NEWS: For years, Barker helped others achieve bestseller status while his name remained in the shadows. “Over the next twenty years, six of my projects hit the New York Times Bestseller list, all with other people’s names on the cover,” he reveals. “That gets old after a while.“

With the support of his wife, Barker took a chance on himself. He quit his day job, sold his possessions, and moved to Pittsburgh with a singular focus: to write his own novel. More…