My guest today is JD Barker. JD is a New York and international best-selling author.
Barker grew up with an early love and interest for creative writing and storytelling, including work by the Hardy Boys and Ninty Drew,
followed by interest to Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
Often Barker was found with a book in his hands at age six.
After the discovery of suspenseful collections by Mary Shelley, Brom Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe,
Barker's early passion grew into creating his own writings as a child.
Barker is known for his suspense thrillers, featuring elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural.
His debut novel, Forsaken, caught the attention of legendary author Stephen King,
who endorsed Barker's creative writing talents early in his career.
King allowed Barker to use one of his characters from Needful Things for Barker's debut novel.
Barker's work expanded when he was approached by Brom Stoker's family
to co-author a prequel to Dracula titled Dracula,
utilizing previously unpublished notes by Stoker.
This collaboration was well received and further solidified his reputation in the genre.
Dracula, published in 2018, was not only a commercial success, but also saw its film rights optioned by Paramount Pictures.
His writing career took off with The Fourth Monkey, which drew widespread attention,
leading to a series of auctions and preems for his publishing rights globally.
Barker's style often involves intricate plots that blend psychological depth with supernatural or crime elements,
appealing to fans of both horror and thriller genres.
In addition, Barker has collaborated with many acclaimed authors, including James Patterson and Christine Dagle.
On November 26, 2024, Barker and Dagle were released Heavy Are The Stones.
Please see the show notes for links to Barker's work.
And now my conversation with JD Barker.
JD, so growing up, recognized as kind of socially withdrawn or even uninterested with the outside world.
And this is in early age, and you always had a book in your hand, it seems.
Start with creativeness as a child, and just take us back to a younger JD.
Sure, so I grew up without a television in the house, so I was reading at a very young age.
I think I started when I was around three years old.
We used to go to the library all the time, a couple of times a week, and I would pick out new books.
By the time I started kindergarten, I had read all the Hardy Boys and all the Nancy Drew mysteries,
and I kind of moved on to Charles Dickens Great Expectations as one of my all-time favorite books.
I think I read that when I was around six or seven, and then I just kind of went from there.
I think in a lot of ways, I wasn't diagnosed as autistic until I was 22.
This was back in the 70s. I was born in 1971.
Back in the 70s, they didn't really look for this sort of thing.
If you were autistic, you were kind of the weird kid. They just sort of shoved off into the corner.
Nobody talked about it. Nobody sought help. Nobody tried to fix it. It was what it was.
I think books, in a lot of ways, they kind of reinforced that for me because I had always been socially awkward from the get-go.
I mean, I still am today, but with a book, I could kind of withdraw into that world.
I think in a lot of ways, it fueled my imagination, but it also caused me to take another one more step back from reality.
I kind of live in my own little bubble.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
So growing up through education, did others around you notice like you were withdrawn socially?
I think they did, but again, this wasn't something that they touched on.
In today's world, my daughter was just diagnosed as autistic. She's seven now, but we knew something was going on at a very early age.
I started seeing signs of it when she was probably like 18 months.
Her teachers started to pick up on it. We got her tested. She's got special things that happen for her in school.
So it's a very different world.
Back in the 70s, they didn't do any of that.
I had a couple of friends that stuck by me, but basically just a few close friends, and that was it.
I didn't really seek out new people. It wasn't something I craved.
Even as I got older, if I was in a social situation, I could be at a party if somebody cracked a joke.
I laughed because everybody else laughed. I was always kind of playing the part of whatever I saw other people doing, not necessarily showing my own reactions.
I didn't understand any of that. I didn't know what autism was. I didn't know that I was autistic.
I had no clue about any of that. I had gone through high school, college. I was working in finance.
I was 22 years old, and my boss pulled me aside. He wanted me to go to anger management classes because I basically did not get along well with others.
But he saw the value of me as an employee, so he wanted to try and correct it.
I was about 20 minutes into that session with that therapist, and she stopped and she said, hey, have you ever been tested for autism?
Apparently, she spent a portion of her day job working with autistic children. She saw the little things that I was doing, like my hand movements, my body motions.
I wasn't making eye contact when I spoke to her. All these little things were flags for her.
When I got that diagnosis, honestly, it changed everything for me. I'm at 53 now, so it was 30-some years ago.
As an autistic person, when you put a problem in front of me, the first thing I wanted to do was solve it.
I went out and got as many books as I could find. I started watching movies, documentaries, and any information I could get.
I fed it into myself and tried to... I don't want to use the word overcome because I don't really see it as a handicap or a disability at this point.
But it allowed me to basically blend a little bit more with the rest of society.
In today's world, I'm a full-time writer. I'm a New York Times bestseller. I wouldn't be able to write the kind of books that I do.
I don't think without autism because it allows me to do a lot of things that I think a normal person may or may not be able to do.
I see the structure in a story, the framework of it. When I read it and when I write it, those things are very evident to me.
I used to write computer code. When you write the first line of computer code, you have to understand how it's going to impact that last line of code and everything that falls in between.
For me, writing a book is no different than that. I don't think I'd be able to do what I do today without it.
Everything is entangled there. It's like a sequence. It's a very structured, we prefer structure.
