Episode 458 – “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” with TJ Klune

Jul 15, 2024

New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune talks with Jeff at an event that was recorded live at the Sacramento Public Library. TJ discusses the forthcoming book Somewhere Beyond the Sea, which is the sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea. In addition, TJ has some wonderful stories about Cerulean Sea, talks about what one of his life missions is, and drops some hints about what books are coming next.

Look for the next episode of Big Gay Fiction Podcast on Monday, July 29.

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Show Notes

Here are the things we talk about in this episode. Please note, these links include affiliate links for which we may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. These links are current at the time the episode premieres, however links are subject to change.

Transcript 

This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

Intro

Jeff: Coming up on this episode, we’re talking to TJ Kune about his forthcoming book “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.”

Hello, Rainbow Romance Reader. Welcome to episode 458 of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast, the show for avid readers and passionate fans of queer romance fiction. I’m Jeff, and it’s great to have you here for another episode, the second that we’ve done that feature conversations that were recorded at live events.

As always, this podcast is brought to you in part by our remarkable community on Patreon. If you’d like more information about what we offer to patrons, including the opportunity to ask questions to our guests, go to patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

And just a reminder that you can follow me on Ream for the latest updates on my writing and some other fun things. There are some exclusive short stories there that you can read once you start to follow me. Plus, Ream is the place to get exclusive access to my works in progress. I just recently wrapped up my work in progress romance between a hockey player and a ballet dancer. And it’s still a story that does not have a real title yet, which is why I keep referring to it by its characters. You can now read all the chapters of the work in progress on Ream. And if you’re part of the Works in Progress tier once that story becomes available as a proper ebook and is fully edited, you’ll get a copy of it as well. I am gonna be starting up some new works in progress in the coming weeks as well. So make sure you follow me on Ream for all of the latest details. You could find me there at reamstories.com/jeffadams, or from the link in the show notes.

And now we’re gonna get right into our conversation with TJ Klune, which was recorded during a live event at the Sacramento Public Library. As always, I love talking to TJ and it was really great getting details on “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” which is the forthcoming sequel to “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” He’s also got some great stories about “Cerulean Sea,” how his storytelling has evolved, and why representation and speaking up for what you believe in is so important. And since this was recorded during Pride month, he also talks about what Pride means to him in 2024. And you know what? We get some teases too about what’s coming up next for him. And now here we go with TJ, picking up just as we sat down from being introduced.

TJ Klune Interview

TJ: There are literally so many of you here. What the heck? Well, thank you for coming. And before we start, I have to say something about Jeff. Okay? So if you don’t know Jeff, as you probably just heard, runs the “Big Gay Fiction Podcast,” which has been around for how many years?

Jeff: We’re in nine and a half now.

TJ: And you were once in Oprah and Oprah’s magazine? Correct?

Jeff: One of the best book podcasts to listen to while you weren’t reading or something like that. Yeah.

TJ: And but I have to… I have known Jeff for all, what my entire career? almost my entire career?

Jeff: Probably. Yeah.

TJ: You were, yeah. Because this is 10 years, that 10th appearance on this podcast here right now.

Jeff: We’re recording the 10th one right now.

TJ: Yeah. And so it’s… and then 10 years. Look who… Everybody give a hand of applause for Jeff. Round of applause for Jeff. That’s so cool. I’m just so thrilled.

Also, hi. Thank you for letting me come to a place where it’s a hundred degrees outside.

Jeff: He says this because where he lives, it’s actually about what, 65 right now?

TJ: Yeah. In the mountains. Yeah, in my little cabin in the woods.

Jeff: I think we all could have come to see you and lived in the 65 degree weather for a little bit. But I’m so happy we’re doing this. This is the 10th time he’ll have been on the show and, like he said, I’ve known TJ forever.

My first TJ Klune book was “Wolfsong” going way back in its first edition. And I was like, wow, this thing. And now you know all the books that have come from there. I love them so much and I love talking to him about where these ideas come from, and how you develop these amazing characters and.

I’m so excited to talk about “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.” I’ve gotten to read just a little teeny, tiny bit of it, and I’m like, “Oh my God. ”

TJ: Has anybody here read it yet? Has anybody here have the ARC? No? Oh, you? What? You read the excerpt? Yeah. Okay. So if you do ARC readings, if you know, there’s a site called NetGalley where you go and you get arcs for books that have not come out yet.

My publisher had the genius idea of saying, “Hey, instead of putting out the whole book, why don’t we just put out the first four chapters and see how mad people get?” Hooray. I got some emails. Let me tell you.

Jeff: It was an amazing four chapters though. So that book comes out in September. And if there happens to be someone out there who, you know, maybe hasn’t read “Cerulean Sea” or hasn’t read it recently, or heard of you at all. Tell us a little bit about the world that you created with Arthur and Linus and these amazing kids that live on this island.

TJ: Okay, y’all remember March 17th, 2020? Y’all remember what we were doing around that time? I’ll tell you what I was doing. So, back in 2018, I had this idea of this orphanage. Of what it would look like if these kids who others perceived were dangerous. What would that look like? What would this home look like? And what would this home look like if their peace, or their semblance of peace, was disrupted by an outsider? Not only just an outsider, but a representative of the government.

And the reason why I started looking at it in this direction was because back in 2018, we had a different president, somebody who apparently might be president again. And it makes you wonder how are some people so old that they have not died yet? And I’m just like, come on. Politicians. Hooray.

But if y’all remember back in 2018, families were being separated at the southern border. There were parents being separated from their children, and that really stuck out to me. Cause I’d always wanted to write something to counteract what I felt was the darkness in the world. At the time thinking that, oh, it can’t get any worse. And I remember wanting to write something about the light, the good, the hope.

You know, there’s that old Mr. Rogers quote, “You have to look to the helpers.” What do the helpers look like? What do they do? Are they loud? Not always. The matter of fact, the people who help the most are usually the ones who are behind the scenes. The people whose names you never hear, you never learn. You never learn about what they do. But they do it because they can. Because they should.

