Dark City

32. HAUNTED: The Island that Terrifies J.D. Barker - and Inspired His Novel

• Dark City Productions • Season 1 • Episode 32

Share episode

Wood Island, Maine | Wood Island is so haunted, even bestselling horror writer J.D. Barker won’t stay the night - and he’s here to share how its chilling history inspired his upcoming book, Something I Keep Upstairs.  Just as the Stanley Hotel inspired Stephen King’s The Shining (and J.D. shares a terrifying story from his own stay there!), Wood Island’s dark past—plagued by disease, starvation, vanished bodies, and eerie paranormal activity—laid the foundation for his latest novel.  Most chilling is J.D.'s revelation that while writing the novel, he repeatedly created fictional scenes only to later discover he had accurately described actual historical events—information he had no prior knowledge of.

You can preorder a signed copy of Something I Keep Upstairs at dbarker.com. If you are not entirely terrified of Wood Island by the end of this episode, you can enter the contest to stay overnight at https://woobox.com/vcevs2.  If you win, you have to write to us at info@darkcitypodcast.com and share all of the details!

Follow us for episode photos and more at:
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/darkcitypod 
🪡 Threads: threads.net/@darkcitypod 
👤 Facebook: facebook.com/darkcitypod
🦋 Bluesky: darkcitypodcast.bsky.social
🎥 TikTok: tiktok.com/@darkcitypod 
🌎 Website: www.darkcitypodcast.com
✉️ Email:  info@darkcitypodcast.com 

Have ideas or suggestion? We would love to hear from you! Send us a text via this link.

👏 Special thanks to our talented partners:
Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)


Speaker 1:

Hi friends, this is Leah and this is April. Today it's easier than ever to make and publish a podcast, but that also means it's never been harder to stand out, especially as an indie podcast. We absolutely love creating Dark City episodes for you, so to make sure the show is a success, we need your help.

Speaker 2:

There are three easy ways to do it. Number one rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1:

Number two click that share button and send a link to friends and family. You think might also like the show.

Speaker 2:

And number three, follow us on social media at Dark City Pod. That's Dark City Pod on Instagram, facebook Threads and TikTok.

Speaker 1:

So remember one rate and review. Two, share with family and friends. And three, follow us on social media. Thank you so much, and we hope. By JD Barker, the international bestselling author of suspense thrillers that blend horror, crime, mystery, science fiction and the supernatural. If his name sounds familiar, it should. His work has been compared to Stephen King's and he's collaborated with literary giants such as James Patterson and with Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, on the novel Dracul. Before we dive into his upcoming book, something I Keep Upstairs and the real-life location behind it, jd, can you introduce yourself to our audience and share a little bit about your journey as a writer?

Speaker 3:

Sure, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So I've been at this for a very long time. I basically did what everybody else expected of me. I was told that I love to write, even as a kid. But my parents always encouraged the writing aspect but added a caveat of you can't make a living as an author, you have to get a real job. So I did exactly what I was told to do. I finished up high school, I went off to college, got multiple degrees, ended up working in the finance world and I would come home at night and I would write, you know, in order to keep my head on straight. And I was working on a lot of side projects. I was basically working as a ghostwriter and a book doctor. I wrote a lot of memoirs for other people, but I did that for 23 years and over that time frame I had six different books that hit the New York Times list, all with other people's names on the cover, which gets very old after a while. So that sixth one hit up.

Speaker 3:

My wife pulled me aside. She said listen, I know you want to become a full-time author, let's find a way to make this happen. And we were kind of trapped at that point because I had been working in the corporate world for a while. I had a strong salary, we had a big house, we had cars, we had a boat. So our lifestyle was expensive. We couldn't just walk away from that. So she came up with this crazy plan. We sold everything that we owned. We bought a tiny little duplex in Pittsburgh, rented out one side to some tenants and moved into the other side, basically got our monthly expenses down to nothing. We sat down at the kitchen table one day and she showed me the bank statement and said looks like you have about 18 months to make it as an author Go. And that's when I sat down and wrote my first book. That was called Forsaken, and that was just a little over 10 years ago.