It's interesting that you mentioned, of course, everything that you just said is standard or textbook evidence of autism now.
I can't help but relate to the social pressures. Just filling in all those pressures to fit in in society and how much that was kind of uncomfortable and just very awkward.
But as we get older, and I don't know if you share the same experience, but as we get older and we can better control our environment, it kind of eases a lot of that pressure.
Growing up through school, did you have any, like you mentioned with your boss, any type of tantrum or outburst?
I don't know that it would be an outburst. I don't tend to get angry. I don't have emotional reactions, not regular people, I guess, do.
But I couldn't understand why people wouldn't do what I said. My job was, I was a chief compliance officer for a brokerage firm.
So my job was basically enforcing all these rules and regulations that exist in the financial industry. Everything was very cut and dry. It was black and white to me.
There's a rule for this that means you need to follow it. There is no gray area. As an autistic person, that makes perfect sense.
But I think everybody else who's not autistic, they tend to live in that gray area. They see the rule, but they kind of, you know, they want to bounce right up against it sometimes.
And that I had trouble with. It was perceived as anger, which is why I ended up in those therapy sessions.
Okay. That's exactly what I was kind of looking for. Because it's like, why can't other people do it? It's not that complicated.
It probably impacts our ability for the social communication, which is criteria A for the newer diagnosed criteria, and kind of reinforces that withdrawal.
So, you know, the core of autism isn't necessarily the social communication problems. It's, it's our rigid thinking patterns a lot.
So that's fantastic news. And I share it and relate with that quite a bit.
But you mentioned also, without the autism, you don't think you would be able to write and create these, this dynamic structure of novels that you've been able to take.
When did you first notice, because I believe you started writing at an early age, did you notice that you had some talents back then?
Well, it impacts me in a couple of different ways. So like, your viewers probably can't see this, but my desk is behind me.
There's nothing sitting on it other than my MacBook. No notes, no papers scattered anywhere. But I'm working on eight different books right now.
And they're all basically up here. They're all up in my head. You know, so you had mentioned patterns.
And like literally everything in my life is based on a pattern. So a book is a pattern to me, you know, the beginning, middle and end, the twist needs to happen here.
Another twist needs to happen here. Like all those things are patterns that I visualize and see and I can, you know, easily adapt them into a book.
I think a lot of that came from the fact that I read at such an early age, you know, I was reading so many books, you know, like that structure is there.
I've never had any formal training as a writer. But you know, anybody that analyzes a book will tell you, you know, my books are written in a three act structure, and they can plug away the take the different pieces and they can get them to fit within that
that structure, which is something that's actually taught if you were to go into an MFA program. It's not something I'm consciously aware of as I'm writing, but because my brain understands the pattern, you know, it's it knows that certain things are supposed to happen at certain times,
and it ends up fitting that particular structure. And that structure is just been embedded in my head, you know, just from all the years of writing. In my earlier years, I used to do a lot of work as a ghostwriter and a book doctor.
So I would I would write for other people. You know, one of the things my wife actually calls it a superpower that I'm able to do is I can read text that somebody else wrote, and then I can continue it and write in their voice.
You know, so I can imitate their, you know, their vocabulary, their cadence, their writing style to the point where it's more or less seamless.
And that that got me a lot of work back in the day, you know, like, yeah, I wrote that prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker's family and I got to use Bram Stoker's original notes and journals and things when I put that together.
You know, he and there's there's sections of the book that were written 100% by Bram we lifted those from his journals, but the, you know, the rest of it I had to write myself but at his voice.
I can go back through that book and I can't even tell which parts he wrote versus what I wrote.
You know, it's simply because of that and I know it's it's you know it that that it comes from the autistic side of me.
You know, because in personal life, you know, I tend to mimic other things, you know, like I mentioned, you know, party situation when other people laugh, I laugh.
You know, I basically, I don't want to say I'm a blank shell because that doesn't quite fit, but I mimic what I see in others.
So as a writer, I was able to mimic the written word the vocabulary that you know that side of it.
Wow.
So I try to explain to people maybe this kind of fits you because what you were saying about you can just fill in the gaps without knowing just based off of a extracting a little bit of information about something or somebody.
And something that I've recognized that I can do is I kind of say that I supplement relationships by doing this.
Like I don't need that socialness now because I get that interaction about others inside of my own head just piecing together and even seeing them live out their life in like other environments.
It's very bizarre, but it's funny that you should say that because you know when I write a book, you know, those characters are very different.
You know, those characters are very real to me, you know, that they are real people and I'm basically writing down what I see in my head happening to them.
So it's almost like I'm experiencing what they're experiencing.
So yeah, I don't necessarily have to leave my office.
Like I'm perfectly content with with the stories going on in my head and the people that that you know live there and end up on the page.
Yeah.
And so one of the things that I wish that people, the lay public and even professionals understand that this is happening and not try to change.
Don't don't try to change us or force us into these other social norms because it's quite harmful, but instead utilize what we have.
And like you even called it a superpower. And that's really what I want to highlight with like doing the podcast and really rolling out information is we have this unique set of skills.
So let's society understand these and accept them and utilize them instead of just forcing us into different environments that we are quite opposite of the superpower.
