J.D Barker: From Books to Business Success

J.D Barker (Jonathan Dylan Barker) is a New York Times and international bestselling American author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural.
J.D continued with his corporate profession and being ghost writer untill in 2012 when he wrote a novel of his own, titled Forsaken.
Stephen King read portions of Forsaken prior to publication and granted Barker permission to utelize the character of Leland Gaunt of King's Needful Things in the novel.  The book went on to hit several major milestones.  Forsaken was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award (best debut novel) and won a handful of others including a New Apple Medalist Award.  After reading Forsaken, Bram Stoker's family reached out to Barker and asked him to co-author a prequel to Dracula utelizing Bram's original notes and journals, much of which has never been made public.  The novel, titled Dracul sold at auction to G.P Putnam & sons, with film rights going to Paramount.  Andy Muschietti (IT, Mama) is attached to direct.
J.D  has since gone to write numerous titles which have appeared on bestseller lists around the world.  He is also a frequent collaborator with James Patterson.

Transcript

00:00:00 Lifuo Makhele: JD Thank you. Thank you for coming to my Entrepreneurship Journey podcast. It's been a long time coming. Trying to arrange with your team for this to happen. And you're here today

00:00:12 JD Barker: Oh.

00:00:13 Lifuo Makhele: to take us through your literary journey. Thank you.

00:00:16 JD Barker: Thanks

00:00:16 Lifuo Makhele: Welcome.

00:00:16 JD Barker: for having me. I appreciate it.

00:00:19 Lifuo Makhele: And we are going to talk about books and business success. We are happy to have you here. And, you know, I read somewhere where you said that you were always drawn to to reading and writing from an early age. But how did you know to tap into your mind, to turn that passion into a career?

00:00:38 JD Barker: You know, it kind of evolved over time. So I grew up without a television in the house, which isn't saying much because I was born in 1971, so there were only three channels on the air anyway, so it wasn't really worth watching. But

00:00:50 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:00:50 JD Barker: my, my mom would take us to the library all the time. So I was reading by a very early age. I started reading when I was three. By the time I got into kindergarten, I had read all the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, which were real popular back then,

00:01:01 Lifuo Makhele: I.

00:01:02 JD Barker: like Charles Dickens and some of the classics. I have always just loved the idea of getting lost in a book. I'm an awkward kid, I'm an awkward adult, and I've retreated into books pretty much my entire life. I've got a form of autism called Asperger's, which I learned later in life. But because of that, I spent a lot of time in my own head and I felt like the world was getting becoming too much or too stressful. I'd open a book and I would I would just get lost. The whole writing thing like that's going on. As far as I can recall, my my entire life I've got a sister who's about a year younger than me, and I used to write stories and stapled the pages together. And I made a little library in my room and she would check out the stories and I would charge her late fees when she did bring them back on time. So this is dating back like I was probably five, six years old or something when I was doing that.

00:01:52 Lifuo Makhele: Right.

00:01:53 JD Barker: My parents always encouraged it, but as a hobby, they were very firm in telling me that, you know, writing is a fun thing to do on the side, but you can't make a living as an author, you have to get a

00:02:03 Lifuo Makhele: Mm

00:02:03 JD Barker: real job.

00:02:04 Lifuo Makhele: hmm.

00:02:04 JD Barker: So when I graduated high school, they drilled that into my head. So I kind of followed the same path everybody else does. I finished high school, I went off to college, ended up getting a couple of different degrees. I got one in business, another, one in finance, another, and I

00:02:17 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:02:18 JD Barker: ended up working in the corporate world. But I would come home at night and I would write in order to stay sane. Nobody

00:02:24 Lifuo Makhele: And.

00:02:24 JD Barker: was paying me for for a lot of the stuff I was doing, but it was entertaining to me. So I've done it pretty much my entire life.

00:02:32 Lifuo Makhele: That's amazing. And so let me to say, you know, I've got this degrees, I've got this corporate life that I'm living. But, you know, I'm just going to follow my passion because I assume that wouldn't be an easy thing, you know, to now switch and say, okay, I'm focusing on writing because it takes time. You know, you need to to give it your all and focus on it and make a career out of it.

00:02:57 JD Barker: Yeah. So I, you know, as I was in school, I was working in the corporate world, I was kind of writing. I did, I worked for a lot of newspapers and magazines. Um, I did that at first and then I

00:03:06 Lifuo Makhele: Argument.

