J.D. Barker turned a late autism diagnosis into a creative superpower and author. Here's what that means for how you build your brand.
GROWTH PILLAR: Marketing & Branding
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: How to build a personal brand that outlasts any single product. Why relationships made decades ago keep paying forward. What most first-time authors — and first-time entrepreneurs — get wrong before they launch.
J.D. Barker is having a big year. Something I Keep Upstairs is out now through Simon & Schuster. The Probability of Murder drops June 2nd. The First Scarlet Door follows September 22nd. Three books. Three genres. Three different audiences. That's not a coincidence — it's a strategy.
J.D. is a New York Times and international bestselling author whose work has been sold in over 150 countries. He co-writes with James Patterson, collaborated with the Bram Stoker estate, and runs his own imprint at Simon & Schuster. He was also diagnosed with autism at 22 — and he'll tell you that changed everything.
In this conversation, J.D. and Bernie dig into what it actually takes to build something original in a crowded market. They talk about creative strategy, IP ownership, ghostwriting as a career launchpad, and why J.D. deliberately crosses genres — not despite what the industry wants, but because of it.
Key topics covered:
Connect with J.D. Barker:
Website: jdbarker.com
Facebook: facebook.com/therealjdbarker
TikTok: tiktok.com/@jdbarker_author
Tumblr: tumblr.com/jdbarkerauthor
Books available now and coming soon:
All available at jdbarker.com
Special thanks to publicist Kate Gomez for connecting J.D. with the Knack 4 Business podcast.
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Bernie (00:05)
Before we get into today's conversation, a quick word from our sponsor, Web Indexer. Web Indexer helps small businesses get found online by making sure your website is properly indexed and visible to people already searching for what you do. Learn more at Web Indexer dot com.
Or find the link in the show notes. All right, question of the audience. What if the thing that made you different your whole life was actually your biggest business advantage? A lot of us spend years trying to fit into a mold that was never built for us. And today's guest didn't just break the mold, he turned it into a best-selling career. Our guest today,
has been on the show twice before and each time the conversation gets bigger. He's a New York Times and international bestselling author whose books have been translated into two dozen languages and sold over more than 150 countries. He's co-written with James Patterson. He's co-authored with Bram Stoker's family. He's ghost written for others, helped launch careers
behind the scenes and just released his latest solo novel, Something I Keep Upstairs, through Simon and Schuster.
He lives in the coastal New Hampshire his wife Dana and their daughter Ember. He was diagnosed with autism at 22 and he will tell you that changed everything. His website is JDBarker.com.
Barker spelled B-A-R-K-E-R. You'll find him on Instagram at JDBarker underscore author JD welcome back it's a pleasure having you here sir good to see you
JD (01:29)
Yeah,
thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Bernie (01:32)
You have a kind of a favourite quote you like working with?
JD (01:34)
Working with Patterson, he's taught me a ton. And one of the things that he does, he writes everything out by hand. He doesn't really use a computer. And at the top of every notebook page, he always writes two words, be there. Basically, be there in the scene with the characters. And I've gotten in the habit of doing that too, only because initially he yells at me if I don't when I'm writing something. But I found like when you do that, and when you really get down to the mix with the characters and put the reader right there in the middle of what's actually happening.
it just jumps off the page. So if there's a quote that I follow, it is that one. the, you know, write and be there right in the story with your characters.
Bernie (02:08)
Well, that's excellent. So you've been on the show a couple of times already. Has anything shifted, anything new transpired in your space?
JD (02:15)
I'm doing a lot of co-authored stuff now, which I think we talked about the last time I was on. I've got a deal with Simon & Schuster. Long story short, they let me create my own imprint there. So basically have my own publishing house. Working with Patterson, he's been kind of teaching me how to create James Patterson 2.0. So I've brought in a bunch of co-authors. I've got a lot of different books working on different genres that I'm writing alongside the standalone stuff that I'm doing and the books that I'm writing with Jim. And it's been a ball. I'm having a lot of fun.
Bernie (02:41)
So being diagnosed with autism age 22, that must have come as a shock but not a shock. It's kind of like that explains it. Would that be fair enough to say?
JD (02:50)
Yeah, I mean, that's basically how it went down. mean, I was born in the 70s. So in the 70s, they didn't look for this kind of thing. I was basically just a weird kid in the corner who, you know, didn't want to play with the other kids. I was reading a lot earlier than the kids were. started at like three, you know, so just I wasn't on the same level. You know, some things I excelled at other things I was way behind at. But, you know, they did nothing about it, you know, from like a school standpoint, teachers standpoint. They just expected you to work through whatever that problem was, which, you know, that was the 70s. Like we didn't have seatbelts.
