Ep 322 Building an Author Brand that Breaks the Rules with JD Barker

Welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. This is a podcast for indie authors. I'm Cat Caldwell, novelist, short story writer, and book coach. Here on Pencils and Lipstick, we're obsessed with bold things story, and it is my goal to bring you the writing tips that you need to make your novel come to life. Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. This is episode 322, and it is the last full week of August 2026, back to school season. Yes. I am very excited to bring another interview to you guys. Today, we are I am talking to JD Barker.

He is an action and thriller and horror writer. He has worked with James Patterson. He worked in the literary industry, the publishing industry since, like, the nineties. He has so much information to give us plus, like, just chatting about his books. He talks really fast.

So if you guys, you know, listen to this, like, on speed, you might wanna turn it down actually, just the normal, depending on how quickly you can listen. And he just has so much information to give. It was so lovely to talk to him. So that interview will start in just a second. Even if you're like a romance writer, you're probably gonna wanna listen to J.

D. Barker. Just listening to people who have been in this business for a while, it's so informative. It'll open your eyes to things that you just haven't considered. So anyway, I highly recommend this interview.

As usual, I had such a good time talking to him. I have a good time talking to everyone who comes on the show. So we have a lot of interviews coming up for I'm booked out through November, but if you want to be on the show, you have to be somebody who has worked in the industry for a while or has published at least three books and have, like, something to talk about, because this show is for the writing process and the publishing process. And so we're trying to, you know, it's great to get, you know, advice on writing our books, but we definitely want, advice and thoughts and experiences in the whole like publishing and continuing to publish and market. Speaking of marketing, at the moment, I have decided to go with Facebook ads and I have to say they are working much better than Amazon ads.

Now Facebook's about to change things up, which I was just reading an article from David Goughran today. So I'm not excited about that. Just as I learn one thing, I have to, you know, learn the changes that they're making, but such is the world of publishing these days. The Facebook ads are solving one, pain point in in finding new readers for my books. So that is, it's fun to see, you know, the reading go through the roof and selling different ebooks and paperbacks.

Of course there's still more to learn from them, but yeah, that is my news. Amazon ads did not work as well for me. But I'm actually hoping that the more that new readers, download my books, the more Amazon will learn about the, I guess, the the demographics of the readers. Since I write a couple of different genres, I think that's one of my pain points as an author. Yet and this is this is why a lot of people suggest pen names.

Of course, I didn't do that. And so there's just, you know, something that I have to deal with. But, yeah, I am actually going through Matthew j Holmes' Facebook class, I guess it would be like it's a course. So I, I that's the only one that I know. That's the one that I really like it.

There are lots of people who, who teach Facebook or you can try it by yourself. That's just I know. I tried it before and it didn't work. I just spent a lot of money with very little results. So I decided to find somebody who could teach me.

But if you guys don't know, all my books are in KU. I know this is, I'm talking to all you writers, but if you're looking for something to read, I've decided to keep them in KU, for the time being,

actually,

just because it's it's a lot. A lot is on my plate. So as we go into into the fall, I am focusing a lot. There's so many things to do right there. So, like, I thought about, making more audiobooks.

I thought about, getting some translations done. And at the moment, I'm just focusing on I'm gonna get the books done that I have started, and I am going to focus on marketing and starting Black Friday stuff. So if you are marketing or struggling with marketing, or, or want to be a little bit better about it this time around in the fall going into Christmas, I suggest that you listen to the Craft and Connect, which will be in about three weeks. It's the third week of the month of September. I'll be talking with Becky Grogan.

You can also head over to her website and see, check out her free resources. And you can join her group, which is going to be in the link below. I think there's only a few spots left, like maybe one or two. I was talking to her the other day. So by the time this goes out or you're listening, it might be full, but I suggest you check it out or maybe even get on the waiting list for next, next time she runs it.

But she still has free resources so that and she has a great newsletter. Congrats, Becky, on your newsletter. And all of you who don't have a newsletter, you need to get one. But you should get on my newsletter because my course my little chat on convincing you to get a newsletter will probably be part of my end of the year sale. So I just a little preview for you.

So if, you are listening to this, whatever you're listening to it on, will you please like, subscribe, share, you know, give a review that is always helpful, especially if you're on like Apple or Spotify. Those are the two main places. If you're on a different one, it's still helpful. If you know other writers, please share it. If you want to see me or see my guests, you should go over to YouTube.

It's at pencilsandlipstick, all spelled out, very easy to find. The logo's there. You can find it and you can watch the interviews. 99.9% of my interviewees, consent to being recorded so you can see them, see the mess that is my office. You shouldn't see this part.

So I try to not give too much too much mess to you guys. But you can see my office. You can see Becky. You can see all my other guests. So I highly suggest that you go there as well.

And please sign up for my newsletter if you want more from me. I have both a writer's and a reader's newsletter. So that is all that I have for you today because I'm so excited to get into this interview because JD has so much to tell us. I am going to go straight into that. So without further ado, let's get into the interview.

