The BonesBeneath My Skin with TJ Klune

TW: Suicide and Cults

In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to author, TJ Klune. We discuss Howl's Moving Castle, belief in aliens, X-Files, Coast to Coast with Art Bell, the 1990s, the Heaven's Gate cult, JKR, TJ's future projects, pets, more X-Files (so much X-Files), and much more.

TJ Klune's Website: https://www.tjklunebooks.com/

If you'd like to support us you can give us a one time donation at Kofi or you can subscribe to our Patreon.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:01):
If this goes on, don't panic, bringing Hope to the
world through speculativefiction you

Alan Bailey (00:40):
music. Hello and welcome to If this goes on,
don't panic. Today we have NewYork Times best selling author,
TJ Clune, but first cat, how arethings going with you? What's
happening?

Unknown (00:57):
It is snowing and snowing and snowing, and I'm so
freaking tired of it. That'sfunny.

Alan Bailey (01:04):
That's funny. It's doing a lot here. I have to say,
I'm I'm enjoying it a littlebit, you know. I mean, after the
last couple of years where Ilive, we've had no snow at all
in the winter, which is weird,you know, because we live in a
temperate area where there'sgenerally four seasons, and that
means the kids go outside andleave me and my wife alone a
little bit. Oh,

Unknown (01:25):
that is sad. The kids need snow, I think, or like snow
at any rate, yeah. Oh,absolutely,

Alan Bailey (01:32):
absolutely. They get some outside, they can go
run around, burn off someenergy, you know, be, I don't
know, do kids stuff? Do kids togive us a break, you know, huh?
So what else is going on?

Unknown (01:44):
Well, I actually, next month, I'm going to the Barbados
for a few days because I amgoing with my business partner
to check it out, to see ifthat's where we want to do the
next wayward worm haul, at leastthat's that's our plan. Is to do
it in November. This is our tripto kind of make sure everything
is feasible and hopefully headoff any potential disasters.

Alan Bailey (02:07):
That's right, the last time you recorded, you gave
us that very cryptic messageabout possibly going to some
place that rhymes withsmarbados. I forgot

Unknown (02:15):
about that. Barbados. Yes, I can now reveal that means
Barbados, yeah, yeah. And we'vegot Karen Lord and Karen Joy
Fowler and Tobias the kill. AndI'm sorry I've forgotten our

(02:36):
fourth person, but I willremember by next, by we, by the
time we make a formalannouncement?

Alan Bailey (02:44):
Well, that sounds like a pretty good crew, and I,
the only one that I've met isTobias, and he's awesome.

Unknown (02:49):
Oh, yeah, well, and Karen Joy Fowler is just
shockingly funny. Oh, he hasthis kind of dry, witty sense
where she'll say something andit is just hysterically funny,
and she'll look at you with thisperfectly straight face. It's
just, yeah, she's, she's a funnyone.

Alan Bailey (03:09):
Okay, I have to meet her sometime. That's pretty
cool. That's cool. Yeah, yeah.So let me think couple
announcements before we getgoing. First of all, I know
we've been saying for a while,we're gonna get a website. We're
fixing up a website, blah, blah,blah, all this stuff. So first
option has not worked out. I amworking on option two and option
three right now, so that's anupdate on that. And also I our

(03:33):
hosting company has added a wayto add transcripts now so we
don't have to rely on a websitefor that. Oh, sweet, sweet.
However, I have to figure outhow to get these transcripts
into either an SRT file or a VTTfile. So I'm working on that
right now. Okay, it's alwayssomething, right? Like, it can't
just be easy, yeah?

Unknown (03:54):
Now I do file formats or such a pain in the ass. I'm
trying to figure out what an SRTformat would be. So,

Alan Bailey (04:00):
so, so, yeah, that's it. And so I don't
forget. This is almost areminder to myself. We also got
a mention from somebody on bluesky that we because we were
asking people, hey, you know, ifanybody has any questions for
TJ, klune, let us know we'd behappy to ask him if we have some
time. And one person did have amessage for TJ, but it was not a

(04:21):
question, so we shall revealthat when we come back. All
right, awesome. All right, sowe'll be right back with TJ
Clune. Okay, and we are backwith our guest, TJ Clune. TJ
Clune is the number one New YorkTimes and number one USA Today,
best selling lambda, literaryaward winning author of
somewhere beyond the sea, thehouse in the Cerulean sea under

(04:46):
the whispering door in the livesof puppets, the green Creek
series for adults, theextraordinary series for teens
and more, being queer himself,Clune believes it's important
now more than ever to haveaccess. Accurate, positive,
queer representation in stories.So I before we get started on

