Linda Baker asked Benedict Jacka:

I just listened to the last four Alex Verus novels and have to say that Gildart Jackson is a splendid choice. Since I listened to, did not read, the books I am not sure about spellings. Is it possible that the character "Barrayar" is a nod to Lois McMaster Bujold's planet of the same name in her Vorkosigan Universe? Love the books BTW and lost entirely too much sleep trying to finish Burned!

Benedict Jacka Glad you like the books! It's a fair question, but oddly enough, it's one that's quite hard to answer, because I'm not completely sure myself.

To understand this, you have to know that Fated dates from a time when I was only barely published and not at all successful. I'd put out two novels, both of which had had mediocre sales, and since then I'd written four more books that had all been rejected one after another. Fated was my tenth novel, and it probably shouldn't be a surprise that by the time I started writing it, my hopes weren't particularly high. The positive side to that was that it gave me a pretty carefree attitude. I really wasn't expecting the book ever to see the light of day, and so I put in all kinds of random references and pieces taken from whatever I'd been reading or watching at the time. When I was writing the scene where that character was introduced I needed a name, decided that 'Barrayar' sounded kind of cool, and put it down. I'd read Bujold's books a while ago, and the society's name must have stuck in my head. And then I went on to the next thing without giving it a second thought.

All that was something like nine years ago. Now writing Alex Verus novels is my day job, Barrayar is a moderately important recurring character and I've had to put way more thought into his personality than I ever did about his name. Funny the way these things work.

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