And that creates so much harm whenever that happens.
Yeah, I speak to a lot of parents these days of autistic children, you know, primarily because I'm successful at this point.
I do well financially.
I'm basically doing something that I love to, you know, as a living.
But you know, I'll talk to a mother and father who have a two year old child who is literally beating its head against the wall to the point where it bleeds and you're trying to understand, you know, not only how do we deal with this.
But how are we going to deal with the next 16, 18 years of this?
Like how do we get our child, you know, to be successful in life.
So one of the reasons why I tend to talk about this quite a bit is because I think when parents see somebody like me, they realize that there is a light at the end of that tunnel.
And in a lot of ways that, you know, you have to discover, you know, when you're when you're dealing with somebody autistic, what those superpowers are, you know, what is it that their kid likes and focus on that because that's going to drive that that's going to be a big deal.
And that's that that skill set within that child.
And also it helps them come out of their shell a little bit because now they're interacting with somebody about something that they actually enjoy, rather than, you know, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, which is, you know, typically what used to happen in the past.
Yeah, some of the language with the criteria is just.
Autistics can over talk even about their interest and not know when even to stop.
And with obviously the lack of interest with the other things. But, you know, there's kind of this given take there that over talking and just like professing as burgers called the little children that he studied little professors.
So another piece of language that I'm really irritated with, with the criteria structure or the criteria symptoms is at the core of it is, it says restricted fixated interest that are abnormal in intensity or focus.
It's like, if interest with that brings such intensity and focus that shouldn't be considered abnormal that should be considered. Okay, what is it that they are interested in. Autistics are interested in and cultivate them into doing that.
So there's a lot of barriers, but you talking about this is what is needed, I think, for that big change in the autistic world in society.
So you, you said that you're doing eight books right now and they're all up here and I was thinking about temple Brandon. She has a book, the autistic brain or yeah, she she compares the autistic thinking style with the same way the AI detects melanoma melanoma the AI,
they just feed it thousands of picture just endless amounts of images, and then the AI will discriminate the subject that is trying to compare to you to say melanoma or not melanoma.
And she says that that's the way the autistic brain is working we're just creating all of this catalog. She calls it a catalog of abstraction in the thinking in pictures, which is precisely what you described as your writing style.
Yeah, I mean when I'm writing a book, the first thing I do is I create the characters I have to create people, and then they need to be real to me to the point where, you know, like I can't distinguish them from somebody in my real life like I need to know everything about them.
To give you an example I've got a serial killer series set in Chicago about a detective named Sam Porter.
I wrote three books in that series I've got other ones that I'm working on now. I could take Sam Porter the lead detective and I could drop him at the entrance to Disney World, and I could tell you what right he's going to go on first I could tell you what he's going to eat for lunch.
None of these things will ever make it in a book, but you know I know that about him because I know him.
And once I know my characters at that level I can basically take them and I can drop them into whatever scenario the actual book is about. And, you know, and a lot of times I don't actually plot out.
You know, I'll follow their lead I'll let them try to dictate where that story is going to go. I do outline a lot of my books at this point just to help keep some type of structure going on.
But you know a lot of times the character will want to do something very different from what I expected them to do and I've learned to trust the character, you know, follow them down that journey and document what what I see them them doing.
And that's essentially what I'm doing when I'm writing a book.
Yeah.
There's a movie, an animated movie. That's maybe 10 years old. It's called B movie.
Jerry Sainto and his little buddy, buddy B their their adolescent bees are about to graduate high school and one of the opening scenes is the camera kind of zooms out and suddenly there's tens of thousands maybe 100,000 bees just flying high rates of speed and great
synchrony very efficient. And in a lot of ways, I think that's what is happening with us in certain areas of the brain, we're just highly efficient with all of this.
These, this electricity this blasting through creating this creativity and our imagination and that's why it's not necessarily that we are abnormal in the social environment.
But that's why we are always inside here.
Canner called it innate disorder at first.
Why would we go out into the social world where it's very unpredictable one, but two, what's going on within our brain here in our imagination is very interesting.
So why would I not want to be there?
Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, you know, one of the reasons why I like what I do is I've kind of found the perfect balance of both of those things.
You know, I spend the bulk of my day, you know, in a room by myself basically working out, you know, what is happening up there and getting it down on paper.
So I satisfy that side of it.
But I'm also out there in the public.
You know, I just went on a book tour in Istanbul and Budapest and, you know, a couple days of just intensive interviews and book signings and meeting with fans and things like that.
And I think the more I force myself to do that, I realize that I should be doing it and I enjoy it a little bit more.
But it's a weird dynamic because it's, you know, again, it's a social situation, you know, so I have to put on more or less a performance.
I become the person that they want to see.
And I have to keep that up, you know, for the course of whatever that activity is.
So, you know, in like a case like that where I'm in a foreign country for a couple of days, you know, I'm literally dialed up to 11 doing that, you know, basically putting on that persona.
For the entire time that I'm there.
When it's over, when I'm back on the airplane and I'm flying back to the U.S., you know, I crash, you know, it's like my batteries are depleted and like I need some quiet time and alone time to kind of get myself centered again.
