Take Five Interview: Victoria Holmes and the Power of Three

It’s not every day your book debuts at #1 on the NYT’s Children’s Series list (now entering Week 3 at the top!), but that’s what happened to contributor Victoria Holmes’ latest release WARRIORS POWER OF THREE: The Sight.  Vicky’s brainchild about feral cat-clans struggling to survive has taken the YA world by storm.  HarperCollins sent her forth from her comfortable London home to the wilds of America armed only with a pen and a sense of humor against hordes of rabid children who are Warrior-mad.

Seriously, this is only half tongue-in-cheek. 

We are pleased to present this Take Five interview with her.

Q.  What is the premise of your new book?

VH:  Firestar, the hero of the first series of Warriors, about four Clans of feral cats, is now a mature, established leader of ThunderClan. The spotlight turns on his grandchildren, three kits named Lionpaw, Hollypaw and Jaypaw, about whom there is an ancient and foreboding prophecy: There will be three, kin of your kin, who will hold the power of the stars in their paws. Firestar has waited a long time for these kits to arrive, and now they are here, he is fearful about what the future holds. The prophecy says nothing about whether the kits will be good or bad, whether they will build ThunderClan up or destroy it entirely . . .

Q.  What would you like people to know about in this story?

VH:  There are two major themes to this book (and, indeed, the whole six-book series): the nature of power, and its amorality; and what being a parent means. I love that Warriors can deal with huge, “human” issues below the surface of a ripping, occasionally bloodthirsty, yarn about feral cats. The messages I would like to get across by the end of the series are that power brings with it the responsibility to choose between good and bad, and that parenting is a way of life rather than a biological affliction. I can’t say anything else because it would give away the plot!

Q.  What problems and challenges do your characters have to overcome in this story?

VH:  Right at the start of planning the series, I decided that I wanted to write from the viewpoint of a blind cat. So, Jaypaw, who takes turns with his brother and sister to tell the story, has been born blind, but has developed such strength and sensitivity in his other senses that it’s impossible to tell that he’s blind from his daily life. We only find out at the very end of Chapter Three, when Jaypaw tells us himself.

Q.  What unique challenges did this story present you, if any?

VH:  Finding new things for my cats to do! This is the thirteenth book in the Warriors series, fourteenth if you include this summer’s Special Edition, Firestar’s Quest, and I frequently wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that I’ll run out of ideas. Luckily Kate and Cherith helped me to develop such strong, complex, rounded characters that it ended up being fun to think up new and unusual adventures that they’d get themselves in to.

Q.  What has been the most rewarding aspect of this book?

VH:  Proving to myself that I can establish a third series of Warriors with a whole new set of central characters, a new prophecy, and some totally new places for the stories to go. And debuting at #1 on every US bestseller chart while I was touring the US to promote it!

WARRIORS THE POWER OF THREE: The Sight is available now at online and bricks ‘n mortar retailers everywhere.

Kathleen Bolton

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.

She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.

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