00:03:06 JD Barker: started, I fell into a kind of a side hustle as a book doctor and a ghostwriter. I was very, very good at fixing grammar, punctuation, and helping people develop their stories, weed out what wasn't working, suggest things that might exist

00:03:20 Lifuo Makhele: I see.

00:03:20 JD Barker: over time. It it turned into a thing where people were handing me manuscripts to to correct. Ultimately, as a ghost writer, I had six different books that hit the New York Times bestseller list over those 20 some years. That all

00:03:32 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:03:32 JD Barker: came out with other people's names on the cover, which gets very old after a while. When you're the one doing the actual work and doing the writing too, that that sticks. One hit up and my wife pulled me aside. She said, Listen, I know you want to become a full time author. Let's find a way to make this happen.

00:03:46 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:03:46 JD Barker: And at that point, we were kind of trapped because I had the corporate job. I was the chief

00:03:51 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:03:51 JD Barker: compliance officer at a brokerage firm, which was very stressful. It was a horrible job. I hated it, but it paid really

00:03:57 Lifuo Makhele: Mm

00:03:57 JD Barker: good. And

00:03:58 Lifuo Makhele: hmm.

00:03:58 JD Barker: because of that salary, we were trapped. We had a big house, we had cars, we had a boat. So ultimately,

00:04:03 Lifuo Makhele: Of course.

00:04:04 JD Barker: she came up with this crazy plan. We we sold everything that we owned. We bought a tiny little duplex in Pittsburgh, rented out one

00:04:10 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:04:11 JD Barker: side to some tenants and lived on the other side and basically got to the point where I could live off of savings long enough to write that first book under my own name. And that one came out a little over a decade ago. It was on November of 2014 and was called Forsaken and I haven't heard

00:04:25 Lifuo Makhele: Just.

00:04:25 JD Barker: back.

00:04:26 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah, and that didn't scare you? You know, I hope I do this right. I don't. You know,

00:04:31 JD Barker: Oh, that's

00:04:32 Lifuo Makhele: the

00:04:32 JD Barker: scary.

00:04:32 Lifuo Makhele: pressure of it all. Yeah.

00:04:33 JD Barker: It scared the crap out of me, you know? That's a frightening thing. I mean, when you, you know, I had a cushy job, I could have easily stayed with that job through retirement

00:04:43 Lifuo Makhele: And.

00:04:43 JD Barker: and live very nicely. But, you know, I wasn't happy at all. And

00:04:48 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:48 JD Barker: the idea of spending another 20 some years doing something I wasn't happy with while this this dream was kind of lingering off to the side, it was worth taking that chance for me.

00:04:57 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. And J.D., that that that that. The first novel Forsaken did so well, and it went on to even be nominated for an award. And take us through that journey. What was your writing process and also what inspired you to to write about that story? And what challenges do you face now as a first time full time novelist?

00:05:26 JD Barker: Well, at that point I had already written some bestsellers, you know, like I mentioned. So

00:05:30 Lifuo Makhele: I.

00:05:31 JD Barker: I knew I knew the formula. I understood what needed to be in the book in order for it to sell well. So I had that part down. I've always been a horror fan. The very first adult book I ever read was Dracula and

00:05:43 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:05:43 JD Barker: Scared Me Half

00:05:44 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah,

00:05:44 JD Barker: to death, you know? And

00:05:45 Lifuo Makhele: yeah.

00:05:46 JD Barker: I think the fact that it was able to do that, I was around eight years old when I read it, and it caused me to have to leave the lights on at night for

00:05:52 Lifuo Makhele: Mhm.

00:05:53 JD Barker: probably a month.

00:05:54 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:05:54 JD Barker: I checked in under my bed and all that kind of stuff, like the fact

00:05:57 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:05:57 JD Barker: that it brought out those emotions in me. Like I wanted to recreate that. So I felt

00:06:01 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:06:01 JD Barker: that I wanted to write horror.

00:06:03 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:06:03 JD Barker: And, you know, in today's world I still do, but I also write thrillers. I bounce back and forth. I kind of write one more novel, one thriller novel, just kind of go back and forth.

00:06:12 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:06:12 JD Barker: But at the time, I felt I wanted to be a horror author. So this particular story focuses very heavily on the Salem Witches,

00:06:20 Lifuo Makhele: Mm.

00:06:20 JD Barker: which has always been. It's one of those things that I'd love to research. So the story fell into place for me. I just felt like it was the right time for it.

