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This is humans.
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Humans. Humans. Humans.
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Humans.
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Humans.
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I'm Hank Green. I've made some strange choices in my life. For example, a while back I made a video about the theology of the fictional feral cats of the warriors books. It's 32 minutes long, but it's also been viewed 750,000 times. So I guess there was demand for that content. It's very easy to underestimate a kid's book. Children are not the most suffic sophisticated readers, but obviously a really good kids book is not like a simpler, watered down version of an adult book. It's a different thing. And in a world where it feels like kids media is kinda whatever will best grab and never let go of a kid's attention, kids books still seem to take the job very seriously. Not just how to entertain, but how they entertain. The warriors books are about cats that that live in the woods, but they are also about power and about survival and community and death and love and bravery and parenthood and culture and alienation and mistakes and forgiveness and hard situations with no good choices. And listening to me talk about this, you will be unsurprised to hear that I am indeed reading these books with my 9 year old right now and have been reading them with him for years now. And I'm just feeling very grateful that we get to spend time together buried in a story that is doing real good work. Like making it clear that living bravely in a community is honorable, even when it might not be as rewarding as being a manipulative liar or just exerting your power. And this is amazing work that I think we belittle at our own peril in a world of garbage brain rot. My guest today is one of the people doing that work. She almost certainly is one of the most influential children's authors that you have never heard of. Partly because the work of the warriors books is shared across several writers at any given moment and various editors as well, under the name Erin Hunter. But over the last 25 years, she has quietly been the architect of book series that have collectively sold, I think like 150 million copies. She built the world of warriors and I'm very grateful to her for that and for all the other folks who have worked on that series. And today I'm talking with Vicki Holmes, the original Aaron Hunter, about what we owe kids when we write for them, about the 8 to 13 window. That might be like the most important time we have to get a person right and what 25 years of feral has taught her about being a human Vicki Holmes, where do stories come from?
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I like to say that they come from my dark and twisted imagination, but they are all around us. I once heard a really interesting quote from a singer songwriter who said, there's no longer such thing as originality. There is only creativity. Yeah. I feel that in me. I am so influenced by. By the culture that I have absorbed from Shakespeare to the Avengers movie. And there is a direct quote from an Avengers movie in one of the warriors books.
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A
Are you allowed to say, just pulled it right out?
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B
Yeah, I think I can say, when Ravenpaw dies, he says, that is my secret. I have always been a warrior. And it directly comes from the moment in the Avengers movie where the Incredible Hulk says, that's my secret. Captain, I am always angry.
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A
Yeah, well, you're allowed to say that because it's not a direct quote that you've pulled. No, we're all always inspiring each other. Also, spoilers, everybody. Eventually, Ravenpaw dies.
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B
Yeah. I mean, these cats, they have to die eventually. And there is a lot of death.
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A
Yeah. No, I mean, there are some really sort of legendary warriors scene deaths.
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B
You touched a little bit on how we have these amazing themes in Warriors. And I do draw on themes from Shakespeare, things that have happened to me. I never need to write an autobiography. That matters to me is in Warriors. The most salient one of those would be that I have helped to raise children that aren't my own. I'm not going to give any other spoilers, but that's such an important theme to me. And also, you know, we all know what it's like to start a new school. The whole of book one is based on a kittypet, a domestic cat, moving to a new school where he doesn't know any of the rules and everyone's mean to him. We've all been in that position. So it's human themes, but our superpower is that we write about cats.
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A
Right.
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B
So if I were writing about humans, I would have to follow middle grade rules, which are that your protagonists are the aspirational age of the readers. So if we take middle grade as being 8 to 13, your heroes will be 12 or 13, younger, middle grade, maybe 11. And as such, they won't grow up, they won't age out, because then they would be doing YA stuff.
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Right, Right.
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Because I'm writing about cats. Cats mature in a year. So my characters are born as babies, and then they go to school. They are apprentices. Then they can get married and have their own babies.
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A
I was surprised. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna, like, have to talk to Oren about, like, babies right now. Yeah, because, like, Graystripe's having babies.
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Yeah. Illicit babies.
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A
Illicit babies.
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And then Silverstream dies in childbirth.
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A
Uh huh. No, no. I know.
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I do look back and wonder how I got away with some of the storylines.
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A
So many little human things that you get to do.
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B
I always say I'm not writing about cats. I joined the project when there was already the root of this idea that there were cats. They were feral cats living in clans. And a kittypet called Rusty joins the clans and end up being leader. That was basically the skeleton, the very sturdy skeleton I was given to play with. It was probably only the second series I ever worked on as an editor. I didn't really know what I was doing and I didn't actually have a say in the projects that I was given. And I don't like cats.
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A
Oh, my God. So literally, I asked my son, like, what questions would you want to ask the woman who created the warrior series? And first question out of his mouth was, why cats? So this is a terrible answer to the question. It's what I was assigned.
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B
So it's a bit like, you know, some have greatness thrust upon them. I had cats thrust upon me.
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Yeah. Well, if you have cats, they thrust themselves upon you.
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Yes. And I'm not. I mean, I grew up with cats because I grew up on a farm, but I didn't particularly want to write about cats. So as I bulked out the first storyline, I wrote about the things I am passionate about, which is spirituality and war and religion and prejudice and bias and fitting into a new society and feeling different and feeling awkward. And I put all those things into the first book. And it was at that point that HarperCollins said, actually, this feels like six books. And I can remember sitting in a meeting and being told this and thinking, I am never going to be able to write six books about cats.
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How many books about cats have you now edited?
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Oh, gosh, probably 70 or 80. And some of the warriors books I have written on my own. So sometimes it's just me.
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Me with a bunch of cats.
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Yeah. My other superpower, of course, is that I always had other people working with me. So for the first two books, I wrote with an incredibly talented writer called Kate Carey. And then for book three, I brought on Cherith Baldry. The advantages of those amazing writers is that their voice sounds quite like mine. So straight away we could establish the Erin Hunter voice. The other huge advantage of working with Kate and Cherith Is that they love cats. So I could present them with these incredibly detailed, gory storylines about little humans. And they would make them feline.