But what I'm finding is the more that I do that, the more often I get out there and do that and force myself to do it, even when I don't want to, the easier it becomes and the more balanced my life seems to be.
Because I could just as easily lock myself right here in this room and do nothing else.
And I know somebody who's not autistic wouldn't understand that.
But I would be perfectly comfortable and capable of doing that.
And it's a slippery slope, you know, so I think getting out there in public for me, you know, kind of forces me to walk that tightrope rather than to fall down into that trap.
Yeah. Having having that social commitment and that environment with something that you're just passionate about really helps.
And it also goes along to the lines of building that catalog up, because of autistics, they don't get to build that catalog up within that social environment.
So like, even the social skills are not there.
But as we do it, especially in an environment that we love, it does get easier for for those older.
And as they, as they live with autism a little bit more, that does necessarily work.
And you also described what people could understand is that autistic burnout, which is very much a real thing.
So it's very interesting that you've learned to do this.
If it wasn't about like book signings and promoting yourself.
Something else I was going to mention is you said it's like a performance and children and even younger adults that get into like theater or acting have a better sense of learning how to socialize.
Because they're, they're just kind of having this persona of somebody else or something else.
And it's just easier to socialize like that. And I think, and large part is because there's some structure and predictiveness behind it.
So I really want to ask you about your, like you're going into a writing bout like, let's say, you, you dedicate X number of hours.
Going into this writing bout.
What does that look like to you?
Does it change from day to day or from bout to bout?
Or is there a ramping up of, okay, I really need to get focused here or I need to understand which of the eight books that I'm going to work on.
Could you, could you just take us through that?
Like your introduction, you're going into it.
And then what that looks like.
Sure. So back when I was in the corporate world, you know, I used to, I would still write, but I would have to squeeze it in whenever I could find a couple of minutes.
So, you know, at lunchtime I'd run onto my car. Sometimes I had to library for 30 minutes or whatever.
The fact that it wasn't, you know, part of my rigid schedule was problematic.
Yeah, because, you know, everything in my life is a pattern.
My daily schedule is a pattern.
So, you know, that portion was chaotic, you know, the fact that sometimes I got to do it at this time, other times it was at this time, like that was difficult for me.
But I used the fact that it was difficult to drive me to get to the point where I could do it full time, knowing that if I became a full time author, then I could dictate my schedule and I could make that, you know, that pattern, make it what I want.
You know, which is where I'm at today.
I'm going to be celebrating my 10 year anniversary as a full time author next month in November.
So it's flown by, but you know, in today's world my schedule is very structured, which is what somebody like me really needs.
You know, I get up at seven in the morning. I head straight to my office. I don't turn the internet on until I get my daily writing done.
So I write for about three hours, usually from 730 to, you know, 10, 1030 or so.
And I knock out about 2 to 3,000 words per day.
I split that up between the different projects.
And I'm able to compartmentalize, like you said, so I can sit down and I can say, okay, now I'm working on this book.
And, you know, 30 minutes later, I can put that book aside and I can work on this one and forget about the other one, which is just, you know, something I've learned over time.
At about 1130 or so, I turn on the internet.
All these emails are coming in, which is the business side of what I do.
I'm in 150 different countries, 20 some different languages.
You know, so I've got books coming out all over the world at different times. So I have to do a lot of interviews on that and a lot of press.
So at the second half of the day is basically when I do that.
I've got an alarm that goes off at 2.45 in the afternoon. That is quitting time for me.
You know, no matter what, I structure everything to happen business wise before that.
Then I go out for, I go for a run. I live on an island in New England.
I just do a lap around the island. It's about four and a half miles or so.
And I use that time to think about what I'm going to write the next day, you know, kind of get my head straight, you know, just again, spend some alone time.
And then when I get home, I spend the rest of the day with my wife and my daughter and our family and, you know, try to be, you know, a good father or husband.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Do you ever have any troubles like first starting the writing of just getting started or being able to know where you're going to send your spotlight of attention.
Whenever your department mentalizing, like which book are you going to work on first? Is there a type of conflict?
No, I've never had any trouble with that. I've learned a lot of little tips and tricks over the years, particularly when I was in the corporate world.
So to get myself in the right headspace, I always listen to a thunderstorm soundtrack.
So it's basically white noise, just the sound of rain and thunder.
I put on the headphones and listen to that every single time I'm writing and I always have.
And what I find is that as soon as I put those headphones on and I hear that my brain immediately snaps into writer mode, like it knows that it's time to do that.
I never get one of the problems that I've seen working with other authors.
A lot of authors will sit down and they will write until they basically have nothing else in them.
They'll, you know, three, four, five thousand words, but they squeeze all the water out of that stone and they literally have nothing left and they're exhausted at the end of the day.
The next day they sit down to continue and, you know, they'll stare at a blank screen for an hour or two hours because they don't know what they're doing next.
So in my world, you know, I end sometimes mid-sentence. I always know what's coming next.
I never stop at a point where I don't know what's coming next.
If I feel like I'm in that place, I'll keep going and get to, you know, make sure I understand what's going to happen next in that story.
And then I find as I'm doing these other things, you know, the business side of stuff when I'm out on that run, when I'm eating dinner or taking a shower or whatever,
my brain is working on that story or the multiple stories and it's figuring out, you know, like what comes next.
