A Peek at my Warrior Cats FanFiction

Hi all,

I'f you’ve read my blog posts for a while you might remember when I posted about the Warriors Short Story Competition. The book series, written by Erin Hunter, has been a favourite of mine for years now and I was so excited to enter. I didn’t win, but I did promise to eventually post my entry for you to read. I think you’ve waited long enough to see what my FanFiction is like!

Brightpaw swings around, expecting a short trek to Snakerocks. Instead, she finds that they've arrived already. 

"How did we get here?" 

Swiftpaw nudges her with a purr. "We walked, mousebrain!" 

"But I don't remember-" 

"Quiet!" Whitestorm raises his tail. "What can you two smell?" 

Swiftpaw eagerly inhales. "Dogs!" 

"Dogs?" Brightpaw echoes, her tail drooping. 

This doesn't happen like this.

"Yes, I'm sure of it!" Swiftpaw continues to meow excitedly. "Do we get to chase them off, Longtail?" 

Brightpaw wants to speak but finds herself unable to. Her mouth goes dry, and her paws feel rooted to the spot. 

There's a panicked yowl from the patrol as a dog seems to appear from the rocks in front of them. Its large body ripples with a bark and it pulls its lips back in a snarl.

"Longtail!" 

Swiftpaw's panicked scream makes her flatten her ears. The tabby tom is being dragged back into a forest by another dog who just came out of nowhere. Another has Swiftpaw pinned. She screams as the dog darts forward, going for her friend's neck. Before the teeth can make contact, the black and white tom disappears into a fine mist. Her fellow apprentice is completely gone and now the dog is glaring at her. 

None of this happened this way! 

She looks to her mentor for comfort, but Whitestorm isn't there anymore. Instead, a pure white she-cat is stood in his place, her green eyes flashing with fury. 

"Come and get me, mange-pelt!" The she-cat yowls. 

No! She wasn't here! 

The white cat sprints forward like Swiftpaw did. Her paws pound against the earth, sounding like thunder in Brightpaw's ears. She can only watch in horror as her beloved daughter springs forward, her claws outstretched, ready to fight like all of LionClan. 

"Whitewing! No!" 

Everything seems to happen in slow motion as the dog snaps its jaws around Whitewing's torso. The dog pins her beneath one of its grubby paws. Her daughter looks at her mother with fear in her green eyes. 

"Mother!" She cries out, clawing at the ground with her free paw. 

"Whitewing!" Brightpaw is still frozen to the spot, no matter how much she wills her body to move. "Whitewing!" 

"Mother!" 

The last shout is clearer, and Brightheart's eye snaps open. The ginger and white she-cat shoots out of her nest with a gasp, taking several clumps of clawed moss with her. 

Her daughter brushes against her with a purr. "I'm here, mother." 

Brightheart takes a moment to catch her breath. "Another nightmare." 

"I've asked Thornclaw to cover my spot on the dawn patrol. I can stay here with you." 

"You don't have to pause your warrior duties to worry about a silly elder." 

Whitewing brushes her tail against her mother’s chin. "I don't have to, but you know I will. Why don't we go out for a walk to clear your head?" 

"I'd like that," She purrs. "I love you." 

Whitewing grins just like Swiftpaw used to. "I love you too, mother." 

***

That’s it for this week! Next week will be my year in review, so keep an eye out for that. See you next Sunday.

My Favourite Book Series

Hi all,

On Twitter I asked what you wanted me to write about this week, and my favourite book series won! (Spoiler alert - it has cats in it).

As I've mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of Warriors by a group of authors who write under the pen name of Erin Hunter. It is by far my favourite book series, one that I continue to read today.

It's about cats who live in a forest in one of four Clans. The first book is 'Into The Wild' and has carried on going since then. 

My Warriors book collection - with my ‘published works’ shelf at the top

Each series follows the perspective of one or multiple characters. My favourite is the 'Dawn of the Clans' which is technically a prequel to the first series. My least favourite is 'The Power of Three'.

My top three favourite characters are as follows:

Russetfur.

Hollyleaf.

Tallstar.

