Award-winning and bestselling fantasy author TJ Klune, a prominent LGBTQ+ voice in contemporary fantasy fiction, is making the final stop of his nationwide book tour in Central New York on Tuesday.
The event, hosted by Friends of the Central Library, is part of the longest-running library lecture series in the country. It begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Crouse Hinds Theater at The Oncenter in downtown Syracuse.
Klune's latest release, We Burned So Bright, just came out in late April and quickly climbed to the top of the LGBTQ+ fantasy fiction ranking of Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases.
Ahead of his Syracuse appearance, Klune sat down with WAER’s own Holliday Moore to discuss the recurring themes across his work, including identity, found family, and belonging...
Holliday Moore (WAER): For 30 seasons, Friends of Central Library have held a robust author series bringing well-known writers to Central New York. On Tuesday, New York Times best-selling author T.J. Klune is featured. The beloved author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, about a young boy who moves into a magical house with a mysterious family, and Under the Whispering Door, another fantasy novel about a young woman who discovers a hidden door into a magical world. TJ Klune joins us right now ahead of his appearance on Tuesday at The Oncenter here in Syracuse. Welcome, TJ.
TJ Klune: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
Holliday Moore (WAER): You have several books in the works. The Bones Beneath My Skin, is so very timely about a journalist who recently lost his job.
TJ Klune: Yeah, exactly. It's a book set in the 90s. It exists because of my love for the conspiracy-laden time that we live in and is born of my love of shows like “The X-Files" and “Farscape” when I was a kid. And this book is essentially about a man who has lost everything, including his job as a journalist. in Washington, D.C., and he has to try to find a way to recover and try to put his life back together. And when he arrives at his family's mountain cabin, he discovers that there are already two people there who will have the power to change the course of his life and everybody else's in the world.
Holliday Moore (WAER): Looking at your works collection, the covers appear geared towards children's literature.
TJ Klune: My cover artist, Chris Sickles, creates the covers by building the 3D set. So every cover you see of mine is actually a 3D set that he builds and photographs and then puts them into - so, for example, the Bones Beneath My Skin cover - you'll notice that there's like a bright light coming from the tunnel on the cover. That's actually a sparkler that he put into the scene and then lit and then photographed everything. He is one of my favorite people in the world, and he is such a ridiculous talent that everybody should be aware of. But yeah, it is meant to invoke a certain sense of feeling. For me, rather than it being geared toward children, I get a sense of nostalgia from the covers. I get a sense of possibility of mystery and magic. And I just think he is just one of the most talented people in the world.
Holliday Moore (WAER): All of your books are in super unique places, sort of a cozy sci-fi atmosphere. How do you find those premises and which has been your favorite to write about so far?
TJ Klune: Under the Whispering Door is my rumination on death and grief and what it means to be a human being and book. The majority of the book is set in a four-story refurbished tea house. It is one of my favorite settings because, look, if you're setting a book inside one location for almost the entirety of the book, the location has to feel like a character. It has to feel real. It has to feel lived in. And since the book deals with heavy topics like death and grief, as the book is about ferrymen whose job it is to help spirits cross over to whatever's next, I wanted to find a place that felt safe, that felt like it could be a place where you could rest. And I thought about how many times I've been to tea shops in the past all over the world and how a sense of calm washes over me when I go inside because I'll have overstuffed chairs, fire crackling in a fireplace. And I remember thinking, if I'm going to be writing something specifically like death and grief, I need to have a safe place in this world so people can not just focus on the death side of things, that they could focus on how these people are coming together. So the tea shop in Under the Whispering Door is probably one of my favorite locations that I've ever created.
Holliday Moore (WAER): Your books are also known for their LGBTQ+ insight, and we're at a time when being gay or gender fluid is getting push back. What underlying themes do you hope to share in your books for these communities?
TJ Klune: Think of it this way. Imagine you're a kid and your greatest love is reading, but you also love movies and TV and video games and all this stuff, but you never get to see yourself in those forms of media. If we were, we were there to get sick or to get hurt or to get killed, all to teach the straight characters a lesson. When I was a kid, that was devastating because it made me feel like there was something wrong with me, that I was broken, that I was othered. And so when I was a kid, I made the decision that when I grew up, I wanted to put people like me in books. I'm one of the very lucky ones who got to grow up doing actually what they love most in the world. And the response has been nothing short of extraordinary. I mean, I get to speak with queer people all over the world, and I want to be clear here. I write for anybody who wants to read my books, but I write with queer people in mind because I know how difficult it is to be alive in the year 2026. Especially now when we're seeing more and more attacks on specifically trans people, some of the most vulnerable people with the highest suicide rates in the world, and we're punching down on them? How is that fair to anyone whatsoever? I knew I was gay by the time I was 10 years old. I may not have known exactly what that meant, But I understood that I wasn't like everybody else. It blows my mind that we have decided what children should be rather than letting children be their weird and wonderful selves.
Holliday Moore (WAER): There's a theme among writers called found families. You are known for being particularly good at writing in that theme. How do you find your way to write about unlikely foundlings that come together in such unique ways?
TJ Klune: Yeah, publishers like to put out graphics and say like, oh, this book has "enemies to lovers." Oh, and this book has "found family." And that's wonderful. But it's also very weird to see your existence be tropified into marketing because found family came from queer people. Many people, like myself included, did not get to have the love and support that children should get from responsible parents. At the end of the day, it taught me so much about how not to treat people and how to treat people because when you learn how not to treat people, there's a part of you that wonders, okay, I can do the opposite, but what does the opposite really look like? So then you have to go out into the world and learn kindness and learn empathy and learn hope. And where did I learn that? From books. I learned that from books because I had nobody else to learn that from. So books were my teacher. Books taught me how to be a better person. And I think that if you are a reader, you know how that feels. Or if you're not a reader, guess what? Those books are going to be there waiting for you when you're ready. And they will teach you things no matter how old you are.
Holliday Moore (WAER): Author T.J. Klune, thank you so much for visiting with WAER today, and we look forward to seeing you at The Oncenter on Tuesday.
TJ Klune: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