(05:07):
the question is, TJ, we hadsomebody write to us that wanted
to thank you for your books.This person, their name was
Rubyist, R, O, O, B, i, u, s ona police guy, and they said,
they said, Thank you for yourbooks. My nine year old uses
Cerulean somewhere and thepuppets as their comfort books,
and has learned so much by thegentle lessons given. We are on

(05:31):
our way to the bookstore to lookfor another that they might
like. My NB kiddo is glad tofeel represented. So wanted to
let you know that that

Unknown (05:40):
is amazing. That is absolutely wonderful. I am, I
am, honestly, anytime I get I'vebeen fortunate enough to hear
stuff like that a lot lately,and anytime I get a message like
that, it's like the first timeall over again. It's
extraordinarily humbling andprofound. And if kid TJ knew

(06:01):
that one day he'd be doing this,yeah, he would never believe it,
because that's all he everwanted. I was

Alan Bailey (06:06):
doing some research on you, as I do sometimes, and
you had mentioned that you'vealways wanted to be a writer in
the one interview. And you alsomentioned something else that
was very interesting. Youmentioned that you really like
Diane Wynn Jones.

Unknown (06:21):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. How's Moving Castle
is one of the most definitivebooks of my childhood. Yeah, and
then, of course, it was adaptedin a studio Ghibli film. It was
a very different beast thatfilm, but I adored it in ways
that few films have touched methat but Diana Wynn Jones was
one of the most profoundinfluences her Douglas Adams,

(06:46):
Terry Pratchett and StephenKing, lovely.
What a lovely set of writers.

Alan Bailey (06:50):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think Diane
Wynn Jones is probably the leastknown of all those. I happen to
be reading the christomancyseries with my son. Oh,

Unknown (07:00):
good stuff. Yeah, yeah. What

Alan Bailey (07:03):
is it about Diane Wynn Jones that you, like,
really enjoy, like, what is itabout her that just, you know,
clicks with you,

Unknown (07:08):
it's, it's the sense of place. So, you know what I love
about Diana Jones, and whatdraws me to her writing and on
authors like her, is that she,she has a she had a sense of
imagination that that feltchildlike, but also felt
grounded in a very adultreality. And she understood that

(07:29):
it's not just the big picturethat makes the story. It's the
tiny little details that go intomaking a book. You have a place
like like house, Castle, it hasto feel like a living, breathing
character. It has to feel likeit actually exists, because if
it doesn't, you're just in thishouse and you're not really
learning anything about it, thenit doesn't really do anything

(07:51):
for the story. But when you packit full of these tiny little
details, and then those detailscould be on display in the
Ghibli film with their own touchon what it would look like,
especially, calcifers is myfavorite. And it's just, it's
just, it's extraordinary how,how this singular story
influenced me, but it also theinterpretation that Ghibli did

(08:14):
is so very different, but stillprofound in its own ways. I
mean, the how in the Ghibli filmand the how in the book are
very, two very differentcharacters. And I love, I love
how there's that disparatefeeling between the two of them,
even though they're, they're soobviously related. Yeah, see

Alan Bailey (08:31):
now I have not had a chance to read Houseman Castle
yet. I've seen the movie manytimes. Yeah,

Unknown (08:36):
the movie is a different Okay, to put it, to
put it bluntly in the book, howit was a fuck boy. That's,
that's what? That's thedifference between book, Hal and
movie. How is it book, how he'sa fuck boy. So just go in
knowing that, and you'll befine.

Alan Bailey (08:58):
All right. All right. That's hilarious. I
didn't intend to start withDiane Wynn Jones, so this is
funny. My first initial questionwas actually going to be, do you
believe in aliens?

Unknown (09:14):
Absolutely? 100% Absolutely. Now, does that mean
to fit, you know, aliens withwith intelligence, who have big,
huge spacecrafts that flyaround. Okay, yeah, I'll say I
believe in that too. But I alsothink it's the idea of the
hubris to believe that that weare the only people in the

(09:34):
world, the only people in theuniverse, the only organ planet
that would be able to supportany kind of life. Think about
it. If you saw if we foundwater, I mean, we find we're
finding water on moons, forplanets in our own solar system
that we didn't know were there.What's under the water? If
there's some kind of weird fish,guess what? That's an alien.

