← The Read Well Podcast
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- [00:04]
Eddie Hood
Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and this is a special episode. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. I've actually seen this gentleman speak live at writing conferences. He's one of the most fascinating storytellers in the fiction space right now. His name is J.D. barker, and I am so, so honored to have him on the show. Today we're going to be talking about his career as a writer, the books he's written, but mostly getting into our message in our community, which is how to read a book well, how to slow down, how to be in a story, how to thoroughly get the most out of, especially with JD's case, a work of fiction. So, JD, thank you for coming on the show. And how you doing?
- [01:01]
J.D. Barker
I'm doing great, honestly. Like, that is a fantastic message. And like, I do a gazillion at these podcasts and interviews and stuff like that. It's the first time anybody's ever brought up, you know, just like, taking a breather, reading a book a little bit slower and actually enjoying it. I mean. Cause a lot of the people I talk to, like, they'll pound out a book a day, you know, two, 300 of them a year. And I learned how to speed read when I was a kid, you know, which is great, you know, if you're studying for something, but, like, I don't find it enjoyable at all. It's almost stressful. I have to slow down and like, you know, I read it in my head literally at, you know, like, the pace that I'm talking right now. Like, to me, like, that's when it's fun, you know, like, you got to get into the story.
- [01:37]
Eddie Hood
Are you one of those readers that hears your voice in your head, or do you try to keep it silent?
- [01:42]
J.D. Barker
You mean as far as telling the story, you know, like the internal voice?
- [01:46]
Eddie Hood
Do you hear the words in your head when you're reading, like. Like the conversation?
- [01:50]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, I do. Yeah. Doesn't everybody? It's always fascinating to learn what's going on in other people's heads.
- [01:56]
Eddie Hood
You know, a lot of people in the reading space now are teaching a practice of, like, almost humming and to, like, not vocalize. So that you can, like, mentally see the word but not hear it. And that's the practice of speed reading, which for me, ruins the book. I want to hear the words. I want to feel them, you know?
- [02:14]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, yeah. Like, I need to fully immerse in it. I mean, that's how I learned to read, you know, as a kid. I've been reading forever, and, you know, then when I started studying, I was told, well, you should learn to speed read because you can, you know, zip through your textbook, which is true. So if it's a boring history text, I can fly through it, and my retention is nice and strong. But it's almost like going like, I run every day, and I almost feel like I get the same rush after reading really fast that I get after running. Like, I need to walk for a little bit to kind of wind down. And if I speed read, it's almost the same thing. I can't speed read before bed for sure, but you can't really see it. But off to the side here in my office, I've got a couch. There's a stack of books there, and I put my phone aside, and I pick up a paper book, and I try to get a good hour or two of reading in every day and just get lost and kind of block out the rest of the world. That's what got me into this in the first place.
- [03:01]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. Nice. I love it. It's interesting. We actually have. I'm an accountant by day. I know that you come from a finance background as well, or like a compliance background of some kind. So. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:14]
J.D. Barker
So I have blocked that out of my mind. Yeah. So my last day job I had, I was the chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm, which is as horrible as it sounds. Yeah. But it's one of those jobs, you know, it pays really well. Most people can't do it for very long, like five to 10 years, like the norm. I did it for 23 years, you know, largely because I compartmentalized. You know, like, I came home and I write to stay sane, or I wrote to stay sane. And, you know, then I would go back into the office and I could separate those two worlds. But, yeah, I. I honestly, I hated every second of it. It's like being an air traffic controller or being responsible for lost luggage at the airport or internal affairs at a police station. Like, nobody wants that job. Somebody's got to do it, you know? So, yeah, yeah.
- [03:54]
Eddie Hood
I used to be an auditor, like, in a CPA firm. So I was the guy that would walk in and tell you all of the problems with your business and how you're screwing it up a thousand different ways. Nobody liked to see me. I feel the different role in the accounting world now, but definitely books are the place I go to. I just feel like I'm that like 9 year old kid again. I started with like Terry Brooks, like sort of Shannara kind of stuff, you know, and just going back to that feeling of like sitting by your little reading lamp as a kid and digging into those books and see, I don't know, I need that because if my life was only accounting, I'd probably lose my mind.
- [04:26]
J.D. Barker
So, yeah, no, I grew up without a TV in the house. So we were reading it, you know, it started with the parents reading to us and by the time I was three, I was reading and we hit the library all the time. I've always been fascinated by the fact that you can open the COVID of something and get completely lost in a totally different world with people that don't really exist. And to like be able to create that, you know, that's, you know, it's fun. I literally get paid to make shit up. It can't get any better.
- [04:49]
Eddie Hood
Well, I mentioned to JD before we got started, selfishly, I'm trying to follow in JD's example as a finance guy. I'm also trying to write myself. And so this is a fun interview for me. I've got a ton of questions about your path to what I would call your creative self. Moving away from that sort of corporate world into kind of what your heart speaks to. Right, that thing that makes you sane. I'd love to talk about that today. Of course, some of the books that you've written. But also one of the benefits is we've got a little chat going on here and some of the members of the chat, the Readwell Podcast book club, are here. So they're asking questions. So I will make sure to get those in today as well. They're very excited to ask you some things. So can we start with that though? I feel like a lot of us have sort of that calling on our heart to make something, to build something, to follow that creative self. I mean, so what, you're in a compliance job and you're writing to stay sane? I mean, how do you, how did you make space for you to do what you love, you know?