00:06:30 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Yeah. And so you say you were always drawn to to, like you said, eight years old. You read Dracula. I remember my mom when I was young, she read the book and she was just narrating the story. My goodness, I was so scared. I even then went on to watch the movie. But could you say that when you were young you were drawn to this horror literature and but then, like any young kid you always chat. You always thought there would be monsters under the bed, in the closet, like most of us when we were young. Could you say that's where your creativity stemmed from? To focus on the three lies, horror, generous.

00:07:16 JD Barker: You know, I think all kids have that creativity, that imagination is just so strong when we're younger. I think what really ends up happening as people get older, we lose we lose hold of that, you know, as we start falling into our our day to day life, as we grow up, we become adults and get responsible. That imagination tends to vanish in a lot of people. I've always read, which I think has helped fuel that. I think being autistic has helped quite a bit. My my memory works

00:07:42 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:07:43 JD Barker: very weird. I can recall things from when I was three or four years old as easily

00:07:47 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:07:47 JD Barker: as I can recall something that happened last week. And

00:07:50 Lifuo Makhele: Huh?

00:07:50 JD Barker: I think because of that, my my imagination is still there. My wife, we we've got a seven year old daughter. And I play with her all the time. And I can

00:07:59 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:07:59 JD Barker: I can play with her as a seven year old, you know, which which she

00:08:02 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah,

00:08:02 JD Barker: loves,

00:08:02 Lifuo Makhele: yeah, yeah,

00:08:03 JD Barker: because

00:08:03 Lifuo Makhele: yeah.

00:08:03 JD Barker: I remember exactly what that was like. And I think that's partly why I'm able to write the way that I do. I think it helps me with shaping characters because I'm 54 years old now. Yeah, I remember

00:08:13 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:08:14 JD Barker: every one of those years, so I could write a character anywhere in between there. I could do a high school student, I can do an elementary school student, I can do a full fledged adult. I've

00:08:22 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:08:22 JD Barker: been there, done that, so I can put it down on paper and make it seem believable.

00:08:26 Lifuo Makhele: Mm hmm. And let's talk about publishing now, because now you are already an experienced a writer, but now you're just doing it on your own, the publishing process. Were there any obstacles, challenges and how did you overcome those?

00:08:43 JD Barker: While the first book forsaken I ended up self-publishing that but

00:08:47 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:08:47 JD Barker: it sold it sold a lot of copies and I credit the process. I basically when I decided I was going to do that, I decided that book would have to come out and it would have to be on par with something coming out of Random House. I saw them as my competition, so we did a hardcover, we did an audiobook, we did an e-book. I hired professionals across the board for formatting, for cover design, for editing, and made it as good as something coming out of one of those large publishing houses. And

00:09:13 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:09:13 JD Barker: I think that in a lot of ways that was partly why it sold as well as it did, because

00:09:17 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:09:17 JD Barker: it sold well. When my second book was ready, I had no trouble getting an agent and selling that into the traditional market. So that one was picked up by AMH, which is now part of HarperCollins and my next several books I put out through a traditional model, through the big publishers.

00:09:33 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:09:33 JD Barker: But I missed a lot of the freedom that I had as an indie author. As an indie author, you make all the decisions, everything is

00:09:40 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:09:40 JD Barker: on your shoulders. And when you're with the traditional guys, you send in the book and they can do anything to it. They can change

00:09:45 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:09:45 JD Barker: the cover, they can change the name, they can market it any way that they want. I didn't like giving up that freedom and the economics as an indie author are better than they are under the traditional publishing model. A traditional publisher.

00:09:58 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:09:58 JD Barker: Might they give you a nice big advance check? But you have to pay that money back is just an advance. So you're paying it back.

00:10:04 Lifuo Makhele: Oh.

00:10:04 JD Barker: You're paying it back on small little increments, 15, $0.20 on the dollar if you're lucky. So

00:10:09 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:10:09 JD Barker: you sell a lot of books in order to make that happen. So I publish a couple of books through the traditional model, and then I kind of rein things in and decided to try something different. And I kind of did a hybrid approach. I retained the English rights for myself and put out my next couple of books through my my own publishing company as

00:10:26 Lifuo Makhele: Right.

00:10:26 JD Barker: an indie author. But my agent still sold all the foreign territories, and I'm in about 150 different countries on somewhere between 2530 different languages. So we were able to still get the book out in all these different places, but I retained

00:10:39 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:10:39 JD Barker: control in a lot of them. That worked out very well for for a couple

00:10:43 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:10:43 JD Barker: of books. I really like that. About a year and a half ago, my next book was ready. It was called Behind Closed Door. I sent it off to my agent and he shopped it. We immediately got a film option from the folks in Hollywood movies in the works on that one, and the book was about to go to auction with the publishing houses, and there were three or four of them that wanted it. And I got a phone call from a friend of mine that worked at Random House and she said, Listen, we're about to offer on your book, but you need to turn it down. And I asked her why, and she said, Well, the editor that that wants your book is going to be laid off or we're going to be letting a lot of people go in about a week or so.