And it's almost like driving in the fog, you know, like I can see just a little further, you know, ahead of where I am.
And as long as I stay that, you know, at that point, I can see a little further than where I really am in the writing process.
I'm able to continue to go and go and go.
But I think the key for me is always just stopping, you know, in the middle of something, you know, literally mid-sentence,
because, you know, I know how that sentence is going to finish up. I know what paragraph is going to come next and, you know, my brain just keeps going and going.
Is that something you learned or is that something you always enforced?
It's just something I picked up on over time. You know, I've been doing this for a very long time and I just sort of noticed that that worked.
You know, early on I used to do what I had mentioned before. I would just, you know, have these marathon writing sessions, six or eight hours or something and just keep going.
But, you know, I was completely burnt out at the end of it. And, you know, if you're doing this as a career, that's not sustainable.
Like, you know, you need to enjoy it.
You know, so with the current process, what I'm doing now, you know, if I get up in the middle of the story, in the middle of the sentence,
you know, I want to get back, you know, and I want to keep going.
And the autistic side of me kind of drives me because, you know, that is, you're writing is part of my daily process.
And if I don't do it, it's almost like there's this voice in the back of my head that just starts to scream and it gets louder and louder and louder.
And it doesn't shut up until I actually get the words down on paper.
You know, exercising is the same thing for me. If I try to skip exercising on any given day, like, it's very difficult for me to do.
I need to exercise in order to shut up that particular voice.
You know, take off that box.
Yeah, it really helps the exercising.
It's bizarre how it works.
But what you were describing, like the scientists or scientifically, we have those releases of all these neuro transmitters and neuro modulators like dopamine and epinephrine, acetylcholine,
channeling all of our attention and drive into the work.
But if you overdo it, the drop, it will just drop so far below our baseline or resting state.
And then there's some recovery time.
So you structured a way that you can really have a release and sustain it and manage it.
So you don't have that crash.
And a lot of people autistic or not, that that crash is because of that overwork and all of those neurotransmitters and such just firing for too long.
The great thing is, though, I guess they're infinite and renewable.
So we can just renew them.
But this allows you to do it as you want and at the efficiency as you want.
So that's, that's amazing that you share that.
Well, I think anybody, like if you really watch for it, you see the pattern that you just described, you know, it's almost like being on a roller coaster and you're going up that hill and you're going up the hill and then you start coming back down again.
You know, you know when you're going to go down that hill.
So you need to, you've got to make a conscious decision to, you know, pull up on the stick and go go in a straight line.
So basically stop before you before you crash, when you feel like you're getting to the point where you're going to crash 20 minutes later, you know, stop now.
And, you know, once you build that, at least for me, once I got that structure, you know, it became easy.
Yeah, it's visually, it's like a seesaw.
The more you're, you're the swing from the ends to end, instead of just balancing.
Yeah, that's exactly like a seesaw.
Those are anti correlated.
I couldn't help but notice that you said, when you worked in the corporate world, if, if you're not a seesaw, you're not going to be a seesaw.
If, if I was wondering if you didn't find time to like what you mentioned, sneak in a little bit of your interest in writing, if you didn't find that time, how would that, how would, how would you react to that?
It's the same thing.
You know, like it, I have to do it, you know, it's not a matter of, you know, finding the time like if, if the day creeps on and I haven't done it yet, then it just nags at me and gets, you know, to the point where it just starts to take over, you know, like I need to do it in order to get it off my, my
plate.
You know, I see the same thing in my daughter, you know, like if we put a puzzle in front of her, you know, just like a literal puzzle. And if I were to, you know, stop her from completing that puzzle when there was like one or two pieces left, you know, she would blow up like she needs to finish that
puzzle. And, you know, to me, this is no different. It's, you know, it's a task. I have to complete it before I can move on to whatever the next next task is.
You know, so I guess that again is one of those superpowers, you know, the autism actually drives me to, to write every day to exercise every day to do all these things.
They could just as easily drive you to do negative stuff, you know, so you have to, I think have to focus on the positives and make those become, you know, your, your goals.
Yeah, you're closing that loop, that loop that you start off to do this writing bout or your exercise about, you're closing it with something positive, instead of the negative. And that keeps the loop structure properly.
Right.
Even with your mental state.
So with the, the waking up and getting right into the writing bout without any other pleasures or like internet even you'd mentioned, is that would you consider that like a contingency, like you're not going to allow yourself that reward or that whatever it might be until you
finish the writing.
It's not that I see it as a reward, it's more of a distraction. You know, there's there's so many other things like it as an author like there's a lot of other stuff going on, like I've got publishers all over the world.
I've got film and TV things that are happening.
You know, I've got multiple agents, you know, when we're done here, my next phone call is with one of my agents.
You know, so the emails and stuff that come in from all these, these people, a lot of times they're looking for something from me, which again is a task that's being put in front of me.
So if I'm aware of that task, then it's always right here chatting me up while I'm trying to get the words done.
So for me, it's easier to just start the day with a clean slate, you know, get the words done while there are no distractions, there's nothing else going on.