Alright, everyone. I am super excited to be talking with JD Barker today. He, I have known about you for a long time, although I read thrillers sporadically. But I'm very excited to talk to you again about your writing and your books. And I know quite a few people are thriller or mystery writers.

And I have a few horror writers, but we'll see. We'll get into all of it because you have been around writing in all of the areas of the arts. So thank you so much for coming on the show, JD. It's fun to meet you.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Now I usually ask people how they get into writing, but you actually have a lot of information on your website. So I have read your whole biography, and you had quite a roundabout way of getting into well, maybe not roundabout, but it wasn't, like, directly into book, your fiction writing. So could you tell us just a little bit about you, like, what genres you write, and then we'll get into all the experience that you've had.

Sure. Yeah. So I I was told by my my parents that at a very early age, writing is a great hobby, but you can't make a living at it. You have to get a real job. Okay.

And, you know, I I was a kid, so I didn't know any better. So I finished up school. I went off to college. I got a degree in finance. But I would write on the side to to stay sane.

And when I was in college and even during the my early years in the financial industry, I would work on, these, like, little projects. And it basically fell into into a side hustle as a book doctor and a ghost writer Yeah. Helping other people get published. Yeah. I would work with agents.

I would work with editors and fine tune manuscripts and get them ready for publication. I did that for twenty three years, while I was working in finance. And over that time frame, I had six different books that hit the New York York Times list that all came out with other people's names on the cover that I had essentially written because they were

completely

different titles. That gets old after a while.

Yeah. I bet.

So my my wife pulled me aside, and she said, listen. I know you wanna become a full time author. Let's figure out how to make this happen.

At

this point, we were kind of stuck because I had I was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm. I had a really good salary. I hated the job, but it paid well. And we had all the trappings of that. We had a big house.

We had cars. We had a boat. So she came up with this crazy plan. We sold everything that we owned. We bought a tiny little duplex in Pittsburgh for cash.

We rented out one side to some tenants, and we moved into the other side in order to, you know, live off a savings long enough for me to write that first book. Your wife suggested that? That was that was all my wife. I I honestly, I did not I did not have the guts to do that on my own. Like, she Kudos

to her. Trigger.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember sitting down at the kitchen table in our tiny little apartment, and she showed me the bank statement. And she said, it looks like you got about eighteen months to make this work before you have to get another job. Job.

Go.

And, you

know, honestly, nothing like putting your feet to the coals to to really, you know, make something happen. That was my first book. That was about eleven years ago, and it's been this crazy roller coaster ever since.

That was Forsaken?

That was Forsaken. Yeah.

Okay. But so you had experience. And, I mean, you had, like, traditional publishing experience before that point. You knew what was what was coming.

I had behind the scenes experience. Yeah. So, like, to give you an example, you know, an editor would buy a book. You know, let's say he works at Penguin Random House, and he loves this book. It's a debut author, but it's got problems.

And they'll go back to the the author and try to get them to fix those problems. And it could be, you know, we have to trim 50,000 words out. Your dialogue's not sharp enough. There's a million different things that it could be. But a lot of times, a debut author just isn't capable of doing that.

So they would hire me as a hired gun that, you know, we'd have one phone call. They'd say this needs to be fixed. This needs to be fixed. They didn't sugarcoat anything because, you know, I was brought in to to correct it. And I did that for so long.

I basically got, like, a peek behind the curtain of what the folks in New York felt really needed to be in a book in order for it

to sell.

And that that was my my education really in this. I I I don't have any formal training as a writer other than, you know, like, I read a lot. You know, like, I I learned story structure because of the books that I read.

Right.

I've never taken any actual classes on it outside of the the norm.

I had no idea that that was a thing

that, like It happens all the time.

But what's the point of not okay. I'm I'm just like, I wanna focus on you

and your books. I I wrote I wrote a ton of memoirs for other people. The very first one, I I was on the field at a at a Miami Dolphins game, and I walked up to a very famous player and we were talking. And I said, hey. Have you ever considered writing down your life story?

Because he had a fascinating history.

Okay.

And he said, I I'd love to. I get offers for that all the time, but I don't have the skill to do that. So ultimately, we struck a deal. His agent went out and sold the book at at a 7 figure deal before we even wrote anything. I wrote the book.

He took credit for it because it was a ghost written title.

Right.

But when you write memoirs, you basically have to write a book and the other person's you know, usually first person as a narrative. Yeah. And you're writing it in their voice, which really helped me learn how to write characters, because I was in the heads of all these different people, and I did so many of those. You know, so there were a lot of projects like that. Sometimes, you know, a well known author, like, I had one where he, you know, he turned in a book and it wasn't done, but he had to go out on tour.

So they hired me to finish it. I wrote the second half of the book based on the outline that they gave me. But I wrote it in his voice. That kind of stuff happens all the time. Like, if you think Britney Spears actually wrote her own autobiography, you know, you're you're missing something.