00:11:18 Lifuo Makhele: Uh

00:11:18 JD Barker: And

00:11:18 Lifuo Makhele: huh.

00:11:18 JD Barker: I don't want I want to see your book get caught up in that. And if you've ever had a book published by an editor, they're purchased by an editor, and then that editor leaves that book can end up in limbo forever at that publishing house.

00:11:29 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:11:29 JD Barker: It may never come out. So

00:11:31 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:11:31 JD Barker: that really frightened me. So I took another step back. I looked at the industry, I had worked in finance. That was my my last real job. I was I was in

00:11:38 Lifuo Makhele: Mm

00:11:38 JD Barker: the finance

00:11:38 Lifuo Makhele: hmm.

00:11:39 JD Barker: industry. So I reached out to some friends of mine that they knew the people that had just bought Simon Schuster, they had been bought by a private equity firm. So ultimately, I struck a deal with Simon Schuster, where I created my own publishing company with Simon

00:11:52 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:11:52 JD Barker: Schuster handling all the print sales and distribution. So I kind of get the best of both worlds. I can put out books whenever I want, whatever topics I want, but I had Simon and Schuster actually putting those books out so they get in all the places that you can't get into. As an indie author, I can get into

00:12:09 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:12:09 JD Barker: Costco, the big box stores, the drugstores, the grocery stores. I get those books everywhere. So that's where I am today. I think that is by far the best position for me to be in. And I think like a lot of other authors, are probably going to be doing similar type things in the near future.

00:12:24 Lifuo Makhele: I see. And just so I understand correctly, for, you know, for the sake of aspiring authors. So for for hybrid publishing you self-published. But then the publishing house, you know, to extend a publishing house comes in to do the marketing of the of the final product.

00:12:41 JD Barker: No, no, it's all based on location. So I

00:12:45 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:12:45 JD Barker: self-published in all the English speaking countries of the world with Canada,

00:12:49 Lifuo Makhele: Right?

00:12:50 JD Barker: the United States, Australia, U.K., places like that. I

00:12:53 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah,

00:12:53 JD Barker: self-published. But then when it came to the foreign territories like Romania, Russia, Germany,

00:12:59 Lifuo Makhele: I

00:12:59 JD Barker: Italy, Italy,

00:12:59 Lifuo Makhele: see.

00:12:59 JD Barker: France, the traditional publishers picked up the books. So we all worked together on it.

00:13:04 Lifuo Makhele: Take over. I see. Okay. That's interesting. You know as well as are talking, I'm listening to your study. I'm thinking when you were eight years old, you read Dracula and now your very first novel, Sorry for Forbidden Trekking Now was nominated as a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, who was the author of Dracula? Who wrote Dracula? And that's like full circle. How was that moment for you?

00:13:32 JD Barker: You know, it actually went beyond that. So when I was at

00:13:35 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:13:35 JD Barker: the up to the award ceremony, I ended up sitting at a book signing next to Dacre Stoker, who is Bram Stoker's great grandnephew. And

00:13:44 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:13:44 JD Barker: we talked talked for about an hour. I picked his brain on everything related to Bram Stoker. He asked me about my time that I spent working as a ghostwriter and a book doctor. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was actually a job interview. He knew exactly who I was, and

00:13:57 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:13:57 JD Barker: he pulled me aside a day later and said, Listen, our family has been looking for somebody to write a prequel to Dracula for a very long time now,

00:14:05 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:14:05 JD Barker: utilizing Bram Stoker's original notes and journals. And they asked if I would be interested in doing that, and I obviously said, yes, you don't turn down

00:14:12 Lifuo Makhele: Wow.

00:14:12 JD Barker: a project like that. That

00:14:14 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:14:14 JD Barker: book came out in, I believe, 2017. It's called A Cool.

00:14:18 Lifuo Makhele: Uh huh. Well, well, that that's that's that's interesting. Are there any of your books currently that are being considered or are in production to be T.V. services or movies?

00:14:32 JD Barker: At the moment. I've got eight of them in what I call various stages of Hollywood. Hell.

