Though TJ Klune had been publishing queer romance books for years, many readers were introduced to his work through the story of a bureaucrat sent to an island of misfit children. Of course, these were not just any children, and this was not just any bureaucrat. The House in the Cerulean Sea took Klune out of the indie scene and launched him into the mainstream, where he continues to bring his loveable characters to life—often through the voice of precocious kids.
Klune is celebrating the re-release of The Bones Beneath My Skin, originally published in 2018, through Tor Books (including a brand-new hardcover). We meet a young man struggling in life. His parents are dead, his brother won’t speak to him, and he just lost his job. He’s adrift, with nowhere to go but the family cabin in the middle of nowhere Oregon. But instead of being empty, he meets a man named Alex and a little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. And the two change his life.
The Bones Beneath My Skin, full of Klune's signature quirky style, simply dares you not to fall head over heels with his characters. I was thrilled to sit down and talk to Klune about his writing process, what it was like moving from indie to traditional publishing, and what he hopes readers take away from his novels.
Let’s start at the beginning. What is your writer origin story? How did you get started writing?
I've been writing ever since I was a kid. When I was six years old, I started carrying this notebook around with me, and I would fill it with whatever stories I could think of. Most of it probably amounts to fan fiction these days. I was writing about a video game called Metroid that I played as a kid. In the game, you play a Space Marine who has a gun for an arm and you try to shoot down aliens. But at the very end of the game, the main character, Samus Aran, takes off their helmet, and you realize you've been playing as a woman the whole time. And that blew my mind. So I ended up writing stories about me and Samus Aran going out and fighting aliens.
Obviously, that led to me wanting to write more and more. Especially as a kid growing up in rural Oregon in the 80s and 90s, I didn't have a lot of outlets for much. I grew up in a household that was not loving. I grew up in a household where reading and writing was something I got made fun of for. I remember being a kid and getting a specific word used about me all the time: weird. I was the weird kid. My parents told me I was weird. My teachers said I was weird, classmates said I was weird, and that for a long time was a pejorative. But as I got older, I realized that my weirdness isn't my defining feature, but it also isn't something that’s bad. It is just part of me, and I've been able to use that weirdness to translate into stories.
Now you've been writing full time for quite a while. What is your writing process like? Do you tend to plot, or do you just kind of like to see where you're going to go from day to day?
I have ADHD, so trying to see where I would go day to day would be an exercise in futility, because I would end up in a location that I didn't even know existed when I started. So, what works best for me is I plot out ridiculous amounts. The House in the Cerulean Sea and its sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, had outlines that were combined around 100,000 words—just for the outline. It includes stuff that goes in the book, but there's also stuff that’s just for me. I put things like my character’s birthdays, their favorite foods, so that I know the characters. And then I go and write.
If I didn't have that guide my books would be a mess. I have to have that focus. And the guide for me is not a set-in-stone map. I have to account for things that might come up while I'm in the middle of writing a story. It's happened before where I've gotten to a point in a story and then I get a really cool idea. That means I have to restart from the beginning—even if I’m halfway done. I've done that a couple of times. Just because those ideas, once they get in my head, they stick, and they won't go away. So, I have to incorporate them. But for the most part, I plot out as much as I possibly can so that I don't get lost.
You started in indie, then you moved to traditional publishing, and now you're seeing previously published titles come back into the mainstream through your traditional publishers. What has that journey been like?
When my very first book came out in 2011, for some reason, I don’t know why, it did well. It was named one of Amazon's best books published that year, and it was a really cool experience. Then my second book came out and completely flopped. I went from a family dramedy to this big science fiction spectacle that didn't make a whole lot of sense. And it was not very good. That’s what I wanted to write, though, so I just continued writing what I wanted to write.
In independent publishing, you make some concessions, to be perfectly blunt. There's no marketing budget, for example. It might be easier to get in with an independent publisher, especially if you're unagented. But at the same time, you also have to consider that thousands of people are self-publishing books every day. How is your book going to stand out with this independent publisher who maybe doesn't have the resources to market it? But the big reason I went with traditional publishing, or chose that direction, was because I wanted to have my books reach a larger audience.
Going to Tor/Macmillan has been extraordinary. They have put so much faith into my work and were willing to bring some of my older books to their imprint. When they asked me which ones I wanted to do, I told them the Green Creek series has emotionally devastated large amounts of people, so let's make that even worse. Let's emotionally devastate other people. I also had The Bones Beneath My Skin. I don’t think it got a fair shake when it came out, and I wanted a redo with it because I adore the story. They agreed, and here we are.