- [05:45]
J.D. Barker
Well, I think we all kind of fall into that, right? I mean, in my case, you know, my parents encouraged reading. They encouraged writing for sure. But they always added this little caveat, you Know, writing is a fantastic hobby, but you can't make a living at it. You have to get a real job and, you know, and like that real job, it's laid out, you know, like there's a blueprint there. You know, you go to. You finish up high school, you go to college, you get your degree, you get a desk job or, you know, a job. Then you get a mortgage, you get cars, you get car payments, you get all these things. And like, you know, it's. We just, we follow that because that's what we're told to do. It's what our parents did. So it seems like the right way to go. In my world, I got trapped, you know, like, I didn't want to do all that, but I did it anyway because that's what was expected of me. You know, my dad was a contractor, my mom was a stay at home mom. So like, they just, they wanted something better for me. They wanted that corporate gig and they thought that it would be better. But yeah, so I would come home at night and I would work on these side projects. I worked as a book doctor and a ghostwriter. I wrote tons of memoirs for other people. I used to take novels that were, you know, half baked. I would get hired by editors, by agents, by authors to rewrite them. Sometimes I completed novels for other people. I'm autistic. So, like, I've got a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome. You know, if you know anybody that's autistic, we tend to mimic people in real life situations. So to give you an example, if you're at a party and somebody next to you cracks a joke and you're autistic, like, I'll start to laugh, but I'm laughing because the people around me are laughing. So I'm basically mimicking the behavior that I see, even if I don't find it funny. I'm basically just trying to fit in. It's a weird dynamic to explain, but I learned years ago that I could mimic people on paper too. So if you put a text in front of me written by somebody else, I can pick up on their vocabulary, their writing style, their cadence and their voice and continue that story, story in their own words from their, you know, from that, the point of view that it's being told. So that became very lucrative for me as a side hustle. But, you know, I got trapped, you know, with the corporate gig. I did that for 20 some years, you know, so we had all the, you know, the cool trappings of a nice Big salary, but we had the big mortgage payment, we had car payments, we had a boat payment. Our monthly nut was somewhere around 10,000 to $12,000, you know, so, like, I couldn't just walk away while I was doing all the writing stuff. I had six different books that hit the New York Times bestseller list that I had written that all came out with other people's names on the, you know, ghostwritten stuff. So, like, that was the catalyst for me. The sixth one hit up, and my wife pulled me aside and she said, listen, I know you want to become a full time author. Let's figure out how to make this happen. So she came up with this crazy plan. We sold everything that we owned, all the stuff. We bought a tiny little duplex in Pittsburgh. It was 800 square feet. We rented out one side to some tenants, and we moved into the other side and got our expenses down to the point where we could live off of the savings account long enough for me to write that first book. And, you know, there's nothing like putting your feet to the coals to really get it done, you know, And I needed that, you know, otherwise I'd probably still be sitting behind that desk.
- [08:24]
Eddie Hood
Kind of just want to high five your wife right now. That is so cool. She.
- [08:27]
J.D. Barker
She is a very smart woman. Anytime I come up with some crazy idea, I always run it past her because, you know, she will either poke holes in it or she will tell me to move forward. But she's a very bright woman.
- [08:37]
Eddie Hood
It's my wife, too. She's the same. I like how you talked about Voice. And actually, one of the questions from a member of the book club is he's talking about how he's got a friend who is a good writer, but you can tell that he's using AI to like, finish his novel sort of thing. And he's wondering what your thought is on AI and how that's affecting fiction going forward.