00:14:37 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:14:37 JD Barker: Nothing is, actually. Nothing has been filmed yet. The whole Hollywood thing, it's like a roller coaster.

00:14:43 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:14:44 JD Barker: Somebody once told me to watch the credits at the end of a movie and all those names that go by. It takes like five or 6 minutes. Every

00:14:50 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:14:50 JD Barker: single person that's listed there had to be there in order for that movie to get to the screen. You take one of them away and all of a sudden it doesn't happen. So there are so many moving

00:14:59 Lifuo Makhele: I

00:14:59 JD Barker: parts

00:14:59 Lifuo Makhele: see.

00:14:59 JD Barker: in something like that. So I've got one project as a director, another one as a writer. This one's got a showrunner. This one's got a star. But

00:15:07 Lifuo Makhele: Huh?

00:15:07 JD Barker: none of them none of them have all the pieces that they need in order for it to happen. But the books have been optioned over and over again. As soon as an option expires, somebody else comes in and scoops it up. So it's I think at this point, it's a numbers game. I think we're going to see something

00:15:21 Lifuo Makhele: I see.

00:15:21 JD Barker: made sooner rather than later.

00:15:24 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Yeah. And how do you approach collaboration, as I know you've just told us that beautifully, how you got to work with Data Stoker on Dracula, and you coauthored to some of the amazing authors, James Patterson and other wonderful authors out there. How do you approach that in a way that aligns with your own business goals?

00:15:49 JD Barker: Well, I mean, for me, it feels natural because I spent so many years working behind the scenes with other people. So when I when I did the ghostwriter thing in the book doctor thing, I was always collaborating with somebody else, either the other, the author or the publisher or the agent, but somebody else was involved in that process.

00:16:05 Lifuo Makhele: Right.

00:16:06 JD Barker: So actually writing books on my own felt weird to me because all of a sudden I was doing it all on my own. So I enjoy working with other people. With James Patterson, that one kind of fell together. He wrote a copy of The Fourth Monkey, which was my serial

00:16:20 Lifuo Makhele: Yes.

00:16:20 JD Barker: killer, and he reached out after that. And then we had a couple of conversations and ultimately decided to try writing together. I think we've got five books out there at this point that the next one comes out in May or in March. It's called The Writer, which

00:16:34 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:16:34 JD Barker: is by far the funniest book the two of us have ever done. But but

00:16:38 Lifuo Makhele: And.

00:16:38 JD Barker: I enjoy that. So, you know, from a business standpoint, I've decided to bring in coauthors, authors, mainly because I've got so many ideas for stories and there's only so many hours in the day I can't write them all So

00:16:50 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:16:50 JD Barker: I've been bringing in coauthors to write some of these titles. The last one I did, it was called Heavier the Stones. I wrote it with a woman named Christine Daigle, who's

00:16:59 Lifuo Makhele: Mm

00:16:59 JD Barker: a neuropsychologist

00:16:59 Lifuo Makhele: hmm.

00:17:00 JD Barker: in real life. And

00:17:01 Lifuo Makhele: Interesting.

00:17:02 JD Barker: the nice

00:17:03 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:17:03 JD Barker: thing about that is she brings that authenticity to the writing process that I could do on my own like I could fake my way through it. I can do enough research and Google searches to create a

00:17:12 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:17:12 JD Barker: character that's well-rounded and seems believable. But having an actual neuropsychologist there as part of the writing process is you can't beat that.

00:17:21 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:17:21 JD Barker: So with these coauthor titles, I've been looking for that. I've been trying to find people that have some type of skill set that I personally don't have that I can bring in, that will help add add a little something to the book. So I've

00:17:32 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:17:32 JD Barker: been having a lot of fun with that. I've got 8 to 12 of them coming out over the next year or so that I've written with others.

00:17:38 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. You know, it's amazing that you have this experience where in the corporate world, you had a finance job. I don't know how to you link this, but what key lessons have you learned about treating your career as a writer, as a business?

00:17:57 JD Barker: Well, I think that's a distinction a lot of authors need to make very early on, and many don't. Ultimately,

00:18:02 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:18:03 JD Barker: you're selling a product. You're selling a widget. It doesn't matter that it could be a book, it could be a cell phone, it could be a banana. But you need to understand

00:18:10 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:18:10 JD Barker: that business and you need to understand how to sell.

00:18:14 Lifuo Makhele: True.

00:18:14 JD Barker: So that's why it's always been for forefront in all of my thinking. Marketing is a huge part of everything that I do. I think, honestly, it's one of the reasons I like working with James Patterson because he came out of the marketing world. He was in advertising before he started writing his own books.