So I started researching it, and it turns out that almost every single culture in the world at some point or another has had instances where families were separated, where children were taken from their parents because they were different. It’s happened in the United States, happened in North America. It happened in South America. It happened in Europe. It happened in Asia. It happened everywhere.

And I wondered about that. What is it? What is so wrong with people that we see someone who is different, we see somebody who is not like us, and one of our first responses is fear? And I’m not talking about like the actual being scared of people. I’m talking about like, we don’t take the time to learn or understand people who are different from us.

So what would that look like in this setting, in this world? And so I decided to write this book about a man named Linus who works with the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, whose job it is to go and inspect these orphanages where children who don’t have parents, their parents are deceased, they are being kept separate from other regular quote unquote normal children, because of what they’re capable of doing.

In this case, you have a boy who is a green blobby ball of sunshine. You have a girl who is a gnome. You have a girl who’s a forest sprite. You have a boy who’s a wyvern. You have a boy who is a ware-Pomeranian. And then you also happen to have the antichrist. And so, I thought about what they would look like for these extremes.

Specifically. The reason I put the antichrist in this book, and the reason I chose Lucy, is because it’s an extreme. It’s an extreme that we all know. The term antichrist we’ve seen in horror, in the religious people who are saying that the antichrist will come to the world and destroy all of us. And they’ve been saying that for however many hundreds of years. And I just wanted to know what would that extreme look like.

Except what happens when this supposed embodiment of evil is a 6-year-old boy? What would happen with this idea of nature versus nurture? What would that look like if somebody who’s been told their entire life that they’re gonna grow up to be a monster, that they are a monster, even as a child? What would that look like if instead of being told there’s something wrong with them, they’re being told that they’re exactly who they’re supposed to be? And that’s what I wanted for that book. And that’s why when we have Linus, this outsider who comes in, he is meant to be the reader. He is meant to be thrown topsy-turvy into this world where things make sense because it’s not so different from our own world.

But at the same time, I mean, there’s the antichrist and he is making threats. And he can dim the sun. And he can make his eyes turn red. And what does that look like for a very extraordinarily ordinary man like Linus? And I wrote that book, and I felt really pleased by it. I quite liked who I was when I was telling that story. It made me feel good. It was different than anything I had written before. And I had wanted to try something different.

So, long story short. It got picked up by Macmillan and Tor, and then I was given the date. In 2019, I was given the date, March 17th, 2020. And you can imagine getting that date and knowing this is gonna be my first huge traditionally published book. This is gonna be the book that changes everything. This is gonna be the book that people are gonna be like, “Oh my God, look at this book. It’s so good.” And I’m gonna be like, “Hell yeah it is. It is. Thank you very much for saying so.” And so for that year. That year I was like, “March 17th, 2020’s going to be the best day of my life.”

And that’s a Tuesday. The Thursday before, I got a phone call at like six o’clock at night, and the area code was New York City. And I was like, “Oh, this is probably somebody from my publisher wanting to call me and say, you’re so cool, TJ. We love you. We can’t wait to publish this book.” And it was a vice president of Tor publishing. And I was like, wow, you really wanna tell me I’m doing a good job, huh? No, that’s not what she wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about, “Hey TJ, have you heard of this thing called COVID-19?” I was like, “Well, yeah, what does that have to do with me?” And she goes, “Well, it’s getting kind of bad, so we’re canceling everybody’s book tour and everybody who’s on tour has to come home right now. And your book comes out next week and we don’t know what we’re gonna do, so let’s figure something out.”

And I just remember being devastated. I was like, “Coronavirus screw you” because the week “The House in the Cerulean Sea” came out, the pandemic exploded in the United States. While you were all out buying every piece of toilet paper there was and wiping down your cereal boxes, for reasons I still don’t understand, I was sitting here going, “Hey, do you wanna read a book about being nice and the antichrist?”

And so the book came out, and I’m gonna be brutally honest with you guys right now, the week the book came out, it sold less than my own self-published book that had come out the year before. And I was devastated. I was like, okay. I got the world was falling into a nightmare that would last… we didn’t know that it would last for many years. But it was falling into a nightmare that would last for a very long time. And all I was thinking about was me, me, me, me, me, me. Why isn’t this, you know? And it, it brought some perspective because I apparently was getting high on my own supply. I was sitting there thinking, “Oh, I’m gonna be so good. This is gonna be so amazing.”

Then a funny thing happened. Everybody was stuck at home. So what do you do when you’re stuck at home? Well, a lot of people read. So more and more people started picking up “The House in the Cerulean Sea” until eight months later, it debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list on January 6th, 2021.

So when the sequel comes out in September, y’all are screwed. My bad. But I remember, getting the news. I mean, like most people, we were all watching the news that day of the storming of the Capitol. And my publisher called me and I was like, why is she calling me? What is going on now? It was my editor. And she goes, “Are you sitting down?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m watching TV. Why is it getting worse?” She goes, “No, you’re number 12 on ‘The New York Times’ bestseller list.” And I said, “What today? I can’t announce this today.” And then I did. Anyways. But look “The House in the Cerulean Sea” has gone on to sell over a million copies in North America alone. That is extraordinary. That is powerful. That is amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

But the thing that sticks with me the most are this, the deep in the pandemic, I got a, Facebook message. I don’t use Facebook anymore. I haven’t for a long time, but I definitely do not check direct messages because some of y’all are very weird. And I don’t know why I decided to click on this message. I think it was because it literally popped up right when I was doing something on Facebook. And it was a block of a small paragraph in brackets. And it was from a dad, a queer dad. He and his husband had a seven-year-old kid. And he goes in the bracket, he goes, my son would like to tell you about “The House in the Cerulean Sea.”

The dad typed as the kid talked. What followed was a stream of consciousness book report on my own book. It went on. I had to scroll through this. I like this, I like this. And then they went there, and then they did this, and then they did that. Then they did this and this. And at the end he goes, “This book made me feel happy because I was sad because I couldn’t see my friends. And this book made me feel like I had friends again. Would you like to see my Chauncey costume?” Forgetting I was speaking to a child. I typed back, “Hell yes. I want to see your Chauncey costume.”