- [08:57]
J.D. Barker
And honestly, in today's world, it doesn't work yet, you know, AI is not capable of a creative thought, you know, so it can regurgitate everything that it's been told. And, you know, it may have a library of, you know, almost all the books, you know, whatever they fed in. Like, I know five or six of mine are in there. Like, they fed tons of stuff in here, but it can only come up with what it already knows, you know, so I've tried that. I've taken, you know, like half a scene, I've dropped it in there, you know, tell it to write the other half and what it gives me is it's horrible. You know, it's complete cardboard stuff that. That I've seen or heard before, because that's all it's capable of doing. You know, I write books with James Patterson, so if we get on the phone together and we brainstorm an idea, we come up with some crazy stuff out of left field. And like, that is something today the human brain is capable of doing. That AI can't. That being said, tomorrow, that could change. You know, like, it is moving very, very fast. At some point, I think AI is going to have a creative thought. It will be able to write a novel. Then it's going to be able to write a good novel. And I think all that stuff is coming very quickly. But, you know, you need to take a step back and actually look at what you're dealing with. So to give you an example, if you were to take every Stephen King book ever written and drop it into an AI, you know, basically create a model based on Stephen King and then tell it to write a Stephen King book, it's not going to be able to do it because it's not about the works that he's already created. It's about his experiences. So to actually mimic Stephen King, you would have to take every life experience he's ever had, drop that into an AI, get the AI to forget what he's forgotten, get it to remember what he remembers. You know, like, all of that stuff is physically impossible. So I will be able to write a decent novel at some point, but it's going to do it in its own voice. So as an author, you need to double down on your own voice. My voice is different from Stephen King's. It's different from John Grisham's. You know, every author has their own unique voice, and ChatGPT has its own voice. I think we're all starting to see that now. You'll read text, like, I'll read a news article on, you know, on my iPhone, and, you know, I can tell that it was written by ChatGPT because that voice is very familiar. Yeah, so that's going to happen too. So, you know, there will be an audience out there that is perfectly fine. Reading novels written by AI. There's, you know, other people that have never, probably never will be. At some point, you know, there's going to be a mix of all of it. As an author, like, I like the fact, you know, I love to write. Like, I have to write. If I go a day or two without writing, I get all twitchy Like I wrote on my wedding day, that is my release. It doesn't matter, you know, if people stop paying me tomorrow, I would still do it every day just like I did before. I think that desire needs to be there to be an author. So like, if you don't enjoy writing, if you feel you need AI to do the work for you, it's not the profession for you. Like I can sit down with a pad of paper and a pen and I can churn out a novel. Like there's very few professions where you can do that. You can be a painter, you can be a musician. You know, it's primarily in the arts, you know. You know, or the labor skills, you know, like I've got people building a deck up behind my house. Like that's art. You know, carpentry is art, but that's not something that could be mimicked by machines. And I don't know that it ever will be in my world. I don't want it to take over for me. I enjoy doing it.
- [11:48]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, I like how you're pulling the concept of the authors life experience is what? Because the book that you've just put out, the something I keep upstairs, which I'm halfway through by the way, it's this really cool like teenage story, like haunted house sort of situation on a, on a deserted island. You all should go get it. It's really great. But it's not the first like spooky story of its kind. Right. But what makes it unique is your lived experience. Like you like the things that you've been through, come in to make this like remote spooky house its own thing.
- [12:18]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, but you also, you know, as an author, you have to approach it, you know, a little differently. Everybody's read the haunted house story, you know, like that, that that particular trope's been done to death. You know, husband and wife, they buy an old house, they decide to fix it up, Something weird happens, something weirder happens. You know, they learn that something really strange happened in the past and then they, you know, spend the rest of the book trying to unravel that. Hopefully everybody comes out alive. Alive. That story has been told so many times, you know, like I, I knew that's not the story that I wanted to tell. I always wanted to write a haunted house book, but not that haunted house book. So a few years ago I came up with the tagline I've got a document on my iPhone of just ideas. I came up with this T. A for a haunted house to be born. Somebody has to die. So I knew that was going to be the basis of my story. So in this story we've got a 17 year old kid, his grandmother passes away and she leaves him a house. It's a perfectly ordinary house. It's on an island, you know, all by itself, right off the coast of the mainland. But other than that, it's. It's a normal house, you know. So he does exactly what you expect any 17 year old kid to do. He turns it into a party house for him and his friends, you know, someplace they can go away from the parents, away from the police. But even that gets old after a while. And then somebody raises their hand and said, hey, what would it take to turn this house into a haunt? Haunted house, you know. So they start exactly where you would expect. There's a couple of scary stories, there's a Ouija board, but you know that tagline for the book, it's right there on the COVID For a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die, so you know where they're going. But the book itself is all about the journey. And like, that's what makes it unique because that particular haunted house story has never been told before. So, you know, if you're writing books, if you're an author, that's what you have to do. You can't just write a serial killer novel. You have to write a serial killer novel that hasn't been done before.
- [13:54]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. And I think the best way to do that, at least from what I'm hearing, is one, being patient for the right idea, but also two, applying the things that have happened to you in your own personal life to give it a little bit of a spin. Right. There's like a JD Barker filter in front of your stories that makes your stories your stories, right?
- [14:09]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, absolutely. I had that tagline that I mentioned sitting on my iPhone for like three or four years. And I just, I was waiting for the right, you know, piece to fall into place to actually write it. I moved to a little island off the coast of Portsmouth in New England back in 2019 called Newcastle. And I go for a run every day. I do a lap around the island and at one point when I stand out on the beach, you know, I can see Wood island, which is a tiny little island right off the coast. It's about a quarter mile out, it's only about an acre. There's one house on it, you know, and it's real, you know, but like it's far enough away where you can't really tell what's happening out there. You might see a light turn on, you might see somebody walking on the beach, but you don't know what's going on. So, like, that sparked that what if gene in me, you know? So I paired that house with the tagline for the book and, you know, like, that became the basis for my haunted house story. And once I did that, you know, I hit the ground running.
- [14:56]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. That's really cool. Well, one of the things I like about fiction is, I mean, I'm always. I'm always curious to know what the characters are feeling.
- [15:03]
J.D. Barker
But if.
- [15:03]
Eddie Hood
But I can't get into a book if I don't feel something myself. Right? Like, I have to. I have to feel something. And what I like about this specific book is, man, it's just throwing me back to the time when I was like, 14, 15, 16, 17. I feel like I'm with all my buddies again and we're doing stupid stuff and then like, yeah, things are happening that I can't. So it's nice. It's like, it's like going back and being a teenager again and filling all those wild thoughts.