Yeah. Well, I knew that part, but I didn't know that, like, well known fiction authors or a debut author, like, they they would make up for that time that they hadn't if they don't know how to fix their own book. It almost seems a bit counterintuitive. Like, how are they gonna write the second one if they don't know how to fix it? I mean, like, when I work

like, if I work with an author on it, you know, like, hand in hand, I show them what I'm fixing and I explain

to them.

I I love to mentor authors and and I'll speak, which is partly what

I'm asking for with authors. Right? But I guess on timelines, it's

like I mean, it's just, you know, the it's a business. Right? You know, these if you a lot of times, they spend a lot of money for these books. They have to make sure they recoup. You know, so they bring in somebody that really knows how to, you know, dot all the i's and and cross the t's.

Well, I feel like that that's probably better than taking any class in writing though because you're really seeing what is selling, what makes it fast paced, what they're cutting out, what they want put back in. I mean, that's almost just a crash course.

I mean, honestly, like, I've steered clear of classes just because of that old adage, you know, if you can't do it, teach. You know? So, like, I don't wanna, you know, get I don't wanna get an MFA from somebody who couldn't sell their own books. Yes. Like, I I write books with James Patterson.

I just talked to him twenty minutes ago. Like, he told me what to do, you know, on some pages that I Yeah. Like, that is education from the best. Yeah. You know, I've I've always gone to, like, the the biggest names I'll have, you know, I could, you know, just to to get, you know, tips and tricks.

Okay. So when you are, like, by day, you're finance, and by night, you're writing, but it didn't it never got to the point in the nineties and two thousands where you thought that you could do the writing full time until your wife told you to do it?

You know, it was a tricky thing because, you know, the finance thing just paid so well. Yeah. It does. Sixty to eighty hours a week doing that. You know, so there there wasn't a whole lot of time.

And, you know, somebody of these book projects that I worked on, I saw people that just they didn't succeed. You know, like, so many books come out, only a handful of them actually make a living at it. I had a sure thing, you know, with the financing. As as much as I hated the job, you know, I get paid the bills.

So

that's how I that's how I looked at it. But my wife, you know, when we talked that one day, she said, okay. I want you to picture something. You're 80 years old. You're sitting on a porch in a rocking chair.

You're looking back on your life. You know, are you gonna be happy with every decision you made? Are you gonna be happy if you don't try the writing thing?

You

know, like, that really clicked for me because in my world, I would much rather try something and fall flat on my face than, you know, look back on it and say what if.

Right. And I guess you have the skills to, you know, if you had to fall back into a a business or, you know, a different job, you had the resume already. I guess, you just I mean, it's

it's honestly helped me with this, you know, because I I get my words done around eleven, you know, 12:00 or so during the day, and then I put my marketing and business hat on, and I've put that whole side of this. I know.

You know, which is a whole other

yeah. It's a whole other world. And it's the op you know, most authors were were introverts. Right? Like, you don't wanna sit down and talk to anybody.

You wanna hide behind your desk and, you know, play pretend all day. Exactly. But, you know, in in the real world, you have to talk to advertisers. You have to do this. You have to do that.

And, like, you have to be able to to switch that. Yeah. Luckily, I've had feet in both camps, so I I understand how it works.

Okay. So did Forsaken come out? Did you do it traditionally published?

No. I I indie published that one. Okay. But I I yeah. In in the story, I had to explain where the wife buys a journal.

So just to get the book finished, I wrote that she walked into Needful Things, you know, Stephen King's store. Fully expected to have to change that. But, again, my wife read it, and she's like, you know, before you change it, let's see if we can get King's permission to do it. And, ultimately, I was able to do that. King King read the the manuscript.

He gave me his blessing to use the reference. And, you know, that kind of really kicked off my career because, initially, you know, like, the book, you know, the book came out just like any other debut author. Nobody knew it was there. It sold a couple of copies. The reviews were good, but, you know, didn't hit it out of the park like I wanted it to.

Right. But when publications learned that I had gotten Stephen King's permission on this, you know, I I had a couple articles that were written about it, that news, you know, libraries, you know, started picking it up, bookstores started picking it up, and, ultimately, I sold a lot of copies. So for my next title, which was The Fourth Monkey, I I got a pretty significant, traditional publishing deal.

Yeah. That was your next one because I I mean, I know that book. Yeah. I mean, of all the millions of books out there, the fact that before I ever knew who you were, like, I know I know that book. So that's that's so you did those two.

Did you by 2014, though, like, you had extensive experience working for magazines and but were those sort of contacts not really around anymore? I assume, like, by 2014, a lot of these magazines were not around for you to be like, hey. I wrote a book. Will you,

you know Yeah. No.

Write about it?

I I wish. You know, a lot of the book doctor and ghost writing projects I had came out of that world. You know, like, if you work at a newspaper, you know, every reporter's got a novel at some stage of development in a desk drawer somewhere. It's it's 400,000 words long. They've been working on it for ten years.