This little rad little dude had gotten himself full body green spandex. He had put suction cups on his arms for tentacles. He had put paper towel rollers on his head for the stalks for his eyes, and put golf balls on the tops for the ice, and wore a little bellhop cap. He made the entire thing himself.

Second person I want you to tell you about why I love doing what I do and why it’s important that I do what I do. I got asked to go to a very rural school in West Virginia, and when I say it’s a very rural school, I mean that it was a school for kindergarten through 12th grade, all in one school. So what I was there to do was speak to the 6th to the 12th graders. So I got up on stage. I was speaking to like 200 kids. I got up on stage and you know what I used the word queer. I use that word a lot because that’s how I describe myself. That is a word that I’ve reclaimed. That is a word, in addition to being called many other slurs, but also gay and stuff like that, it’s a word that was thrown at me so much over my life, and so I wanted people to hear that word from an actual queer person. a queer person who has been right where they are.

Apparently, the school board did not like that. I got told by the librarian afterwards that the school board was gonna call her in for a talk about what kind of people she invites to the school and what they say. And why? They were upset because I’d used the word queer because they thought it might make some student uncomfortable to hear that word. After that meeting where I talked to them about “The House in the Cerulean Sea” and everything that I do.

After that meeting, I got to meet with some select kids that were chosen cause they wanted to ask questions. This 12-year-old boy walks up to me, looks me straight in the eye, and he goes, “I know all about the gay stuff.” I said, “What do you mean, tiny little 12-year-old boy? What do you know all about the gay stuff?” And he said, “Last year I had a girlfriend. He came out as trans and now he’s my boyfriend.” If a 12-year-old can do that, why the hell cannot adults do this same exact thing? If it is that easy for a child, why is it so hard for adults?

Which leads me to why I wrote “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.” I wrote “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” because I’m so sick and tired of nobody asking the kids what they want. Kids today are smarter, savvy, more worldly than we ever were at their age. They know what’s going on to their queer and trans classmates. They know the books that are being taken out of the schools. They know about wars and genocides that are occurring on the other side of the earth. They know, they are angry, and they are going to change the world. They’re gonna make this world a better place than we ever left it.

And I am so… I don’t worry… I worry about the future. But I don’t worry about it to the regard that I know that we are gonna be okay because generations that are coming up after us are gonna change everything. And boy, I’m gonna wait for that because there’s something that, this might get me in trouble, so I apologize cause I’m gonna say something. It’s about time that these old white politicians in power die. It’s about time that they go because they do not represent the people that they’re supposed to represent. And we’ll get into that more with the sequel about why I wrote it, but yeah. Oh, that was a big old diatribe. You’re welcome.

Jeff: As the pandemic was unfolding, TJ was on “Big Gay Fiction,” cause of course we’re gonna talk to TJ about this book that he’s written. And within that interview you talked a little bit about the, what was then the forthcoming kindness trilogy. Because “Cerulean Sea,” of course, was followed by “Under the Whispering Door,” was followed by “In the Lives of Puppets,” and those you termed them the “Kindness Trilogy” at the time.

TJ: I had actually, if in case for some people don’t know, I actually wrote all three of those books before “The House in the Cerulean Sea” came out in 2020. So all of those books were done by the time “The House in the Cerulean Sea” came out.

Jeff: He writes a lot of books, just so you know. And we’ll definitely talk about that later. In this interview that we were doing, cause in your past, you’ve done sequels. “Green Creek” has four books. “Verania” has what, five or six. And will “Cerulean” ever have a sequel? It’s like, “Eh, I thought about this as a standalone. I don’t really see a sequel for it.” What was the catalyst? Was it those students that you were seeing? Was it something else in the world that’s like, this is the catalyst and I know what this book is?

TJ: So, last year I got asked a question at an event like this. And I got asked, “What do you think your legacy will be?” And me being an asshole, I kind of said, “What do I care? I’ll be dead. Who cares if somebody remembers my name 50 or a hundred years from now? I won’t be here to even see it. So what’s the point? The most I wanna do is while I’m here on this earth… that’s what I want to do with my time, is change things while I’m here.”

But I kind of realized I’m a liar and a fat mouth cause that’s not quite true. That is not quite true. I do want to be remembered for something very specific and it is a reason that “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” exists. I want to be remembered as the anti-J. K. Rowling. I want to be the one that is remembered for standing up against everything she stands for. I wanna be the person who can look a billionaire author in the eye and say, “Well, you shouldn’t be a billionaire, first and foremost, because that’s evil. And second of all, you’re a transphobic monster. Who the hell do you think you are?”

Now, at the end of the day, J. K. Rowling doesn’t know who I am, and that’s totally okay with me. But here’s the thing. I have a platform. I tell the stories that I do. I cannot just use my platform to tell stories. I have to speak up about my community. Why? Because the world has made my community a political talking point in everything that we do. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but it is. Queer people, especially trans people, now in this day and age are at the focus of vitriol and hatred the likes we haven’t seen in a very long time.
I remember in 2015, nine years ago, gay marriage was legalized. Only nine years ago in 2015. And I remember people online saying, “Yay, homophobia is over. We solved it. Hooray.” But no. “The House in the Cerulean Sea” exists because of this reason. J. K. Rowling sucks.

And two, over the past few years, trans people, parents of trans people, medical professionals who provide gender affirming care, were invited to speak in front of the United States government over many hearings. And in these hearings, most of the politicians fell into two camps. One, they said, “We hear you. We see you. We appreciate you.” And then they went around and turned and voted against everything that would’ve protected the trans people who were talking to them. The other group, the worst smarmy group, questioned trans people, parents of trans children, about trans bodies, about their right to exist, about being pedophiles or groomers or anything like that. And they did it with smiles on their faces.

Can you imagine going to speak your truth, going to tell the world who you are, and then having people who were voted to represent you question your right to exist? That is infuriating and disgusting on multiple levels. But I will tell you this. I got to speak with some of those people in doing research for “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.” I got to speak to some of those people and I asked them all different questions. But I asked them all one question, the same across the board in particular, “Knowing what you know now after what you’ve seen, what you went through, would you go do this all over again if you had to?” Everybody said absolutely, unequivocally, “Yes. We would get up there. We would speak our truth no matter what kind of anger, hatred, whatever that we were experiencing, we would speak our truth.”