Speaker 1:

That's so interesting how you. You know like you had that short runway and it worked out really well. How do you decide to write about what you write before we dive into your upcoming book?

Speaker 3:

Well, that's changed over time. I mean, initially, like with that first book, you literally have nobody telling you what to do. So I just sat down and wrote the story that I wanted to tell. My second one was about a serial killer in Chicago called the Fourth Monkey. Very much, you know, hardcore thriller and those took off, you know, from a sales standpoint. So that was basically what my publishers wanted to see over and over again.

Speaker 3:

But I love horror and so I refuse to kind of get pigeonholed. So I try to go back and forth. I'll write a thriller novel, I write a horror novel and I go back and I call Hollywood hell, they're in the works for TV shows, for movies, that kind of thing. And I touch base with my film agent Whenever I'm ready to start a new book. You know he tells me what the studios are looking for and whenever he leaves a meeting you know with like Sony, they'll tell him. You know, like this is what we want. So he communicates that to me. So I'm basically writing to the film market. You know the studios are looking for in hopes of getting the option.

Speaker 1:

Now for your upcoming book, something I Keep Upstairs, which is set to be released in I believe it's May of this year, so it's inspired by a real house that you visited. How did you stumble upon this place and what was it like being there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So this one came together totally different from what I just said. So my wife and I, when the books took off, we were living in Pittsburgh. We realized we don't have to live in Pittsburgh, so we started looking at different places around the country. We were in a town called Portsmouth just, and we stopped for lunch. We were on the way to Boston to visit one of my publishers and while we were there, one of the waitresses told us listen, before you leave, you need to check out this little island called Newcastle. It's about a mile away from here. So we, you know, left the restaurant, we hopped in the car and we went over the bridge to Newcastle and we literally fell in love with this, this little island. It's honestly like stepping back in time. You know we've got a post office, but like they don't deliver mail, you have to walk to the post office to get your mail. I know a big house, but was literally falling apart. There were raccoons living inside and we started a renovation right before COVID, which I would not advise on anybody. It's tough to find contractors in the middle of a pandemic, but that's basically how we ended up here in Newcastle.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I write full time, so I basically knock that out. First thing in the morning, by three o'clock, my quitting bell rings and I go for a lap around the island. I like to run and at one point I run across the beach. And when I'm standing out on the beach, if I look out over the water, about a quarter mile out is Wood Island. It's this tiny little island, about an acre or so. There's one house on it. It's a white house with a red roof, and you know it's just far enough away where you know you can see it. It looks pretty, but you can't really tell what's going on out there. You know, you occasionally see somebody walking on the beach. A light may come on, light may go off, but like you don't really know what's happening out there. And as an author, there's two words that are always at forefront for me what if you know? So when I see a house like that, my mind starts wondering well, what if this happened? What if that happened?

Speaker 3:

I got to know the people that owned the house. It's actually owned by the town of Kittery, but a friend of ours is basically trying to bring it back to life. It had been abandoned for a long time. It used to be a lifeguard coast or coast guard life-saving station, and it was falling apart, just like our house was falling apart, and he's been renovating it and he brought me out to the island one day so I could see the progress.

Speaker 3:

And you know like I'm not somebody who normally believes in the paranormal I'm smart enough to understand there's a lot I don't understand. But while I was standing in that house I wanted to get out, like I felt like I needed to leave, like the hair on the back of my neck was standing up, like it felt like just someplace I shouldn't be. And you know it's funny, I've talked to a lot of people about this. Since then. You know, people have evolved to the point where we, you know, ignore a lot of that stuff. You know, like if you're standing in a room with a cat and you know there's some noise in the corner, that cat is going to bolt and be gone. It're like, well, what made that noise? And we'll walk over the corner, we'll try to figure it out. Like you know, we've kind of lost track of those instinctual reactions that keep us safe.