But I kind of got through life that way. I you learn to adapt, you learn to deal with it. Ended up working in finance. My last real job I had before becoming a full-time author, was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm, which is essentially like being internal affairs at a police department. I have to monitor all the activity that happens at the firm, make sure we're adhering to every rule and regulation related to the finance industry. So working with a ton of data, which as an autistic person, I was always good at. The problem always came up when I had to actually
confront somebody because something went wrong. know, so if something got spotted, I would have to actually leave my office and go and tell this person, hey, you did this and you're not allowed to do that. And that always turned into a confrontation, whether I wanted it to or not. My boss, to his credit, he recognized that I was very good at a portion of my job, terrible at the people side. He thought that I had anger management issues because he didn't know how to really address it either. But he sent me to an anger management therapist. And the first time I sat down with her, we talked for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and then she stopped the conversation.
And she said I'm gonna ask you a question. Have you ever been tested for autism? And honestly, I didn't really know what that was. I mean I had seen Rain Man That was probably like my only introduction to it and it's not even remotely accurate But she went on to say that the entire time we've been talking you haven't made eye contact with me I've noticed that when you you know form a thought you rub your thumb and your forefinger together basically whenever you're thinking she just start rattling off all these things that I do and like to start ticking off these boxes so then she sent me for some tests to determine if it was autism and you
we came to the conclusion that it was I was diagnosed with something called Asperger's syndrome. Today's, you know, today's world you're just on the spectrum somewhere. But once I had that, you know, I was able to really dive into it. And as an autistic person, I love to solve a good problem. So this became a problem for me, something I could solve. So I started to research everything. We made a list of what we considered to be the things that I needed to work on. We made another list of the things that this allowed me to excel at. And I doubled down on those. And I've spent the last 30 some years basically following
in that model.
Bernie (05:13)
Excellent. So the book Something I Keep Upstairs is your first solo release in a while. And it's kind of a story about yourself. Can you expand on it?
JD (05:24)
Sort of. So I've got an app on my phone, just a note taking app called Ideas, where I write down every time I've got an idea for a book. And years ago, I had an idea for a haunted house story. Like I knew I wanted to write a haunted house book, but I didn't want to write the same story that we've seen over and over again. You know, like a husband and wife buy a house, they move in, something bad happens, something worse happens. They do a little research, realize something really bad happened. And then they either solve that problem or the problem solves them. But we've seen that movie so many different times. I didn't want to write that
story, but it got me thinking, you know, like how does a haunted house come into being? So I came up with this tagline for a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die. So that line went into my note app and it sat there for a couple of years, you know, as the idea just sort of, you know, worked its way around in my head. And over that time, my family and I, we moved to New England. We bought a house on an island right off the coast of Portsmouth. And I go for a run every day. I do a lap around the island. It's 4.2 miles. At one point I cross our beach. And when I'm standing out on the beach, if I look out over the water about a quarter
mile out is another island. It's really small. It's only about an acre. There's one house on it. But the moment I saw that house, I knew that was the house for my story. So I started to research it and got to know the guy who was basically taking care of it. The house itself is public property. It's owned by the city. Its last actual use, was a life Coast Guard life-saving station. But that was back in like the forties or fifties. There's a house on it, but it's in total disrepair. It was falling apart. There were bats living inside. It was in really bad shape. But this guy, he raised about
million dollars with the idea of being that he wanted to renovate the house, bring it back to life, and turn it into a museum. So I started working with him. I went out to the house a bunch of times. He gave me the floor plans, and I just used that as the basis for my story as I wrote the book. And he kind of liked the idea of me writing a book about the house. So as he got to the point where they were decorating, he actually decorated the interior of the house to match my book, which is really cool in today's world because now it is open as a museum. You can take a boat and go out there, and you can literally walk through the house in my story.
So that's where the idea kind of came together. And I've noticed all my books sort of happen that way. I'll have basically two ideas come together from completely opposite directions. It's almost like chocolate and peanut butter, where they just work. And in this case, that house fit that tagline perfectly.
Bernie (07:32)
So is that also kind of the recipe of success working with James Pratterson?
JD (07:36)
you
You know, I think so. You one of the things that we've talked about, you know, with all this stuff coming up with AI, you know, like I can brainstorm an idea with AI and it's always horrible. Like it's just, it's not worth pursuing. It's like talking to cardboard. You're talking to an encyclopedia because it can only regurgitate what it's already been told. It's not capable of a creative thought. When I get on the phone with somebody like James Patterson and we bat an idea back and forth, trying to come up with an idea for a book, the ideas are completely out of left field. Half the time they don't make any sense. And our job as a thriller author is to make it make
He told me once as a thriller author, have to make the reader believe that one plus one equals three. That's your job. And I always think about that. ⁓ So I think a lot of it comes from that kind of thing. Like brainstorming with a person, particularly somebody that creative, you just, can't beat it.