And that reminded me of Arthur Parnassus to a T. Arthur Parnassus, who has been beaten down, broken down for years upon years upon years. Who gave part of himself, gave all of himself to not just keep himself safe, but to also keep children safe, his community safe.

So in this book, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” the villain is based on J. K. Rowling. She is explicitly the villain, and her ideologies are the villain in this book. In addition to that, there is a scene in this book that comes early on. I’m not gonna spoil it here too much, but I will say this. You guys remember at the end of “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” Arthur was called to testify about his experience. He is going to be ambushed, but like the same way that people of trans families, trans parents, the gender affirming community was ambushed. And we are gonna see just how… I’m in a library, but I’m gonna say this, we’re just gonna see how many fucks he has left to give because I am angry.

And you’re gonna see my anger in this book. You’re gonna see that kind of anger. But it all boils down to the question that I ask myself over and over again, if we are making all of these decisions on behalf of children, why is nobody asking the children what they want? And that is why I wrote this book.

Jeff: There’s a quote I want to talk about that Sal says to Arthur, as Arthur and Linus are preparing to leave. And it ties directly to what he said, but… I’ve never marked up something as much as I marked up four chapters of an excerpt. I was like, “Oh, that line, that line, that line.” And this was really profound to me.

And it goes directly to what you said. And so Sal has pulled Arthur aside as they’re getting ready to leave, pull them aside from the rest of the children. And he says this because apparently they don’t want the children to necessarily listen to the testimony that’s gonna be broadcast on the radio. So Sal says, “You want to protect us from the people who don’t like us. And I get it. I do. But then in the next breath, you tell us we need to use our voices because those same people should know who we are.” And I can’t imagine, and you probably have insight from the research that you did, how many conversations that happen in homes where trans children are, where queer children are, and being faced with all this.

TJ: Right? I mean, you’ve hopefully all heard the stories about how there are trans families that are having to move out of their states because the fact that, A, it’s not safe for them. B, they may not be able to get the care that they are trying to get anymore. But you may also be thinking, doesn’t that sound awfully familiar to what’s going on with women who are now seeking abortions and stuff like that? Why is that? That’s because transphobia is deeply rooted in misogyny and the fact that it’s an attack on trans women.

I mean, look, when you look on the news and they’re talking about trans people in sports, it’s trans women in sports. It’s not trans men. It’s trans women in sports. Trans women are being pulled out of sport competitions for darts, for pool. I did not know that as a man I had a biological advantage to throwing needles at a wall. That is insane. What else can men do? Besides everything?

But you also have to think about these conversations that are having to be had with kids. The fact that we want, we are proud of you. We… I mean, in a good home. In a loving, well-respected home, you’ll have parents telling their kids, we love you. We support you. We want you to show your truth to the world. But we also need to keep you safe because there are people out there who would do you harm. And where do you draw that line?

And so exploring that from Arthur’s perspective means so much more than if I had written from Linus perspective again, because Arthur not only has been with the children much longer, he is in essence doing everything he can to protect them. Which is not to say Linus isn’t, but Linus can’t quite get it.

And that comes up in this book, you know, Linus and Arthur… There’s not gonna be a mysterious man who comes in and wrecks up the relationship or anything like that. They are strong. But also in relationships, you quarrel. You, I don’t wanna say fight, but you do go back and forth. And something Linus has to appreciate is that he may not always understand what it’s like for Arthur and the children, because he’s not like they are in a way. He has their best interest in heart.

But it goes back to the conversations that we need to have of, we’re always talking about helping people. Why aren’t we listening to the people who are wanting our help? And I don’t know, it just blows my mind that we can hear from parents and then hear from trans youth themselves about how desperately unhappy they were before they came out as trans, before they started transitioning, before they got a new name that they felt was more right for themself. That is… you can see the relief and the hope and the joy on their faces that they are no longer living a secret.

And that’s… if a queer person, you probably know that as well, at some point in your life when you came out, had to have felt like, okay, even if it wasn’t in the best situation, had to have felt like at least it is out there now. At least I am not carrying this burden inside anymore. And so when we have these people who are going out and speaking their truth, speaking their joy, only to have people try to snuff that out. That blows my mind. And then, you know, not to harp on her for too long, even though she deserves for it to go on forever, but to have J. K. Rowling every single day being online basically attacking trans people.

Do you know how many people she got to read because of her books? This is the same thing whether or not you liked the “Harry Potter” books before JK Rowling. The same thing goes with like the “Twilight” books. The same thing can even be said about books like “50 Shades of Gray.” It got so many people to pick up books that had never read or hadn’t read in a very long time. And that is something to be celebrated. But then to have the author turn into the very thing she wrote about fighting against, that has to be such an extraordinary slap in the face to everybody who has lifted them up, these characters, these books up.

I have a hard time with the argument, “Can you separate the art from the artist?” I don’t know what the right answer here is for that. If the “Harry Potter” books bring you joy and you reread them, that is totally your prerogative. But I hope we can all be aware that people like J. K. Rowling, transphobic people who spend their days just attacking others for simply existing. How are we okay with this? How are we okay when statistics can come out from the National Health Institute that says in places like San Francisco trans youth under the age of 25, at least 48% of them have attempted to kill themselves at least one point in their life? That’s almost 50%. When has that ever been acceptable? Not for any community, should that be acceptable.

And I just… you know what? Talking about being the anti-J. K. Rowling, man, I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life. I don’t know how much longer I have on this earth. Maybe I have a few years, maybe I have another 50 years. But for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be spending my time making sure that everybody knows that if you are part of my community, if you are a queer community, if you have ever been othered or marginalized in some way, shape, or form, come to me. I got your back. I will be here for you, telling the stories that we didn’t get to see when we were kids. Telling the stories that are being banned from our schools and libraries. Telling the stories that matter because somewhere in this world, there is a queer kid in a rural area who does not get to have the hope and love and support that he has, even now in 2024. And it is so vital that we continue to tell these stories and continue to use our platforms to show support for people who are being dragged through the mud for no reason other than that they exist. I’m mad, obviously.