00:18:28 Lifuo Makhele: Huh?

00:18:28 JD Barker: And

00:18:28 Lifuo Makhele: Uh huh.

00:18:28 JD Barker: even even today he's got both hands heavily involved in the business side of things. And I'm constantly learning not only how to write from him, I may do things on that front, but he's taught me a ton on the business side that I would never be able to pick up somewhere else.

00:18:44 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:18:44 JD Barker: I think most authors need to approach it that way. They need to look at their book and say, okay, I'm selling a product. What is the best way to sell this product?

00:18:52 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Amazing. And to anyone who hasn't read off for M.K. Killer for Monkey Killer series books. What could you tell us about that series to entice us, you know, to go out there and pick one of them?

00:19:08 JD Barker: You know, it's funny that that book, I think it came out in 2017. So it's been a few years, but it's still

00:19:13 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:19:14 JD Barker: and every time I you know, it's constantly hitting the chart. The Amazon charts is right

00:19:18 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:19:19 JD Barker: to the top. I think today's back up there again

00:19:21 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:19:21 JD Barker: because it gets so much word of mouth, which is what you really need for a book to succeed. I mean, you can buy as much advertising as you want, but people really need to talk about that book for it to go somewhere. That particular one, I came up with a crazy twist that I had, you know, kind of in the back of my head for years. I knew I wanted to write it. So at the very beginning of the book, the serial killer has been killing people in Chicago for about five years. So

00:19:44 Lifuo Makhele: Right.

00:19:44 JD Barker: the police are all trying to trying to track this person down. He tends to kidnap his victim and he starts mailing body parts to the family, emails and e-mails, their eyes and emails their tongue with

00:19:55 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:19:55 JD Barker: little notes. Evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. And then ultimately they they find the body somewhere. So at the very beginning of this book, a guy is hit by a city bus and killed on his way to a mailbox. And he's holding a tiny little white box tied with a black string with somebody, you're in it. So

00:20:12 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:20:12 JD Barker: the police immediately know this is our serial killer is now dead,

00:20:17 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:20:17 JD Barker: but they also know that he's got a victim out there somewhere that he just kidnaped that's still alive. So they've got a certain amount of time to try and find out because now there's nobody taking care of her. So this

00:20:27 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:20:28 JD Barker: is not not heavy water over

00:20:30 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:20:30 JD Barker: a couple of days like she can die from from that. So it's this crazy ticking clock, you know. But nobody had done that before because my killer is literally dead at the very beginning of the book. But

00:20:40 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:20:40 JD Barker: it is a wild ride.

00:20:43 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Well, interesting. I j do we now live in a in a in a digital landscape, as we know? What advice would you give any aspiring authors out there about monetizing their work digitally?

00:21:00 JD Barker: Well, audiobooks are huge. I know a lot of people in publishing. They don't do an audiobook. That's a mistake

00:21:05 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:21:06 JD Barker: because audiobooks will make a lot of money for you. I have yet to create one that does pay for itself very quickly and turned into

00:21:14 Lifuo Makhele: Oh,

00:21:14 JD Barker: a money making machine.

00:21:15 Lifuo Makhele: yeah.

00:21:16 JD Barker: So I always tell people to do that. I think you need to try it. Like I mentioned earlier, like I publish every publish title I put out, I put out in every possible format. So it's got an audiobook. It's got an e-book, it's got a hardcover, it's got a paperback because certain segments of the world, of the reading world, they like that particular thing. So they may somebody may only want paperback somebody else. They only want audiobooks. So it's it's important to try and hit all of those, those different markets and even things like Kindle Unlimited. I try to get a couple of books in there just because there's a large population that does nothing but Kindle Unlimited books.

00:21:49 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:21:50 JD Barker: I think you have to look at everything that's available and just make sure that you're marketing your product in all those different places.

00:21:57 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. And integrate. And which ones do you prefer? Do you prefer the real book or digital books?

00:22:05 JD Barker: Me. I kind of do all of them.

00:22:08 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:22:09 JD Barker: Like I'll read on my my phone or on my Kindle, you know, when I'm traveling, before I fall, sleep at night just because it's convenient. But

00:22:16 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:22:16 JD Barker: I prefer a paper book whenever I'm able to do that because it's the most relaxing. You don't get text messages popping up in front of you when you're reading

00:22:23 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:22:23 JD Barker: a paper book.