Bernie (08:20)
You also have a book coming up and if you're looking at the video of this podcast, you'll see the first Scarlet Door. What's the backstory on that one?
JD (08:31)
So I've got a thriller series that I wrote years ago and it was basically my breakout series about a killer called the fourth monkey So in the story, you know again, I wanted to write a serial killer novel before the haunted house book But I didn't want to write the same book that I've read over and over again So in my book the killer dies at the very beginning of the book He's been operating in Chicago for about five years. The police know his MO He kidnaps a victim he cuts off their ear and he mails it to their family and a little white box tied with a black string has done that every single time
So at the beginning of the fourth monkey, we've got a guy crossing the street in Chicago, heading to a mailbox with a little white box tied with a black string about to mail it. And he gets hit by a city bus and killed. So the police know they've got their killer. They don't know who he is, but they know that he's got a victim out there somewhere and nobody is taking care of her. So the clock is ticking. They have to find her before she dies. So that was the premise of the fourth monkey. We ended up selling three books total in the trilogy. And I honestly, I thought I was done with it. One of the things that I had to do in the story
is keep the killer alive, even though he was dead. And in order to do that, I gave him a diary that the police get and they basically read that throughout the book. So you get little flashes of the killer's, know, growing up in his history and these little glimpses of who he is. And that, you know, over the years has become like a fan favorite. You know, the books have been done, I think almost 10 years now they've been out there still hitting bestseller lists, you mainly because of word of mouth. And whenever I travel somewhere, you know, people put this book down in front of me and there's the series and they always tell me they want more on the killer.
because I only gave them these little glimpses, but they want to know more about his backstory. And I've heard that so many times. When COVID hit, I decided I was going to try something different. I decided I was going to write a book and not tell anybody I was working on it. That book turned into another trilogy. And I basically wrote three prequels to my 4MK series. Didn't tell my agent I was working on it, didn't tell my publisher. And honestly, it was very refreshing to be able to do that because there was nobody in the room with me. There were no deadlines involved.
While I was working on book three, I could go back and make adjustments in book one and two to fit whatever I was working on. So I was able to get them really, really tight before I told anybody they were out there. And when I was happy with them, I picked up the phone and called my agent and say, I got this little thing I've been doing. I want to run it by my publishers and see if they're interested. And they've been interested.
Bernie (10:43)
Well, that's excellent. That speaks well to the writing skills and the story. What's the fourth monkey? How does that fit into the picture?
JD (10:52)
It's based on the old proverb, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. So most of us only know those three monkeys, but there actually is a fourth, which is do no evil. And I only learned that because when I started to research, my killer actually uses that as a premise. That's why he chops off the ear. They hear no evil. The next thing he mails them is their eyes, and then he mails them their tongue. So he follows that particular pattern. But while I was doing research on that, I realized that there is a fourth monkey out there, and a lot of people collect these little statues.
actually find a set that has all four, it's worth a lot more money than a set that only has three. So it just kind of became this thing. And while I was writing the book, I actually, think the working title was Diary of a Madman, which if you're an Ozzy fan, you know, he already had that. You know, he had an album called Diary of a Madman. So I knew I was going to have to change it. And then when I discovered that fourth monkey thing, you just those words, the fourth monkey just kind of made sense to me as a title. So we went with it.
Bernie (11:44)
Is this something that you've seen or have adjusted from things that have happened? Or is this something where you looked at other sources, other writings, and you're going, hang on, there's a gap and I'm going to fill that gap.
JD (11:55)
No, I mean, honestly, like if I come up with something that's been done before, I won't do it. I go out of my way to make sure whatever I'm doing is different from what's already out there. That being said, I love to sprinkle real life into the various stories. So even the Fourth Monkey trilogy, I found out a lot of things about Chicago that I was able to work into the books. There's tunnels that exist underneath the city that were originally built for bootlegging. So I worked those into the story. There's a hospital that was sitting in the middle of Chicago for years, completely abandoned.