- [15:25]
J.D. Barker
Thoughts.
- [15:26]
Eddie Hood
Meanwhile, everything's sort of falling apart around you. So, yeah, it's great.
- [15:29]
J.D. Barker
Well, that's one of those things that, you know, being autistic, my memory works very weird, so I can pull back and recall stuff from when I'm, you know, was five years old, six years old, or a teenager fairly well and put that back down on paper. So I decided I'm lucky when it comes to that.
- [15:45]
Eddie Hood
Let's take a second and look at your career. So you worked in corporate for a long time and then your first book. Remind me if I'm right here. You were 42ish when it was published.
- [15:55]
J.D. Barker
40. 40. 43.
- [15:57]
Eddie Hood
43. Okay.
- [15:58]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:59]
Eddie Hood
And you've put out quite a few books. I mean, you're cooking, you're really producing some good stuff.
- [16:05]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, like, I feel like I've been storing it up, you know, for years, you know, and it's all the stuff.
- [16:10]
Eddie Hood
He's right.
- [16:11]
J.D. Barker
It's one of those things, you know, like, people ask me all the time, like, well, what would have happened if you started publishing, you know, when you were a kid or when you were, you know, in high school or college or something. And honestly, like, I don't think it would have, you know, the books would hit as well as they're hitting. I had those 20 some years working as a book doctor and a ghostwriter to kind of fine tune everything, you know, One of the reasons why I'm just good with character voice is I wrote so many memoirs for people, you know, like I wrote a memoir for a female politician and I wrote, you know, first person in her voice, you know, so like, I can get into the head of other people. I think I've done that so many times it makes characterization, you know, that much easier. But yeah, I mean, it takes me about three to four months to write a book nowadays. I'm doing this full time. I do it about 2, 2 to 3,000 words a day. My quitting bell rings at 3 o'. Clock, so, you know, like, I found a good pace of.
- [16:55]
Eddie Hood
What time do you get started each day?
- [16:57]
J.D. Barker
Seven. Well, my alarm goes off at seven. I told myself when I left the corporate world I'd never set an alarm before 7 o'. Clock. So my, my day, I basically get up at 7. I, you know, get dressed, get ready, say hi to my wife and my daughter, grab some coffee, and then I just hit my desk. I turn off the Internet when I first sit down. I don't want to see anything online. I don't want to see emails come in, nothing. Yeah, knock, knock the words out. You know, once I hit that word count, then I flip on the Internet and like the whole business side of this comes flooding in and then I deal with that.
- [17:25]
Eddie Hood
So aren't we a little backwards? I mean, you're the guy that was chosen by Brahma Stoker's family to take on the continuation of Dracula. You're writing thrillers. Shouldn't you be working in the middle of the night and sleeping during the day?
- [17:40]
J.D. Barker
I've tried it. I think everybody needs to find because I've got plenty of author friends where that's the only time they can write. But my wife was kind of like that because she's a writer too, and she had to write when our daughter was sleeping. So a lot of times that was at night. I've tried writing at night. I've tried writing during the daytime. For me, like, if I get interrupted by stuff, you know, like we've got this construction going on at the house, so I'm dealing with contractors. That throws my rhythm off. And like, I usually don't do as well for the day. So like, I just, I try to get it done and you know, for me it feels nice to just accomplish it, be finished with it, you know, like, I usually get the words finished by about 10:30 or 11, you know, so I feel like I've done what I need to do for the day. So the rest of it's gravy. If I wait, then it's hanging out over my head, you know, like, I still have to do this, I still have to do that. You know, Like, I don't like things out there on the to do list.
- [18:25]
Eddie Hood
I love that schedule. I actually, as I mentioned, I'm trying to work on my skill of writing. I'm actually on the exact same schedule. I start at 7 in the morning every day, but I'm usually done by 10 because I got to go do the accounting thing. Right. But I got two or three hours, and I'm trying to hit a thousand words a day, and it's. If I hit it, like, the rest of the day can fall apart, everything can go bad. But, like, I'm cool as a cucumber because I got the writing thing done right. It's wild how it stabilizes me.
- [18:50]
J.D. Barker
So, yeah, I mean, it's just any kind of goal, I think being able to get it just done first thing in the morning, I think is healthy.
- [18:55]
Eddie Hood
Healthy, yeah. Cool. We got a couple questions here that I want to get into. Somebody's asking what it's like to work with James Patterson.
