and she got kicked out for being a TERF.
00:42:06
Speaker
Oh! A self-proclaimed TERF, in fact. She got fired on January 26, 2020 for, quote, abusive transphobic comments, mocking her fans on Twitter, and general unprofessionalism. Which, I try to find the comments because I don't like to go off of, like... um I couldn't find it because i don't have X on my phone and it wouldn't load on the browser and I wasn't about to download it and get back into my account just to find these comments.
00:42:40
Speaker
But she... This is actually hilarious to me. It's not hilarious because she's a horrible person and has probably hurt people over it. But she wrote an article for Spiked Online. And the title is, Will the trans activists who canceled me ever apologize?
00:43:03
Speaker
Wow. Right. I have an answer for her. And it's no, because why would you apologize for being a good person, you know? um So I read this whole article and I was kind of just laughing the whole time because she has such a victim complex because she will be like, all I did was tweeted hashtag I stand with Rowling and the Twitter mob came after me.
00:43:29
Speaker
she's
00:43:32
Speaker
The time that she posted that was when Rowling published her um her whole article about how she doesn't believe in trans people. Mm-hmm. So um it's actually hilarious to me that she's like, oh my god, these people are so horrible. All I did was say your gender identity isn't real and now they're mad at me. Mm-hmm. So, ah yeah. Yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker
ah She says, the Twitter mobbing took place over 24 hours, resulting in my so am i sat in my summary sacking. That doesn't even make sense. Resulted in my summary sacking.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah. if If you're in the UK, it makes sense. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. ah With no attempt to get my side of the story. And I'm just going to say this.
00:44:25
Speaker
I don't care what your side of the story is. Yeah, you say terrible things. You still said the terrible things. Yeah. She said, i was then fired by client Harper Collins, who thereafter pretended not to know me despite hosting me on media tours in the U.S. on multiple occasions and professing themselves over the moon with my work. My agent, Julia Churchill, dropped me too, ensuring I would never write for a major publisher again.
00:44:57
Speaker
And you know what? Fucking fucking good on you, HarperCollins and Julia Churchill. i love love yeah I love that you made this transphobe never write for a major publisher again.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah. Fuck off. Yeah, especially because obviously I know you don't do fandoms, but I had a Warriors website, so I was in the fandom a lot.
00:45:21
Speaker
The fan base for Warriors is the most fucking queer fan base I've like ever been in there's Growing up, there would be like a bunch of like gay shippings and people the cats as like...
00:45:37
Speaker
the cats as like Ways of understanding their own gender. And i when you are when you read the series in the age that you're like figuring out who the fuck you are obviously that's not just Warriors. That's a lot of series. So like Warriors fans are so incredibly gay and trans. And the fact that they fired her for being a transphobe just makes me really happy. Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's what should happen. Yeah. So, well, because there have been issues in the series of like, there are no gay cats or anything. And from things the authors have said, it's clear that they want to make gay cats. But HarperCollins is telling them no, because like, oh, well, some of our i audience in certain locations, like wouldn't like that, which obviously like,
00:46:37
Speaker
I don't care, you know, lose some money, i guess, but they're a business, so they can't do that. And so them firing a transphobe after like being pretty problematic about gay characters just feels good.
00:46:53
Speaker
I'm going to give you the slightest spoiler. To make up for what I just said, though.
Celebrating Diversity in 'Warriors'
00:46:59
Speaker
And that's that. Finally, we have gay characters in Warriors. Yay! After 20 fucking years, our cats can be gay.
00:47:10
Speaker
Well, they were gay the whole time. They were gay the whole time. There is one specific couple, and I'm curious if you figure out who it is. There's one specific couple that the whole fan base knew was gay as fuck the whole time. And graphic novels of the series have started coming out. And in the graphic novel, he... ah Well, I just said he, so I give that away. But he calls the cat his mate. So, like, obviously the whole fandom went fucking wild and, like... hu I knew it. And um they there were like questions for the authors like, were they gay the whole time? And I don't quote me on this, but I think the authors were pretty like vague about answering because they don't want to get in trouble. But like, yeah, they were gay the whole time, of course. like
00:47:59
Speaker
But yeah, that's all. That's everything I have. That's intro to warriors. Wow. That's pretty um substantial. Uh-huh.
00:48:10
Speaker
Aren't you like... Robust, even. i'm like energized. Like when I was doing all my research, looking all this shit up, I was like, oh my god, the creation of Warriors is just so much more cool than I was imagining.
00:48:28
Speaker
So, have you read the Survivors? I have read one of the books. Are you not going to read the other ones? Of course I'm going to read the other ones. Are you insane? Okay. Well, just, I mean, you know.
00:48:47
Speaker
ah Warriors is going to take a lot to get through, but I do have Survivors on my list of what to do after. Okay. Well, no, the only reason I ask is because, you know, if if Survivors was written What's-Her-Face Rolling Stan, then...
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, i'm I'm curious too about um how that will turn out. Or you're saying you don't want to do Survivors. No, no, i and I was just curious.
00:49:20
Speaker
and Okay. Because, yeah, I basically disowned the entire Wizarding World after Rowling. um When the shitty Hogwarts game came out, some of the streamers I know like made a big deal about how they're streaming it, and I was very disappointed in that. and Yeah. Yeah. ah ah Yeah, it's it's one thing...
00:49:48
Speaker
We're not going to get super into Harry Potter right now. But when people have it as like their childhood thing and it's really hard to let go, I understand. And that's one thing. But to like buy a brand new game and give money to her and then advertise it is like, I think. there Yeah. you Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
When her money is actively hurting people. Mm hmm. It's not like buying like a classic from an author who died a hundred years ago. who was probably also a transphobe, but like... Probably, yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying though. It's like... Yeah, I don't know.
00:50:31
Speaker
But...
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:50:33
Speaker
Yay, warriors! Yay! So in two weeks, we will have the first book of the new, ah the prophecies begin into the wild where we will might meet Firepaw and Graypaw and Ravenpaw and it will be fantastic.
00:50:52
Speaker
All the paws. who Jerga, how are you feeling about warriors?
00:50:59
Speaker
I'm fucking ready to get into it. Yay! Yay! Okay, so if you would like to talk to us about Warriors or any other middle grade book that you can think of, I'm open to all of them, except one spayed by transphobes, you can join our Discord, which is linked in the episode description, or you can go to glitterfoxmedia.com, where it is also linked.
00:51:27
Speaker
We also have... Another podcast that you may be interested in It's called Somewhere Elsewhere. it is a world building and actual play podcast where me and my Janiel build a world from a prompt from you guys, and then we play in it.
00:51:51
Speaker
It's very cool. It's true. And the prompts are on Discord. So that's just another reason to join. Mm-hmm. Give us prompts. We need them. We want them.
00:52:05
Speaker
Well, I have been Snowstorm. And I am forever Sparkleheart. And remember, just because you're older doesn't mean you have to grow up. Bye!