They built a brand new hospital right next door. Then one day when that hospital was finished, they wheeled all the patients through a tunnel from one to the other, put up a padlock, locked the doors, and they just left that hospital there. And I think initially developers expected it to get torn down and something else to be built there fairly quickly because it's in the heart of Chicago. It's very pricey real estate. But that never happened. So this hospital sat there for over a decade with nothing in it. literally everybody just walked out left one day. it's like coffee cups and stuff still sitting around. It's very eerie.
you get to walk through it. But you know when I find things like that I like to use them. Even the haunted house story you know with it being a real house you know typically I could write a book in about three months. That story took me four years to get down on paper mainly because as I was writing I would stumble into some fact that happened in real life and I'd be like I need to find a way to include this and that would that would slow me down. The house itself to give you some examples it you know it's on a little island. That island was used as a quarantine zone during yellow fever. So if you were in New England and you caught
yellow fever, you'd be brought out to this island and you'd be left there until you got better. Nobody got better. All these people died out there. During the Spanish-American War, they used to vessels out there when they captured them. So they would capture a ship, they would dock it out there, they'd make everybody stay on board until they either died of disease or starvation. Then they'd take the boat because that's what they really wanted. The bodies would go overboard and they'd feed them to the sharks. And you know, like when you look at this house, you know, and you can pull up pictures of it. If you Google Wood Island in New England, you'll find it.
It's very picturesque. It's a beautiful little house. The water around it is gorgeous. It looks blue. But it's all a deception because even right below that water, it's very, very rocky. You can only get a boat through there at certain times of the day when the tide is high enough. Filled with sharks. It looks beautiful, but it's a ⁓ disguise. And I love that. And I included as much of that as I could in the book.
Bernie (14:08)
I find it fascinating you utilize, you know, existing, you know, details about the space. And I think for the house, you last time we were having a chat about it, you said, listen, part of the promo involved, you know, people wanting to be at the house, right? Are you leveraging in the case for the first Scarlet door?
Is that is Chicago tourism getting involved? Is that also kind of getting spun into that story as part of the book itself is getting promoted, but at the same time, the community is getting also involved, too.
JD (14:41)
It happens mainly because I use a lot of real places and they they end up on tours, know, they'll create a tour So like there's a tour of Chicago where you can tour the fourth monkey, know Basically the places in the book that are real When I ended that series in the final book the six wicked child that actually ends on the island where I live In the bathrooms at our beach. There's a tiny little building with a male and you female bathrooms in it and like the story ends there and we actually get tourists that come out here just to go to those bathrooms and take pictures, know in front
They'll stand in the bathroom itself to try and... If you actually stand in the real bathroom, you can kind of figure out the ending. The ending is a little bit ambiguous, but actually standing in there, you can figure out exactly what happened. So people have come here to do that. So I like to do that. I think it's kind of fun. mean, as a reader, I love stumbling into that kind of thing. We did it with Dracul, the prequel to Dracula. Bram Stoker believed vampires were real to the point where he started studying. And we found notes dating all the way back to when he was 16. And he didn't start writing Dracula until he was 43.
So it was a lifelong obsession for him. But when you read Dracul, the whole thing reads as if it's this fictional story, but a lot of it is actually based on fact and based on true things that actually happened in Bram Stoker's life. Honestly, if you read the author's note at the end where we lay that out, that to me is the best part of the book because you realize how much of it is actually real.
Bernie (15:57)
So is that the true art of storytelling, having a touch of reality and a pinch of salt come together?
JD (16:04)
I don't know that there is any magic formula, but it definitely is something that the readers like and I do it because I like it as a reader.
Bernie (16:10)
Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic. just, you know, trying to get into the genius of your writing skills and that's really cool. So is a video or a TV series or a Netflix series, you know, one of the, is that kind of coming into the works for the first Scarlet Door? Is that potential?
JD (16:32)
So the Fourth Monkey series has been optioned four times now. Initially when it first sold it was picked up by CBS and they had planned to make a feature film for the Fourth Monkey and a TV series to follow up with the second and third book. That never happened and they sat on it for years trying to figure out how to make it happen. Then somebody else picked it up, they had it for a year, they let it go. Then Lionsgate picked it up, they had it for a while, then they let it go. We've got a new production company that picked it up I guess about six months ago now. There's a press release that you know I've seen the draft of it, it's going to go out in any
point but it hasn't gone out yet so I can't go into any detail but the people behind it are ridiculous. mean I'm over the moon just looking at this list of the people you hoping to make this series so we'll see but you know I've got eight different projects and what I call various stages of Hollywood hell. I have yet to see something actually on film you know my butt in a theater seat and watching it on the big screen so until that happens I'm just cautiously optimistic.
Bernie (17:27)
From a business perspective, have a hot commodity. You have people that are really super keen, avid fans of the book or series of books or of yourself.
When you flip it over and you start going, okay, the spin-off could be a video, you know, a film. Are there other spin-offs? And then how do you structure the business case around it so that it provides you a good success story at end of the day that it provides you support to carry on for your next book.