00:22:25 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:22:25 JD Barker: But I go on a five mile run every day and I'll listen to an audiobook while I'm doing that. So I kind of take advantage of all the different

00:22:30 Lifuo Makhele: Uh,

00:22:30 JD Barker: mediums that are out there.

00:22:31 Lifuo Makhele: yes. Yeah. Yeah. You briefly shared earlier about your your autism. And thank you for sharing that. You know, there are studies that link heightened creativity with autism. What are your thoughts about that with your with your experience?

00:22:49 JD Barker: I don't know if that heightens creativity. I mean, I feel like I've always been creative, like I've never let go of that. I

00:22:56 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:22:56 JD Barker: can tell you that the autism, you know, like I mentioned, my memory, you know, I'm able to pull from these early ages and remember them as if they just happened. I

00:23:03 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:23:03 JD Barker: think that that helps from a creative standpoint.

00:23:06 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:23:07 JD Barker: One of the other things that autistic people tend to mimic people in a lot of situations, particularly social situations. So to give you an example, if I'm at a party and I'm standing in a small group and somebody makes a joke, everybody starts laughing, I'm going to start laughing just because everybody else is laughing, not because I think the joke is funny,

00:23:24 Lifuo Makhele: It is funny. Yeah.

00:23:25 JD Barker: but I kind of mimic what everybody else is doing and I kind of more or less fake my way through a social situation like that. I learned long time ago that I can also mimic people on paper in the written word. So if you take a text and put it in front of me and I read a couple of paragraphs written by somebody, I can continue that story and I can write it in their voice. I can copy their vocabulary, their cadence, and their pacing, and basically mimic what what they were doing on paper,

00:23:51 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:23:51 JD Barker: which is something that I did quite a bit when I was working as a ghostwriter because I had to write as somebody else. I've written a lot of memoirs, so I would interview a politician

00:24:01 Lifuo Makhele: Ready.

00:24:01 JD Barker: and I would have to put that story down on paper, but I would have to tell that story in their voice, which I was able to do. I can essentially in my head, I can become that person and I can I can get that out there.

00:24:13 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. I have an autistic nephew and. And one. One thing I've noticed that I know is autistic people are focused. I don't know. You've got this focused mind. I don't know how to put it, but you've got that laser focus. I don't know. So I don't know when when you know, when you're going through your writing process. Do you already know how the book is going to end? Because I see, you know, there will be like other writers going through writer's block. I don't know how the ending should be, but for you, when you start writing the story interlinked like that, do you already know how it's going to end? You already have that mind map.

00:24:50 JD Barker: Well, there's two different camps when it comes to writing. You've got people, they call themselves painters or they basically they make up the story as they go, which I've done for a lot of a lot of my books You come up with your characters, you come up with your plot. You just kind of drop it all together and just wait and see what happens. The author doesn't know where the story's going to end. I've

00:25:10 Lifuo Makhele: Uh huh.

00:25:10 JD Barker: always had a beginning, the ending and something that's going to happen in the middle. I always have that in

00:25:15 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:25:15 JD Barker: my mind and I feel it's almost like having going on a road trip. What you need to know what your destination is. It's okay to take a detour to stop somewhere along the way, but you need to know where you're going. And as long as you know

00:25:25 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:25:26 JD Barker: that when you're writing that book, your subconscious is going to get you to that finish line. So I've written plenty of books that way, but working with James Patterson, he taught me an outline. So the last couple of books that I've written that created very detailed outlines before I even start writing the book. And

00:25:41 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:25:41 JD Barker: what I what I find is I had mentioned I go for a run every day. I live on a little

00:25:45 Lifuo Makhele: Mm

00:25:45 JD Barker: island

00:25:45 Lifuo Makhele: hmm.

00:25:45 JD Barker: and I do a lap around the island. It's about

00:25:47 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:25:48 JD Barker: four miles or so. But during that time I tend to think about like what comes next in the story. So when I was passing a novel, making it up, as I went to it to figure out what was going to happen tomorrow, when I sit down and write more like what comes next in the story now that I've got an outline in front of me, I spend that same brainpower trying to figure out like, how do I make what comes next better? Because I already know what comes next. So I can I can

00:26:09 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:26:09 JD Barker: tweak it and I can make it a lot better than what it initially was. So I'm finding

00:26:13 Lifuo Makhele: I.

