-Seedfur

Hi everyone,

Ah, September. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,* and new school supplies! If you’ve met me (and even if you haven’t), you probably know I’m a proud geek, and I used to love the start of a new school year, when I could update my school bag, pencil case and textbooks. I used to get very excited about my new school schedule, and figuring out the quickest route between classrooms.

I appreciate that not everyone gets so thrilled about the end of the summer vacation, so commiserations to those of you who are less enthusiastic about the return to school. Look at it this way: You’re one year closer to graduating, and having no homework EVER AGAIN!

The perfect compliment to a locker full of shiny new textbooks, is a box full of shiny new editions of POWER OF THREE. The boxed set is on sale soon, hurrah! All six paperbacks in one gorgeous slipcover, the perfect gift for new classmates, perhaps? And the holidays are just around the corner…

If extra reading is the last thing on your mind as you plunge back into the school routine, how about challenging your knowledge of what you’ve read so far? The Warriors and Seekers trivia game is online now at the Awesome Adventure website, http://awesomeadventurebooks.com/freegames/warriors-trivia-battle. I’ll be posting my score next month, as long as I’m not too ashamed by my lack of knowledge. I struggle to remember all the cast lists and past storylines when I have my notes right in front of me, so my memory might not be up to competing with the super-fans that I know are out there.

Right now, things are very busy behind the scenes of Warriors and Seekers. Kate and I are developing the storyline for CROOKEDSTAR’S PROMISE – the storyline is the easy part, actually, it’s fitting in everything that happened in BLUESTAR’S PROPHECY which is the hard part! While that’s going on, Cherith and I are turning our imaginations to storylines for the second series of Seekers, with even more bear-themed intrigue than before, including MURDER. Gasp! You know I get bored if we don’t have a few dead bodies littering the scenery… And after the sensational revelation that there WILL be a fifth series of Warriors, I’m starting to let a few ideas take shape in my imagination, like tiny little seeds that might one day grow into something proud and fruitful. No hints as to what they might be about, though! Some things will be kept secret for a little longer.

Meanwhile, my search for a new house goes on, and one property in particular provided a lot of stories. It was a former village Post Office, thriving as the village’s only store until thirty years ago when it was turned into a private home. What is now the dining room was the entire shop, with a long counter running down one side and shelves everywhere for essentials like bread and milk, as well as stationery and stamps. In one corner of the room is a little nook that used to be where the Public Telephone was kept. As the only phone in the village for many, many years, it must have been used for all kinds of dramatic announcements and requests! Perhaps the house where you live was once used for a different purpose; are there any traces of its history left? There are stories all around us, if we just take the time to look.

Good luck for the new school year, watch out for the new boxed set, test your memory on the Warriors and Seekers Trivia Battle, and keep me posted (via the official messageboards) with your thoughts about the latest books. I’ll be jealously picturing your new school stuff, wishing I had an excuse for shiny new shoes…

With love and good wishes
Erin x

* This is the first line of Keats’ beautiful poem Ode To Autumn. Read it if you can!

I haven’t gotten to around to reading it yet, so post your spoilers in the comments section!

-Seedfur

-Seedfur

Unfortunatly, if you haven’t read most of the Warriors books, you might have a little trouble with it, but if you’ve read most of the Warriors books, you’ll love it.

I’ll have the transcript up here ASAP.

-Seedfur

It was announced on Kate Cary’s blog that HarperCollins (and thousands of fans) have requested a fifth series of Warriors. Stay tuned for more updates (which probably aren’t coming anytime soon).

-Seedfur

Also, the third and final book in the Ravenpaw manga trilogy, A (or is it The) Heart of the Warrior is now out, and, to be honest, I haven’t read the second book yet. It’s been sitting in my bookshelf since I got it in March. I might read it today after I get back on topic.

All relevant sections have been updated. Oh, and I’m adding some new graphics.

