Bestselling Lambda Literary Award winner TJ Klune is the author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, and the forthcoming Somewhere Beyond the Sea, all published by Tor. Following his LJ Day of Dialog keynote address (online at bit.ly/4f6fVrm), he talks about fighting bigotry, the power of found family, and his future projects, including a book featuring a wandering black hole.

You mentioned that this book was never supposed to happen. How did you end up writing a sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea?

I honestly thought I was one-and-done when it came to the gremlins and their dads. The characters stayed with me, perhaps a bit more than they usually do when I’m finished putting a book out into the world—especially Chauncey. He just wouldn’t stop talking.

And then the last few years happened—the last few years when anti-LGBTQ+ vitriol seemed to explode, particularly against the trans community. The first book was about being othered, and what it meant to accept yourself as different. The sequel is about what happens when those who have been othered decide they’ve had enough. What does it look like to fight back against bigotry, not just for yourself but for your entire community? That’s why I wrote the sequel.

The characters in your duology, especially the children, reflect a range of experiences and differences, even beyond the fact that several are not human. Do you feel that using fantasy to explore identity and inclusivity is easier than in other genres?

It is easier, in a way: I can ignore things about the real world that don’t necessarily fit within the scope of the stories I’m telling. And yet, I think the world of Marsyas is instantly recognizable as not so very different from our own. Marginalized people experience bigotry every single day. Hell, I recently just moved to a new home, and my nearest neighbor decided to use homophobic slurs to describe me when I put up a pride flag at my house. Homophobia in 2024? Bless his heart.

By putting these stories firmly in fantasy, I can explore what bigotry can look like when it comes to things like magical children, because the root of all bigotry is a fear of things people don’t understand. And some might push back on the idea of it being a “fear,” but to be quite frank, what the hell else could it be?

The monsters in Somewhere Beyond the Sea, like in Cerulean Sea, seem to be the humans, not the ones who would normally be identified as such. You said during your LJ Day of Dialog keynote that this novel’s antagonist is inspired by J.K. Rowling. How have real-world events further inspired your writing?

I know Rowling enriched many childhoods by the books she released. I’m not going to dispute that. However, when you become the very thing you wrote about fighting against, you deserve to be called out for it. I know she’s rich and famous to a degree I will never be—and trust me when I say that I’m okay with that. There is no professional jealousy here.

What I’m not okay with is someone like her using her platform to incessantly attack the trans community simply because she has surrounded herself with an echo chamber that continues to do nothing but harm.

While Rowling isn’t the only [instigator] of the anti-trans movement, there is no denying she has played a huge role in it. As such, she deserves nothing more than to be shunned from a proper society.

If we don’t call out this kind of hate, what are we even doing? What’s the point of having a platform like I do if I don’t use it to speak out against homophobia and transphobia? I can’t in good conscience just sit here and pretend that my books are my only voice. They can’t be.

Found families are an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community and are featured in your latest. Have there been found families in your life, from your own or others’ experiences, that inspire this?

What so many readers don’t realize is that the “found family” trope comes from a very real place. So many queer people don’t get the love and support from their blood family like they should. I certainly didn’t.

And so what do we do? We leave those people behind in the past where they belong and go out into the world and find people who love and appreciate us for exactly who we are—nothing more, nothing less. My family is made up of my brother, my sister, and everyone else isn’t related to us by blood, but they are still ours. We have no room for hate. There’s already too much of that in the world.

Is Chauncey still your favorite character, and if so, why? (If not, who is your current favorite and why?)  

He is! I adore the blobby boy to pieces. There’s just something about him that tickles me greatly. This kid wanted to be a bellhop. He knew how he looked, knew that some people might not like that, but he didn’t let that stop him from becoming what he wanted to be. Some might call him a bit naive, but I like to think he has the boldness of youth: he has a dream, and nothing will get in his way. To watch him grow as he has is honestly one of the great joys of my writing career.

Is there anything you can tell us about your future projects?

I don’t want to get into too many specifics, but I can say this: next year, I have a book coming out that will have my first non-human main character, born out of my love of stories like Homeward Bound and [The Adventures of] Milo and Otis.

After that, there’s a book that I wrote earlier this year that came after a small discussion I had with my editor about black holes. There’s a one in a trillion chance that a wandering black hole would come to the Milky Way. Infinitesimal odds, right? But what happens when that one in a trillion chance proves to be true? I wrote a book about just that.

Do you have any books or authors to recommend to readers?

I do! There’s this little up-and-coming author named Stephen King who just released a collection of short stories called You Like It Darker. What a freaking blast that book has been. King and short stories are some of my very favorites. As a self-proclaimed fanboy of King, it’s incredible to see he is still putting out great books over 50 years later.

I also want to highlight Flamer by Mike Curato, a queer graphic novel that is one of the most banned books in America. If I’d had that book when I was a kid coming into his queerness, I think it would have made things so much easier for me. It is a powerful piece of art that I think all queer youth—and their straight peers—should read.