Speaker 1:

Although I think I've seen enough true crime documentaries and read enough. Yeah, I don't wonder anymore, I don't walk over and don't walk over. But no, I get what you're saying.

Speaker 3:

That's the thing. You know. Like I try to be rational when it comes to that sort of stuff, but like I have never stood in a house and wanted to leave as bad as I did that one particular day. So I started to research the property and I learned that you know over time, like it had been used as a quarantine zone during the yellow fever. A lot of people died out there during that, during the Spanish-American War. It was a prison. They used to take ships. So like there's an inlet there, there's a harbor. So if they would capture a ship during the Spanish-American War, they would make them dock there and they wouldn't feed the people on the boat, they would literally just starve them out because they wanted the boat, so they wouldn't give them food. When people got sick, they didn't give them medicine, they just waited until there was nobody to basically keep them from taking the boat and then they would take the boat. So like all this tragedy happened out there on this beautiful little picturesque island. You know that looks like a postcard when you're looking at it from the beach, but when you start researching what actually has taken place out there, it's kind of horrific.

Speaker 3:

I also stumbled into a story. Back in the 70s they found two bodies on the beach that in today's world they've still never been identified. And it's a bit of a hot potato. You know we were talking before we started recording. Like the island is located right on the border between Maine and New Hampshire, so it's not really nobody really knows who physically owns it. You know. So when something goes wrong, everybody kind of points fingers at each other. So when they found those two bodies, the local police came out, the Coast Guard came out. Ultimately the FBI took the case because the locals didn't want it, but it just it seems to have vanished. I've contacted all the local police departments. Nobody's got a record of it. The local FBI office has no record of it. But meanwhile there's newspaper articles about these two bodies found on the beach. So nobody knows what happened to them. So, like all these things you know, as a writer you know they kind of tie together and then that what if you know, starts popping out. I mean, before you know it you've got a book.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy For the bodies that have been found. I just have to ask this as an aside Is there any, is there enough, dna evidence where they could eventually try to identify them, or is it just a cold case that's probably going to sit there?

Speaker 3:

They don't even know where those bodies are. So, like there's pictures you know from like, the day they found them. You know somebody who later became the DA DA is standing out there in one of the photo shots. You know there's people that I've identified and actually talked to. But like the bodies were removed from the beach, the FBI took the investigation and, like, the paper trail literally goes dry, there's, there's nothing after that. So nobody knows where they went or what happened.

Speaker 1:

That's insane. Okay, so basically, there's a lot of tragedy. For hundreds of years as far as we know maybe probably farther back than that that's happened on this island. As far as, like the light that you saw and the feeling that you had when you were in the house, is there a dominant theory about? It's like one specific person or multiple people from the past that might be haunting this place now?

Speaker 3:

There is. You know I started asking around town, you know, when I started researching this and there is tons of local lore, you know, and stories, you know. If you go to the house now, if you stand on the second floor, you know it used to be a Coast Guard life-saving station. So there's a giant bunk room. There's just a bunch of bunk beds and there's walls with lockers. People have swore that they've heard voices. You know, like when they stand in that particular spot, you know they hear the voices of the people that used to demand the station, because a lot of them perished at sea trying to save other people.

Speaker 3:

The lights like nobody can explain that. Like lights would come on in the windows, you know, at a time when there was no electricity on the island. So like there's nothing to explain why there would be a light. Getting to the island, you know even somebody being seen walking on the beach, like that's tricky business because the island is surrounded by, like all these giant granite, you know, things that are kind of sticking out of the water. So you have to know exactly how to navigate your boat in order to get to it and if you don't, it's fairly dangerous. So, like a lot of people actually avoid it and they don't go out there. So a lot of these things that have been seen like nobody can explain it.

Speaker 1:

And it sounds like it's probably just far enough to where it wouldn't be a comfortable swim if somebody wanted to swim out there and squat on the property.