Jeff: All the books you’ve ever done that I’ve read, and I still have many to read in your library, even though I’ve read a lot of them, the representation, the accuracy of queer portrayals, it’s always been a cornerstone in your books going back to the very beginning. How has it evolved in your storytelling over time?

Because as we talked a little bit… Every book you do is different, or at least every series is, could be wildly different from one to the other. From werewolves to “Cerulean Sea,” to “Whispering Door” to all of these. How has your storytelling evolved to continue to tell those stories in new ways and in ways that can highlight what’s happening in society?

TJ: So, when my first book came out in 2011, I was 28 years old and I didn’t know what I was doing. I know, we’re old now. I feel so gross.

Jeff: Thank you for that so much.

TJ: Yeah. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m 42 years old now and I’ve grown up in a certain spotlight this whole time. You know, my career has been,… I’ve been very lucky in my career and a lot of people following my work. And then that went on an even bigger scale with “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” And so tenants, touchstones of my work, they will always be about queer people. Straight people have enough stuff written about them. There will always be, unless I go into horror, there will always be queer people getting the ending that they deserve. If I go into horror, all bets are off, because when you write horror, the best horror novels are the ones that end when everybody’s dead, and the monster wins, and you’re like, “Oh, I feel sad now.”

As I said before, I never got to see myself in books when I was a kid. The first book I got to see myself in was, oh boy, “The Front Runner” by Patricia Nell Warren. If you do not know that book, it was a book written in the seventies by a straight white woman. It became the first critically and commercially successful queer novel. It was about a man in his thirties who is a running coach, who is training a collegiate runner to be in the Olympics, and it’s their love story. And I’d never seen anything like that in a book before I was 13 years old. I’m about to spoil a 50-year-old book. The book ends with one of the main characters getting murdered at his Olympic event. He’s shot, assassinated by a sniper and that’s the end of the book.

So imagine you finding queer people in her book for the first time and then all of a sudden they’re dead. And what’s funny about that is Miss Nell Warren read my very first book and she wrote to me. And I, of course, I freaked out because this is Patricia Nell Warren, who’s one of the greatest authors. And I told her “The Front Runner” was my very first book with gay characters in it. And she goes, “I’m so sorry.” Miss Nell Warren has since passed. She passed away some years ago. But the most prized book in my collection is a first edition, “The Front Runner” signed by her. It is the absolute best thing I’ve got.

You know, looking back on that book from when I was 13 to now being 42, I can see why it devastated me. But at the same time, I can see why that book was so important. But for me, queer joy, queer happiness, is the most important thing. Can we go through ups and downs? Can bad things happen in life? Yes. Because it does in the real world. But to me, at the end of the day, queer joy, queer empowerment, and to see queer people succeed and to get the same things that everybody else gets, that’s something that I think so many of us still take for granted.

I really think that we get to read these books and we get to see ourselves in TV shows, and we get to see ourselves in movies, and stuff like that. Ten years ago, that wasn’t the case. I mean, I don’t know. I was just reading an article the other day about how Laura Dern when she appeared on the Ellen Show in the late nineties with Ellen coming out on the sitcom she had. Laura Dern was blacklisted from Hollywood for a while because of that.

Could you imagine? Well, A, blacklisting Laura Dern, I could never. But B, just a straight woman, a straight white woman, went on a show where she played the love interest to Ellen DeGeneres and Hollywood blacklister her because of that. And that was the late nineties. We’ve come so far in a short amount of time. But again, we just got the right to legalize gay marriage less than a decade ago. And that’s something that could get overturned. It could just as easily, several justices have… couple of the justices have already signaled that they think it oversteps. So you think, “Oh, that can’t happen.” Well, we said the same thing about Roe v. Wade, didn’t we? So what are we gonna do when they get done with trans people? Do you think that they’re not gonna come for the rest of the LGBTQ community? They will.

It’s just starting with us. It’s just starting with the trans community. And I just want to make sure that while I am here on this earth, that I’m putting out as much queer joy, queer positivity, queer stories for people like me who never got to see themselves in books. My books are for anybody who wants to read them, but at the end of the day, I write with my queer audience front and center because they are who I am writing for, because I am writing for our community who never got to see stuff like this. I mean, can you imagine being a kid in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and getting a book like “The House in the Cerulean Sea?” Do you know how much that could have changed?

Do you know much being able to go to a school and getting to be a part of what they used to call the Gay Straight Alliances? Could you imagine being a kid in rural Oregon in the nineties, like I was, coming of age and having something like that instead of having nothing and then going home to a family who literally hated my existence because I was queer?

I do what I do because if I don’t do it, nobody’s gonna tell the stories like I can. And that’s why I’m so happy to see so many queer, trans science fiction and fantasy authors just tearing up the charts. We were talking backstage, there’s authors like Andrew Joseph White. There’s authors like Ryka Aoki. There’s non-binary authors like Anna-Marie McLemore, who write some of the most profound and beautiful queer and trans stories. And they’re just getting started. And I’m just getting… I’m 30 books in. I’m just getting started. I’m gonna keep on writing books till my fricking fingers fall off, man.

Jeff: 30 books. I didn’t know the back that was that big now.

TJ: I know that makes me feel older. Talking about being in our twenties. what the hell?

Jeff: I wanna come back to the 7-year-old for a second who read “Cerulean” and gave you the book report. Did you anticipate that “Cerulean” would be either read or read to that age group?

TJ: No.

Jeff: Because I mean…

TJ: No I sure didn’t.. Tell you funny, I totally just forgot about this until now. In the editing stage of “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” my editor said, “Hey, TJ, you’ve told me one of your favorite words in the world. And that word is fuck. There are three instances of that word in “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” If you take those three words out, this book could potentially open it up to a wider readership because there are people who go into bookstores, libraries and say, does this book have any foul language in it? And if you say yes, they’re like, oh, I’m not doing that.”