(09:55):
That's amazing to me. But do Ibelieve that we have been
visiting? Did by advancedbeings. Man, yeah, totally go
there and say, Yeah, I do. Ithink, I think so. I don't know.
I don't know what they want. Idon't know what they did, but
there's just too much. I mean,hell, it's so funny. In the past
couple of years, the governmenthas even explicitly come out and

(10:16):
said, you know, yeah, there'sthings that we don't understand,
that we can't explain. Andeverybody in the world is kind
of like, okay, yeah, let's justmove on. It's kind of like how
the way news goes these days.Okay, what else is happening?
Yeah, my

Alan Bailey (10:32):
father is obsessed with that stuff. By the way,
completely obsessed. I'm like,to the point where I'm like, a
little worried about him, likehe hasn't gone, like, the
direction of Maga or Fox oranything. But I'm like Dad, you
might want to find somethingbetter to do in retirement than
watch YouTube videos aboutaliens. You know. Oh,

Unknown (10:49):
my God, you know. You know when, when History Channel
used to show history. Somehow,it before they and then they
started with ancient aliens.Man, I ate that shit. You know I
have to be I have to be clear.Though, I know it's BS. I
absolutely know there's allthese weird little connections
that they're trying to make andeverything like that. I know.

(11:11):
But at the same time, thislizard part of my brain goes
Yes, aliens built the pyramids.Yes,

Alan Bailey (11:18):
absolutely. I used to get all the conspiracy books
out of the library when I was inmiddle school. I remember it. I
remember it very clearly. Oh,

Unknown (11:25):
yeah. Oh, I did too. And that was I blame it on. I'm
a child. I was born in the 80s,so I came of age in the 90s, and
I 100% blame it on the X Files,which was an obsession of mine
in the 90s. And obviously, youknow, Fox Mulder made me gay,
and it's, it's just one of thosethings that that The X Files

(11:46):
has, has been in my existencesince I could really remember. I
mean, that show came out inwhat, like, 1992 I was 10 years
old, yeah, and I grew up withthat show. And, of course, when
you know, everything is aboutconspiracies and governmental
conspiracies and aliens. I'mlike, of course a kid is gonna
be like, yes, yes, all of thisis real. Yes, there is a

(12:07):
government. There is a secretpart of the FBI called The X
Files. Yes, this all has to bereal. Yeah, right, right. But
that's the thing aboutconspiracies, it has there's
sometimes is that there's somuch logic to it that you can't
help just to go, well maybe, butit's where, it's where you draw
the line that it becomes veryimportant. Yeah,

Alan Bailey (12:26):
yeah. Cat, do you believe in aliens? Do you think
aliens have visited

Unknown (12:30):
us? Oh, I do. I mean, I think, as TJ said, it is, it is
just monumental hubris to thinkwe are the only possible
manifestation of intelligentlife in the universe, or even on
this planet. I mean, becausedolphins are well, I mean, okay,
so I'm getting sidetracked. Yes,yes, I do.

Alan Bailey (12:52):
No worries. Yeah, no, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
agree with you both, you know.So you mentioned, you mentioned
conspiracies DJ, which I thinkis interesting. And just to give
our listeners a little contextin the bones beneath my skin,
the book that we're discussingtoday, you know, conspiracy and
aliens play a major part, infact. And this is not a spoiler,
because it's revealed. Well, letme say it's hinted on extremely

(13:16):
early in the book, right, right?One of the main characters,
Artemis, Artemis Darth, Vader.What a great name. Best, best
name ever. Cat and I have agreedon that, by the way, TJ,

Unknown (13:28):
I would have to agree. I, I was very tickled with
myself.

Alan Bailey (13:35):
But um, Artemis is an alien, right? And, uh, later
on they keep, they start tuninginto this conspiracy channel
that's basically like, I thinkyou don't, you don't name it,
but you definitely drop areference to coast to coast.

Unknown (13:48):
Coast to coast with art. Bell, man, yeah, coast to
coast. Am with art. Bell,absolutely. Let me tell you
about the other part of mychildhood where I used to listen
to coast to coast. Am, with allthe people calling in about I've
experienced this, I'veexperienced that. I've seen
Bigfoot, I've seen Sasquatch,I've seen, you know, Nessie. I
was abducted by aliens. Thegovernment caused 911 all of

(14:10):
that kind of stuff. Absolutelyyes. Art Bell, the I did my own
spin on art belt. I'm so, I'm sopleased. You notice that,
because, you know, it get, youget to a certain point, when,
when, when? Because Art Bell, Idon't, he's no longer with us. I
don't think, I don't think Iknow, yeah, because I know he
doesn't do the show anymoreanyways. But there was a very,