It's almost done. You know? And they they would hand it to me and and get my opinion on it. And initially, I just fixed grammar and punctuation, but then I started turning you know, giving them developmental edits and things like that. And that's essentially what turned into the the book doctor gig.

Okay. Okay. But those were kind of, like by 2014, you were, like, on your own pretty much.

Yeah. They they were they were on. I mean, I I I hired a a publicist who was a friend of mine, that I had worked with. She used to work with bands out in LA back in the eighties and nineties. Like, all the hair bands, like, she was their publicist.

So I actually hired her to be my publicist for the book. So, like, I you know, that was probably the only contact I was actually able to Yeah. Get from that because, yeah, yeah, everybody had moved on. The newspapers had folded. The magazines either went online or disappeared.

Right.

You know, the world has just changed so much.

It had changed. I just wanted to say that because a lot of times, you know, we'll be listening to podcasts and listeners who are like, yeah. But it's J. D. Barker.

You know? Yeah. But, you know, like but you were starting out kind of in this new world of independent publishing and ebooks.

Yeah. I mean, if people Google me and read some of the stuff that I've done, like, it it it's been a a crazy ridiculous career so far, but it's been eleven years. And if you go back eleven years, I started in the same place as everybody else. I had no books out there, zero people on my mailing list. Nobody knew who I was.

So the the real takeaway is is just look at the decisions that I've made. Yeah. And not all of them work out. I've fallen on my face many of times. But, you know, I'm not willing to take it or I am willing to take a chance.

And because of that, you know, a lot of those do, you know, turn into to home runs. Right. That's that's that's what you really have to, you know, I think think about as as an author. I mean, my main you know, like, every time I've got a book coming out, I look at what everybody else is doing, and then I come up with something that nobody is doing in order to push that title. And that's that's what really works for me.

Okay. That's that's interesting because I feel like a lot of authors try to do the same thing. I mean

You can. I mean, you can do Facebook ads and Amazon ads, but the problem is then you're never gonna succeed any more than the other people that are doing the same thing. To give you an example, my last book was called Something I Keep Upstairs. It was a haunted house story. Mhmm.

And the actual house in the story is real. It's a, you know, real house. It's about a mile off the the Coast where I live here on on in New England. So to promote that book, I actually gave away an overnight stay in the real haunted house at the basis of the book. Oh, that's scary.

Yeah. And as soon as we put out a press release saying author giving away an overnight stay to a reader, you know, I did television. I did radio. I did tons of podcasts. You know, everybody was writing about it.

People were talking about it online. All that chatter was essentially free, but it sold a lot of books. Now if if another author comes up and writes a haunted house story, they could try to do the same thing and but it's not gonna work as well because I've already done it. So you have to come up with that one thing that nobody's done yet to to promote your title. And there there's always something there.

You just have to you have to really think about

it. Well, I think you said something interesting in, like, not only finding something new, but using kind of the the traditional methods as well. Like, I think I wonder if sometimes in this modern, you know, 2026, we forget that you can do press press releases, that you can approach local newspapers and radio shows. Like, don't you feel like we're all, like, Amazon ads and not as much, like, what is free?

Press press releases are huge, and this is something that I've got, you know, working with with Patterson. Like, if he, you know, comes up with a new deal, like, he's gonna write a book with Dolly Parton, you know, he announces that before they write the first word. And, like, that generates a significant amount of buzz, and and I've been doing the same thing. I've got a a national PR company that will put out a release. And what happens is that release comes out.

All these publications pick up on it, then that generates people calling me asking for interviews. And all of that, you know, the the cost of the press release is, I think, $500, you know, so it's not a huge amount of money. But the amount of noise that it creates, you know, like, you can't replicate that. And if you do it over and over and over again, you know, it basically comes down to the core of selling everything, which is brand. You know, you need to get your brand in front of people's eyeballs as many times as possible before they're willing to pull the trigger on it.

So Okay. People see my name over here. They see it over here. They see it over here. Eventually, they walk into Walmart or a bookstore, and they see it on its cover.

And and, you know, they pick up that book, and they may you know, they remember me. They may not know why, but I feel earlier and and then, you know, they they buy that book.

Yeah. That's a really good point, Jamaica. Honestly, I I do think that we we tend to run around a lot on on the Internet circles, you know, and not necessarily thinking because if you think about, like, even $500, people can spend that on poor advertising all the time on Facebook. I mean, those platforms are made for us basically to fail. Like, in the sense of, like, they want the money.

It doesn't matter to them if anyone buys your book or not. Right?

Yeah. They will they will take your money all day long. Yeah. You know, which is one of the things that scares me about it. Yeah.

And and they're not as effective as they used to be. You know, none of that stuff is. You know, even a a BookBub ad, you know, you used to be able to get one of those and you'd sell thousands of copies in a day. That just doesn't happen anymore. You know, you're lucky if you recoup.