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Right. As a cat owner and lover. Over here, there are many great, like how cats communicate with each other. Little bits, little tips, the ways that their ears are moving or their tails, or the things that they do with their claws when they're stressed out. Like, the physicality of the cats is really wonderful as well.
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B
Yeah. And Kate and Cherith definitely brought that, and I learned from it and could put it into future stories. But, yeah, they absolutely brought that. And that was always very important to me. This series had to be about real cats. So when we were creating it, the other animal fantasy series that was is a series called Red Wall, which is by Brian Jakes. And those are very much more anthropomorphic animals. They sail boats, they wear little outfits. And before I joined the warriors team, there had been a lot of debate as to whether these cats could make weapons and things. But when I joined, I very strongly said, no, they don't need to. Let's use real cats and present them with real challenges like starving to death or eating poison or getting run over. There's more than enough story in the reality of a feral cats world. I can still make them anthropomorphic. They can still have human emotions and illicit love affairs and priests who don't believe in God. You know, there's still all those stories, but I can put that in the natural world.
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A
Yeah, yeah. And they do have, though, medicine, which, you know, that's always something where I'm feeling a little bit like we are really reflecting an earlier set of human cultures.
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I use as my reference book for all the herbs, a book called Culpepper's Herbal, which was written by Nicholas culpepper in the 1600s. He was a physician in England who
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secretly was a cat.
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He was not a cat, but he had an uncanny ability to catalog the healing properties of plants. So comfrey, for example. And I have comfrey growing in my hedgerow. Comfrey is everywhere. Comfrey's other name is knit bone in the country countryside. And it does heal. It is an extraordinary healer. Marigold is very purifying and you would use it on your eyes. So the herbal remedies are all 100% accurate, according to Pulpa's Herbal. I do add the caveat that if your cat is sick, please don't rush out to your backyard. Please seek official veterinary advice. And yes, it seems a stretch that these cats know this, but my last dog Missy, who was a legend among the fans as well, got very sick. It actually turned out that she died of a stomach tumor. But in the months before she died, she ate a plant in my garden. She kept going up to one plant and eating the leaves. After she died, I researched what that plant was, and it was an aster. And aster is used for treating stomach ache. So how did she know?
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Yeah, I mean, certainly my cats, when they got like a hairball, they will go eat grass because they're trying to make a thing happen, which is. It's crazy.
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So why shouldn't Clans of Medicine cats, why shouldn't they have these ideas passed down?
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Great legacy of stories like this, where we're telling the stories of animals and we're trying to tell them in a human way. You know, you do have the sort of like, Reepicheeps of the world with their little swords. And you have, you know, Watership down, where it's really trying to get at the root of what it is like to be a bunny. I feel like you're occupying a place between.
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Yeah, there is no originality. There is only creativity. And I actually grew up very near Watership Down. Watership down is an actual place, and I've walked on it many times. My father's farm was very close to it, so I didn't set out to write my own Watership down, actually, as well as not liking cats, I don't like books about animals.
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A
What do you mean you don't like books about animals? Like, you don't reading them?
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No, I've never read animal fantasy. It would bore me.
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But you like certain books about animals, like the warrior series, Obviously, warriors is
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the beat of my heart, but I would never have chosen to read them as a child. I mean, I am all about animals. You know, I'm vegetarian, and I'm surrounded by dogs and cats. And now I'm surrounded by cats and horses. Any animal is welcome in my kingdom. But reading stories about them, I guess possibly because, you know, I grew up on a farm, so I always had animals outside. I didn't need to read about them for my own tastes. I read thrillers and crime. You know, I grew up on Agatha Christie.
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Yeah.
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So those are my literary influences.
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A
So my son is 9 right now. This period of time I've been thinking a lot about. It's so beautiful and terrible to watch him become a little man and to be confronting his social world and understand everybody else's interiority in a way that he had not previously and just more fears Popping up. I've been thinking of this in terms of the phrase, we kind of leave people to go from Mr. Rogers to Mr. Beast. But I'm happy to have him watch stuff that he really loves where it's just like trick shot basketball stuff and car racing, video games. But I'm also really happy to have these parts of life where it is about telling stories that help him construct a morality, a world, and understand interpersonal relationships. And I've watched him as we've read these books. I think we started when he was 6 and he got nothing. And now he'll say to me, oh, this is a bad decision. And I'm like, it is, it is. You're right. But love is crazy. Love makes you crazy, Oren. You shouldn't know that going in. I'm seeing him see beyond himself. And I just want to ask you about, like, what responsibility we have to
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B
that group particularly so middle grade is my favorite. The 8 to 13. These children are like sponges. They fought all the time. Everything for science fiction, drama, humor, comedy, tragedy. They are also exposed to a lot of the world. They know about war, they know about violence. They read the news. And so I have infinite themes to play with. I've never really thought of myself as writing for children. Having said that, I feel like a global babysitter. So middle grade is when children have pocket money to spend, so they can make their own choice, or they can go to a library and choose my books. And I'm also appealing to the parents and the guardians, the grandparents and the school teachers. So I want to say to the children, we're going to have so much fun. This story is filled with everything that is in your head, with death and violence and love and forbidden relationships. Cats born in secret come with me. Let's have fun. But then to the adults, I say, trust me. I will take very great care of this young, precious mind. If I have the honor of having someone's attention for my story, then I will treat it like glass. And I see myself as having giant hands made of feathers. And I carry my readers very, very gently in my feather hands through scary things, through the challenges of not being liked, of not understanding the rules of battle, of dying of starvation. We're going to confront really scary things. But there is always hope. And I promise I will take your children safely to the other side. The one thing I never deal in is fear. That is one emotion I never want to evoke. I hate being scared. I will never watch horror films. I think fear is the one wholly Negative emotion we have. And no child should be scared ever. That's just like the law in Vicky's world.
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A
So interesting. I mean, obviously your characters are scared.