JD (17:58)
I mean the truth of it is from the Hollywood side, I've got very little control over that. They're licensing the ability to make that story as they see fit. So they can take it in a completely different direction if they want to. I they're basically just grabbing the key portions of the IP. So I tend to steer clear of that because I can't control it in any way. There's spin-off books I would like to write that I haven't been able to write because the property is actually owned by somebody else or been licensed by somebody else, so there's permissions involved.
get very complicated. That's one of things that I miss about just being a flat out indie author. You could kind of do whatever you want and get away with it, but when other companies, big corporations and stuff get involved, a lot of those liberties get taken away. And it's not necessarily a bad thing because if those movies or TV shows happen, that's basically an advertisement for the books, all those things raise awareness and bring more readers into the following. So you've got to weigh all of that. To me, it's always worthwhile, even if it is a little bit of a hand.
us.
Bernie (18:52)
Oh, and there's a license stay in effect. Like, you, does it ever return back to you as, as your property or is it, does it have a shelf life that they can run with it or do they have an option to keep continuing it?
JD (19:03)
It all depends on the contracts, know, like you work on, mean, publishing contract is two or three pages long, a film and TV contract could be two or 300 pages long. So you've got to look at every line of that. And some of it, you know, can really bite you in the butt. I mean, to give you an example, I know a guy named David Morrell, he's a friend of mine. He wrote First Blood, the books that Rambo, it was based on. He, you in the contract basically gave up his rights to merchandising. You know, it was a throwaway line somewhere.
in a big stack of pages and he missed it. But looking back on it, that is millions and millions of dollars that was left on the table from his standpoint. As an author, you don't know. I fight for a couple of things on each of these contracts. I always make sure that my name is on a title card at the beginning of whatever the feature is. And I always make sure that it has to be displayed as long as they display the director, which I feel is important. Because there's a lot of great movies and TV shows that get made. And a lot of times they're based on a book. And a lot of times you have no idea.
they're based on a book because they don't have to put that card out there unless you ask for it and you basically force their hand. So you have to approach all these things from a business standpoint not only as you my god they're gonna make my movie, you know have to take a step back and think about you know like what you just said like how is this going to be a calling card for me? How is it going to raise awareness? How can I use this product to you know increase my overall you know readership?
Bernie (20:23)
So you've got horror, you've got crime, you have sci-fi as a part of the genres that you work across, the suspense space. Do they kind of blend or do they stay pretty isolated or are they just kind of touch each other a little bit when you're writing?
JD (20:39)
I made a conscious decision from the beginning that I wanted to bounce around in genre. I didn't want to get stuck writing the same book over and over again. And I always pick on Lee Child for this. Lee Child is not his real name. If you go to his Wikipedia page, you can read all about that. But he was basically writing books under different pen names. And all of a sudden, the Reacher books took off. So before you know it, he's stuck writing a Reacher book year after year after year after year, which is not necessarily what he wanted to do. But that's how the publishing industry works. If you have a hit, they want you to write that same book but different over and over again.
I didn't want to do that. So I came out of the gate, purposely published a horror novel, then I wrote a thriller, then I wrote another horror novel. If you go to my Wikipedia page, it probably sums it up best, but it says I'm a suspense author who may include elements of sci-fi, may include elements of this, of that, but suspense is that common thread. And what I've found over time is as long as that common thread is there, the readers will come into the fold. I remember I was about four or five books in and my editor called me and he said, well, we just did some data studies and it
like your readership is women 45 and over. So that's who we need to target with the next book. So instead of targeting that group, I wrote a young adult book because my thinking was I've already got women that are 45 and over reading me. I need to get this other group over here that's not reading me and bring them into the mix. So I use the books themselves almost like being a literary pied piper. I look for an area that's not currently reading JD Barker books and I write something to fit that particular market and bring them into the fold, which isn't necessarily a new idea. If you look at guys like Stephen King and the big names
that are out there, if you go back over their career, that's how they became those household names by doing exactly that. It's an uphill battle because agents, editors, publishers, they don't want you to do that. They want you to write the same book over and over again. But if you can force it down the system and get it to work over time, it's worthwhile.
Bernie (22:23)
find that sometimes, because you also have the ghostwriting element or the ghostwriter element as part of the skills, if someone has a story to tell, maybe they have a really good fictional story, whether it's in any of those genres, is that a good way to kind of get going or is it a good way for an author to get an idea?
and then kind of build on that because sometimes ⁓ from left field you might get a, that'll make an interesting story. The person may not realize it, it could be the seed. You ever had that experience?