It's very true. It's very true. So when you're also, you're let me see what direction I wanna go. You have worked with a lot of people. So you've you've been publishing for not even twelve years, like, on your own?

Yeah. November 2014 is when the first book came out.

You have I'm try I mean, I can't even count that quickly. You have over a dozen books out at least.

I I have 19 at last time.

Okay.

I thought I thought it was 12, and then I had to write a speech at my next book release party. And I I looked at my Wikipedia page and, oh, I've Really? Actually 19.

Look at that. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, some of these what you you wrote with people, some of most of them you wrote by yourself. How how how did you get this many books written?

Well, I mean, I I write fairly fast. I write two to 3,000 words a day. So that's three words on my own. I every I even wrote on my wedding day, which got me in trouble. So yeah.

The the the only day I take off is Sundays because that's dad and daughter day, and I think I do all day with my daughter. So Sure. That's the only day. Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's to me, it's like going to the gym. You know, like, if you do it every day, that very writing muscle gets stronger and stronger, and you're able to produce more. And if you step away for a week, then it's, you know, everything just kinda goes yeah. It's hard. You know, you can't do quite as much.

So, yeah, I I like to write every day. Yeah, I spent the bulk of my career working with other people, you know, collaborating on the the book doctor and ghost writing stuff. So it actually feels weird for me to sit down and write a book by myself. Okay. So so I like to mix it up.

Yeah. But do you only work on one book at a time?

I've got 12 books right now on the pipeline. Oh my gosh.

So no. The the answer is very

clearly not. And and this this also comes from working with with Patterson. Like, the first time that I I met him, I went to his house in Palm Beach, and he let me in. And we went walked to his office and, like, literally, every surface had a manuscript on it. You know, like, the stairs going up to his second floor, every step had a manuscript sitting there.

They were everywhere. And then we get to his office, and it's this big square room, and it's, like, lined with bookcases. And every more manuscripts. And, like, he knew exactly what was going on with every single one of those. He knew knew you know, he because he's writing them.

He's reading them. He's working on them. Like, that that to me inspired me. I mean, he's he's 79 years old now. He sounds like he's, you know, 20 when you talk to him on the phone.

Like, he's just got so much energy. And, like, I I think a lot of what I'm doing is I'm chasing Patterson.

Wow. I mean, how many people is he working with at like, he's just an empire at this point. Like, it's so impressive.

He's a publishing force all by himself. He's got an entire division in his shed that does nothing but work on his books.

That's that's impressive. Like, the I mean, and he came from copyright. Right? Like, yeah. Nothing.

Right? He grew up in a boarding house. You know? Like, he Wow.

That Or I grew up when

he was a kid.

I mean, when you know someone like that, you can't help but, like, keep working. Right? Like, there's really no

That's the thing. You know? Like, he'll he'll call me and, like, you know, I'm thinking, well, maybe I'll take the afternoon off. And then I talk to him and, you know, it's like, there's no way I

can I I gotta touch touch

up with this guy? I mean, he's been helping me quite a bit. Like, I just had to deal with Simon and Schuster where they let me create my own imprint. He's basically helping me create almost like a James Patterson two point o using the tools that are available today.

Okay. So I

got a number of titles I'm working on with co authors. You know, I've got some nonfiction stuff coming out. Yeah. I'm basically following his model, but he's helping me avoid the stuff where he you know, the mistakes he made and just kinda focus on the things that worked.

I'm a

lucky I'm a lucky guy.

Well but, I mean, it sounds like you're also you haven't been shy in asking questions of people. Like, if you just ask Stephen King, I think most people don't ask. Ask. Right? Like, we just assume they're gonna say no, and then we don't ask.

And then you just you never know.

Yeah. And I've always been the kind of person who asks. And and, you know, when I started talking to writers and lecturing, I yeah. I was at Thriller Fest one year. And, like, I went and got in the elevator, and and Lee Child was there.

And, like, he was in the elevator with us, and one other author that I knew was a big fan of Lee Child really wanted to get a blurb from Lee Child. You know? So we're in there riding the elevator from the 1st Floor up to the 4th Floor, you know, fifteen seconds or so. That was her window. You know?

Like, I wanted to kick her in the leg. I was like, this is your opportunity. You got the guy right here and, like and she didn't ask the question. Like, I would have completely asked the question. I'd rather get shot down, you know, have Lee say, no.

I don't have time to read it or whatever. But, you know, to watch him stand there and everybody quiet, watch him leave that elevator and the expression on her face, like, because she didn't make that ask, you know, like, every author needs to ask the question. Like, it Yeah. And the funny thing is when you talk to some of these guys, you know, they've all been in the same place. You know, like, you know, Stephen King wrote Carrie in a trailer, you know, like, he was wedged between a washer and dryer.