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B
My characters are scared, yeah. And then obviously the child will empathize with that. But I don't want my reader to be scared always. Even after a battle, there was always some kind of hope.
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A
So of all the things you listed like tragedy and adventure, you didn't list horror?
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No, never horror. My book should never be described as horror.
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A
Right. Cause that's what that genre is. It's designed to elicit fear. Yeah.
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And I don't want to elicit fear. So what I want to show is that terrible things happen. Cats die quite horribly. But we can learn to live with that loss. That actually part of being human is loss and grief and sadness. Obviously, I have StarClan on my side.
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A
Cause I'm like, hey, I was just about to ask about this.
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They're in Starkland. They're okay. But also the cats left behind will grieve. You know, that's something that I want to show children, is not to be afraid of. Don't be scared of the big emotions. Don't be scared if grown ups cry. Life can be really sad, but you don't have to be afraid.
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A
So I feel that we must explain StarClan to people who are not steeped in the lore.
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B
Yeah. So starklan is where cats go when they die. We always needed the cats to have a religion. They were organized societies. If they're going to be warriors and apprentices and leaders, then obviously they're going to have a set of spiritual beliefs. And this has to be set within their natural world. So if you think about our ancient ancestors, they worshiped fire and they worshiped the seasons because they were dependent on fire for warmth and cooking, and they were dependent on seasons for early agriculture. Now, our cats don't have fire and they don't grow crops. But what they do is they have the stars and the moon above them. When the world is dark. When the world is dark, there is still light. And from there it seemed very obvious that what if each star was a lost warrior and so star clad? It feels a little reductive to say it like this, but it is a natural religion. You know, if we round the clock, I'd totally be out there worshiping the moon and the sun and the leaves. You know, it's. It's a basic human instinct to find mystery. We go out looking for it.
- [18:26]
A
Yeah. And to explain mystery, you know, like to explain the Vagaries and the horrors and the sense that, like, I feel I have continuity, and thus it's sort of unthinkable that my continuity will have an end. Yeah.
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B
And that there is a purpose. And that these people, people that we loved so much, I don't want them to vanish. Please let them be somewhere. Right.
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A
And the story that I took from that and then put into my video. Did you watch my video that I made about this?
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B
Of course I did. Many times.
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A
I watched it again last night and I was like, I'm good at making YouTube. This happened.
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B
Sometimes I do that with a book. I read something that I wrote and I'm like, oh, I can do this.
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A
We'll come back to what I was saying. But when I'm writing fiction as well, I have to, like, sometimes before starting to write again, I will have to go read something that I did that was good.
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B
Yes.
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A
And be like, okay. I am a capable writer. I've written things that I don't think are bad. Which is not always how it feels when you're actively writing.
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B
Yes.
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A
So I made this YouTube video, and obviously ancestor theologies are like, they exist in the world right now. They were much more common in the past. And the idea of StarClan is that when cats die while they are remembered, they are actually still consciously present in the world. And they can take some, but not universal action. They are not all powerful. And oftentimes this is confusing to the living cats. They're like, why won't StarClan fix this? But StarClan can't fix everything.
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B
StarClan are powerless.
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A
They don't seem to be powerless. They seem to be able to do some stuff. But I don't know.
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B
I like the idea that you could completely explain StarClan in an atheist world. The nine lives thing is a little harder. Yeah.
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A
They seem to have directed some lightning bolts as well.
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B
Did they though?
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A
Or did they. Maybe that was just luck. Yeah.
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B
You know, we are very quick to ascribe natural phenomena and coincidence to a higher power. Sometimes things just work out, and sometimes things really don't work out. You can't have one without the other. It's like, you can't only read good reviews. If you're gonna read reviews, you have to read all of them.
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A
Turns out starclan could have done maybe more in certain situation situations.
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B
They are wise. They have the benefit of hindsight.
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A
Yeah. And they can maybe see some things that the cats can't see. They can see farther in some way.
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B
Yes. So they do have an Inkling of what's going to happen. And they can give very cryptic announcements. It always has to be cryptic because as in all religion, there has to be an element of faith and willful comprehension in the purest sense of the word. You have to analyze and interpret these messages in a way that fits your worldview.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So it is a pure religion. It is pure faith in that respect.
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A
I just like, as I'm reading these books, my mind is wandering off to all kinds of places. And one of the ways it's wandering off is like, oh, my God, isn't this beautiful? It's actually reflective of the real situation we're in where we are constantly being guided by and coached by the knowledge of those who have come before us and gone.
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B
Yes. Because where else would we look? You know, it always amuses me when the new generation always feels that they've invented everything, you know, and you really haven't. You know, I'm quite old now. And you know what, you guys, all the emotions you feel now, I felt them too. You may have different names for those feelings now, but they are within all of us. And a thousand years ago, people felt them too. Emotions are timeless. And because I write about cats, because I have this layer of protection from my readers, my human readers, I can take those readers to all those emotions, to the deepest grief and the craziest hope and the biggest claims to power, because I'm writing about cats. If I was writing about humans for a middle grade audience, it would be a lot more challenging. I would have to be a lot less raw.
- [22:45]
A
Mm. Yeah. And it's wonderful. I mean, it's like science fiction in that way where you can talk about things that are very clearly analogous but are not the exact thing. Like there is a kind of racism in the warrior cats world.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
It's just not based on race. And that is different from the kind of clan based tensions. Because there's four clans in these forests and you know, they have. Well, I guess. And tell me what you think of this. That's kind of different than the prejudice that they have against true outsiders or kittypets who are like, absolutely, absolutely.
