Interviewing RJ Barker

Helloooo!!

I recently reviewed the stunning finale to The Tide Child trilogy The Bone Ship's Wake by RJ Barker – it will end in kittens and by kittens a heart-rending, brilliant and powerful conclusion to a series I’ve loved. I couldn’t resist finding out a bit more about the book (and still not spoil you) so RK kindly agreed to answer a few questions.

So how would you book tempt The Bone Ship’s Wake?

Hornblower Vs Godzilla. or Master and Commander Vs Godzilla

I mean, that’s mostly a lie but it gives you a flavour of it. Hornblower’s tragic emotional journey in the company of Godzilla who may or may not know he exists, doesn’t work quite as well.

Both Meas and Joron find themselves in very different places to where we first met them? What were you exploring with their character arcs?

I suppose it’s about how people’s realities change. By the third book Joron has more or less become, to the people around him, the person he saw Meas as when he first met her. They don’t see him as he sees himself anymore.

And at the same time, we are realising that Meas never really was the person he thought of her as, and still to some degree thinks of her as. Looked at from outside they have both become figures of legend, people expect wonderful things of them. But we know that up close they are just as frail and fallible as anyone else. I mean, there’s loads of other stuff going on, but that idea really interested me.

You have a great and tense set piece with ships being pursued? How did you find writing those scenes?

Well, I really enjoyed writing it, but I can’t really claim the long chase. It’s a staple of naval fiction and it was my homage to a similar chase in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books so I kind of had the blueprint for it already in my head. Then I did a version of it that fitted the world I had created but I think tension is a thing I do. One of my big influences is the crime writer James Lee Burke whose books are a slowbuild of tension, and I love those westerns that are about people trying to escape violence, but being dragged back. The slow turning of the screw and I think there’s a real element of that in the ship chases. There’s also (spoilers here) a metaphor in that chase for Joron’s path through the trilogy, in what is done to the ship in the name of duty.

You’ve mentioned your love of Patrick O’Brian’s maritime series. Have you noticed something you’d never appreciated before now you’ve written your own?

Yes, ships are incredibly hard to write about. Never again. Though, maybe again. I really enjoyed it, but I can see why a lot of writers just go *handwave* and they went on a ship, and they did a journey. Keeping track of all the detail is incredibly hard and adds another layer of hard on to an already complex world. But it’s not fun if it’s easy.

What was your favourite piece of research you found while writing this novel that never made the book?

Well, I started it with a pretty good level of knowledge about ships already, so there wasn’t vast amounts of research done. But the huge amount of work needed to keep these big ships running is fascinating, the supply chains run back through everything. You can see it in our history and language, even now it touches our lives in surprising ways, like the make-up of our forests and woods and landscape has its roots (ha!) in ship building. I find rope walks a really interesting thing. I’m a bit fascinated with rope walks. But in the end, how they salted fish, or made ropes were not things the reader needed to know for the story to work, so I didn’t put them in. Most research is like that.  

What else can we look forward from you in the future? How is your evil twin RJ Darker doing?

RJ Darker is doing alright, there are three Mal and Jackie books done and the next two are slowly going through the process of editing for release. I’m at the end of the first in a new fantasy trilogy that is loosely based on Robin Hood, that sort of feel anyway. Lots of big forests and strange things going on. It’s much closer to Age of Assassins in feel than to The Bone Ships. So, we should see that next year and it will be coming out in hardback first, I believe.

Any books you’d recommend for autumn night’s reading

I’ve recently read an ARC of Justice of Kings by Richard Swann which was excellent, and I started The Book eaters by Sunyi Dean which was also excellent and then my deadline roared up and I have had to put it aside until that is done, but it is also excellent. A really new and fresh take on vampires.