Speaker 3:

Considering the water is filled with great whites, I would not advise that. So, being an inlet, you know, like we're in New England, it's cold up here, but the water in that little harbor is warmer, so the fish tend to come in, seals come in, and with that the sharks follow, so there's all types of sharks, including great whites. So, yeah, I wouldn't go in that water at all.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think at a minimum. That to me is much scarier than whatever is in that lighthouse.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but you know again, you know, like when you look at, if you're standing on the beach and you look at it, it looks like a postcard, like you know. You can't imagine that something horrific ever happened on that island. You can't imagine what's possibly going on right below the surface of that water. You know, it's wild how Mother Nature can hide something.

Speaker 1:

When you were doing your research and you were hearing the different stories or encounters people had, were there any particular stories that really stood out as particularly chilling or believable?

Speaker 3:

I think it was a lot of the, you know nobody's seen like a ghost. You know, like that kind of thing, like yeah, I really think that kind of stuff is reserved for television, like I don't know that it actually exists in real life. The people that I've talked to that research this, believe in this kind of thing. They feel that, you know, everything is energy based. You know, like the entire universe is based on energy. So if something dies, like the energy doesn't disappear, it just goes somewhere else. You know so, if you think of that, you know if a bunch of people die in one particular place, that energy is going to be trapped there. It's almost like the island has become a battery and it's stored a lot of that stuff. And we've got a number of places in this area that people feel are haunted, and that same theory tends to apply to them. You know, a lot of tragic things happen in one particular spot and walls seem to have a memory.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so interesting. We've covered haunted locations like that where that theory has come up that there's certain locations maybe because of, like, the materials that the house were made up, or just the geography itself, the geology itself. Did you come across any when you're researching your book? Did you come across any like convincing theories or anything that was particularly interesting, that that seemed like that. You know, some places just seem to have souls that stick for more so than others.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean a lot of it. The geography comes up quite a bit. You know, with granite, like there's a lot of magnetic activity and things like that happening out there, like if you actually take a boat out and use like an old school compass, like there's places in there where that compass doesn't point north, you know, like it's just it's all over the place. You know you're standing on the island. You know you can see Kittery, maine, which is a fairly decent sized town. You can see Portsmouth, you can see Newcastle. There's cell towers in all three but your cell phone doesn't work well out there, you know, even though it should. So things like that always give me pause.

Speaker 3:

Some of the people that have been seen on the beach, you know, like their clothing doesn't necessarily match what they should be wearing. You know, and that comes up quite a bit. You know, especially here in Portsmouth, I've heard a lot of stories about people in, you know, period appropriate clothing. You know something from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, something that doesn't necessarily fit today but you know wandering around as if it does. You know there's theories about magnetic fields, about time vortexes. You know I've heard so many different things all circling around this. Nobody can explain it. But the thing is like you know, it's happened so much, you know, like people have been talking about this for literally for generations.

Speaker 1:

Well, so when you were at the location, you felt just that compelling urge to leave. You could tell something was absolutely not right there. Have you ever felt that in any other location that you visited?

Speaker 3:

You know I should have. Are you familiar with the Stanley Hotel? Oh yeah, okay. So for anybody who's not, that's the hotel Stephen King stayed at when he came up with the idea for the Shining Right. It's a gorgeous hotel. It's a hike I mean you have to drive for a few miles from the airport in order to get to it. But once you get out there, it's a beautiful location.

Speaker 3:

My wife and I went out there for it was a horror retreat with a couple other horror authors. Josh Mallerman was out there, a guy named Dallas Mayer who wrote under the name Jack Ketchum. There was about four or five of us and we were there for about a week or so. We tried to get some type of activity there, like we tried to scare something up the whole time we were there. We went down in the basement at midnight and told ghost stories like literally couldn't get anything to happen. You know we were just waiting to capture anything at all.

Speaker 3:

Then, the last day that we were there, my wife and I woke up. It was probably maybe nine in the morning or something and we're sitting in bed and the bed just started to shake for like no reason. It just started to vibrate. It felt like somebody had grabbed the rails and was just shaking it with like all their might. And the weird part about it is this went on for about a minute.