- [23:23]
B
And it's very much like, well, I went to Oxford University, which is divided into colleges, and we would play sport against each other. And I went to Jesus College and obviously shout out to my Jesuits, we were the best. But our obvious rival is Cambridge University. We have very rude names for them. But then you get Oxbridge. The community of those two universities being ever so slightly snobbish towards everybody. Else. So we all live in clans, and we have little clans that in our families, we might resent our siblings, but if someone threatens our siblings, we turn into tigers. So everything, everything is circles upon circles of loyalty. And for me, the big examination of this inherent racism and prejudice came in the second series, when I created the Tribe of Rushing Water, which is another clan of cats that has a social hierarchy and is organized, but they are fundamentally different. They don't look up at the sky to worship. They look at reflections in puddles. And all our clans unite in fear and hostility at first, and then gradually, they have to learn that the Tribe of Rushing Water is okay. And the onus is on the clans, the onus is on our heroes to get over their prejudices. The Tribe of Rushing Water are always fine. There's never any idea that they are being hostile. They're just living a good life. And that was so important to me, to show this fundamental thing that everyone. You're just all cats, basically. You know, just as we could say, we're all humans.
- [25:13]
A
So you're talking about your feather hands. Yeah, you're doing it right now. It feels like we're talking about, like, going through hard stuff with these. This, like, fragile thing, I guess, is that just always present in your mind when you're constructing these stories, and that's how it carries forward?
- [25:30]
B
I don't know if I could consciously say that I do, but I am very respectful of my audience. I'm deeply humbled by the fact that they want to read these stories, and obviously my role in the stories is tiny. It's a huge team now, and they're all being brilliant without me. But I am humbled that they love the stories enough to keep coming back, and so why wouldn't I treat them with respect, but also honesty, and I'm very honest about feelings. My favorite character is Cinderpelt because she desperately wanted to be a warrior, and she was desperately in love with Firestar. She has an accident, that means she has to be a medicine cat, and that happens very early in the first series. So I don't think we can be too precious about spoilers from a book that has been out a long time. And I just really admired the way that she handled that destiny that. Yeah. Do you know what she's not doing? She didn't want to be a doctor. She wanted to be a warrior. She wanted to be a fighter. She wanted to, you know, marry Firestar. And perhaps in my life, you know, I haven't always achieved what I wanted to do. But you can make the best of it and find joy in it. But the bit that was most personal to me is that Cinderpelt does die, as do all my cats. But unusually, and because she's a medicine cat, starclan tells her that she's going to die. And they come to her and they say, we've got some really bad news. You're going to die. Now, this coincided with me receiving some very bad health news. And I was quietly reeling, I think, and processing it. And I wrote what I wanted to hear. And Blue Star and StarClan say to Cinderpelt, they say, we cannot change this. We cannot save you. You are going to die. But we will be with you and you will be safe. And Cinderpelt says, that's fine. I accept my destiny. Please let me do as much as I can in the time that I have, but please, just be with me. Don't let me be alone. And the starclan cats say, yes, that's the deal. And that, for me, is StarClan. They are comfort and they are presence, and they are trust and honesty. You know, it's no secret that my health isn't great. That, for me, is all I want to hear from the doctors, from my family. You can't change the destiny, but I am safe and I am loved, and I am not alone.
- [28:02]
A
Did that coincide with you needing to step back from working on Warriors?
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B
I'd actually stepped back a little bit before I stopped working on the series in series five, book one. I did the first book of that series, but then I stepped back for a lot of reasons. And what I will say is I stepped back for all the right reasons. Right for me, but most of all, right for Warriors. I have a great imagination, but I certainly couldn't have come up with another, you know, all the nine series. The team of creative editors now is much bigger. Many more people write the books, and that is only a good thing. It would have been deeply selfish of me to say, no, my precious must die with me. It's just a source of great pride and joy to see this series still thriving with other people. And I think it brings it back to, there's no such thing as originality. There's just creativity. Sure, I created the Flesh on the Skeleton, but I've also created a springboard for a million other stories. And I do not have ownership of these cats. They have a million destinies, just as humans have a million destinies, if we are fortunate enough. You know, people who are born fortunate are born with Options. Yeah. So it's all about infinite possibility. And that's what stories are. And surely a series that is taken over by different people is the perfect demonstration of infinite possibility.
- [29:30]
A
That's so interesting. I mean, options as a frame for what freedom actually is. Like we talk about freedom, and what freedom actually is is not just like having the choice to choose between this one option or this one option. The real expansion of human flourishing. You can kind of put that into a frame of just like being able to choose.
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B
Yeah, completely.
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A
And having good choices.
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B
Having good choices and making good choices. And this brings it onto my personal upbringing as a Quaker.
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A
Yeah.
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B
My religious background is in the branch of Christianity known as Quakers. And this is a very quiet religion and it believes in the privacy of divinity. The fact that there is a voice inside us that is the divine. Now, with a non faith hat on, you can say that is the voice of your conscience, that is the voice of your spirit. It could be the voice of anything. But I truly believe that we all have in us this voice. And my favorite quote for it is the still small voice of calm, which is from a hymn. But we all have in us this still small voice of calm. When I was very young, I used to read lot Vinid blyton, a prolific 1950s English author. And she wrote a story for very young children about a cat called Blue. And Blue was stolen and taken very far from her home. And she escapes from the thieves and she has to find her way home. Every time she comes to a junction, Enid Blyton wrote, she lay down and she waited to feel a tugging in one of her paws. At whichever paw that was, that was the way she went. And she followed this little tugging all the way home. And that to me is the perfect embodiment of the still small voice of calm we all have in us. This voice that tells us which choices we should be making. We don't always listen to it. I certainly don't. I've made some crashing errors. But what I try and encourage my readers to see is that we can make choices. If we are blessed with freedom, then we can make good choices, just as Farstar does. Farstar directly contradicts his leader's orders to go into battle at one point because he knows that even though the warrior code says he has to obey his leader, the right thing to do is to disobey her. As that to me, that element of choice and listening to your inner voice, it should be at the heart of the. Of humanity.
- [32:09]
A
I mean, you were talking earlier about how Clear. It seems to you that you have to be careful with this audience that you have been so lucky to have and what other choice would you make? But I think that it's so easy to make the choice of, like, just make the thing that is the most captivating, that is the most escalating. I'll watch stuff that is being made by companies that have very good brand reputations and I'm like, this is just about never letting go of their attention. It is just about bright colors and candy content. I don't know, you say that it's very clear and that you feel that very strongly, but obviously it can go other directions.