I wish I had pushed back a little more because at the end of the day, “The House in the Cerulean Sea” is not a young adult novel. It is an adult novel about a 40-year-old man. But I did take those words out. I don’t regret it because after that book report, after the child showed me his Chauncey costume that he’d made up elaborate, I had to sit there and ask myself, am I a goddamn children’s author?

Like, what is this? And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m totally fine with that. I love… I have seen so many kids, who identify as queer, kids who don’t, kids who are questioning, whatever. I have seen so many kids. I’ve had so many kids come to me and say, this is me. I’m Chauncey. I’m Lucy. I am Theodore. I’m Sal. I’m Talia. I’m Phee. I’ve had parents, social workers come up to me and say, I have a Phee. I have a Lucy. I have a Chauncey. I have a Sal. I have a Theodore. I have a Talia. And that to me, at the end of the day, is the magic of stories, man.

I wrote something that I set out… that was intended to be read by a certain segment of the audience. My publisher, my editor, saw something more in that, and like a good editor does, deleted my words. And until she thought this would be something that could be pretty special. And she was right, because after “The House in the Cerulean Sea” came out, it went on to win the Alex Award, which is an award given by libraries for books for adults that have crossover appeal to younger readers. And that is one of the coolest thing that I have ever gotten, because I’d never expected that.

And now that I know that’s a thing, I am wholeheartedly a children’s author for the most part. That’s why when Tor decided to purchase the “Green Creek” series and re-release those, I had them have them put on there, “this is for an adult audience.” Because I didn’t want parents to be like, “Oh, look at the cute little wolf. I bet this book is gonna be nice and cuddly.” And then have to have a children come up and be like, “Mom, what sex?”

So, I do… I love… I’m never going to probably write YA again like I did with “The Extraordinaries.” I did that. I’m good with how that came out and I’m kind of done with that. But I’m gonna write stories that I hope can be read by as many people of all ages as possible. I get emails from 80, 90-year-old people saying, “I’m probably not the right age group for this.” I’m like, you can pick up a book and read. So you’re definitely the right age group for this. That’s all that matters to me. You know, when you have people of all ages coming together to read something, that’s something special. That’s something very cool that I did not expect, and I’m just absolutely grateful for.

Jeff: Could you see a world where there is a children’s book that features the children?

TJ: Oh God, yes. I already have an idea for that. Let me tell you what that idea is.

Jeff: Perfect.

TJ: So I wanna do like an illustrated, not maybe graphic novel, but like an illustrated book that follows Chauncey as he gets his own hotel. And he is also the… wait…. hold on. It gets better, trust me. I’ve given a lot of thought to this. It gets so much better. Wait. Ready? So not only is Chauncey the owner of the hotel, he’s also the bellhop. He’s also the concierge. He has different hats for each one of them. And he also solves inconsequential mysteries. Like somebody stole the flatware from the kitchen. He takes off his bellhop cap and puts on a Sherlock Holmes cap and has to go around and solve those mysteries. Come on now.

Jeff: And this comes out when?

TJ: I know for real. But like in my head… I mean, in my head, it’s Chauncey, Chauncey, Chauncey. Chauncey, like if you’ve heard me speak before, you know that I could have… When I growing up, I had a choice. I could either have been psychotic or a writer and I chose to be a writer because I hear voices in my head. I hear characters speak. I hear characters talk. Chauncey was the first character I really kind of heard, and Chauncey does not shut up. Chauncey has been in my head for a very, very long time and I have a feeling that he’s gonna be there for a long time to come. So we’ll see what happens in the future.

Jeff: Because the other thing that came to my head, as you mentioned, that was like a Chauncey cozy mystery series.

TJ: Yeah, the kind that have like a dog on the cover… but it’s Sal. This is a were-Pomeranian on the cover, was Sal and there’s some… what if there was one? What if there was a book? Oh my God, this just came to me. Ready? Witness my genius. Ready? Hold on. It’s a series and it’s a five book series and each one he pairs up with one of the other kids to have to solve the mysteries in there. Come on.

Jeff: All of you want that, right? There’s the books that come in like 2028, 29, 30…

TJ: I know. Or like a “House in the Cerulean Sea” coloring book, or a “House in the Cerulean Sea” video game that’s like “Stardew Valley” and you could just go around your island, and build up your island, and play with Chauncey the whole time. Come on. It’s like printing money. Jesus Christ.

Jeff: You’ve mentioned J.K. Rowling a lot, or the author whose name we should not speak, the way that she operates not withstanding, there’s a lot of authors, those in the entertainment business, who are often told you shouldn’t express your opinion because we just want to buy your books or your movies or your music or whatever it is, and you shouldn’t have a political opinion. You shouldn’t thrust your ideas on social issues at us. You do that all the time in your,…

TJ: Some of my critics have accused me of beating people over the head with the messages in my book. To that I say some of you need to be beat over the head with the messages in my books.

Jeff: What do you say to newer authors, or ones who listen more to that, and maybe try to put that piece of them away, not maybe just in their writing, but in their interactions with readers and out in the world? What tips do you have to help them understand how to navigate that and interact with their readers that way? Cause you do it with no fear.

TJ: Well, some fear. No, I’m just kidding. It’s… Look back in 2016, the night that Donald Trump was elected, I was still using… I remember this so clearly. I posted on Facebook, “Everybody who voted for Donald Trump, we see you. We know what you’ve done. The future, you know, you’re going to see what happens because of what you did. So many people are gonna get hurt.” I had readers in my comments going, “Oh, you don’t need to talk about stuff like this. You’re just there to write books. We don’t… I guess I’ll never read your books again because you’re making political opinion.” As I said before, so many people have made my entire life a political talking point. So of course I’m going to speak up.

But at the same time, I know that there is that fear that new authors have about, if you say the wrong thing, you are going to be canceled or people are going to review bomb your books or people are gonna… And by the way, if you’re one of the people who do that and you’re here for some reason, go to hell. My thing is this, you have to be firm in your convictions. You have to… I mean, I can say that from the safety of, “Oh, he’s a New York Times bestselling author who’s written 30 plus books. You know, he sells a lot of books. People know who he is.” And I get that. I have privilege. I absolutely 100% have privilege to do what I do. At the same point, that doesn’t negate the fact that I busted my ass to get here, to get to this point, and doing so I pissed off a lot of people talking about things that were important to me.