JD (22:55)
I mean, as a ghostwriter, I did that more out of necessity than anything. I had been told at a very early age, you can't make a living as an author. You have to get a real job, which is how I ended up in finance. But I would come home at night and I would work on these projects. And initially they were ghostwriting projects. like I was brought in, you people would give me manuscripts. I would help them tweak them. I would help fine tune them and get them to the point where they could be published. I worked for agents. I worked for editors. Because of that, I kind of got a peek behind the curtain. You know, in today's world, if I write a book and
turned into my editor. If there's some kind of problem with it that he doesn't like or she doesn't like, they'll call me and they'll tell me three or four things they love about the book. Then they'll tell me that one thing they need me to fix. Then they'll give me four or five other things they love about the book. They kind of sandwich the problem between all this good stuff. But when you're a hired gun brought in to fix a book, it's totally different. They don't sugarcoat anything. They tell you this person can't write dialogue to save their life. They overwrite. They're wordy. They're this. They're that. We've got to take 40,000 words out. But they never sugarcoat it. And I think hearing that, having those conversations
so many years, it really taught me how to write a fine-tuned book, how to really tell a story the way the folks in New York want to see it.
Bernie (24:00)
Is that the way to break into the book of being an author and break into the market?
JD (24:05)
I think it's helpful. I think what honestly really helped me the most though is I wrote a lot of memoirs for other people. So I would sit down, you the very first one was a very famous football player. I met him on the, I was on the field at a Miami Dolphins game. We got to talking while the game was going on. And I asked him if any, he had ever considered writing a book about his life. He told me he gets, you know, offers for that all the time, but he's not a writer. He doesn't have the time to do it. So ultimately we struck a deal where I wrote the book in his voice. His agent sold it and I collected 50 % of the revenue.
on that and it was a very large advance. So I've encouraged people to do that. think as a writer, it's a great way to break in, not only because from a monetary standpoint, you do well, but when you're forced to write a book in, you know, in most cases, first person from somebody else's point of view, you know, I wrote books for female politicians, for actors, for actresses, for sports figures. When you do enough of that, you're in their head so much that when it comes time for you to actually create a character, you can jump right into that character's head and write it just as easily. So I think that real world
experience does translate.
Bernie (25:04)
Well,
that's perfect. To develop this, develop becoming an author, to be successful, is there a lot of networking involved? And if there is, what circles do you travel in?
JD (25:16)
I think networking is important in any aspect of business. I think you need to take a step back and you're selling a widget at the end of the day. It could be a banana, could be a glass, it could be a bottle or a book, but you're selling a product and a lot of that has to do with who you know and when you know them. A lot of relationships that I made 10, 15, 20 years ago, they come back into play. Sometimes they contact me because I can help them with something. Sometimes a name just pops into my head because I remember they had a particular skill set and I'll go back and find
that person again. You just never know. To give you an example, guy named Peter Flaherty, was, know, Dracul got optioned and he was one of the writers on the script. Peter Flaherty wrote the original Flatliners, he wrote The Craft, a lot of big movies from the 80s and 90s. And while he was working on Dracul, I told him how much I liked Flatliners. You know, it's one of my all-time favorite movies. For fans, you know, people that are watching or listening right now that aren't familiar with it, it's about a bunch of medical students that kill each other one at a time and then they bring themselves
back from death to try and figure out if there's life after death. The movie had a crazy cast. had Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Billy Baldwin, Oliver Platt, all these people before they became famous. It was one of their first movies. It just always stuck with me. We started talking about it and I told them I had an idea to reboot the franchise, something original for Flatliners. told them that years ago. Then out of the blue, I got a phone call from him about two years ago and he said, hey, I just got the rights back from the studio. Do you still want to do this thing? Before we even
We wrote a book to reboot the Flatliners franchise, which my agent is currently shopping. So you never know. I find that as being an author, a lot of it, there's a lot of pain and forward involved. A lot of authors help me get to where I am. I constantly help authors that are up and coming any way that I possibly can. And at the end of the day, that always comes back in a positive way.
Bernie (27:00)
You find that their first time authors make certain types of mistakes that you see often. You might even see it in other entrepreneurs that are starting up at the same time. Is there something that they do that you shouldn't have done that?
