The Official Blog of Joseph Baker

Hello, everyone it's me Jill again. Joel asked me to put something in here so the people who read this would know he hadn't slipped off the side of the earth. I couldn't get the rights to any articles so, I'm harking back to my days as the Junior beauty editor (yeah, I know) at the LA magazine and am going to write a piece about the must-haves that I noticed for everyone when we were on tour and since we ate out more than I'll admit what our usual was at the Chinese Takeout.

Joel Baker

1. A book from the Signet Classics Collections

2. A Starbucks Iced Americano or a Starbucks Double Shot

3. Kenneth Cole R.S.V.P (yeah no more Black !)

4. Macbook

5. An spare shirt (usually a graphic Tee from Target)

6. Chinese Takeout : Vegetable Fried Rice





Jill Lamberton - Ryder (Me !)

1. Purple Ipod Nano

2. Iphone

3. Fluffy Pen

4. Mossimo Flip Flops (so - comfy !)

5. Pop Chips and Snapple

6. Chinese Takeout : Shrimp Lo Mein


Harry Kline (Our editorial assistant who works with Joel)


1. Portable DVD player and all the 30 Rock & Office seasons on DVD

2. Sprint Instinct

3. Anything by Post- It

4. Twizzlers (not Red Vines, lol)

5. Bed Head Creative Sculpting Liquid

6. Chinese Takeout : Moo Shoo Pork


Taylor Kirpatrick (my assistant)

1. Voice Recorder

2. Notebook (constantly taking notes)

3. Iphone (he learns quickly)

4. His U-Pillow travel pillow

5. Mocha Frappuccino

6. Chinese Takeout : Crab Ragoon





We defiantly had an interesting time spending so much time together from fighting over work to figuring out sleeping arrangements. Good times.

Anyway, Joel is working very hard on getting his new book ready and spending time with his beautiful family but, he will get back to you guys very soon !

First of all I did an interview last night with an Andrea Harlawrights (I'm sorry if I butchered that leave me a comment and I'll fix it.) over at a forum and it was really nice to talk to fans and hear what you guys think, she was very nice, we had lots of conversations over colors.

I have been doing more writing than I planned these last few days, it's kind of scary. I try to only write for at most 4 hours a day but, it's hard because when I was incarcerated or living alone or in the hospital I would write for about 10 hours a day, I would be in a trance.

My younger children are adorable because they are at that age where they are starting to understand where sometime they understand what I am doing in front of my laptop and other time one of them wants to know what I do in front of my laptop for hours at a time or imitate me. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with my younger children because of stuff that has happened so I really love being with them even though they are at that terrible two stage that drives me insane sometimes but, it's okay I still love them. Of course I become a horrible father when they repeat words Daddy shouldn't be saying in the first place but, thats a whole different story. It's funny with 2-year-olds that you spend so much time telling them no and then they start saying it back to you.

I have spent to much time in my house. I must be boring you all.

Uh, what else ? Well nothing much. I'm just working on writing and I've been spending a lot of time with other writers and that has also been inspiring so who knows what my next book will be about.

I actually have a Mac ( I know, I'm actually more of a PC) that I use just for my writing, because it has so much space and is so light and right now I'm about to put some more RAM into it because I can never keep a USB port more than 6 days before I lose it. It's a horrible running joke at Cobalt Publishing, I blame my ADHD but anyway (I'm kidding) I have lots of stuff I can't wait to share with everyone

Today I decided I was going to pretty much stay around the house with my children. It's weird that it's been a while since I've actually stayed at home not working when I'm not on disability. Anyway, I woke up early this morning and was reading outside, when my kids mother's stepfather came outside and we started talking. The conversation isn't that important but, I am now seriously considering going back to school.

I should save this for my autobiography but, my college experience was 2 years at Penn State. I was accepted and at the time I was undeclared. I played soccer my first year but, my GPA was so low I got kicked off the team. In my second year I was getting tired of the 45 minute drive and working ( I used to work at a 7-11) and being with my family and other illicit activities I was involved in that I decided to quit the thing I carried the least about. I hated math and history, the only thing that I liked to do was read and I figured why pay thousands of dollars for that. I'll admit I was a horrible student, I didn't' go to class, I missed deadlines it was bad. Living in Oaklande at that time there were more than enough jobs I could get without a degree so, I left school when I was 19 and never thought about it.