- [19:02]
J.D. Barker
He's fun. So if you've ever taken his master class online, he's got one you can take to learn how to write. It's basically just like that, except he calls you and tells you everything you're doing wrong. So it's an enlightening experience. You know, that's why I do it, because it's not even about the money anymore. Like, I have learned so much from this guy, not only on the writing side, but on the business side. We talk business as much as we do the craft. But, you know, to give me an example, like, when we were writing our first book, I'm the only guy who's ever gotten James Patterson to pants a novel. Because when I first met with him, you know, we talked and we wanted to write something together. You know, I was a pantser. He's a notorious outliner. We didn't think it was going to work. So, you know, we had lunch, and I just kind of walked away going, hey, I just had lunch with James Patterson. That was a win. And, you know, kind of left it at that. A couple months later, we talked again, and he said, you know what? Let's try it your way. Let's try to pants a novel. So we went back and forth. I wrote a chapter. I would paint him into some kind of impossible, crazy scenario, send him the pages, you know, know, 15 minutes yeah, I tried, you know, wait for him to get out. It'd take him 15, 20 minutes to write a new chapter, get out, and put me into something even worse. And we went back and forth like that. And it was by far the craziest novel I've ever written. The twistiest. But there was, you know, I'll give you an example of, like, a writing tip. So, like, there was a scene, you know, where the. The characters had dinner, main characters. And I. We basically had two or three lines of text that we had to communicate. And I just felt like a dinner scene was probably the best way to do it. So it was about a, you know, page and a half, you know, maybe 800, 900 words or something. But he called me up and he read it. He's like, is there any reason we can't just say they had dinner words, and then take this sentence and put it over here on page 43? And like that, you know, that fixed it. And, like, the novel pacing was that much better. One of the things that we do on almost every book is, you know, when you write a chapter, like, our brains try to find closure, you know, like a chapter, you know, literally, we bookend it with a beginning, middle and an end. But when you're writing a thriller, you don't necessarily want to do that. So on the second pass of almost every book, we'll go back through and we'll take out, like, the last sentence, the last paragraph, you know, something, and then a lot of times just move it over to the beginning of the next one.
- [20:56]
Eddie Hood
Oh, wow.
- [20:56]
J.D. Barker
Or take it out altogether. But it creates these little mini cliffhangers that, that everybody, you know, is always talking about. It causes, you know, you can't stop turning those pages because if you give a reader closure, you're giving them the opportunity to close that book, you know, and. And I personally don't care if it's, you know, 2 o' clock in the morning or they have to go pick up the kids from school or it's time to make dinner. I don't ever want them to close the book. So I try to take every opportunity for that away from them.
- [21:20]
Eddie Hood
That is so, so great. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, he's. He knows a little. He knows a few things about selling books, doesn't it?
- [21:28]
J.D. Barker
He. He. He does, yes. He's been helping me. You know, I recently signed a deal with Simon and Schuster where I created my own imprint. So I've got my own publishing house through Simon and Schuster, and I'm putting out a Ton of co author titles. And like, all of this is with his guidance. I'm basically recreating the James Patterson model, but, you know, the 2.0 version of it for the, you know, 2025. And yeah, I'm just watching everything that he does, you know, like, one of the things that he taught me early on is to use the books to rope in new readers, you know. Cause I was told very early on that my. My audience was women 45 and over, over. And, you know, like from a publisher standpoint, you know, that's great. That's a good sweet spot to be in. But they, you know, didn't give me any tips to expand on that. They were just communicating a fact. When I told Patterson, you know, he was like, well, you need to find some other way to rope somebody else in. So I wrote a young adult book and then all of a sudden I started getting readers that were in their 20s and their late teens and bringing them in, you know, so I purposely branch out now, especially with the co authors, into sci fi, into romance, to, you know, this, that, whatever, you know, as long as I keep a common thread of suspense and I keep the, you know, the overall feel of the books the same, I'm able to use books, books almost like being a literary Pied Piper and grabbing people from different audiences. And if you look at Patterson, he did the exact same thing, you know, like, yeah, he wrote with Bill Clinton, you know, that brought in a huge audience that probably, you know, may not have been reading him before. Recently wrote one with Dolly Parton, you know, again, opened another door by doing that. And he just announced a book with Mr. Beast, you know, who is the number one YouTube star, you know, that's going to bring in, you know, gazillion more readers, you know, so, like, that's smart, you know, and that's not something your editor, your agent's ever going to tell you to do. I watch everything this guy does.
- [22:58]
Eddie Hood
Somebody's asking in the community if you like working co authoring with people more or do you prefer writing standalone by yourself? Well, I don't know. What do you think?
- [23:06]
J.D. Barker
It's a tough question because, you know, when I was working as a book doctor and a ghostwriter, you know, two decades of that I spent, I. Even today, I have spent more time working with other people than I have actually writing books as a solo thing. When I sat down to write that first book all on my own, it felt very weird to be the only voice in that room. And, you know, a lot of times Working with other people, it helps me recharge the batteries. I like having that fresh take on stuff, you know, takes books and directions. They may not go in, you know, if I'm doing it on my own. I wrote a book about a year and a half ago with a woman named Christine Daigle called Heavy Are the Stones. She's a neuropsychologist in real life, you know, so she was able to bring that experience to the book. And, you know, I can fake my way through it, you know, just like anybody else. I can watch Netflix, a couple, you know, YouTube videos, and, you know, read what I need to online to make something convincing. But when you've got that authentic voice in the writing room, you can't beat that. So I enjoy it. You know, when you put two people together, you come up with, you know, an ending to the book that you wouldn't come up with on your own. You've got to find the right mix. You know, I often liken it to people in the, you know, being in the kitchen, cooking breakfast together. If you've got two people trying to make eggs, you're gonna have a problem. But if one person is making bacon while the other one's making eggs and everything goes smooth, so you've got to find your lane.