00:26:13 JD Barker: that I can write a lot faster if I have an outline. There's a lot less editing involved on the end. I it to go back through and clean it up before I turn the book in because

00:26:21 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:26:22 JD Barker: I already had the story mapped out and I'm able to create some very elaborate twists and storylines that I probably wouldn't have before. So that's that's where I'm at. I don't know how much of that comes from being autistic. I mean, we're not a video right now, so you can't see my office, but you could see my

00:26:36 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:26:36 JD Barker: desk. There's no papers on my desk. It's just my MacBook.

00:26:39 Lifuo Makhele: That's

00:26:39 JD Barker: I don't

00:26:40 Lifuo Makhele: all

00:26:40 JD Barker: have

00:26:40 Lifuo Makhele: I ask. Yeah.

00:26:41 JD Barker: I don't have notes everywhere that the storyline is all it's all in my head

00:26:46 Lifuo Makhele: That's

00:26:46 JD Barker: not.

00:26:46 Lifuo Makhele: amazing. Yeah, that's amazing. Because our next question is going to be, so when you come back from your jog now, you thought of something, do you now scribble it down before you forget? But you're saying, no, no paper notes everywhere, all over the place. It's all it's all in your head. It's all in your mind.

00:27:05 JD Barker: Yeah. Yeah, I just keep it up there.

00:27:07 Lifuo Makhele: You know, that's brilliant. And and and of all the books you have written. Do you have a favorite one?

00:27:15 JD Barker: Oh, that's tough. That's like asking a parent to their favorite kid is

00:27:19 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:27:20 JD Barker: my my favorite book tends to be the last book that I wrote. So right now, it's, it's behind a closed door. But honestly, I've

00:27:26 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:27:26 JD Barker: got one coming out in May called something I Keep Upstairs, which is by far the scariest book I've ever written. I

00:27:33 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:27:33 JD Barker: it's taken me about four years. I got to the point where I freaked myself out a couple of times. I had to put it aside and kind of come back to it. But

00:27:40 Lifuo Makhele: Really? Yeah.

00:27:41 JD Barker: it's about a 16 year old kid who inherits a house. This

00:27:44 Lifuo Makhele: Uh huh.

00:27:44 JD Barker: grandmother died and lives in the house, and it's a perfectly ordinary house.

00:27:48 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:27:48 JD Barker: So he does whatever any 16 year old kid would do. He decides to turn it into a party house so him and his friends start to go there and they have parties, but they quickly get bored with that and they come up with this idea like, what would it take to take this house and turn it into a haunted house?

00:28:03 Lifuo Makhele: Mm hmm.

00:28:04 JD Barker: So they start with a Ouija board, know the typical things that you would expect to try and turn themselves into a haunted house. But the tagline for the book is For a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die. So you kind of you

00:28:15 Lifuo Makhele: Uh

00:28:15 JD Barker: kind

00:28:15 Lifuo Makhele: huh.

00:28:15 JD Barker: of know where they're going.

00:28:17 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:17 JD Barker: Now, the cool thing about this is this house is really it's based on a real house that existed up here in New England. I can actually it's on a tiny little island all by itself,

00:28:27 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah.

00:28:27 JD Barker: right off the coast of where where I live. So you can stand out

00:28:29 Lifuo Makhele: Hmm.

00:28:29 JD Barker: on the beach and you can see it and you can only get to it by boat. But it but it's but it's a real house and it is

00:28:36 Lifuo Makhele: Okay.

00:28:36 JD Barker: really haunted. So we're going to have a lot of fun with the marketing on that one.

00:28:40 Lifuo Makhele: Wow. Interesting. And so something I keep upstairs is the one upcoming book. Is there any other one to be released? A person.

00:28:49 JD Barker: Yes. It's something I keep upstairs comes out in May. In March,

00:28:52 Lifuo Makhele: Mm hmm.

00:28:53 JD Barker: I have a book called The Writer Coming Out with James

00:28:55 Lifuo Makhele: Mm hmm.

00:28:55 JD Barker: Patterson, which is a lot of fun. And then this coming February, I have another one called We Don't Talk About Emma, which takes

00:29:01 Lifuo Makhele: Uh

00:29:01 JD Barker: place

00:29:01 Lifuo Makhele: huh.

00:29:01 JD Barker: in New Orleans. That comes on, I believe, February 5th.

00:29:04 Lifuo Makhele: Uh huh. Wow. JD Thank you. This has been amazing. We've learned so much about writing with Learn So Much About Your Work. I can't thank you enough for showing up on our podcast. Thank you. And happy writing. And happy reading to us.

00:29:20 JD Barker: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Take care.

00:29:22 Lifuo Makhele: Yeah. You're welcome.