Rob barron publishes second novel
RJ Barron took the Creative Writing Programme from 2022 to 2024. His second novel A Cold Wind Blows is published today. Here he talks about his writing life.
When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? I never really wanted to be a writer. I just wanted to write.
You worked for many years as an English teacher and deputy headteacher in London before moving on to train new English teachers and to write fiction. How did that background influence your writing? It meant that my entire adult professional life involved literature of one sort or another: reading it, analysing it, talking and writing about it. I also honed my skills of reading fiction aloud and developing a sensitivity about what worked and what didn’t. By the end, I had a pretty good sense of what made a good book.
Why did you decide to join the Creative Writing Programme? I wanted to become a better writer. I had self-published a novel and had had a YA novel (The Watcher and The Friend) published by Burton Mayers Books and although it was a very enjoyable experience, it was a very solitary one. I wanted to experience a network of writers that would support and challenge.
Who were your tutors? Bethan Roberts and Hannah Vincent. Both fabulous!
What was the most impactful element of the course for you? Finally realising that, when writing, less is more! Also coming to the understanding that critical feedback is not a damning verdict on one’s personal worth, but a helpful process of identifying elements in the draft that don’t work. Criticism still stings but it’s so educative. Finally, it was just a pure indulgent luxury to have two or three hours every Monday morning to talk about books and writing. I loved the craic!
Did you start writing your second YA novel A Cold Wind Blows on the course? Tell us how that came about and the inspiration behind it? The series (it’s planned as a trilogy) had been in my head for some time. I had done a lot of work on children’s literature and fantasy in my degree and through my job as an English teacher and wanted to tell a story that was exciting and adventurous but at the same time commenting on things going on in the world today. It’s sneakily political in many ways.
How did you finish your novel and get your publishing deal? I never really seem to have trouble finishing things (I know that’s going to come back to bite me sometime in the future), but finding a publisher was just luck really. I had built up a following on Twitter (pre Mr Musk) in the educational community to promote an earlier school-based book, and I heard of Burton Mayers Books through them and sent it off, expecting to add to my growing mountain of rejections. Reader, he liked it!
Originally from Teesside, you became familiar with Runswick Bay, the North Yorkshire Moors and the city of York as a child, and then a student. How important is setting in your books? Vitally important. I love to give a vivid sense of time and place so the story feels rooted in reality
Book Two A Cold Wind Blows came out today – 30th May 2025. Tell us about that story and how the writing process differed from the first book. The book is about the old regime fighting back against a liberal establishment. In the fictional world of Yngerlande, in 1796, society has developed so that there is no discrimination against any groups of people based on sexuality or race. This comes under threat and there is an attempted coup to bring back the bad old days. The final part of the trilogy will show who wins in the end. I found writing a sequel very hard at first. I had never done it before and floundered around making false start after false start. I couldn’t quite work out how to mine the connection between the two books and how much information new and old readers would need. But then I put book one out of my mind and the whole thing began to flow, just as the first one had done.
What’s next for you? I finished a crime romance novel, The Wrong Men, set in York in 1979, during the Creative Writing Programme, and I am now slogging my way through final edits and the submissions process. I’m hopeful something will come of that. I’m currently writing the end of the YA trilogy and a sequel to The Wrong Men, provisionally called Agua de Valencia. I’m excited about both of those projects.
What are your top tips for someone starting out in their writing career?
Write for yourself. Don’t worry about genre or target audience, just write a story that you want to be told.
Don’t worry about editing while you go, just accumulate the words, so that something exists that you can work with later. In the words of DBC Pierre, you’ll be delighted at the alchemy that takes place after about 10,00 words when like a compost heap, your writing takes on a life of its own and ideas, characters, relationships start to snap crackle and pop.
Be open to feedback and brave about criticism. As my tutors told me during the course, all first drafts are terrible. Words of wisdom!
Follow Rob on Instagram and X. If you’d like to follow in Rob’s footsteps, why not consider signing up for a taster session for the Creative Writing Programme? We’re running tasters from now until late September.