Speaker 3:

It was totally quiet. There was no mechanical noise or anything like that going on and neither of us were scared. We were like looking around the bed, like scared. We were like looking around the bed, like we got off the bed, we looked under the bed, we looked behind the bed trying to figure out what could possibly do this, because we're standing there watching it shake. Then we caught you know a little bit of it on video and we went downstairs and we showed the hotel manager. He's like, yeah, the bed in that room does that. We don't know why. So I think from a paranormal experience like that's probably the closest one I ever had it didn't necessarily scare me Like I just wanted to understand what was going on.

Speaker 1:

But maybe back to the cat story I said at the beginning of this I probably should have ran. Yeah, that's my reaction is. I think that's. I think that's so interesting to have that curious mind of what exactly is happening. My instinct is always I have no idea what's happening, but it's very often I need to be out of here right now and we could just figure that all out later. Well, and you know, that's a good segue too, because, much like the Stanley Hotel inspired the Shining, which, coincidentally, I just finished a month ago. So this is all like very good coincidence.

Speaker 1:

This island inspiring your upcoming book. Yeah, it sounds like it's a very comparable sort of thing. Well, you talked about, when you're thinking about what to write, you'll analyze trends in publishing and film and TV to figure out what's upcoming. What would people be interested in reading? What might publishers be interested in publishing? With Wood Island specifically, was there something about the pull of that place that would sort of like override that process for you because it was so compelling, or did the story kind of haunt you until the right moment arrived to write the book?

Speaker 3:

This was a very weird story for me, because normally I'm a fast writer, I'll write a novel in about three or four months. This particular one took me four years from start to finish, mainly because I would run into something that would just like scare the bejesus out of me and I had to put the book aside for a little while. I had weird things that happened during the writing process, like I would write a scene, you know, thinking that it's total fiction, you know just came out of my head, and then I would talk to somebody about it and they would tell me no, that actually happened out there. You need to look at this, this and this. And then I would research it, you know, like after the fact, and realize that you know, these things actually did take place. So that kind of freaked me out a little bit, because I didn't know where this information was coming from, and to this day I still don't. It almost felt like I was channeling something which is, you know, scary in and of itself.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so that was going on and, like it's the only book that that's ever happened with, for a while I considered not even putting it out at all because I wasn't sure. You know, do I want to be the guy who draws attention to this place? You know, maybe it's better to leave it alone, but ultimately I decided that it's the right thing to do. You know this type of stuff. I think we need to better understand it. If there is something out there.

Speaker 1:

I would like to know what it is Right. Are you or will you ever reveal which part, which scenes from the novel were? It turned out they were actually mirrors of what happened in real life?

Speaker 3:

no-transcript. So you can go down that particular rabbit hole all on your own.

Speaker 1:

Is there one particular thing that you could say is like this actually, this is in the book and it actually happened, or is it too much of a plot spoiler?

Speaker 3:

That's the thing. I don't want to give away. The plot, like if I, if I tell you any of these things, like then we're going to go down that and once you tug on the string it's hard to unravel it. If I'm being coy, that's, that's why.

Speaker 1:

Okay, got it. Question how did you balance historical accuracy with supernatural fiction in the novel?

Speaker 3:

ago she was able to, you know, not only tell me, but you know, in some cases she had old photographs, she had stories that she could share with me from people back in the day, a lot of that type of stuff. You know, like when I write something like this, that part is very important to me. I want to make sure I get anything that is historical. You know, I want to make sure I'm as accurate as I possibly could be. So between her and the person who was renovating the island at the time, you know, running the organization that's basically restoring it, I was able to fact check a lot of the information I have in the book and make sure that I got it right.

Speaker 1:

You are running an unusual contest on June 13th 2025. You will be selecting a winner to spend the night on Wood Island with three guests of their choice. So they'll get transported by boat from Kittery Point, maine, and left there for 24 hours. My question to you is have you ever stayed overnight in the house yourself?