And then once I have that done, because the words are the driver in my career in my life, like I have to make the, have to make words in order to get the books and keep it everything going.
So without that, I have nothing.
Like that is my focus, everything else is kind of noise, and I just, I don't deal with the noise until I accomplish the goal that has to happen.
Yeah, okay.
So something that I've noticed about myself is if my to-do list gets too, too large, I start to really get or maybe even panic or kind of, you know, it's unsettling, it's a conflict.
And I have to knock those out because I don't like a lot of things on my to-do list, even though there might be minor.
Does that say anything?
Yeah, you're going to find if you talk to anybody that's autistic, they're an inbox zero kind of person, you know, like their email is empty, you know, at the end of the day.
Yeah, yeah.
I try to keep it empty.
Yeah, it's the same thing with tasks.
I mean, in my world, like I just, I try to look at the smaller pieces, you know, like if you, you know, like, if I look at a book, you know, it's 500 pages.
If I tell myself I need to write one of those, you know, starting tomorrow, that's kind of a daunting thing.
But if I tell myself I need to write 2,000 words, you know, which is a couple of chapters tomorrow, you know, that's not quite as difficult.
You know, if I tell myself I need to write a paragraph for 200 words, it makes it easier.
So I tend to approach, you know, the bigger problems by looking at the small little pieces that make them up and just tackle those things one at a time.
And, you know, that could be a to-do list or it could be anything.
You know, with all the different books I have going on, you know, I've got Excel spreadsheets that track everything.
Everything is very organized.
You know, for me, being structured and organized is key.
You know, I can manage a million different things as long as I've got it organized in some way or another.
And if somebody else throws something new into my mix, you know, I have to find some way to get that to work with everything else.
If I don't, then that chaos of not having it organized would drive me crazy.
Yeah, it's like that B movie example that I use just people sometimes.
If there's a little subset of B's off in that big operation, then the whole thing kind of can crumble or get off track.
Something that I've just noticed that you don't necessarily look at the end result.
You're not focused on the reward of that end result.
You focus on the process to get to that end result.
Is that accurate?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's easier for me to do that.
You know, and it's funny because when I am working on a book, you know, eventually I write that last sentence and like it almost surprises me.
You know, that I just wrote the final word in that particular title like that that project is done because, you know, it sort of sneaks up on you.
You know, you started with chapter one, chapter 20, chapter 40, chapter 50, and then all of a sudden you're finished.
If you approach things in those small pieces.
I think if I looked at it as a whole, it would become something a little bit more daunting.
Yeah, a lot of motivation science is describing what you just said.
You attach to reward with those small, intricate steps like little micro awards.
You feel, yeah, I mean, for me, you know, the goal is two to three thousand words a day.
So, you know, I've got a little counter that's on the program that I used to write and when it ticks over that 2000 mark, I know that I'm, you know, I've accomplished what I need to accomplish on that particular task for the day.
So to me, that's that's the reward knowing that I got it done.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's fantastic.
And autistic or not, if people could understand that, it could give them a lot of satisfaction and productivity.
It can build their productivity.
Like the military is big on that.
If you've ever heard like, former military, what I'm thinking about specifically is the Navy Sills, they go through buds and that hell week they call it.
They just focus on getting to the next meal of the day, not not no sleep for the whole week.
They don't, you know, they're not thinking about accomplishing that.
Just what do they need to get by?
And that's a very powerful if you can have that mindset.
Yeah.
What was it like getting an endorsement from Stephen King before your first book for second was even in the least?
That was pretty wild.
So I didn't actually endorse the book. This this kind of came about in a weird way.
So I wrote a book called Forsaken in the story.
I had to explain where the wife buys a journal.
And just to get the book done, I wrote that she walked into needful things, you know, Stephen King store and bought it there and fully expected to have to change that because you can't just do that sort of thing without, you know, a bunch of lawyers jumping down your throat.
But my wife read it and, you know, she said, Well, you know, before you do that, before you change it, let's see if we can get his permission to use it.
So in a round, it took a little bit.
But through a friend of mine, I was able to get in contact with them.
I sent them a copy of the manuscript and he replied back and gave me his blessing to go ahead and use that that that reference in there.
So yeah, that was that was huge.
The funny thing is when we first tried to get that endorsement from him, we were in Florida.
He's got a house in Florida.
That's about 10 minutes from my mother's house.
So we literally printed up the book, got in the car and figured we'd head over to Stephen King's house and, you know, I figured I'd catch him outside.
I'd give him the manuscript.
We talk a little bit, you know, and get it done.
Turns out that didn't happen.
So like he lives on a little island right off the coast called Casey Key.
You go over a tiny little bridge.
If you make a left, you kind of go to the entire, you know, like the public portion of this island, you know, beaches, the restaurants, bars and stuff like that.
If you make a right, you basically head to the half of the island that Stephen King owns and there's immediately a private drive sign.
There was a fence, a gate, you know, like all these things.
And we got maybe a half mile down this road and, you know, I just realized this was a bad idea.
And we turned around and and went back to a restaurant and I reached out to a friend of mine who gave me his email address.
But with the book, like the book came out and it did okay initially, but the sales weren't through the roof.