Now my ideas have changed about education. I realize that I got extremely lucky in my life because I was able to make decent money modeling, and that when I went to the police academy in Colorado they had no degree requirements. But, now I see education differently. I really want to get a degree to learn.

I really enjoy not only writing but, reading and I'd like to learn more about that. I haven't made any decisions yet about where I want to go or anything but it is something that is on my mind.

Also in a completely unrelated note a few minutes after this conversation I was making breakfast and I got an idea for a book that had nothing to do with what I read or what I just wrote about I just got this story. When I was done cooking got on my laptop and ended up writing 98 pages.

So, I guess I already got 2 ideas just from this morning.

To finish off my little story from yesterday, I went by the bar to see what happened with the bartender. Apparently, she has anxiety attacks sometimes and it being her first day ever working she got a little overwhelmed. She is fine now, and is on her medication and everything is okay. As a matter of fact we all had a laugh about it later.

So, today I decided to spend sometime with my 7 year old son. The doctors recently told me that his is probably on the autism scale somewhere. It's funny because when I was his age the doctors told my parents the same thing but, they didn't believe that and I'm just fine. It was mostly because I didn't start talking until I was in school but, I think that is because my mother never talked to me as a baby. My children shouldn't have that problem because their mother and grandmother just love to talk and could go on forever.

Anyway, I took him to The Children's Museum and then later we went back home to get my 8 year old daughter and we went downtown to see a taping of Sonny With a Chance. There were a few tears and tantrums but, overall it was a pretty good day. Afterwards, I took them to this restaurant and they tried sushi for the first time and I was very happy that they enjoyed it.

I'm also trying to spend my little vacation reading some more books. For a long time I mostly only read pre-21st century books just because they offered insight into worlds I didn't get to live through but, now I'm trying to read something that came out after the year 2000. I have read Eragon and Harry Potter though. But other than that if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Today I decided to leave my little ones with my mother in law and spent the day with my oldest son. He is 14 and at the age where he thinks he can do just fine without me. Of course I understand he is a teenager and needs space and privacy and I try to respect that to the best of my ability.

Afterwards, when I got back home and turned my phone back on-- I saw there was a problem at my bar. It was nothing huge but apparently our new bartender had a nervous breakdown and quit. So, I had to leave my family for a while and play bartender for a while. My partner never did get the full story of the breakdown to me so, I'm not sure what happened there. I did here that she is fine, the bartender with the nervous breakdown that is.

It was pretty slow for a Monday afternoon so, I started doing some work on my autobiography. I thought this book would be easy to write but, I'm starting to notice that the best way to write about my life is by talking to other people. So, I've been trying to contact people from my past to fill in some blanks and help put my life in order.

Looks, like Harry is here to fill in so, I'd better get back home

Well, no articles or interviews today. I just got the first copy of The Truth About Forests from my publishing company and I am very happy about that.

So, now I am focusing mostly on my autobiography which is a lot harder to write than I though. At this point I'm working on how to best organize it where it tells a story but allows me to skip across somethings.

I've also been spending more time at home than I have in a year and I certainly have a lot of respect for stay at home mothers. I mean before all my youngest, well I guess they aren't my youngest anymore but anyway all the quadruplets did was sleep all day but, now they are all over the place and developing their own personalities.

I wish I had something more exciting to put in here but, I don't. I do have a few more interviews so, I may have Mrs. Lambeton-Ryder post those.

Hi everybody,

I don't have a lot of time to write in here right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book. I'm also working on some content for the L A Magazine, which is working on going online. Speaking of LA Magazine online I did a short interview for them you can find it here.

Hello Everyone,

This is Jill again. So, Joel is working really hard on getting his new book ready for publication and being with his family but, he didn't want to leave this blog empty for today so, I'm going to post an interview that was published in the local magazine, N.C Life while we were at Duke :


This morning I had the pleasure of talking with the man who is making reading cool again, novelist Joel Baker. He is visiting Duke this weekend to meet fans and sign some books. We met at the local coffee shop. I know he is a fan of Starbucks Iced Americano's which they don't have here but, it was a favorite spot of mine. He arrived in a 2 seater Audi convertible with the top down, completing the look with a pair of black shades. If you didn't know his story you'd be surprised to see the man in that car take a second before he got out and grab two steel crutches and carefully get out of the car while balancing on the crutches for support. Joel's look offered quite a paradox to his personality. The dark hair and glasses paired with the tattoed writing sprawled across his neck and several piercing adorning his face gave him a dark edgy look. However the light blue polo shirt-- showing the right amount of man cleavage--and loose fitting jeans(that should only look that good on the mannequins) made him seem open and friendly.