At the end of the day, a writer should make a choice for themselves what they do or what they do not do. But if you are a queer person, if you are a person of color, if you are a marginalized person, part of some community, you have to know that at some point they are going to come for you. There’s gonna be people who literally hate you for existing. You didn’t do anything wrong to them. You simply breathe the same air that they do and they will hate that for existing. And if we cannot counteract that kind of hate, that kind of vitriol with showing real live queer people in the world, doing things and talking about things that are important to us, then what are we even doing? We have to speak up against everybody who hates us.

Arthur says in the book, “Hate is Loud, but I am louder.” And that is so important because you’ll learn that all the hate that you hear online, all the hate you see on the news and stuff like that, it is by a very few desperate people who are shouting because no one else will listen to them. One day they’re all gonna go away. One day their voices will fail. One day their voices will crack and they’ll realize nobody is listening to me. I hope that might give them pause to say, okay, what have I done?

I’m not counting on it, but I can hope for something like that. And I really do. I know I’ve long said that I don’t like people, but I love humanity cause humanity gave us books, and music, and art, and wonder, and creativity. People disappoint on a regular basis. So if you’re in a position like mine, what do you do with your platform? Do you just tell stories? Or do you realize that you have a voice like Arthur says, like Linus says, a few voices coming together can turn into a roar. And that’s what we have to do. When you have somebody like she who should not be named, using that her platform every single day to do what she does, and people still buy her books, well guess what? I’m gonna be here laying the smackdown on her, and people will still be buying my books too, and that’s totally okay.

And if you don’t buy my book because I said something that offended you because you don’t like the way I use the word language, you don’t like how I talk about how there’s certain authors who should not be allowed to do what they do, and they should be shunned from any civilized society, then maybe you should think you’re… ask yourself, “Why does that make me mad? Why does that make me angry?” The people we should be angry at are not the people who are telling stories. The people we should be angry at are the ones who are trying to take every single one of our rights away. And that’s, at the end of the day, that is the most important thing to focus on.

I tell stories, but I’m also using my voice to make sure that people know that we won’t be silent, we won’t be quiet. You wanna try to take away our rights, our people, our community. We are not going down without a fight. And trust me, you will lose because gay people, holy shit, we are bitchy as hell.

Jeff: Sacramento Pride is this weekend. You’ve been on the show a number of times in Pride Month, and I always ask this question to guests in Pride Month, so it’s nice that we get to do it here, live this time. What does pride mean to you sitting here June, 2024?

TJ: So in Tucson, Arizona, I lived there for 16 years. Does anybody here in this room know how Pride started in Tucson, Arizona? It’s okay if you don’t. Pride started in Tucson, Arizona because four teenagers under the age of 18 murdered a gay man as he was coming out of the gay bar. He was not from Tucson. His name was Richard, and he was visiting from out of town. He went to a gay bar. As he came out of the gay bar, he was attacked by four young men who murdered him. These young men were given probation, no jail time. Probation, I believe was for a year for all four of them. The queer community said no. Queer community came together and in 1977, that’s when the Tucson Pride first held their pride.

You probably all know about Stonewall. Do you guys know about the Black Cat in Silver Lake? Stonewall was not where the Pride riot started in the United States. They actually occurred in Silver Lake, California at the Black Cat where the Black Cat still stands. It’s a restaurant now and there’s still a sign. The original sign for the Black Cat. There used to be gay and lesbian bars all the way around there. Then they were raided. The first Pride was born out of that raid, that rage in Silver Lake, California.

Does anybody know in this room why LGBTQ… why we have the L first? It’s because in the eighties and nineties during the AIDS crisis, lesbians were the only ones who came to the gay men to hold them while they were dying. They were the only ones who filled the hospitals with the sick and the dying and the bereaved to take care of their community. So to honor them, it used to be GLBT. So to honor the women who came for us at our hour of need, we made it LGBT because they put us first. So we put them first. That is what pride means to me.

Pride means to me, in the face of adversity, no matter what happens to our community, we still come together. We still thrive and like queer people, like trans people, we have always been here and we will always be here. You know, to add on to something like that, unfortunately I find myself in a very weird role where I can be considered a queer elder because there’s an entire generation of queer men who are dead with the, for the AIDS, and the for Nancy and Ronald Reagan, who let them die in the eighties. There should be an entire generation above mine here, offering support and solace to the queer community, but they were allowed to die. So if you are a young, queer person, I’m not gonna tell you to do your homework. But I do want you to know that it’s important to know your history. Know the queer and trans people and people of color who fought for your rights to be here.

You think that we have all the rights that we need right now. We just got legalized marriage nine years ago. That’s not ancient history, that’s history that’s still warm to the touch. And that’s something that could be taken away. So when you have pride, your pride should not only be in yourself, but it should also be in the idea of helping others in your community and coming together.

Jeff: Well said. Absolutely. So as we wrap up.

TJ: Shit. Already?

Jeff: I know. The time is like…

TJ: Wow. Okay, cool. Then you guys can wrap up and then I’m gonna tell you a story.

Jeff: Ooh. A story, okay. So you can answer this question fast and get to the story. “Somewhere Beyond The Sea” comes out in September. What else is out there that you can tell us about? And you know, can we pull any teasers out of you for other stuff? And I know the answer to that’s no, but I’m gonna ask him anyway.

TJ: I’m gonna see if I can dance around this a little bit. Okay. So “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” September 10th. Nothing bad’s gonna happen on that day, I promise. Just go by the book and read it. It’s wonderful. If you hear things about like, “Oh no, there’s some kind of like avian cow flu or something.” Ignore it. Just read the book, it’s fine.

Next February is the re-release of the “Bones Beneath My Skin” a story. I am so, so thrilled about that it’s getting a new release cause that was a very…

Jeff: Have y’all read that? Do people know “Bones Beneath My Skin?”