Speaker 3:

I have never been able to stay on that island for more than maybe 15 minutes without wanting to leave, and I seriously doubt anybody is going to be able to stay the full 24 hours. We're going to give them a satellite phone so they can call for help if they want to leave a little bit early. But yeah, there's just bad juju out there. The thing is, I wrote the book and when the people in my life started reading it, then sharing it with friends, social media started to pick up on it. People were like I want to go there, I want to go there, I want to stay there, I want to check it out. So I want to go there. I want to go there, I want to stay there, I want to check it out. So I want to give them the opportunity to do that. So that's where the contest came into play.

Speaker 1:

And you said so. There's an individual that is restoring they're restoring the house, right, so you could technically go and visit it by day when it's open. Is that right or is that upcoming?

Speaker 3:

By the time the book comes out it's going to be happening. They finished up the bulk of the construction this last year. They have to close the house up for the winter. The waters are just too rough to try and get in and out of there. But by the time the book comes out, in May, the island will be open and as a functioning museum.

Speaker 1:

Very interesting. Well, as a side note, my co-host April and I we have to go to Boston for a true crime podcast festival in July and we're going to stay at the Lizzie Borden house and that sounds like that is much preferable to what you're describing. A horror novel writer can't even stay in a location for a very brief time, but of course that's me and, as I've clearly indicated, if I sense anything is off in my environment, I'm immediately running away. But I'm sure you're going to get lots of really curious people.

Speaker 3:

So if you think you're up for it, I'll put you out there on Wood Island and you two can check it out on your own.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, actually I totally do. I will. I'll take you up on that. I don't know how long I can stay, but regardless of who wins the contest, I'm so curious to see if they do end up staying the whole night. So you'll have to keep me posted on it. Have there been other haunted locations that inspired previous books of yours, or is this more of the first novel that's based, you know, at least roughly on historical happenings?

Speaker 3:

Well, I grew up primarily in Florida, where none of this stuff happens. When we moved to New England I got a crash course in all of it. I've actually got a cemetery in my backyard and the real estate agent didn't show it to me the first two or three times we looked at the house. She kind of she steered us away so that we wouldn't see it back in the bushes there. I researched everything in Portsmouth, portsmouth, new Hampshire, and there is a ton of lore haunted places in this area. There's a couple of cemeteries where there are a lot of stories.

Speaker 3:

There's a house right down the street from me where people swear they see the same person. He basically like repeats a pattern on the second floor. He comes out of a room, walks and goes into another room. He's wearing clothing from about 200 years ago and, like a lot of people have seen this, it's documented. There's another house where people can hear a woman screaming but you only hear it from the outside. Like people inside the house never hear it, but like walking down the sidewalk people hear it all the time.

Speaker 3:

We've got an old auditorium here that the music theater that people have, you know, have seen. Like people just sitting out in the audience, wearing, you know, clothing that is not modern day clothing, when there shouldn't be anybody in the audience. You know, like everything around here is just old, you know, and I think that's a big part of it. You know, like I can throw a rock and hit three different houses built in the 1600s right out my window, like Paul Revere wrote past. Here there's a plaque down the street which you know I touched on in the book. You know, like all that historical stuff is true, it's all real.

Speaker 1:

I came across something fascinating about you. You have a unique superpower that shapes how you work and that sets you apart from other authors. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3:

no-transcript a lot of issues that I was trying to deal with. You know I couldn't make eye contact in conversations. You know all these other. You know different, different things. So once I got that diagnosis, it was very helpful.

Speaker 3:

But one of the things that I learned is, you know, as an autistic person, you know I tend to mimic people quite a bit. So if I'm standing in a party and, you know, and somebody cracks a joke, there's two or three people around me I'm going to laugh because the other people around me are laughing, not necessarily because I found it funny. So I'm mimicking what I see other people doing, what I consider to be normal behavior. And one of the things I learned very on as a writer is I can mimic people's author voice, you know. So if I read something written by somebody else, I can basically continue that story in their voice.