One of the other things that your books do so beautifully is tackle social issues in a way that never feels like preaching. Do you start writing with a theme or topic in mind, or does that develop naturally as you write?
It could be either or both. For example, Somewhere Beyond the Sea exists because of the rising anti-trans movement in the United States that has been going on the past few years. In 2021 and 2022 trans people were invited to testify in front of the government, and they went to talk about their lives, their truths, and themselves not knowing that it was an ambush. Writing that book was very much issue driven because of the fact that that it was necessary to write about that, and I can do that through the lens of the fantastical.
That’s what I love about fantasies. You can take real world issues and put them into a fantastical setting and still have them mean something to people. The House in The Cerulean Sea and its sequel are about bigotry. They’re about marginalization. But not just against one specific person. It's against a whole group of people, which very much happens now. It's one of those things that history continually repeats itself, and we never seem to learn from our mistakes.
Some of these topics can be very heavy in nature. How do you balance the story without making one more important than the other?
I am very much a character-driven author. It is always going to be about my characters. You can talk about the so-called issues of the day and put into your book. But if my characters don't feel real, if it doesn't feel organic, then it feels like I'm taking a hammer and just beating a nail over and over until you get the point. Some of my critics have accused me of being unsubtle, but I never want an issue to overtake my characters.
I feel very protective over them as well, particularly characters like Artemis and Lucy and the rest of the kids on the island. I love them because they're all little bits and parts of me. And so, for better or for worse, I want to make sure that even though they're fictional, they get to have the journey and the happy ending that characters like that deserve, that we normally don't always get to see for people like us in our community.
So, I need my characters to be front and center, to feel organic. I can't just plop in a paragraph or seven to teach somebody a very valuable lesson. That's not what I'm going for. Maybe I am trying to educate, but I'm also trying to entertain. That's what books should do. They should entertain you, regardless of what kind of a book it is. And if you can add layers on top that people can read into or choose to ignore and focus on the story instead, that's totally fine.
You’ve had so many interesting twists and turns in your career. What has been the biggest surprise?
One of the coolest things that's ever happened to me in my career, that I still get chills over, is I was invited in 2022 to speak at the National Archives of the United States with the National Archivist of the United States at the Washington Mall. I got to speak to 2,000 people, and it was one of the coolest events that I have ever been part of. I am absolutely floored that I got to do something like that. Little kid me would never believe that something like that would have happened.
It was one of those moments when I got onto the stage and saw all those people, met the lovely archivist who gave me tours of all the cool things that you couldn't normally see, I realized that this is what I've been working towards. This is what I've been working for. And if nothing else were to happen on that scale again, I got to have that moment. And that's enough for me.
I am very lucky. I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid, and I'm doing it, and not a lot of people get to say something like that. And I'm so humbled and appreciative that I get to do what I've always wanted to do. It's remarkable.
What do you hope your readers will take away from your books?
I write first and foremost with my queer audience in mind. That is something that will never change. My books will always be by, about, and for queer people. But I write for anybody who wants to read. If you want to pick up one of my books, that's wonderful. I get emails from older people who tell me, I don't think I'm the target audience for this book, but I enjoyed it. I write back to them that they are exactly who I want to have read this book.
Over the past few years, I've noticed a very big uptick in the messages I get from male readers, specifically queer men, who are in a generation above mine. They didn't know books like this existed. They didn't know queer people can exist in books and go on adventures and be the heroes and the villains and the sidekicks and get to have happy endings. They didn't know that queer books existed that weren't about just tragedy, because that's all they had. That's all so many of us had growing up.
YA has always been at the forefront of diversity. Now, I believe adult fiction is finally trying to catch up. They have a lot of ground to make up, especially in science fiction and fantasy. But there are so many wonderful, marginalized stories from marginalized creators that are necessary and absolutely vital.
To wrap up, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to new or aspiring writers?
The first piece of advice I would give writers is to remember that what works for one might not work for another. Writing advice can sometimes feel like a dime a dozen. So, my best advice is twofold. One, do not chase trends. Whatever is popular right now probably won't be popular by the time your book comes out. Because once you write a book, especially if you go the traditional publishing route, it could be two years before it comes out. So, don't chase trends. Write what you want to write when you want to write it.
The second piece of advice is please understand that fan fiction is a very necessary and vital part of the literature industry. Fan fiction can help queer writers who don't get to see themselves in canon make stories where they can be in the story itself. But even more importantly, to me, fan fiction is a great place for burgeoning writers, because you don't have to worry about world building, so you can focus on things like structure, narrative, and dialog. There's all kinds of little tricks and tools and tips that you’ll find that work for you. Discard some, keep others, find what works for you and don’t feel bad about it.