- [32:49]
B
It can. And there's nothing I can do about that and there's nothing the current team of Erin's can do about that. All we can do is keep putting out gripping stories that deal with honestly and transparently and with authenticity, with human emotions. And maybe in 25 years time, these candy coloured TikTok videos won't be being watched.
- [33:13]
A
No, they won't be.
- [33:14]
B
But warriors might still be being read. There is a resonance in the stories. There is a human truth that I never set out to create. It just happened. I certainly didn't set out to sell 150 million books or to speak with a world famous YouTuber. If anyone had said that was in my destiny when I was 20 and desperately insecure and miserable, I would have laughed at them.
- [33:41]
A
Yeah.
- [33:42]
B
So it's pure fortune. Yes, I've made good choices. Yes, I've worked extremely hard. But I've also been incredibly lucky. Lucky to work for a publisher that gave me freedom. So lucky to work with Kate and Cheris.
- [33:58]
A
Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about. So you talked about the first series and how that went and it has expanded since then. How does Erin Hunter exist in the world?
- [34:07]
B
I do remember turning up for an event in an American school somewhere. Please don't ask me to remember where. But quite early on in my touring career and the teacher greeted me with, oh, my children were so disappointed to hear that Erin Hunter doesn't exist. And I was like, yes, she does. It's me. I'm in front of you.
- [34:30]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:32]
B
So warriors is not the only collaborative series I work on. I had nine series that I was working on. Oh, God.
- [34:39]
A
Oh my God, that's great.
- [34:41]
B
So it is a way of working that is already existence in the world. There are teams of editors who work creatively creating storylines for writers to write. So warriors is kind of just another one of those. So it was the longest and it was the most mature, and it was the one where I was given the most freedom to deal with these big, big topics because I was writing about cats. So Erin Hunter exists in me, as in the passion I've poured in, the creativity that I have brought. But it also exists in Kate Carey, who has written nearly 50% of the books. She can do tragedy like no one else. She shares my very dark sense of humor. So we have had some very off the record conversations when discussing manuscripts. And then Erin Hunter lives in Cherith. Cherith Baldry, who is an incredibly gifted writer with an amazing eye for writing old characters. She could just bring old characters to life in a way that no one else could. And now that has increased, and there are six or seven additional writers now who all are Erin Hunter because they contribute to a glorious whole. And how much more fun and how much more future proof, because, you know, one of the Erin Hunters is not gonna be around forever. How disappointing. I mean, that would just suck, wouldn't it? Sorry, guys. But instead, there is no such thing as originality. We can all be creative and we are all passionate about the cats. And the new team have different messages that they want to tell they bring themselves. I discussed the messages, you know, about raising children that aren't your own, being new kid on the block, perhaps. You know, I had cats that didn't believe that was me exploring atheism and questions of spirituality. So all of those things I've had the huge privilege of exploring in these 70 or so warriors books that I've worked on. So why not step back and let someone else have a turn? So Erin Hunter exists.
- [36:51]
A
Erinantra exists. Like, does any individual person truly exist? This is my take. Having lived for now 46 years, I suddenly realize more and more that the continuity of my existence is very, somewhat, like, fractured. And so many pieces of me are gone. Most of the experiences I've had have been lost completely. I just don't have access to that anymore.
- [37:14]
B
I find that extraordinary too. The idea that we can forget things. Oh, yeah, I was there. Why can't I remember it?
- [37:21]
A
My high school friends will tell me a thing, and I'm like, nope, that's frequently I.
- [37:26]
B
All the time. I have fans remind me of things that I've done.
- [37:29]
A
Oh, I'll watch YouTube videos that were made by Hank Green, and I'm like, good points, guy. I wouldn't have thought of that. You know, 20 years in, you made a lot of stuff.
- [37:44]
B
Yes. I had to revisit the. I wrote a lot of novellas so slightly shorter novels about sort of spin offs of the warriors characters, which I absolutely loved doing and I had to revisit them recently for a project and I had forgotten what had happened. And I wrote these stories on my own. I came up with the storylines on my own and wrote them on my own and I was like, did that, did he? Oh, but then how lovely that we can be reminded. And also our brains would be too full. How would we fit in new things?
- [38:14]
A
I think it's wonderful.
- [38:15]
B
I speak a little bit of German and I'm currently learning Polish and I find that all the German in my head is falling out to be replaced by Polish. I'm very conscious. My brain is limited, so thank goodness that I don't remember everything.
- [38:32]
A
And to have in the way, like to have the author almost be a character and that kind of can preserve more of a purity.
- [38:40]
B
I am very different when I'm being Vicky in my private life. Very different. I always say that I'm shorter. Vicki is shorter and oh, wow. Less charismatic and less graceful than Erin. But I am very shy and very awkward and would never want to go out and meet people. You know, writers are pretty weird. You know, we have to just like sitting in a little box talking to ourselves.
- [39:06]
A
Yeah, for sure.
- [39:06]
B
You know, we don't make natural figureheads.
- [39:10]
A
So you like put Erin Hunter on very much.
- [39:13]
B
But it's an honor and it's just that gracious responsibility that both children and parents give to me by reading the stories that I have been involved in.
- [39:23]
A
So Eren Hunter being a multi person
- [39:26]
B
entity, a seven headed hydra that you love.
- [39:31]
A
It's also interesting that, you know, warriors fanfiction world is very big, you know, Harry Potter level big of fan fiction writers. How do you think of that world? Do you think of Erin Hunter as like this is the warriors that comes from Erin Hunter and this is a separate thing or is there a way in which Erin is in that.
- [39:51]
B
That's so interesting. I am in awe of fan fiction. I'm far too lazy to write fan fiction. If I'm not paid, I'm not writing anything. So the idea that people just come up with their stories. I also have to add a caveat that I ever read it and I never have done and I've been sent a lot to read.
- [40:11]
A
Yeah, you have to be really careful because.