Erin Hunter has a released a new author tracker;

AuthorTracker :: Erin Hunter

Hi everyone,

July is upon us, which can mean only one thing: MY BIRTHDAY! Top of my wish list this year is a Friesian horse. I’ve seen some in a field close to my home and talked to their owners, and they are my Dream Horses in every way: tall, black, sturdy but graceful, and always impossibly shiny with flowing manes and tails. I have ridden horses all my life, but I’ve never had the honor of owning a purebred Friesian. Maybe one day…

The other exciting thing about July is that it means we’re just days away until SKYCLAN’S DESTINY and the final part of RAVENPAW’S PATH are published on August 3rd. Don’t forget to pre-order your copy from your local bookstore or online! Cherith and I had a lot of fun revisiting new SkyClan in the sandy gorge. We were so interested to see how the characters had developed over the six moons since FIRESTAR’S QUEST that I think we almost forgot these cats only exist in our imaginations! Sometimes I truly believe they are carrying on with their lives beyond the pages of the books. FIRESTAR’S QUEST was one of the most fun storylines to develop. Once I had the idea about the fifth Clan, and Firestar finding out in a cryptic message from Bluestar, the story seemed to write itself. My favorite scene is the battle with the rats, when the enemy is like a single river flowing around them, sharp-teethed and hostile.

I think I was hoping that SKYCLAN’S DESTINY would be similarly straightforward to come up with a plot, but in fact I spent a long time thinking about various dramatic things that could happen next to the beleaguered modern Clan. Once I started thinking along the lines of a Civil War, with conflicting ideas that threaten to destroy the foundations of the new community, things started to fall into place. I hope we have succeeded in giving SkyClan a satisfying second chapter to their courageous modern history!

I’m excited to hear your opinions on the Ravenpaw manga trilogy, too. This character was an obvious choice for a manga series; I promise I miss him as much as you do! I set out to give him a series of adventures that would prove he is a true warrior at heart-brave, loyal to Barley, and willing to fight for what he believes in-but by the time I finished the trio of storylines I realized that I had also created a passionate defence for Ravenpaw keeping his apprentice name. One the questions I am asked the most is, What would Ravenpaw’s warrior name have been? My answer is always the same: He was never going to have one because he isn’t suited to be a Clan warrior. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that, and if you read my introductions to each part of his manga trilogy, you’ll get more of an insight into why this issue became so important to me.

I haven’t succeeded in buying a house yet, but we are still very interested in the Coach House, with all its history and red-bricked charm. One unusual element is that part of the property is the home of a colony of Lesser Horseshoe Bats, which are very rare. As the cold weather arrives, they all decamp to the cellars of a large country house several miles away, where they hibernate peacefully until spring returns. They have been living in these two properties, for nearly three hundred years. The bats are gorgeous, about the size of plums with thick soft-looking fur and velvety wings. Generations and generations of them have been flying back and forth between their summer and winter quarters and theirs are the stories I would most like to hear! If I moved there, maybe they would inspire a new Erin Hunter series?

If you need some downtime from outdoor activities during the long vacation, don’t forget to pit your skills and wits against the Warriors-themed challenges at www.awesomeadventurebooks.com. All the games and activities are completely FREE, and I have no doubt that you will be far, far better than me. My scores on the bejewelled game (so pretty! So hard!) are shameful, I’m afraid.

And if you can’t bear the thought of going an entire month without a new Warriors or Seekers title, have you read BATTLES OF THE CLANS yet? It doesn’t only feature battles that have appeared in the series so far; there are lots of battles from before we met the four Clans, as well as some familiar encounters from a completely different point of view.

Have a safe and happy vacation, and don’t forget to wear sunscreen when you’re out on patrol!

With love and good wishes
Erin x

And the Browse Inside for SkyClan’s Destiny is out. (Click the title to view). And let me just say that the titles in SkyClan’s Destiny are horrific. Exhibit A; Ebonyclaw, Billystorm, Harveymoon, Rockshade, Bouncefire, Snookpaw (This is NOT Jersey Shore, people), Hunchfoot, and; this is not for young children or the faint of heart; Macgyver. It’s obviously a kittypet name, and, in that case, i’m mad at whatever human named their cat that. Hopefully I didn’t offend any Macgyver owners.

Update; the browse inside for the final Manga in the Ravenpaw trilogy is out! Click here to view it.

Enjoy your Browse Insides and summer vacations-

~Seedfur (who is still upset over the names in SkyClan’s Destiny)