But Publishers Weekly got a hold of the fact that I had tried to get the Stephen King's house in order to get this blessing and they ended up writing a story about that.
You know, basically my failed attempt to get the Stephen King's house.
And when that story came out, that's what really lit the fuse because librarians and booksellers all read that and then they checked out the book and started ordering and then, you know, from there the sales went crazy.
That's great.
That's a great story to me.
That's very, very memorable.
How about the connection to James Patterson?
With Patterson, I, my second book was called The Fourth Monkey.
It's about a serial killer in Chicago.
We talked about it a little bit at the beginning.
When you write a book like that, you know, when the publishers are getting ready to publish it, they send out copies to the various authors hoping to get that one sentence, you know, the blurb or the endorsement on the back of the book.
So Patterson is was on my list and he's probably on everybody's list.
I never expected to hear from the guy, but he got the book.
He liked the book and then he reached out and he actually called me to give me his thoughts on it, which really surprised me.
And then we ended up getting together for lunch down in Florida and we talked a little bit and, you know, we came up with an idea to write a book together.
And at this point, we're, I think, five books in that we've written together with more, more coming down the pipe.
But he's been a huge influence on me.
He's a fascinating guy, extremely smart.
You know, he started in advertising, if you're familiar with Toys R Us, if you remember the Toys R Us theme song, like he actually wrote that back in the day.
So he was working in advertising when his book started to take off.
But, you know, even in today's world, he's, you know, he's one of the biggest sellers in the world.
You know, he's still very heavily involved in marketing and thinking of ideas that are just outside the box.
And those are the kind of conversations I love to have with them, you know, just, you know, how do we sell this particular book, you know, in a way that nobody else has tried yet.
You know, we've had a lot of fun just writing and working together.
Yeah.
That self-promotion is something that I struggle with.
Sounds like he's got it figured out though.
He's got it dialed in for sure.
Yeah.
Very successful.
Okay.
So how about earlier you mentioned Brom Stoker.
How was that experience?
That was pretty wild, too.
I always tell people I've captured lightning in a bottle one too many times and they probably don't want to stand next to me outside because Karma's going to try to even this out.
But for sake in my first book, the one that Stephen King, you know, gave that the blessing on, it was up for the my the best debut novel of the year by the Horror Writers Association.
And I was at the conference in order to accept that award and I ran it to Dacre Stoker, who is Bram's great-grandnephew.
And we ended up talking for a little bit.
And, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but it was more or less an audition.
Like he knew that I had co-authored books with other people that I'd worked as a ghostwriter and a book doctor before.
And at some point he pulled me aside and said that his family had been trying to find somebody to write a prequel to Dracula using Bram's original notes for a while.
And they were, you know, wanted to know if I'd be interested in doing that.
There was no way I was going to say no to that.
You know, one of our first meetings, we met Dacre Stoker at a cabin that he had up in the Carolinas and he disappeared like on the second day and came back like, you know, 10 minutes later with his big old box and set it down on the kitchen table.
And it was literally everything that Bram had on his desk when he wrote the original Dracula.
And there were notes that were written out in laundry receipts.
Part of the book was written in a day timer, which surprised me, but like Bram was a theater manager.
You know, so a day timer was something he would have access to.
But it makes sense from a plotting standpoint because, you know, at 2 p.m., you know, Mina does this, at 3 p.m., she does this, you know, like that's kind of how he laid it out.
So yeah, that was a crazy, wild experience for sure.
Dang, were there any pressure or did you have any stress writing that prequel or did it just...
I don't really get pressured or stressed, you know, but I'm sure it was there.
You know, like we had a film deal almost immediately.
You know, a lot of people, as soon as they heard this book was happening, they wanted it.
You know, I've kind of gotten accustomed to that.
I'm working on one right now.
I don't know if you remember a movie from the 90s called Flatliners.
But I'm writing a book right now to reboot the franchise.
And when that broke in the press, you know, like it was insane.
We had story after story after story, you know, people talking about it, you know, every studio lined up and they wanted it.
And, you know, I'm literally writing it right now, so it's not even done yet.
So if I let all that noise get in my head and turn into pressure, then I wouldn't get anything done.
So I've just learned to block it out.
Yeah, that's good.
That's good.
Would you mind sharing a little bit of, you said that you mentioned you noticed your daughter was autistic around 18 months.
Could you share some of those symptoms that you recognize to help people out with recognizing some of these symptoms?
I think one of the earliest ones was task related.
You know, so if she was doing something and she got interrupted, you know, I saw her reaction to that.
And I recognized that reaction as something that I would do.
She was allowed to finish whatever she wanted to finish.
You know, she reacted differently.
But the thing was, like, I didn't see a lot of the things that I had looked for.
You know, like she has no trouble making eye contact with other people in a conversation.
You know, she has no trouble being touched by other people.
Like, for me, that's a real problem.
You know, if somebody touches me and I'm not ready for it, you know, like it really freaks me out.
You know, but she had no issue with that.
So I kept telling myself that I was seeing something where there really wasn't anything.
But, you know, as she got older, when she started speaking, she started doing something that we've since been told is called cluttering.
So like, if you ask me a question, you know, like three to five different answers to that question will pop up in my head all at the same time.
