Most people know Jason Halbert as the longtime music director for Kelly Clarkson, and The Kelly Clarkson Show. But Jason has an entirely different creative side, one he shares with his wife, Rhonda Halbert. The two just released Architect, the third and final installment in their The Goodpasture Chronicles trilogy, a series of books written by the couple, under the pen name, R.J. Halbert.
The Halberts began writing The Goodpasture Chronicles in 2022, amid a lot of personal pain.
“The way the story is written, unfortunately it came out of a lot of trauma,” Jason tells Everything Nash. “And trauma’s not unique to us. Everybody can relate to some point or another at any age group.”
The Halberts lost 14 people close to them in a period of three years, just part of a painful chapter in their lives, which led them to write The Goodpasture Chornicles.
“That was also in the midst of COVID, and not just due to COVID, but add that pressure to it,” Rhonda recalls. “And then in the middle of that, we lost our home to a flood. Jason was working on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and Amy Grant happened to be coming, during the beginning of the loss of the intensity of some of that. He was just talking to her, and she recommended this brain treatment called Cereset. And it basically just helps your brain to calm down and get out of fight or flight mode, only so that you can process what you’re going through.”
View this post on Instagram
What Led Jason and Rhonda Halbert to Write ‘The Goodpasture Chronicles’
It was while Jason was going through Cereset that he had the idea for what became The Goodpasture Chronicles.
“During one of his treatments, he was sitting there, and all of a sudden, this idea came to his head,” Rhonda reveals. “He came home, and he was telling me, he was like, ‘Man, I had this really cool visual,’ and he was just describing it all to me. And as he was talking, I knew something exciting was happening, so I pulled out my voice memo, started to record him, and we bantered back and forth of, ‘Oh, that’s such a great idea. What if we did this?’ And we just bounced back and forth for three and a half hours, and that three and a half hours actually turned into our trilogy.”
The Halberts first thought The Goodpasture Chronicles would be a TV series, before being convinced by a friend to make it into a series of books, although they now have their focus on turning the three books into a TV series. It’s a welcome new chapter for the Halberts, who are now focusing on a new series, targeting a specific age group.
“So all ages are identifying with the series in a really good way,” Jason says. “But we’re specifically spinning off a young adult series just because we’re still in love with all these characters and want to continue the story.”
While The Architect is the end of The Goodpasture Chronicles, it’s the beginning of a new chapter for the Halberts and their creativity.
“We’ve definitely fallen in love with these characters,” Rhonda says. “And honestly, we’re not able to let go of the storytelling. … We have young adults that are reading it, and we have seniors that are reading it and everything in between.”
Jason Halbert Looks Back As ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show Comes to An End
The Kelly Clarkson Show is now coming to a close after seven years. Although Halbert will still be working with Clarkson in some capacity, the end of the award-winning show is bittersweet for him.
“It was a magic seven years,” Jason says. “We never saw ourselves working in TV in this capacity. And it came at just the right time. We launched about four months before COVID hit, and where a lot of our friends and peers were out of work from touring, we were able to keep in production during the entire time. So it came at a really perfect time for our lives.
“And wow, we just learned so much, and have met a lot of people, a lot of actors and directors and showrunners and producers,” he adds. “And all that is building us into the next phase of our life, which is gonna be taking our book series to TV. So it’s been very serendipitous.”
Find The Architect, and all of the books in The Goodpasture Chronicles, at RJHalbert.com.