He was working in a laundromat. You know, like, they've all had crappy jobs. They know what it's like to write that first book and to sell that first book, and they don't forget that. So if you approach them as an author and you're at this particular stage, they know what that was like. And they will reach a hand back, and they'll help you, mostly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is that's very important to remember. So what?

You write several genres. Do you have a favorite that you prefer?

Is is horror. Okay. When I was a kid, I my mom owned an antique store, and then we used to go to a lot of garage sales. And up I was eight years old, and up at up to that point, I had read, like, all the classics and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and stuff like that. This guy had a box of books, and Dracula was sitting on the top for, I think, it was 25¢.

And she let me buy it. I took it home and read it, and it scared the crap out of me. For, like, three weeks, I slept with the lights on. I'm looking under my bed. And that was, like, the first time a book had ever made you know, gotten an emotional reaction out of me.

And I think I've been chasing that feeling as a reader and a writer ever since. So horror is definitely my first love. But I like writing thrillers, and I didn't wanna get caught. And, you know, a lot of authors, they write a book, it sells really well, and then they have to write that same book but different every year for the rest of their lives. I didn't wanna be that guy.

So I purposely started with a horror novel, then I wrote a thriller novel, then I wrote another horror novel. I wrote a prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker's family. Another thriller after that. I bounced back and forth. And then at one point, my, editor called me and he said, well, we just did some numbers, and it looks like your readership is women 45 and over.

That's your primary market. So that's who we need to target. So he wanted me to write a book for that particular group. So instead, I wrote a young adult book because my general thinking was I've already got women 45 and over. What I don't have are these people over here.

So I'm gonna write a book to target this group, bring them into the fold, and now all of a sudden, I've got everybody. So I I use the books almost like being a literary Pied Piper. I look for a hole that I'm not filling, and I write a book that actually targets that group to to expand my audience.

I I am very impressed by this thought process because, like, it again, it goes against everything everyone is teaching right now. Niche down. Niche down. But the truth is, like, from yours and my generation, we would just pick up a book. Like, it had it it wasn't made for our age or whatever.

Like, you just picked up a book, you either liked it or you didn't

still happens though. Like, if you you know, I walked into Barnes and Noble very early in my career. And if you stand at that entrance and you just look at the titles that are there, you're gonna see certain names. You're gonna see Stephen King. You're gonna see James Patterson.

You're gonna see Nora Roberts. Their name is huge on the cover. The title of the book is like this. And then you've got all these other authors that are kind of, you know, the mid listers, you know, where their title is this big, their name is this big. And, you know, if you take a step back, what's really happening there is the publishers are doubling down on brand.

You know, Stephen King is a brand. Patterson or Roberts, they they are all brands. Right. On the on the other side of it, those other people, you know, they've got a two book deal. You know, they're gonna sell you know, publisher wants to sell those two books.

They really don't care anymore if they build a brand name author. They don't have the the wherewithal anymore. So they're gonna get what they can out of that one or two book deal with that author and then move on to the next one and move on to the next one. But authors get caught up in that because they don't know any better. I got tons of pushback at the the beginning.

You know, when I turned in you know, my first book was horror and then I turned in a thriller, you know, my agent's like, what what are you doing? My editor didn't want it, you know, because it was just so different. I I forced it down their throat. And I just I kept doing that. I didn't give them a choice.

And what I ended up seeing, particularly in the foreign markets, you know, I had some publishers that would only buy the horror, would only buy the thrillers. But then all of a sudden, you know, they started realizing I'm selling a lot of books, and they started picking up the other ones that I had written that they hadn't published before. They saw my audience get even bigger. And they realized that, you know, as long as the books are connected in some way, you know, like, in my case, I try to keep a common thread of suspense. You know?

So I could write a suspense book that's got elements of horror or sci fi or romance or whatever. But as long as suspense is there, I can kinda bring people into the fold. I think if you've got that common thread, you can tie it all together. And if you look at somebody like Stephen King, I mean, that's that's what he's done, you know, from from from get go. You know?

He he's basically created a a brand by jumping around different genres and just, you know, bringing people into his his fold.

Yeah. This is this is something that I try to talk about on the podcast a lot of, like, making the decisions that you're very confident in. And I I dislike this idea these days of authors being pulled everywhere, especially if they're starting out or they're just small. You know, most of us only have a few books out there. We're, like, trying to do the things, you know, but it's taking the moment and looking like you were just saying, like, how is my cover?

How is everyone else's cover? Do I want a brand or not? You know? And then making that decision that you are confident enough in that when somebody pushes back, you say, no. I I'm gonna do it like this, and I have my reasons why.

And, like, if it fails, it fails. If it but if you go forward in it, like, at least you did it because you knew what you were doing. You wanted to.

I I think in the traditional world, that happens a lot, you know, because you feel special because all of a sudden you've got a contract in front of you. Right. You just sign it. Like, you don't even Right. You don't push back on any of it.

Yeah. And you do what you're told because you just assume these people know better than me. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut. I'm gonna listen. But they know what's best for them.