- [24:13]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, that's really great. And it seems like all of the books are really. I mean, I'm always curious to see how books are faring on, like, Goodreads, for example. You know, people, most of the authors I interview, like, oh, I don't read my Goodreads reviews. I don't even, like, go over there. Trash is my mentality. Your books are kind of crushing it over there. Like, you know, Fourth Monkey, for example. Like, a lot of them are over four stars, which is not easy to do on Goodreads.
- [24:34]
J.D. Barker
I. I honestly, I read. I read every review that I see, including the negative ones, because a lot of times they're going to point out problems with the book, you know, and if it's a decent review, you know, they might give you something that you can fix with the next one. And, you know, it's the best critique you can get out there. But, yeah, I've been really lucky when it comes to reviews. I think our latest one with Patterson the writer, I think it's like 4.67 or something, average rating, which is insane.
- [24:57]
Eddie Hood
On Goodread, that people on Goodreads are harsh.
- [24:59]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, I mean, they can be.
- [25:02]
Eddie Hood
They don't hold back. So I'm looking at your books going, these are all Rated really well, which is fantastic.
- [25:10]
J.D. Barker
Fingers crossed it keeps up.
- [25:11]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, yeah, good for you. And I like that you're actually reading them. I mean, that's. Do you think that's part of your corporate background, just like getting feedback from a market and adjusting kind of thing?
- [25:20]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, I mean, when I finish the words for the day and I've put that business cap on and you know, like you're literally getting thousands of people to give you their opinions and if the opinion is valid, valid, you know, like if I see the same thing being pointed out as a problem over and over again, I adjust for it. You know, I. Particularly now with co authors because I am using that to branch out, you know, like I'll write books with people that are very different from my own writing style, you know, which means the books have to be marketed a little bit different. So I use the reviews to figure out whether I'm hitting the right audience. You know, I use the reviews to adjust the Facebook and Amazon ads, you know, the messaging for advertisement, you know, all that stuff. It's all based on reader review.
- [25:55]
Eddie Hood
Can we take just a second and talk about the classics? Right. So I mean, I, I don't know if you definitely sort of continued the Dracula story. I know you've talked about that a thousand times, so I'm not going to touch on that too deeply because I think everybody knows that about you and it's just fascinating. What I'm curious about though is I read an article about your love for Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, that, that is.
- [26:16]
J.D. Barker
Still my all time favorite book. You know, I read it at first when I was a kid. I was probably, I don't know, maybe six or seven or something when I read it the first time, read it a bunch of times, you know, because it, it just, it takes on a different meaning as times of your life. But yeah, I mean, there's something about Dickens, his writing style, you know, he just, he ropes me in, you know, and just did the stories themselves, the characterization, you know, you just can't beat it.
- [26:36]
Eddie Hood
I'm.
- [26:36]
J.D. Barker
I'm listening to the audiobook for Count of Monte Cristo right now. You know, you have to get over the fact that it was written a very long time ago. So the language is very different, but the storytelling is just phenomenal, you know, and I think a lot of readers do themselves a disservice. They don't read that kind of stuff. They tend to read, you know, maybe what's on the current bestseller list. You know, a lot of people just stick to what they, you know, if you're a writer, you know, you read what you write, you know, that's not going to help you broaden your overall writing style. I mean, I personally read a ton of romance, not because I'm going to write a romance novel, but because it's, you know, it's a good subplot in, you know, a thriller or a horror novel to have a little romance going on. So you want to understand it and how to write it. Yeah, occasionally I'll. I'll. I'll read something just to see what's going on. I just finished up fourth wing just because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
- [27:19]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, on Great Expectations, would you call that. I mean, that's got some thriller elements to. To it, don't you think? I mean, like, we start off in the cemetery and the mortgage planes being chased by a convict, the whole thing. And what do you think?
- [27:31]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, I mean, like something I keep upstairs. I dubbed it a Chiller because it's not necessarily horror. It's not really a thriller. It's kind of in between. I think Charles Dickens and those guys, a lot of them did that. You know, they used that to kind of rope people in. And back then, you know, a lot of these things were published in a serialized fashion, you know, a lot of times in the newspaper, you know, so it was like a newspaper column. So, like somebody like Charles Dickens, like, he. He would try, you know, that's why the books are so long. He didn't want that paycheck to go away, you know, so he just kept going and going. But that also means you have to keep, you know, keep the readers coming back. And you're not going to keep them coming back unless you leave them with a good cliffhanger, you know, and it all. The storytelling process has never changed. You know, in writing the prequel to Dracula, I had access to all of Bram Stoker's notes and his journals and all the things he had on his desk when he wrote that book. And, you know, it looks no different than what you would find on my desk today. You know, like little scribbles of, you know, sentence here or there and dialogue and stuff like that. Like, the storytelling process is exactly the same today as it was back when we were cavemen standing around a fire.
- [28:30]
Eddie Hood
What do you think about that sort of epistolary form of a novel, like Jonathan Harker's Diary, as a way of telling stories versus the standard narrative?