- [40:14]
B
Because I say this will just lodge in my head and I have to have integrity. I have to say that all the stories I write come from myself. So. And I'm pretty sure that this goes for all the errands as well. We cannot read the fan fiction for fear of plagiarism, which we would never intend, but it would just seep into our conscious. It's the greatest compliment you can pay us is to say that w so much that we can see other destinies. And again, we come back to that point that there are infinite destinies for the characters that I created so long ago. There is a structure to this world that can go in any direction. And so the fact that other people are stretching their creative wings to write their own stories is marvelous. And we love it and we applaud it. I. I can't quite go so far as to say that everyone who writes fanfiction isn't Erin Hunter, because there has to be a canon. We have to draw the line. We have to say, this is the series. I mean, a copyright lawyer would spin in their graves. You know, we have to be able to say, this is the world of Erin. These are the characters that are official. But the Internet is a loudspeaker for our best efforts as well as our worst. And positive, wholesome fan fiction has to be up there with the best creative efforts, and it will produce writers. In the early days of YouTube, there were children creating warriors animations. There's an animation of blue stars prophecy by a person who called themselves Ali Kat Naya. And she created this when she was, I think, 14. And it's a genius. And whenever I had writer's block and was feeling sorry for myself, I would go and watch it and be inspired all over again that someone has visualized my characters. That's amazing. And this young woman, Ali Katna, is now a professional animator. So there will be people writing fan fiction who will be not Erin Hunter. They will be themselves with their own ideas and their own identities, and that is amazing. So fanfiction can be the springboard and the catalyst for that. Then I am delighted. Absolutely. But there has to be a finite number of errands.
- [42:45]
A
Right? Right. Yeah. And also, we'll leave the discussion of what counts as warriors to the lawyers.
- [42:53]
B
Yes.
- [42:54]
A
And I do want it to be inside of a controlled thing so that I. That there's the next story and that it's all gonna line up. Though I don't envy the people who are in charge of the canon Bible. There's a lot going on.
- [43:10]
B
It's hefty. Yeah. There's cast lists. You know, there's literally over a thousand characters now. And even though I kept cast lists in every single book and I Always started off a new storyline by looking at the cast list and thinking, okay, who can I kill in this book? I still made mistakes. There are cats who die more than once they shouldn't have done. Yeah, there's a cat in Windclan who comes back. Didn't he die in the last book? Secrets Nine Lives. That's what I said. There's a whole story in it.
- [43:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. Somewhere we can explain that one.
- [43:46]
B
Yeah. So we do our best. We do our very best. And now it's far more organized. You know, there are people whose job it is to maintain continuity. When it was just me, Kate and Cherith, Things Were Wild.
- [44:03]
A
Has spending so much time writing books about animals and their world and their relationships. Has it given you a different outlook on people?
- [44:14]
B
Oh, that's interesting. I don't think so. I'm pretty misanthropic. You know, I think I got that
- [44:24]
A
impression in our pre interview emails.
- [44:27]
B
Yeah, I think people make catastrophic decisions. You mentioned a point that we cannot live within the bounds of our environment. You know, we seem to be constantly chasing after something else. So no, I think people have a lot to. Well, they have everything to answer for actually.
- [44:46]
A
For sure. I mean, we just recorded this SciShow video. This is a weird thing to bring up, but we recorded a SciShow video about bone meal and how in England, as the population was increasing during the Industrial revolution, they needed to create much more food and found that if you ground up the bones of livestock, animals that had been slaughtered, that if you put that on fields, it would dramatically increase the yields of the crop. And that created a worldwide shortage of bones, which is a wild thing to have England have done. But then they found that you could mine guano from islands in the ocean that birds had had laid down over thousands of years. And they turned those places into complete wastelands, mining that. And then they found other islands that had fossilized sources of the same minerals that you would need. Phosphorus is the thing that they were going for that was actually contributing to the growth of crops. And then they strip mined all these other places and then they now still in the world there's these giant phosphorus mines that are, you know, environmentally destructive. And it was like interesting how much England played a part in this story because it was just really what was happening was they were just trying to be able to continue to sustain the population that had grown due to the increase in agricultural fertility and the mechanization of all that stuff.
- [46:11]
B
And that's a really interesting point because in thinking about how obviously humanity has gone too far in a lot of things in pursuit of the unnecessary because we have all the necessary. We have shelter and food and we don't have to go out and club mammoths to death. And I don't have to skin a cow before I can put clothes on. But is there a time when we could have said stop?
- [46:38]
A
I don't know that we could, but not. Because there's a reason why all animals, I think, have want built in. Like, we have to want. We can't stop because the wanting is the only reason we got to where we are now. The wanting is the only reason why the cats still exist in the world. The wanting is the only reason why any animal is able to continue is because they, like, have these desires and you, like, can't fill in the want. It seems like there isn't. Like you never get there because it's a fundamental attribute.
- [47:15]
B
But the human want is different because the human want goes far beyond what the badger in my garden wants.
- [47:22]
A
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had this period, and this is relatively recent that we've finished with this period. We're not even all the way through it, where it was really about how do we make our children not die. And that was a huge amount of the impact that we have had on the world is answering that question. Remarkably, worldwide infant mortality and childhood mortality has cratered in the last hundred years and really in the last 50. And that has resulted in a lot of impact on the world. But I think that when you satisfy all wants, the want still remains because it was kind of at the root of being a living thing. And so it has to find something new to want.
- [48:06]
B
Yeah. And that's what we do. We have everything we need. Our children are not dying. We have medicine beyond our wildest dreams. You know, the medicine and the surgery that I have received to keep me here is absolutely extraordinary. And even 20 years ago would not have existed. So obviously, I don't want to say could we halt all progress in the 1950s, because that would suck.
- [48:28]
A
We'd have less Aaron Hunter and less Vicki Holmes. Yeah.