They don't know necessarily what's best for you, and that's what you really need to focus on.

Yeah. Okay. So then the first Scarlet Door, is this a this is a thriller, four MC thriller? What what is the four MC series about?

Four four MK. So it's a

Four sorry. My eyes are not as good as they say.

So it in my my first my first thriller was called The Fourth Monkey. It's got a serial killer in Chicago. He's been operating in the city for about five years, so everybody knows who he is. They they know his MO. He kidnaps a girl.

He cuts off her ear, and he mails it to their that girl's family in a little white box tied with a black string. He's been doing this over and over again, but the police have no clue who he is. So at the beginning of Fourth Monkey, I wanted to do something different. So my killer is is walking across the street. He's got a little white box tied with a black string.

He's about to mail it. He gets hit by a city bus and killed. So the police know that they've got their killer. He's got no ID on him, so they don't know who he is. But they know that he already kidnapped another victim, and she's out there somewhere.

So they have to try to find her. Now it's a great premise, but I had to figure out how to, you know, introduce my killer to the readers because he's dead. You know? So, like, how do I bring him back into the story?

It's a great first chapter.

Yeah. So, you know, as a writer, I'm like, how do I how do I bring them you know, how do I get the other 80 chapters that I need?

Okay.

So I created these diary entries. The police find the killer's diary. And through that, we get glimpses of his childhood and how he grew up and the things that happened around him. Okay. And I carried that forward through the entire initial trilogy, and and readers loved it.

And it's funny because initially, the publishers wanted to strip that out. They're like, we don't want the diary entries. We just wanna put this out as a straight up thriller, you know, that that was gonna be their plan, and I pushed back on that too. And luckily, it worked out. And the book's been out, I guess, about ten years now.

And it's just it's constantly hitting bestseller lists in in new countries and new places. It's and it's all based on word-of-mouth, you know, which is fantastic. Yeah. Whenever I travel, you know, people would put those books in front of me, and they wanted to know more about the killer. Like, they love the diary entries.

They want to know more about his backstory. And, like, I kept hearing that over and over again when I went out on these book tours. And then COVID hit, and I sat down. I was like, you know, I'm gonna try something. You know, up until that point, you know, like, I had all these projects I was working on.

I felt like I was on a roller coaster. I'm gonna write these, you know, a book and not tell anybody. So I ended up writing three prequels to my four m k, thriller series, all based in on the the serial killer. So I basically fill in fifteen years worth of blank history in these three prequels. And I didn't tell anybody I was working on them, which was very refreshing, you know, because, like, you know, if I had to change something in book one to accommodate an idea I had in book three, like, I was able to keep tweaking them right up until the

very end.

Right. And then I, you know, I brought them to my agent, and I was like, I wanna put these all out on the same day. And, like, not tell anybody they're coming out. I don't wanna do any advanced press. I don't want it I just want, you know, maybe a PR announcement saying they're coming out tomorrow, but, like, drop them all on the same day.

And I was able to do that if I wanted to because I've got my own publishing imprint at Simon

and Schuster.

Okay. So that was the plan going in. And then when we started talking to my foreign publishers, we got a lot of pushback because they don't have the ability to put out three books for the same author at the same time. Oh. It's just So, ultimately, we're releasing them, I think it's about six months in between each title.

Okay.

But that that's so the first one is the first scarlet door. It comes out in September. And I'm basically revisiting my my serial killer and filling in that backstory.

So he he was active doing stuff before the

Well, it's the

the one the serial starts.

I I've I've got halfway through a psychology degree in college. I love psychology. And when I wrote The Fourth Monkey, the I the question I was trying to answer for myself is could a serial killer be made? You know, like, if you take somebody who's a perfectly good person and put them in the wrong circumstances over and over again, could that turn that person into a killer? So he basically starts off as a good guy.

So if you read the fourth monkey, like, you actually feel bad for the serial killer at the end, probably more so than the victims. You know, people are rooting for him. But when you read these prequels, you basically, you know, from the age age 15 until about 30, we basically see what happened to him that, you know, caused him to go from this nice kid to, you know, a serial killer Oh. Which was a lot of fun to write.

I bet that was fun to write. And sometimes it just takes, like, I don't know why. Our brains just need some time to figure out that character. Right? Like, that character's always been with you.

It just took maybe a a worldwide pandemic for you to come up with his his backstory.

I I think it was Brandon Sanderson because he dropped, you know, that Kickstarter. And, like, he announced four books that nobody had ever heard of or, you know, he didn't tell anybody he was doing. And I think that's where I got that idea from. I'm like, I I wanna try that.

Wait. I can do that too. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine that would be refreshing.

Yeah. Because it's it's hard to explain. Somebody once told me, like, you have a lifetime to write your first book and six months to write the next one. And it is very much like that. And almost all of my books have been optioned, you know, so I've got a lot of film and TV stuff going on.