JD (27:16)
Yeah, I mean it across the board, you people rush their product to market before it's ready You know, it doesn't you know, it could be this computer mouse right here It could be anything but you know, there's so anxious to get it out the door that they forget that it may not be ready for primetime With authors what I tend to see quite a bit is you somebody will sit down They write a book they edit it they get it, know to the best of their ability They send it out to agents They start querying them and they just get rejection after rejection after rejection and then they make this decision Well, I'm go ahead and just indie publish it because I can't get an agent to
it out for me. That is the wrong thing to do. What you really need to do is figure out why all those agents rejected that book because there is a reason and a lot of them will tell you and a lot of times that problem can be fixed. you know if you can get that out of enough agents and they you know they tell you what's wrong you fix the book tweak it and get it get it right. I personally don't think anybody should publish a book unless it's something that Penguin Random House would offer a lot of money on and put on on their own. If that's not going to happen then you need to go back to the drawing board because unfortunately for better or worse in today's
world, you have to write five-star book and it has to stand out. I just read some stats. Last year there were four million books published in English, which is insane. 60 % of that was probably related to AI. Nobody knows. Only 600,000 of those books were actually traditionally published. So everything else was indie, was coming from all these different places. But your book has to stand out in that crowd. And if there's a problem with it, what typically happens is an indie author, if they don't go through that process and figure out what's wrong, they just put in
out. Their friends and family will read it. They'll get a bunch of four or five star reviews, but then the real readers find it. All of sudden, their average drops to like two and a half stars because they call it out for whatever was actually wrong with it. And that becomes you as an author. That becomes your legacy. So the next time you take a book out, when an agent Googles you, they're going to see that book sitting in a million and a half in the Kindle store with a two and a half star rating. And that's who you are to them. So you kind of carve that in stone. So as much as it might suck as a writer, you have to write a five
before you really start showing it to people.
Bernie (29:12)
Every once in a while you see filmmakers do certain things. They'll either put a cameo in there or some sort of Easter egg. Is that something that authors sometimes do or something you do and put an Easter egg in there just as a tease, especially if you have a certain fan base and later on as part of the promotion, do you put an Easter egg inside?
JD (29:36)
Yeah, I love doing stuff like that. My first book Forsaken, it was about a horror author and he passes away at the end of the book and I want to give away the whole story. throughout all my other books, I've got characters that occasionally read a book by this particular author. name was Thad McAllister. know, so I have a call for somebody to have a book, you know, in their hand for whatever reason. A lot of times it's going to be a Thad McAllister book. I went so far as to actually create a website for him with his books on it. So he has his own author profile out there in social media.
Bernie (30:02)
Sometimes when you see, let's say, example, certain sci-fi movies, you have the franchise and then you have the consumables or the swag that comes from that. Is that something that you also do inside your book space and provide swag elements to it to help promote and remind people, yeah, I'm out there, come check it out, and to provide that curiosity.
JD (30:26)
Now I've never really gotten into the swag thing ⁓ I do keep those rights back when I sign contracts for other things because of what happened to David But I haven't actually produced anything on my own. I think the closest that I've got I've got a book called behind a closed door Where there's an app involved. It's a husband and wife. They're going through some marital problems They go to a therapist and that therapist tells them to download an app called sugar and spice It's essentially truth or dare for adults But I actually had that somebody write that app for me in real life and that apps gonna hit the app store in the next couple of months
which will be kind of fun as a tie-in, that's all it really is. It's just a little fun thing for the fans.
Bernie (30:59)
Is that findable on both Apple and on the Google platform?
JD (31:04)
It will be when it comes out. I've got like the current draft of it on my computer back on my desk and I've been playing with it and we're working out the last couple of bugs but I'm guessing before the year is out it's gonna be in the stores.
Bernie (31:14)
You also have something else coming out the probability of murder is that's coming up this June is that correct?
JD (31:20)
Yeah,
that's one my co-authored titles.
Bernie (31:22)
Very nice. Can you tell us a bit more about it? Other than probability of murder? I suspect there's a criminal element to it.
JD (31:29)
There is also a math element to it, which is why I wanted to do this book. I mean, one of the reasons why I work with co-authors is it allows me to write a book that I can't write on my own. To give you an example, I've got one called Heavier of the Stones, and I wrote it with a woman named Christine Daigle. In real life, she's a neuropsychologist. So she brought that skill set to the writing table. And like, I can fake my way through that kind of thing. I can do a bunch of Google searches, watch some Netflix documentaries, and kind of fake it well enough to pull it off. But having that authentic voice in the writing room is priceless.
So when I seek out co-authors, I'm always looking for a skill set that complements what I do, but something that I can't do on my own. Basically, so that we can create a book that neither of us could write on our own. That's half the fun.
Bernie (32:07)
What a great idea. really, that's really good to hear. So, and you have the first Scarlet Door launching this fall. And so do you have any other books that are kind of coming close to fruition and release?