I've learned over time to grab one of those answers and then actually verbalize it.
But if I'm excited or back when I was younger, what would end up happening is those three to five answers would all pop in my head at the same time.
And my brain would grab the words from all of those answers.
And then it would come out of my mouth, basically this combination of three different responses.
So it was kind of incoherent.
And I caught her doing that quite a bit and she still does it today.
So that was probably one of the first real signs of it.
So yeah, we've noticed little things here and there.
And then we eventually got her tested and got an actual diagnosis on it.
But, you know, again, it's allowed us to focus on, you know, searching for her superpowers because she has, you know, certain things that are difficult for her.
They're completely different than they were for me.
And she's got things that she's very good at, you know, so we've had to focus on that.
And through the diagnosis of that testing process, we were able to hone in on what those things were.
You know, at the time she was six, you know, so we could do it at a much earlier age than it ever happened with me.
So I personally think it's going to be almost like a non-event in her life because we've caught it so early and we've been able to adjust on the fly for it.
Yeah, yeah, earlier the better is what the data.
The data are impressive on that.
That cluttering is something that I've never heard.
But as you mentioned, I was like all through school, like if it was a, let's say an essay question, I would just, like you said, I would pop up three to five different scenarios there and just grab a couple of them.
And then I remember getting feedback like, well, you said multiple different things here.
And I was like, that's probably what it was.
And even like multiple choice.
You know, there's little slight nuances or changes within several and whenever I'm doing like a multiple choice, it's like, what could be this one or this one and this one?
You know, because I need more context.
But that's all very interesting.
Huh.
What is something recently that you're most excited about?
I think most I've got a couple of things going on in the business side. So I recently signed a deal with Simon and Schuster.
They allowed me to create my own publishing imprint.
So I basically active as my own publisher, but with Simon and Schuster as my print sales and distribution arm behind me, which is solves a lot of problems because I've indie published books and I've also had books published by the traditional publishers.
I've always liked like the control that I had as an indie publisher and be able to hold all those those puppet strings and deal with it on my own.
But you know, there's a lot of places that a traditional publisher can get your book that you can't as an indie, you know, like it airport bookstores, you know, the grocery store, things like that.
So through this new relationship, I can kind of accomplish the best of both worlds.
I still have total control over everything, but you know, with Simon and Schuster behind me as the backbone.
So that's been huge. And I've also started working with co authors. I've started bringing in a lot of co authors to help me write titles.
You know, my next one is called heavier the stones. I wrote it with a girl named Christine Dagle, who's a neuropsychologist.
So she was able to bring that whole knowledge and those skills to the writing table and basically allowed me to create a book that I would be able to write on my own.
So I'm trying to do more and more of that.
Well, that's very fascinating. Christine Dagle, a neuropsychologist. Does she have specialized in autism or kind of that's part of her job is, you know, helping with the diagnosis of that with with kids.
She's up in Canada. I'm in New England. So we're, you know, different parts of the world. But yeah.
Oh, that's very interesting. And then the author. Okay. Yeah. Those eight books that you're currently writing.
Go ahead and tell us a little bit about some of them or all of them and what's coming out. You said the one with Christine Dagle later this year.
Go ahead and tell us what to look forward to.
Yeah. So that one's coming out in November. It's called heavier the stones. The next one after that is called we don't talk about Emma, which comes out in February.
Then in March, I've got one coming out with James Patterson called the writer.
The my next one after that is called something I keep upstairs. It's about a haunted house.
The tagline for the book is for a haunted house to be born somebody has to die.
That one comes out in May.
Wow. That's crazy. This, this, this amazing work. I'm glad that you can dial that in and just expand on that creative imagination and just channel that into such productivity.
Is there anything else you want to share before, before we end.
It was very nice to meet you JD and I love the interaction and how similar our experiences are.
To me, you know, because I don't really socialize that much and interact. It's kind of hard for me to find that and just instantly as we started the conversation, it's like, oh my gosh, yes.
You're doing a great job with the podcast. I mean, this kind of thing gets that information out there. Somebody will discover it. That's going to open some doors for them. So all good.
Yeah, that's exactly what my goal is. And having success stories like you and recognizing those superpowers is perfect, perfect for the podcast.
All right. Well, pleasure meeting you.
Yeah, you too. And good luck with everything.
All right. Take care.
Today's episode with JD Barker really is it's differently for me than other all other episodes. Having JD come on and explain his life really helps me accelerate the way that I can explain some of the things that I go through some of my superpowers and certainly super deficits.
Having JD come on and just explain his structure and his processes really will drive society's view of how we should be treating autism and accepting and channeling in the autistic phenotype.
The way that he expresses his processes and really attaches things with structure and order and the way that he can visualize things and that creative imagination and keeping up with all of that is those writings and work that he has really should allow us to understand the superpowers with the
aspergers and lower level autism. This was such a fascinating conversation for me.
If you're listening to the podcast or listening to the episode, please feel free to leave a review or rating.
I'm very much happy to be passing reviews, ratings and downloads are huge. And I very much appreciate your feedback. You can contact me on X at RPS 47586 for some discussions about autism.
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Thank you for listening to From the Spectrum podcast.