In a quiet Tudor-style home tucked into the Nashville woods, Jason and Rhonda Halbert built a fictional world long before they finished rebuilding their real one. Jason — Kelly Clarkson’s
longtime music director — and Rhonda, his wife of 32 years, write together under the pen name R.J. Halbert. The pair never set out to become novelists, but their supernatural thriller series “The Goodpasture Chronicles” became both a creative escape and a lifeline after years of upheaval.
Their newest release, “Servant” (Novus Press Works, 2025), picks up five minutes after their No. 1 Amazon bestselling debut “Caretaker” ends, plunging readers back into the eerie, generational mystery surrounding the Goodpasture family.
“Half of it takes place 3,000 years ago, and the other half follows the family as their stories intertwine,” Jason says.
This time, secrets hinted at in the prologue and epilogue of “Caretaker” begin to surface, widening the mythology and pulling readers deeper into the family’s past — and fate.
Rhonda calls it “a cozy thriller”— one that balances “suspense, faith, and redemption.”
Before fiction gave them a new world to inhabit, real life had nearly broken them. The couple endured four relentless years of crisis: their daughter’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis, the deaths of multiple family members, Rhonda’s grueling season caring for her mother with Lewy body dementia, and finally, a flood that destroyed their “forever” Nashville home.
“We were overwhelmed,” Jason recalls. “The grief just kept coming. Writing became a way to stop talking about our problems and start imagining something outside of them.”
Rhonda adds, “I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t process, I couldn’t stop crying. I cried probably for two years straight.”
A turning point arrived unexpectedly during a lunch in Los Angeles with Amy Grant. Jason shared his family’s struggles, and Grant suggested Cereset, a brain health technology using sound to help the brain reset.
She offered to fund the treatment for the family. And, they accepted. Each person experienced it differently, but it unlocked something profound. Rhonda stopped crying for the first time in years. And Jason emerged with the plot for “The Goodpasture Chronicles” — even though he’d never written a book before.
Rhonda remembers how quickly the trilogy took shape. Jason started sharing ideas and she recorded them on her phone. In three hours, the couple had the foundation for “The Goodpasture Chronicles.”
“It was just a spark of creativity,” Jason says.
That spark became book one — “Caretaker.”
“When our home flooded, in a moment of exasperation, I looked up and said, ‘God, if we’ll take on the rebuilding of this home, could you please take on the rebuilding of the foundation of our family?’” Jason explains.
Rhonda adds, “We realized the foundation of our home was rotted, and the foundation of our family was, too. Rebuilding both became the spark.”
The couple describe “Caretaker” as “not-spooky supernatural,” but a story in which events inside the family’s house parallel their reality.
Jason says the books “are written as pure escapism,” adding: “Instead of us talking every day about all of our problems, we were pouring ourselves into this book. What we learned later was that we were inadvertently doing a form of therapy — externalizing our trauma through story.”
Rhonda’s chapters drew from her experience caregiving for her mother. “It was so inhumane, and I needed to process it,” she says. “Every day that I wrote that part of the book, I would call Jason bawling my eyes out because I could feel the healing.”
Then life delivered another blow. Just before their first publicity push in early 2024, Jason was diagnosed with a rare cancer. The new round of trauma reshaped both his outlook and the couple’s approach to “Servant.”
The experience forced the couple to live through some of the same themes they had already written about — resilience, faith, and the line between fear and hope. Writing became an emotional outlet, a way for Jason to process what was happening while transforming adversity into art.
“It blurred the line between the characters and us,” Rhonda says.
“Caretaker” debuted as a No. 1 Amazon bestseller and won nine awards. Readers responded to its mix of history, mystery, and emotional truth.
“Our tagline was, ‘There’s history, there’s mystery, and a little bit of therapy,’” Jason says. “I was worried people wouldn’t pick up on it, but the feedback’s been incredible.”
Their writing partnership mirrors their marriage. Rhonda brings the heart, and Jason delivers the adventure.
“There are some very crazy things that happen, but by the end, people tend to fall in love with the characters,” she says.
Their real home — rebuilt on the same property that inspired the fictional estate — is filled with touches readers will recognize. The lamppost from the books is in their yard, and the mirror — a gateway to the supernatural in their books — will hang in their new home. Most of the illustrations in the book are from their home.
“It’s hard to talk about the book because it’s so intertwined with our lives,” Jason says.
For Rhonda, success has nothing to do with sales — it’s about personal healing.
“Success to me was that we finished it,” she says. “We did something together that we’d never done before, and instead of it forcing us apart, it drew us closer together.”