- [48:31]
B
But we seem to just keep going. You know, we're talking about mining on the moon because we've used up all the precious minerals for our mobile phones. It's like there is no limit to our wants. But I have to include myself in this because I could be sitting in a cave, couldn't I? I don't need to live in a large cave, comfortable house. I could live in a shed. I don't need a car. I could do without that. I could gather wool from the local sheep and knit my own sweaters. But actually, I think I'm wearing something made in Vietnam and it's really rather comfortable. So I think we sort of circle back, don't we, to the still small voice of calm. To the. The idea of what can we do now as personal responsibility? I can recycle. I can use my car less. I can shop for locally made products. You know, I think the world is a lost cause. Humanity is a lost cause.
- [49:29]
A
Oh, wow.
- [49:29]
B
Yeah.
- [49:30]
A
Vicky Holmes coming with a big mic drop. Humanity is a lost cause. What do you mean by lost cause?
- [49:36]
B
I can't see us reversing back because I don't see there is a point to reverse back to. We can't be like, do you know what? 1952 was a great year. Let's rewind everything. Technology. What? Medicine.
- [49:52]
A
Yeah.
- [49:52]
B
Weaponry. Not everyone's going to do that. We have gone too far.
- [49:57]
A
I, of course, people will not be surprised to hear. Do not think that we are so much a lost cause. I think that we are still finding our way through. I think that in many ways we are real babies. The thing that we are is a weird thing that nobody knows how to do. There isn't another species that's been like us before. And so, like, finding our way through. I'm not surprised that we're not doing it perfectly. And I don't know what through means. Like, I don't know that we'll end up in a place where we will help the Earth come back and be valuable for its own sake and not have to have so much of it converted to our use. But I don't. I feel like we're not at the end.
- [50:39]
B
That's so heartening. And I would completely agree that we seem very young, that we seem to have lost even the wisdom of Leonardo da Vinci. You know, he drew helicopters. There's no one here drawing things that are going to be in reality in a thousand years time. You know, we do seem very young, and I like that idea. That is comforting. You're offering feather hands to me now. You're saying that things are bleak, but it's okay because there is still a human drive to protect and to nurture. You know, we are a nurturing creature.
- [51:13]
A
The thing about humans that's so interesting is it's not just about our human drive. It's about what we teach each other and what we learn and what we carry forward. You've heard the term antisocial, definitely. And you may have heard the Term pro social, which is like the opposite of antisocial, which is like, the thing where people are actually, like, working together to build something that's good. I think about pro sociality constantly as a father. Like, this is very present in my mind because I'm like, this kid could go a lot of different directions. He's smart. He's gonna be attractive and tall.
- [51:44]
B
You know what? Small people are good, too,
- [51:49]
A
but, like, people take bigger people more seriously. As a bigger person.
- [51:53]
B
I have had it said many times when I've turned up to events. I thought you would be taller. Clearly, I write like a giant.
- [52:00]
A
That's right. That's right. That's what I tell to all my short friends. I say, you have tall personality.
- [52:05]
B
I think I'd rather people say, oh, you're taller than I imagine. Than people be faintly disappointed that I turn up. I'm only five foot four. Oh, we were expecting more. It's kind of less of you than we thought we'd get.
- [52:20]
A
I loved your talk, but next time, could you bring, like, just more of yourself? Could you just, like, tack on another couple inches? What a world.
- [52:31]
B
So pro social, if that is the goal, then surely Erin Hunter is kind of nailing the pro social.
- [52:38]
A
Yes. I mean, that's what I was going to say. I apologize for making you say it, but yes.
- [52:43]
B
Yeah. We are working together. You know, we're not an army of a force for good. You know, we do this because it's our jobs, because we love telling stories, because we've been given the opportunity to tell stories about cats that people really love. It's a place of harmony. There's never great disputes.
- [53:01]
A
So in the books, there's this. There's this thing called the warrior code. It's just a thing that you learn. It's just like a thing that everyone knows, but no one ever sits down and tells you what it is.
- [53:12]
B
Yeah, it's not like the Ten Commandments. Bluestar wasn't handed a stone with them written on. The warrior code developed very organically and had never been written down by the
- [53:25]
A
cats or by you?
- [53:26]
B
By me.
- [53:27]
A
Okay.
- [53:27]
B
And just every so often, something would arise, and I'd be like, hmm, that feels like it should be the warrior code. So I'd be like, and this is part of the warrior code. Like, the things like that, you know, kits have to be felt first. There is a book called Code of the Clans, which is a special edition. So we sort of wrote non fiction about warriors. And those were my books. Those are the books that I wrote alone. As well, because it was basically collating information from the series but also creating new stories. So in the book Code of the Clans, I go through each of the 14 items of the code, and I didn't even know there were 14 items until I read. And then I was like, that's a rubbish number. I wish I'd come up with 15, but I wasn't going to make a new one. And I come up with stories in this book. It's basically a collection of 14 short stories about how the code came about. What situation in the history of warriors caused all the clans to agree that this should be a law, part of their moral law. So the code is written down, it is concrete, it can be referred to, and it is in a book that's actually proved very popular with fans. They love knowing where the code came from. But certainly in the writing of the first three series, it was very organic. And in every so often, as I say, I would just think we should probably make that more concrete.
- [54:46]
A
But when Rusty, who is a cat owned by a person, makes his way and becomes Firepaw, he does not know the warrior code. And then eventually does. It feels to me as if it is, you know, in the way that we've been talking about how there's so much analogous, that there's just like, you know, when in Rome kind of things, that there are these rules that are different from culture to culture.
- [55:13]
B
Yeah.
- [55:14]
A
And. But like, kind of the important thing is that there are rules.
- [55:17]
B
Yeah. That's really interesting, actually, that you think that. Because you're right, that they aren't written down and they seem to be absorbed. But now I'm trying to improve my own life. When was I told that I couldn't kill someone?
- [55:31]
A
Well, yeah. I mean, I actually remember having this conversation with my mom in a strange way, where she was like, why wouldn't you do, like, X thing? And I was like, well, it's a lick against the law. And she was like, but why wouldn't you? And I was like, it's against the law. You know, I was 10 or something. And she was like, no, Hank, it's because of your values.