Before we sit down, he asks me what I suggest and in the end we both end up with iced coffees. Once we grab a booth inside he unstraps his crutches and leaves them on the floor and takes of his shade, for the first time I can see those bright blue eyes that drive his fans wild--and yes they are bright. I have a total understanding of why Joel Baker has created the genre of sexy novelist.

Mr. Baker just released his collection of short stories, ironically called Coffee Break and know he is working on the final stages of a sequel to Blemishes called, The Truth About Forests. My first question for him is how does he get it all done.

"I was in jail for about 6 months and during that time all I did was write, like you know I had, pen and paper and I just started writing everything down. So, when I got out I had like 40 of those legal pads you know, filled with writing. I spent a lot of time afterwards sitting on the front porch of my house typing up the stuff that I liked. I was going through a lot of family stuff and by the end of last summer I had about 44 short stories and 12 novels."

The jailtime Mr.Baker so comfortably alludes to was for charges that he was involved in prostitution but, he was found wrongfully convicted and released after 6 months. However his trouble didn't stop there when a month later he was involved in a domestic dispute
he was stabbed in the face and the next month he was hospitalized after being poisened and pushed out his 2nd story window. While he doesn't ususally talk about it, he opened up a little for us.

"It was just a scary experience, I was lying there and I thought I was going about to know what heaven looked like and I thought the sky would be the last thing I ever saw. All I could think about was my children how I wanted to see them grow up and be apart of their lives and then I blacked out. I woke up in the hospital and . . . it eas just a scary feeling. "
said Joel.

He was told he would never walk again but, a year later he is getting around with the aid of crutches. The incident set him behind in his work but, now he is back and writing books that capture our heart. Some of the short stories in Coffee Break deal with some of the most common themes in Joel's books; substance abuse.

" I had my first cigarette when I was 11 and from there it was just downhill. I know a lot about drugs and what the experience can be like and that's what I write about, what I know it's unfortunate but, I don't know it seems to be working for me."

With all the focus on abuse and drugs I wonder how he brings his past up to his children.

"My older children, who were adopted when they were young children do have memories of me when I would get drunk or really high and they know I don't want them going through that at all but, it's not something I plan on hiding from them . . . I've found that causes more problems, when you try to hide things."

Speaking of children, people who follow the novelist have noticed a new addition the inked bracelet around his ankle, which includes the name of all 10 of his children. With uniuqe names like Hope and Christopher Robin it was no surprise to see the pretty yet, uncommon name Dahlia Beth. I asked him about her name and what kind of baby she is.

"I was born 2nd out of 18 children but, I mean my mother only raised about 7 of them and we all had two names but, thier mother wasn't having that but, I just thought it was a pretty name. I haven't been able to spend as much time with her as I would have liked but overall she is a pretty good baby. She is so beautiful, she looks just like her mother and I just absolutely adore her."

Joel says that on top of getting The Truth About Forests released he is also working on his autobiography and a few other novels that are not about his usual topics.

At the end of our interview I was very surprised out how easy it was to become comfortable around him. I even teased him by asking if he was wearing contacts. He laughed an said he wasn't but his only pair of contacts are actually brown. Go figure.


Joel Baker's Favorites

Color : Green

Song : Her Eyes- Pat Monohan

Book : Catcher in the Rye

Author : Kurt Vonnegut

TV show : One Tree Hill

Sport : Soccer

Sport's Team : Steelers

Part of a woman : Her smile

~N*C LIFE~

I've been working a lot on my new book and being with my family lately.I still want to post stuff in here so, I am probably going to have Jill post some more Q&A's from the tour in here. I have taken some time to myself and had an airbrush done of what my new sleeve will look like. The words will most likely be lines from my favorite books. It will probably be a while before I get any of it done because I want to be able to hold my baby.