(14:31):
very specific point in timewhen, when he was one of the
most Think, think Howard Sternlevels of popularity during that
time. You had Howard Stern, andthen you had Art Bell with Coast
to Coast AM. And something Ithink it's very important to
point out is, you know, the 90swere a very odd, very weird,

(14:51):
strange time, because at thebeginning of the 90s, nobody had
cell phones, nobody had theinternet, and by the end of the
90s, everybody had. Cell phonesand everybody had internet, or
at least most places weregetting Internet. In the United
States, you know, you couldargue that any one of the prior
100 years of technological, youknow, leaps that we made were

(15:13):
the most important, but the 90swere the ones that connected the
entire world and that allowedconspiracy theorists to come
together in ways that they hadnever been able to before. You

Alan Bailey (15:23):
never thought about that. That's interesting. Yeah,

Unknown (15:26):
yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's fascinating to me that you
know when you, when you havethese kind of you know when you
when you're conspiracy minded,and you're reading books, you're
reading whatever, whatevermanifesto that the Unabomber put
out or anything like that.You're reading in a book. You're
not talking to other peopleabout it, per se, but when you
get like minded people together,that's how stuff like Q anon

(15:50):
happens. That's how all the youknow, all this conspiracy BS
comes fodder, and it's justgetting worse and worse now, as
we're advancing, yeah,

Alan Bailey (15:58):
yeah. 100% 100% just a real quick observation.
Do you remember the X Filesepisode? Do either of you
remember this episode where theyhave to stop? It must have been
in the first or second seasonthey had to stop and explain
what the internet was because

Unknown (16:14):
yeah, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely,
absolutely. It's a time kindcapsule ass thing. And I love
Yeah, yeah. And those cellphones, like, in that very first
season, like, he pulls out amobile phone, and it's the size
of, like, an old landline phone,yeah,

(16:37):
right. And this, this was, thatwas the advanced technology that
nobody else got to have. Butthis was the FBI. Yeah, that

Alan Bailey (16:44):
was so funny. I think about the cell phone too,
but the one episode, they'relike, yeah, they're, they're on
these things called discussionboards, and someone's tracking
someone else down and killingthem. Yeah, yes. And it was, it
was in the early episodes. Doyou remember the early episodes
when Jillian Anderson'scharacter. She like analyzed the
episode, and she like wrote areport to the FBI, yeah, at the

(17:06):
very end, yes, yeah, oh

Unknown (17:10):
yeah, there's a thing called the internet. Yeah, yeah,
the glowing Person X

Alan Bailey (17:17):
Files are huge for me, huge. But yeah, I did have a
question. So you've beenmentioning the 90s a lot, so the
book for sixth place in the 90s,but I believe it was 1996 is
that right? 96 Yeah. Okay, okay,why? Why? 96 is my next question
for you, because

Unknown (17:35):
that I it felt like that that was the beginning. I
don't want to say the beginningof the end, because to me,
that's that's when theadvancement started happening.
That's when that's whentechnology started to take leaps
and bounds forward. That's whenCoast to Coast AM was at its
peak. But specifically, alsothat's when in the United

(17:57):
States, around that time, wassomething called Hale bop was
coming towards the Earth, hail.Bop was a comet that was a once.
You know, for us, it'll be oncein a lifetime thing. But it was
a comment that hadn't been herefor 1000s of years. They thought
they did the math for all of it.You can look all that stuff up.
It was named for the two peoplethat discover it, hail and Bop.

(18:20):
And what bloomed from there wasa man named Marshall Applewhite.
And Marshall Applewhite had acult called Heaven's Gate, and
Heaven, oh yeah, believed, asMarshall Applewhite believed
that there was an alien craft inthe tale of this comet, and that

(18:42):
when the comet passed as closeas it would ever would to the
earth, they would ascend fromtheir earthly bodies to the
craft and then leave thisuniverse. You can watch Marshall
Applewhite videos if, if you'venever heard of him or his is
this cult called Heaven's Gate.I guarantee you that if you see

(19:02):
his face, you will be like I'veseen him at some point or
another, because he recordedhours and hours and hours of
video about what he was doing,his ideology, the reason behind
Heaven's Gate. And then, Oh,interesting. As the comma got
closest, they committed masssuicide with heaven and yeah,

(19:23):
from there, obviously, you know,people were like, oh, you know,
obviously they were lunatics.They were out of their minds.
They died for nothing. But itjust shows you how powerful
belief is, especially when itfalls into the hands of somebody
who's charismatic, and I don'teven, I don't necessarily sit,