TJ: Oh my God. When it gets released in hardcover…

Jeff: Oh, you are in for something.

TJ: Oh my God. If you ever wanted to see what would happen if TJ Klune wrote a queer action thriller with helicopter chases, and explosions, and gay sex, well, guess what? I have a book for you.

After that we get into the darkest time, the murky time, the stuff that has not been confirmed yet. But I will say this, I have three novels already written that have not been announced yet. I will say that the one that comes out next fall, the fall of 2025, is my first non-human character as the main character. It is a dog who thinks he’s immortal and then finds out he’s not, and then turns into a drama queen and tries to get his owner into a relationship.

The second, my Fall 2026 book, was born out of me and my editor randomly talking about black holes. So that comes out… That’ll be coming out at some point.

But next week, on June 12th, y’all get something for free. If you’ve read “In the Lives of Puppets,” you will know that there’s a very long storied history in that book about what happened to the world. I have written a 10,000 word short story that comes out for free next week set in the world of “In the Lives of Puppets” except a few hundred years before. And we get to meet new characters. And it is my first foray into horror. It is not gross, splatter, gross kind of horror. It’s more spooky as in something is not quite right here in what’s going on. I am so proud of this book because you guys get to meet a character named Douglas who may very well be the very first iteration of this world’s version of the Blue Ferry. And it is such a cool story. And tomorrow… is tomorrow. Thursday? Tomorrow I’ll be posting the artwork for the first time on Instagram that an Asian, a Chinese artist did that blew my fricking mind, man. It is crazy nuts. So I’m gonna be revealing that tomorrow. Then that comes out next week.

Beyond that, can y’all keep a secret? I have one more idea in mind for “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” This story… it probably won’t happen for a few more years because I did 2020, “House in the Cerulean Sea,” 2024, the sequel comes out. So maybe 2028. We’ll see it. Eight years into the future. What happens when Lucy takes the center stage and tells his own story? So we may end this with a trilogy capper.

So just keep in mind that one day… cause I had this idea in my head. I’ve covered a lot of parts in these books about adoption, about foster care and stuff like that. But I’ve never really talked about what happens when your real dad comes back and wants to see you. Who’s Lucy’s real dad? Ha. Hooray. So we’ll see how that goes, but I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’ve also already written like 30,000 words of it.

Jeff: Heard it here first.

TJ: Okay, so to wrap up, I want to tell you guys two stories. One of empowerment and the other one is just fricking hysterical.

One of empowerment. When I was a kid, my father died when I was five years old in a car accident. My mother remarried to a man with a last name Klune, six months later. This man adopted me and my sister giving us the last name, Klune. My first, my original last name was Irwin. He was and his family, surrounded us with some of the most vile, racist, homophobic people you could ever know. My life was a living hell growing up in this house. I don’t know if you ever know what it feels like to have a person, a parental figure, despise you. I did. He didn’t like my existence. He didn’t like my queerness. He didn’t like how effeminate I was. He didn’t like how I talked, how I acted, how I breathe. He didn’t like how they… I had ADHD, but they refused to go get me diagnosed or tested for. He didn’t like how loud I was. How I could never sit down and shut up.

His entire… that side of the entire family all berated me constantly. You need to be more of a man. You need to do more manly things. You have to do this, you have to do that. You can’t sit with your legs crossed. No, you cannot go play with your sister’s dolls. No, you can’t read certain kinds of books. You need to do this. You need to do sports. That whole family, when I came out at the age of 16, my step grandparents cut me out of their will. All that family kind of shunned me and everything like that. You know how I got my revenge? I took their last name Klune, and I made it the gayest thing in the world. Now, if anybody looks up the last name Klune, you know what they see? This motherfucker right here. They don’t get to see any of their bullshit.

Last thing I’ll tell you. Deep in the pandemic, I did a lot of online book clubs for “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” Once I got an invitation from a Southern Baptist church, they were reading “The House in the Cerulean Sea” for their book club and wanted to know if I’d come to speak to them online, virtually, of course.

And they were gonna be at their church while doing this. And I said, “Oh, this’ll be fun.” I get there. It’s row after row of white women in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. All of them were smiling except for one. She was in the top right corner and she glared at me the entire hour. She did not speak.

Everybody else was lovely. Everybody else is kind and everybody else is fun. But she did not speak. So I got done and I thought, “Okay, that’s gonna be the end of that. I’ll never hear from any of them again.” Oh, guess who sent me an email the next day? An email from the lady in the top right corner who’s very pissed off at me, who’s very upset.

Why was she upset? She wanted to let me know how dare I include the character of the antichrist in a book. Did I not know who the antichrist was? Did I not know what the antichrist was capable of? Did I not know what it was prophesied that he would do? And while she did come to care about the 6-year-old antichrist, she wished I had gone in a different direction.

And then she ended the email with the best sign off of any email that I’ve ever received. So much so that I use this sign off in emails to my friends. After taking me to task in paragraph and paragraphs of how much she hated the fact that I included the antichrist, she ended the email by saying, but I did not mind the homosexuals.

Thank you all very much.

Jeff: Thank you everybody. Thank you TJ.

Wrap-Up

Jeff: This episode’s transcript has been brought to you by our community on Patreon. If you’d like to read the conversation for yourself, make sure to check out the show notes page for this episode at biggayfictionpodcast.com. We’ve also got links there to everything that we talked about in this episode.

And thanks so much to TJ for the terrific conversation and to the wonderful crowd that was there that evening. It was really a wonderful event. A big shout out also to the Sacramento Public Library and Todd Deck for allowing us to record the event so we could bring it to you here.

Alright, I think that’s gonna do it for now. Coming up next on Monday, July 29th, authors Nora Phoenix and E.M. Lindsey are going to be here to talk about their first time collaboration on the book “Creek.”

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope that you’ll join us back here again soon for more discussions about the kinds of stories that we all love, the big gay fiction kind. Until then, keep turning those pages and keep reading.

Will: Big Gay Fiction Podcast is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more shows you’ll love at frolic.media/podcasts. Original theme music by Daryl Banner.

 

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