- [55:54]
B
The law exists for many reasons. If we go back to the Anglo Saxon, earliest English laws, they were there to protect, you know, they were there to protect your wealth, your status, your community. But also, we agreed a moral code, you know, that actually humans did agree that maybe killing someone was not the best idea. Maybe stealing my neighbor's sheep was not going to lead to communal harmony. And it's this idea of living in a community and this idea of lived experience contributing to the warrior code. So when food is short, you have to feed the kits and the elders first. You feed the kits first because they are the future and you have to preserve them. And you feed the elders first because they served you. We have an honor, we have a debt to pay to them. So each of the parts of the warrior code are rooted in the morality inherent in living with lots of people in a small space. And that's basically what it boils down to. We have to agree how to get on.
- [57:01]
A
Yeah. And also, you know, with neighbors who we also have to maintain relationships with. And they are living with lots of people in a small space.
- [57:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. I mean, in America, you have neighborhood associations, which is not something we have in the uk, but I understand they are a force for both good and perhaps. Perhaps irritation.
- [57:23]
A
Yeah, for sure. I think irritation is a good word for it.
- [57:25]
B
And, you know, lots of laws. Any animal, any creatures living in close proximity have laws. My area of expertise is horses. And horses living in a herd will have a dominant. Dominant female. They'll have subordinates. They'll have horses that will stand on guard while the others sleep. These are all rules that they've organized so that they can live in a community within the bounds of their environment. We have expanded far beyond the bounce fire environment. So now our rules have to be amorphous and infinite and we have to make rules about things that haven't even happened yet.
- [58:01]
A
We have to make rules about our rules, about our rules.
- [58:04]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I used to manage comedians back in the early 2000s.
- [58:11]
A
Amazing.
- [58:11]
B
I love live comedy. And it was the days when they would occasionally record a dvd. And in the contracts, it used to say that we have retained rights for this material to be shown in any format in any galaxy known or unknown. So we had to future proof beyond galaxies.
- [58:36]
A
That's so human. Yeah.
- [58:39]
B
And so this is where our laws are now. We are having to create laws that cover every possible permutation.
- [58:47]
A
I really want to be controlling the rights to this comedy special after the intergalactic civilization happens.
- [58:54]
B
I mean, you know, I did used to say to my comedians, don't get your hopes off.
- [59:01]
A
I think maybe the lawyers paying for themselves here more than any reflection of reality.
- [59:06]
B
It's a great piece. You've got some great material. It's a solid 15 minutes, but it's not gonna be on a. A spaceship going to Mars anytime soon.
- [59:16]
A
I gotta say, you're so funny. Does not surprise me that you have an Affinity for live comedy I also very much do A little bit surprises me though, all of the different lives we end up living.
- [59:28]
B
I think this comes down to two things. One is, oh my goodness, how blessed am I to be born with choice. Yeah, I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive. Even if you could look at my health now and say, wow, sucks to be you. Does not suck to be me. Wow, let's put it out there. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Oh my goodness. I'm so fortunate. I was blessed to have an education and then to have opportunities. But the other thing, and this is something I say to my fans whenever I speak to them, say yes. Say yes to anything that is not illegal or dangerous. As much as possible, say yes. And courage only comes from fear. If you are afraid of something, great, this is your chance to show that you're brave. So I have said yes to a lot of things. So I started out well, actually I worked with horses as soon as I graduated university because I was only 20 when I left Oxford, too young to know what to do. And then I became a teacher. I have direct knowledge of transmitting information to young people. So I taught English at what you would call middle school and high school. And then what I really wanted was to work in books. So a very good friend of mine said to me, well, apply for the job you want in five years and when you don't get it, ask how you get there. So I applied for a job as an editor with the company where I still am 26 years later. I got the job and had to learn quickly. But parallel to that, that same dear friend was starting up a comedy agency. And I'm like, hey, I love comedy. Let's do a comedy agency. I've always ridden horses. I could ride before I could walk. I've always been lucky enough to have horses. So that has always been my deep. And yes, of course, in my dreams I would be a professional horse rider. But I'm not good enough and I'm not competitive enough. The thing I'm really good at is writing stories and how lucky am I that I've been able to do it?
- [61:23]
A
And how lucky are we that we get to live in a world with your stories.
- [61:28]
B
Thank you.
- [61:29]
A
I'm so happy to have them and even more now, I'm so happy to know who is behind them. Because all of what you have said, the choices make so much more sense. Like so much smart, careful, thoughtful stuff along with it being like, you know, truly exciting and compelling and attention grabbing stories. I love walking in and seeing Orin in his bed, either doing his Minecraft math workbook, which he does for fun, or reading a warriors book.
- [62:07]
B
Thank you. And I still find that extraordinary. 25 years on, it still takes my breath away that anyone will read the books that I have created with wonderful people. It could have just been me writing one fairly miserable story about cats on my own, but it wasn't. And how much more fun that I get to share all this and that the stories will live on beyond me. If this is my legacy, then wow. Snuff me out like a candle tomorrow. All is well. There's a German phrase that I love, which is alles gut, alles klar. Everything's good. Everything's making sense. All is well. Wow.
- [62:48]
A
Thank you for spending this time with us. Vicky, I'm gonna ask you our last question. If there's anything that you've learned from doing this work that you kind of wish everybody knew, what would it be?
- [62:57]
B
I think it is embrace opportunity. Never limit yourself. Always have a go. Because I had a go, I said yes to writing a book about cats. When I don't like cats, I said yes. And the importance of listening to your inner voice. Because I have been in an incredibly fortunate position of being feted around the world, and it's always very important to remember that I'm just me. I'm just Vicky. I'm part of a team. Fame isn't real. It doesn't make me special. I'm a regular person who comes home and does laundry and feeds my dog and connects with nature. So remember what is real. Listen to your inner voice and say yes.
- [63:48]
A
Thanks to all the humans who help helped make this episode. Morgan Levy is the show's supervising producer, and Greg Rippon is our engineer. Peyton Mitchell manages our social media. Andrew Huang composed the music, and James Barnard designed the artwork. You can and should follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [64:09]
B
Let's do it one more time.
- [64:10]
A
Humans.