JD (32:21)
Nothing I could talk about. There's another one with Patterson that they're probably going to announce sometime soon. There's always something on the horizon.
Bernie (32:27)
Well, that's perfect. That's perfect. Your fans, all your fans will be chomping at the bit for that. I also understand you work with parents of autistic kids and advocate this publicly. How does that fit in your brand?
JD (32:43)
I mean, it's really a lot of conversations. I'm very public about being autistic. I talk about it all the time. I do a lot of interviews about it. So I get approached by lot of parents of autistic children. And as a parent of an autistic child, it can be a very difficult situation. You don't know how to deal with it. The support that's out there is much better than it used to be. But you still feel very much alone. So when I talk to parents, let's say they've got an 18-month-old who sits in the hallway and just bangs its head against the wall,
till it bleeds, I can explain to them why their child is doing that, because I did it. And I can also show them that there is a light at the end of that tunnel. ⁓ You have to work through it. So a lot of times, just having those conversations with somebody that actually understands what's going on is just very helpful to the parents. So I try to do that as much as I possibly can.
Bernie (33:27)
Are you involved, is it just in your local community? it throughout the continental US or is it global, this ⁓ these connections that you have?
JD (33:35)
I get people that reach out to me from all over the world. I've talked about it so much that it's just in the press. I do whatever I can to help out.
Bernie (33:43)
Perfect. Now you spent as part of a promo for the real haunted house story. You spent the night there. Did anything actually cause you to go, my gosh, or,
JD (33:55)
Stronger? I actually didn't spend the night there. We gave away an overnight stay to a reader, which was part of the promo. So we basically selected one person's name. We allowed them to take three of their friends. We put them in a boat, brought them out to the island, and we left them there for 24 hours. No, happened. Nobody died, which is my insurance company was very happy about.
Bernie (34:13)
well imagined.
JD (34:14)
Yeah, I honestly I don't think I would stay out there. mean the house is always you know, even before I knew some of the things that had happened out there it always kind of creeped me out. Like the first time I stood in the middle of that house on like every bone in my body wanted to leave and I didn't know why I think it was just an instinctual thing and I've since learned that we've kind of tuned that out as humans, know over the generations and generations we've learned to ignore that feeling. It's almost like if you're in a room with a cat and a cat hears a noise that cat's gonna run it doesn't care what made that noise it doesn't matter.
it's just gone. If you're person in that room, you're liable to walk over the corner, try to figure out what made the noise, sniff around. We're dumb. We've learned to ignore that instinct that kept us alive for so long. So I think when a person is standing in the middle of a room and the hair is standing up on the back of your neck and your body is telling you to leave, I think you should leave. So I had that feeling from the get-go, then I started learning about all these things that actually happened out there, which just reinforced why I felt that way. So for me personally, I will never spend the night out there.
going out there with my family, like our dog won't even get off the boat. Like all these things are, you know, that's telling to me, you know, like a dog that does not want to get out and play on an island, like it wants to stay in the boat and leave. Like there's reasons for that. And I don't know what those reasons are, but I'm not going to fool with it.
Bernie (35:23)
So you're not going to do the typical horror movie flick. let's go to the basement and hide there. You trapped in.
JD (35:29)
I will not now.
Bernie (35:30)
Oh, JD I really enjoy these conversations with you. It's good to hear what's happening. And you have a have a solo book that's coming out, something I keep upstairs published by Simon and Schuster. It's actually out this month. And it's the haunted house thriller set on a real island off of New Hampshire. And you can folks you can grab it wherever you wherever you like or go visit.
JDBarker.com, the website. He's got an upcoming release. The probability of murder drops June 2nd, 2026. So if you're a Thriller fan, go for that. And he also has the first Scarlet Door. When is it releasing exactly in September, JD?
JD (36:10)
September 22nd in the U.S.
Bernie (36:12)
And I want to say thank you to Kate Gomez because she's JD's publicist. She found the Knack 4 Business podcast and made this introduction happen. So kudos to Kate So you want to read a good book. You need a little bit of excitement. You need a little bit of mystery. You need a little bit of puzzling.
Go to JD's website and pick up one of his books, either through the your favorite book supplier or just go through to his website. And just go directly to his website at JDBarker.com. And you want to reach out to him. He's got a contact form in that space also.
So JD's been on this podcast in January of last year and he's come back in October. That one's to be released soon also. yeah, it's a great backstory and just shows that you can become an author and there is a way to go through and how to leverage your networking successes and who you're working with. It's kind of key.
For us, reach us at Knack 4 Business.com. That's NAC, K-N-A-C-K, the number four, business.com. And we have a chat bot. It can help you find other podcasts or book a call with us. Thank you.