I started reading the books in 2005, when I was about eight years old. Although I took a break for a few years when I turned eighteen, I rediscovered them last year and caught up with all the books. At the time of writing this there are over eighty books in total, with more still to come.

Warriors really inspired my writing, as most of my original stories were about cats. I used to go on the Warriors Forums under the name RussetstarOfCloudClan (inspired by my favourite character - Russetfur and my made up Clan, CloudClan). Although most people just called me Russet. I wrote about my OC, Russetheart and had a spin-off series called Like Lightning, Disaster Strikes. Although reading those stories back now makes me cringe, writing about Warriors really helped my writing to grow and improve while I was trying to find my style.

Mishka wouldn’t make a very good warrior…

Warriors fanfiction inspired me to keep writing and I hope that one day people will love my books as much as they love the Warriors series. I've laughed and cried so much reading these books, and certain character deaths still pull on my heart strings when I re-read some books. I want people to feel that roller coaster of emotions when reading my work too.

I will keep reading Warriors until the authors stop writing books. I absolutely love the series and nothing has matched up to it since I started reading it.

That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading and will check out Warriors if you haven't already.

See you next week!

Don't be Ashamed to Write Fanfiction

Hi all,

This week I'm going to talk about Fanfiction, and why you shouldn't be ashamed to write it.

Firstly, Fanfiction is when someone writes a story using a book's setting, plot or characters. Most people write about their own original characters, or 'OCs' and how they would fit into this world.

I've seen a lot of authors being shamed online for writing Fanfiction, as they are using someone else's ideas and changing the plot.

There's nothing wrong with that.

As long as they source the original work and express that it is fan made, there is no harm done. They also don't try to sell these works because that would breach copyright. 

Fanfiction is a fun way to write without having to worry about doing all the world building yourself, it's already been done for you. It's a great way to improve your writing skills and also inspire you to come up with your own original work. I started off writing Fanfiction for my favourite book series, Warriors by Erin Hunter. I still love those books to this day (though I really need to catch up with some of the newer books).

Were they badly written?

Yes, but seeing as I wrote Fanfiction from thirteen to eighteen I could see the improvement.

Were there spelling errors?

You bet.

Did you use OCs?

Yep, creating OCs in the Warriors universe helped me greatly with personality and character flaws.

Did readers like the characters?

Yes, people loved my characters. When I left the site because of my schoolwork I passed one of my characters, Bouncepelt, to one of my most loyal readers.

Was the story good?

Kinda.

Do you regret writing it?

Not at all.

I wrote four Fanfiction novellas because of those books, I think I only managed to finish three before I had to stop to concentrate on my studies. It was a great creative outlet and I met so many lovely people from writing Fanfiction. It really improved my writing, as I just had to focus on nailing my characters because the background and rules had already been written. Although I look back on it now and cringe at how bad it is, I'm still glad that I loved a book series so much that I wanted to write about it and share it with the world.

Do not be ashamed to write Fanfiction.

It's not a bad thing at all, it's lovely to see authors expanding on someone else's work. I love reading Fanfiction, I think I've read more Fanfiction this month than books!

Of course, not all Fanfiction is good.

But, I'm the other hand you can go into any book store and pick up an awful traditionally published book or scroll through Amazon and find an unedited mess of an ebook. Shaming someone for reading Fanfiction does not make you look good. Plus, coming up with original ideas all the time can be exhausting. Why not take a break but also fulfill your writing needs at the same time?

I've also seen some of the following as to why people don't regard Fanfiction as 'proper' writing:

- It's copyright.

- Authors don't like it.

- You're stealing someone's work.

- You're not coming up with any ideas yourself.

- It's lazy.

- All Fanfiction is poorly written.

None of the above are true. Fanfiction is an important creative outlet, and I'd encourage people to write Fanfiction about my work if they were that inspired by it. Most authors are flattered that people love their work so much, so don't be afraid of backlash.

In conclusion, if you want to write Fanfiction, do it. If you don't want to, don't. But neither side should be shaming the other for their choice. We need to support each other no matter the writing route we take.

Thank you for reading this week's post! Did you ever write Fanfiction? Share in the comments!