So, like, you know, a lot of different people weighing in. Neil Patterson and I were working on a book called The Noise a few years back, and it got optioned by e one while we were still writing it. So not only were we working on the book, but we had writers and producers and show runners all criticizing, you know, the text and saying, well, can you do this instead of this?

It's a lot of

interesting stuff. The ending six different times to accommodate, you know, filming locations. You know, like, it's a lot. You know? Like, so when you can close that door and just write a book for yourself again, like, it it reminds you of what's fun about all this.

Yeah. I can I can imagine that that would be it? So in September, the first scarlet Door comes out, and then you'll have two more come out next year in 2027?

Yeah. And there's a a TV show that's hopefully in the works where there's an announcement coming out for that pretty soon.

Very cool.

Hopefully, we're gonna see all this stuff piggyback on it on each other.

So just, just a few more minutes if you have it. But how has, international been? Have has was that ever something that you thought of before, or has that just sort of been an added, delight, I guess?

Yeah. No. I'm I'm in a 150 different countries now. Like, two two dozen languages. I I didn't even consider that at the beginning.

Yeah. But the fourth monkey had just you know, my my agent was able to sell it in these foreign territories, and it's just expanded over time. It's it's a great way to, you know, to build your brand. Like, I was just in Spain, and I had a ridiculous number of people that showed up for my signings, you know, in this foreign country. Like, when you can travel to a, you know, some place you've never been and have all these people come and, you know, that that like your book, like, that just helps you recharge the batteries.

Yeah. From a business standpoint, though, I think it's a necessity at this point for for authors if you really wanna succeed. And you can build your brand in in multiple markets. It's not that difficult to do. I've been experimenting with hiring my own translators, possibly doing doing some of it on my own.

And it's getting easier and easier. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of AI, but I I think AI translations are probably gonna hit very soon. Probably, you know, maybe a combination of AI and a human where the AI does the the first pass and then a human cleans it up or or something. Yeah.

Translation process is gonna get a lot easier for for authors to do. So I think every author author that's out there, you need to start looking at that, you know, figure out a way to get your books into some of these these other markets because it's you know, there's a lot of readers out there.

Yeah. Actually, as a former translator myself, it it's a terribly paid job in the sense of it takes a lot of work. So I'm actually super pro AI translation because if twenty years ago, if I had that, I could have taken on double or triple the work, literally. You know? And so you would actually be sustaining jobs, like a weird a weird benefit of AI because it's taking away jobs for most places.

Right?

Yeah. And and a and a translator honestly can make or break the book. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, the the only market where the fourth monkey didn't sell well was, Italian.

And we've since learned it was because of the translation. You know? So it's hitting in all these other markets. It's running up the bestseller list. It came out in Italy.

It just fizzled and died. And, you know, we we we've learned, you know, since it was because of the translators.

Okay. So you need a

different the rights back, they're translating it again. Okay. You know, so hopefully, that market will hit too. But Okay. If if you the the moral is if you can find a good translator and you're working with them, you know, get their contact information to latch on to that person.

And keep them. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So then are you going to author nation as a speaker?

I am. Yeah.

Okay. Oh, so it's like a thriller whole year, I guess, over there. Isn't it you and, I'm blanking on the guy. He wrote Red Rising.

I brought in James Patterson last year who got sick, unfortunately, at the last minute.

Oh, he was just

so okay? Yeah. We had to do it remotely, through a Zoom call. Awesome. This year, I got Andy Weir to come in at the

Andy Weir. That's it.

Yeah.

Okay. I was like, I know the guy. I can see the cover. Okay.

I I I honestly I I went to author nation a few years ago, and I just I love the vibe that was there. Mhmm. I've been to other conferences. You know, like, Thriller Fest is great. But as a business, they're very good at promoting the very big name authors and very good at promoting the debut authors, but they don't really do much for the people that are in the middle.

And that's most of us. Yeah. Author nation, you know, gives you the tools to learn how to market your book, how to sell your book, how to do this, how to do that. So I think it's a really good place for for authors. So I'm trying to mix up the two worlds.

I've been working with them to bring in some of the bigger names, you know, like Patterson, like Andy, so we can, you know, kinda mash it all up. Because I I you know, traditional indie, like, I think all those lines are getting very blurry at this point.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just all about selling books, and we've all got different ways to do it.

Sure. Sure. So you would recommend that as a as an author to go and learn kinda that business part

of it? Absolutely. Yeah. That's probably the conference you need to go to.

Okay. Perfect. So after The Scarlet Door, what's the next one that we should be looking out for?

I haven't released the names yet.

Okay. You haven't? Alright. So we'll just have to keep following you. It's gonna

be the the the second and the third, but I I haven't released the full names yet.

Alright. So I will have the links to your website in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you would like people to follow you or or find out where you announce your your

next page? To find. I'm I'm at jdbarker.com. On social media, I'm at jdbarker on all the the platforms. And the books are pretty much in every bookstore.

Alright. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, j d, for coming on and talking with us.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.