- [28:40]
J.D. Barker
I love it. We did that with Dracul mainly just because Dracula is written that way. But if you're a writer, it gives you the chance to really get into a character's head, not just their point of view. But now you've got a letter that they've written or an email that they've. They've written to me. It's a lot of fun. I haven't done a novel yet that's based solely, like, let's say, a chat, like a Facebook chat or something like that. But I think I could, and I think it would be a lot of fun to do it. It's just another vehicle.
- [29:08]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, I was really struck by it when I first read Dracula. And we're actually reading a nonfiction book right now called the Power of Myth and the Book Club, which is just a conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Just that alone, that sort of different format just makes your brain function differently as a reader career. But we read Great Expectations in our book club, I don't know, five, six months ago. And I think the best part was in leading that discussion. People were like, where's this book been my whole life? There's something about this book. There are no car crashes. There are no explosions. But it's like, the greatest thing I've ever read. What's going on?
- [29:42]
J.D. Barker
That's one of the reasons why I like a lot of the classics, because they don't have all the distractions that we do today, even writing. I wrote a book called she Has a Broken Thing Where Her Heart Shapes Should Be, which is like, basically my retelling of Great Expectations in. In more or less modern times. But I said it back in the 80s just because, you know, like, it was just a simpler time. There were no cell phones, and, you know, kids could, you know, you kicked them out the door first thing Saturday morning. They didn't come back till it was dark out. That's just fun.
- [30:08]
Eddie Hood
I'm curious. I mean, you've talked a little bit about sort of your experience as an autistic writer. How does that affect your reading that experience?
- [30:15]
J.D. Barker
I mean, to really drill down, like, the weird thing that it does for me, and this is going to sound really goofy, is I can see the characters, dialogue, and the points of view in different colors. So if I look at a page, like, one particular character will be yellow, another one is red, another one is blue. I think part of it is because when I did the book doctor and ghostwriter stuff, I used to use highlighters to do that to help frame out the novel. But when I'm reading books, I can literally See that on the page. And I know that's a weird autistic trait, but that's probably the only one. I mean, I've got really good retention, you know, so I remember the stuff that I read, particularly if I slow down, like we were talking about at the beginning, you know, I can pick up on all of it and, you know, remember, you know, years later. But that's probably it. Other than that, it's not any different.
- [31:01]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, good. Let's dig into that concept of slowing down for just a minute. And then I'd like to send people to your webpage and to go out and get all of your books and what have you, because it's been a lot of fun reading your, your work, but when it comes to reading a book, well, reading deeply. We've talked a little bit about speed reading. I know. What are your thoughts on, on, you know, being with a book? On. I've got the Grapes of Wrath here. We just finished this in book club. Like, what does it feel to you to, like, just be with a book and be in it? And how, what are your thoughts or tips on reading slowly, reading deeply?
- [31:32]
J.D. Barker
I, I think it's more than just reading slowly and deeply. Like, I, I, I prefer to have a paper book, you know, in my hands. You know, like that chair over here, the couch. I'm talking about, like, there's nothing but hard covers and paperbacks and stuff piled next to it, mainly because, you know, there's no messages popping up on the screen in front of me when I'm trying to read. Like, all that stuff is distracting, and it takes you out of the story. Eliminates the fact that you could be relaxing. You know, when I was a kid, like, I opened up a book to forget about everything else that was going on in the world. I want to continue that. And I think that's honestly coming back. You know, like, print book sales are up, ebook sales aren't necessarily going down, but people are, you know, they're migrating over in a lot of ways. I think we have influencers to thank for that. Because, you know, what I'm finding in my world is, you know, if an influencer wants to review one of my books, they want a physical copy in their hand so they can use it as a prop. But then a lot of times they'll read the ebook. You know, they're not actually reading the paper copy, but because they're using that physical copy in their video, the one that's being seen by thousands and thousands, sometimes millions of people, those people run out and they buy the physical book. And I think that they're all realizing that it's way more relaxing to sit down with a physical book book than it ever is, even with, you know, if you've got the Kindle app on your phone. Because those other things keep happening, you know, even the, you know, an electronic Kindle like that device, like, there's still other stuff that can distract you. Like there's nothing better than a paper book.
- [32:48]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, I feel like our brains change. I actually did an interview a while back with a lady named Dr. Marianne Wolf. She wrote a book called Reader Come Home. She talks about how our brains actually change function, shape and size sort of thing when we. When we read a book, especially a paper book. And I think you're right. I know, for me, I feel. I feel different when I'm holding a physical copy of a book rather than when I'm reading an ebook or when I'm listening to an audiobook. They're all great, right? But definitely there's something tactile about the physical book. And I've always got paper with me.
- [33:21]
J.D. Barker
For some people, it's tough to do because we're, you know, we're being trained to go in the other direction. You know, like if you turn on the tv, you know, like if I watch regular television, I have to do something else while I'm doing doing it. You know, it's like scroll on my phone or I'm talking to somebody, or I'm doing something else while the TV's droning on. A news channel is a little different because there's a lot happening. You've got a talking head, you've got a scrolling ticker, you've got stuff happening over here. But our brains are being rewired to accept all these multiple sources of information all at once. And when you sit down with just a book, all of a sudden you're dialing it back to that. You know, it's almost like taking the volume and turning it down to one from 11. I think it's important that we do that, that. Because I'm worried about what's going to happen if we continue to go in the other direction, you know, because there's other things going on there. There's, you know, a lot of physiological, you know, aspects to that, you know, like your cortisol levels, all these. All these things are off, you know, when you're stressed out like that. And. And, you know, constant bombardment of information stresses you out, whether you want to believe it or not, you know, and sitting down with just a book or, you know, sitting down with your headphones on and just listening to music and closing your eyes. Just something that just isolates you with a solitary experience is relaxing. And I think we need to do that in order to find some kind of, you know, a happy place.