Speaker 3:

I pick up on their vocabulary, their cadence, their writing style, which came in very handy back when I was doing memoirs and ghostwriting and basically helping people finish their own novels From a plotting standpoint. You know you can't really see my desk in this video but, like you know, there's nothing on there really. And then I'm working on eight different books right now, like it's all. It's all in my head and I know that's all from the autism thing. It's you know cause I'm able to. I see structure and patterns and just about everything, and to me a book is a pattern. You know like I can see the framework of that story as I'm writing it, so I know which beats need to happen and when.

Speaker 1:

That's so amazing. I am jealous. It's because it takes so much work, I think, for me to sort of actively think about you. Know, how would you build a character? Fortunately, with everything that we do on Dark City, because it's all historically based, I don't have to build them myself. They're already built. We just have to uncover the right information about them. But I definitely can detect that in your writing. You bring these characters into your books and I feel like, very quickly you know who this person is. They're distinct and it just makes it so. It's so readable. The characters being believable makes such a big difference In terms of something I keep upstairs. Where can our listeners, if they want to pre-order it, what's the best place to do it? And we'll link it in our show notes too.

Speaker 3:

There's a couple spots. You can go to my website, jdbarkercom. It's available in every bookstore. I've got my own imprint with Simon Schuster, so they're pretty good about getting my books just about anywhere. If you'd like a signed copy that those you can get through through my website. I've got a local bookstore here in Portsmouth that fulfills those orders. So if you just go to my website, click on the book cover, there's a link for signed copies. That'll take you directly to that local bookstore. They'll get your information. I go in there every couple of weeks and sign everything and then they'll ship it out to you.

Speaker 1:

Very nice. Okay, I'm definitely going to order the signed copy one, even though I have the one on my computer right now. What other projects do you have coming up that people can keep an eye out for?

Speaker 3:

I've always got something weird going on. Do you remember a movie in the 90s called Flatliners?

Speaker 1:

Oh no, april's the one who's so good at trivia, and she couldn't join us, but I'm sure it's probably something everyone else has heard of.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is one of those cult classics. It had Kiefer Sutherland, julia Roberts, kevin Bacon, billy Baldwin, oliver Platt all at the beginning of their careers. It's about a bunch of medical students who decide to kill each other to see if there's any type of life after death. So they kill each other and then bring each other back after a certain amount of time. I love that story. It's one of my all-time favorite movies and the guy who wrote it his name is Peter Filardi and he's actually on one of my other projects and we talked about it a few years ago and I told him I had an idea to reboot the franchise and at the time he didn't have the rights. The studio still owned it, so it didn't really go anywhere. And then about a year ago, he called me up and said hey, I got the rights back if you still want to do this thing. So I'm in the middle of writing a book to basically reboot a film franchise, which I don't know if it's ever been done that way before.

Speaker 1:

Typically it goes the other route. So I'm finish your book, I'm going to go back and watch that movie and be prepared for it. Then, JD, is there anything you could read us from the book to tease it in advance of publication?

Speaker 3:

Oh well, I don't want to give you any spoilers. How about if I just read what's on the back?

Speaker 1:

Okay, what'll do All?

Speaker 3:

right In the sleepy coastal town of Newcastle, new Hampshire, 17-year-old Billy Hassler's life is about to take a terrifying turn when his best friend, david Spivey, inherits a mysterious house on a nearby island. It seems like the perfect place to spend their final summer before heading off to college. No parents, no police, no responsibilities. As they dig deep into the island's dark past, they awaken an ancient evil that has influenced generations. What becomes an innocent summer adventure quickly descends into a nightmare. The tagline for the book is for a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die.

Speaker 1:

I love that tagline and I've started it and it's already grabbed me. So for everyone out there listening, we will link in the show notes where you can order the book, and I'm looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to looking into your other projects coming up too.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

JD, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.