- [34:30]
Eddie Hood
So people in the community are asking what book they should start with. If they're new to your library, what do you think? Where would you send a first?
- [34:37]
J.D. Barker
I mean, the most popular one is still the Fourth Monkey that tends to rope people in. You're going to want to pick up the other two books in the series. If you start the first one, make sure they're close at hand. That's probably a good starting point if you're just looking for something scary. I mean, the prequel to Dracula is fantastic. Something I keep Upstairs, which just released, is another good one. And some of my books with Patterson, But Fourth Monkey seems to be the, you know, typical entry point for most people.
- [35:00]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. And something I keep Upstairs is your most recent publication.
- [35:04]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, yeah, my most recent solo title.
- [35:07]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. And that's what people are asking, is the name of the new haunted house book. So, yeah, something I keep upstairs, so go check that out, too. That's the one I'm having.
- [35:14]
J.D. Barker
Yeah. I mean, and the best part is that the haunted house in the story is real, so you can actually visit it. And, you know, in today's world, it's a museum. They just finished renovating it. You have to take a ferry to get out there. But they're the. The cool thing is they. They decorated the interior of the house to match what I have in my building book, because, like, I was writing the book as. As they were rebuilding the house. So when you. When you walk through the house, it looks exactly like I. I described it, right down to the furniture. They're getting a ton of traffic, which is people, you know, hanging out, listening to the audiobook on the island with the house, you know, reading the book while they're there or reading the book and coming back, you know, so it's kind of neat. We kind of created a whole experience for it.
- [35:48]
Eddie Hood
Wow. That's fantastic. Yeah, that is that. I. I grew up in a really small town. It's kind of like that Ray Bradbury kind of town down, you know, and this feel kind of reminds me of that. I don't know, but. Well, that's fantastic. So for you, what's next on the agenda for JD Barker? Where are you headed?
- [36:06]
J.D. Barker
Current. Do you remember a movie called flatliners from the 1990s so it had this crazy cast. Keefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Billy Baldwin. All at the start of their careers. So before they were the household names they are today. It's about medical students who kill each other one at a time and then bring each other back to try and figure out if there's life after death. Death. One of the guys who wrote it, his name is Peter Fi, he was writing the screenplay for Dracul. We got to know each other and, you know, a couple years ago, he got the rights back to the project. So I just recently rewrote a book to reboot the franchise. So we're currently working on that. Our agents are out shopping that one.
- [36:41]
Eddie Hood
Okay. Any plans to give up on writing and go back to Compliance at all, or.
- [36:46]
J.D. Barker
Not a chance.
- [36:47]
Eddie Hood
No. All right. Very good. Good. Are you still doing a lot of speaking at places like Thriller Fest and what have you? Are you doing that this year?
- [36:56]
J.D. Barker
I. I do. Not as much as I'd like to. I just did the Writers Digest conference in Baltimore. I'll be at Author Nation in November. I've got a couple. Couple overseas trips coming up and things like that. You know, I try to spend as much time with my wife and daughter as I can, so that kind of thing takes me away from the house a little too much.
- [37:13]
Eddie Hood
Yeah. Yeah. It's nice that you're able to have a consistent writing practice and then focus on the family and. Sounds like you've got the business side of writing down pretty well, so that's. That keeps the bills paid. I like it. Good, good. Well, jd, I know you're jumping into another podcast right after this. You're a busy guy.
- [37:30]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, it's a fun Friday.
- [37:33]
Eddie Hood
Awesome. Well, I think we got most of our questions answered here, and it's just been an honor having you on the podcast with us today. I'd like to encourage everybody to go out and check out any one of his books. You really can't go wrong. Wrong. The Fourth Monkey is just a fantastic book. Something I keep upstairs has been really fun for me. I'm. I'm enjoying seeing where the story's going in that book. Right now, I'm trying to figure out what's. What's going on with Lily Dwyer. That's where I'm at and trying to. Trying to understand. So I'm excited about it. But is there any last. Any last thoughts or things you want to say before we wrap up?
- [38:03]
J.D. Barker
Yeah, I mean, when. When. When you finish up the book, come out to New England and visit the actual house. It's a, it's a whole, whole other experience. But I, I appreciate it.
- [38:12]
Eddie Hood
Yeah, I go to Boston every year and I usually try to like hit Walden Pond and a, just while I'm out there, maybe I'll get a rental car and go check it out.
- [38:19]
J.D. Barker
So there you go.
- [38:20]
Eddie Hood
Very cool.
- [38:21]
J.D. Barker
All right, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
- [38:23]
Eddie Hood
Thanks. Oh, and as always, everybody remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwell podcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. The also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.