(19:44):
want to say evil, but brokensomehow. And I just, I wanted
to, I wanted to explore thatidea. Because being a writer,
one of the worst things thatcould happen to a writer is a is
a two word question. What if.If, because that opens the door.
What if they were right? What ifthere was something there, and

(20:09):
what if it was on this earthbefore? And we had to find out,
you know, through the novel,what happens from there? But I
The point I'm trying to get tois Heaven's Gate still exists as
an entity today. In fact, when Iwas writing this book, if you
look up, you can go to theHeavens Gate website right now,

(20:30):
it looks exactly like it did tothe 90s. It's this geo, geo
cities hellscape kind of yeahwebsite, and I talked to the
people who ran the website.They're not necessarily part of
Heaven's Gate, and you need tothink of this website as a
museum exhibit. It's not likerecruitment or anything like
that. It's basically a timecapsule of what it was like when

(20:54):
this happened. And so I got so Igot to talk back and forth with
the people who run the website,and was able to just get some
information about but what itwas like, and just talk to
Marshall Applewhite, how he wasso charismatic. And I wanted to
use that for my character calledPeter in this book. Because, to
me, I'm fascinated by cultmentality, because it's, if you

(21:18):
think about it, the idea of acult is following, you know,
typically following onecharismatic individual. Isn't
that Jesus Christ? Yeah, isn'tthat? Isn't that God? Yeah,
isn't, is, isn't that? Couldthat technically be considered a
cult because you followsomeone's teachings to the
letter to and if you if peoplewho are not following those

(21:41):
teachings, or if those teachingstell you that other people are
good, then you're going to dothat. You're going to act like
that. You're going to do that.So the I love this idea that
cults are basically bisectedmany religions forming around an
individual, whereas if you wereto call, say, Christianity, a

(22:02):
cult, Christians would berightfully offended, but at the
same time, aren't you followingthe teachings of a charismatic
individual?

Alan Bailey (22:08):
Right? It's kind of a paradox because of the
popularity, right? Right? It is,

Unknown (22:15):
right, exactly. And I just, I find that fascinating.
What? What does it take? Whatdoes it take to give your will
over to another personcompletely and fully? Because
that's what that's what cultsdo, and that's what I mean with
with any call. You think JimJones, you think David Koresh
and Waco. You think which alsowas in the 90s. You think
Heaven's Gate. You think cultsthat happen in a lot of hardcore

(22:39):
cults happen in South Americathe end, they're all based
around mysticism and things likethat. There's, there's all these
different things. But what doesit mean for a person to give up
everything about themselves toone individual, and What? What?
What point in their life do theyget to that point to think this
is the best step for me? What?What led them to that? I just I

(23:00):
find that idea fascinating.Absolutely.

Alan Bailey (23:04):
I think one of the most interesting characters you
have in the book is thecharacter who's not in it very
much, but it is one of the cultfollowers. I think she named
Dolores. I think, yes, she waslike a former teacher and a
grandmother, and then she wentand joined Peters cult, right,
correct? I mean, she wasn't evenin it for very long, but she was

(23:24):
just such a relatable character,you know, kind of scary
relatable. I thought, well,

Unknown (23:30):
that's just it. It's, there's, you know, when you
watch, like, documentaries andyou read, read books on on cults
and the histories of cults andthe the psychology of cults,
you'll find that even thoughthese people have given
themselves up to whateverideology or whatever person that
is is running them, they'restill rational. They see still

(23:52):
seem rational, you know, I maybenot. They're not rational, but
they seem like they are, becausethey don't see anything wrong.
They don't see the danger. Theydon't they don't want to see it.
Because how freeing must it beto have somebody else worry
about everything and tell youwhat to think and tell you when

(24:13):
to eat, what to dress, how toact, what job you have to do,
though, because most of many ofthese, if not all of these
people that are in cults. Theyleave everything behind, family,
their jobs, finances, all ofthat gets left behind because
that one person or this oneideology becomes everything that
they are. But it's still scary,because they can still be

(24:38):
rational or seem rational. Yeah,that's

Alan Bailey (24:40):
so interesting. Kat, I feel like I'm getting all
the questions in here. Do youwant

Unknown (24:45):
to jump in? I love this book. And now that you've said
the thing about The X Files, I'mjust like, oh shit, that's all
through the current book. That'sreally awesome. But last year I
read in the lives of puppets,yeah, which I really loved a
lot. And I was just. Curiouswhat drew you to the Pinocchio
story,
the original version of thestory of Carlo colovis Pinocchio

(25:08):
is such a fascinating tale. Likemost people, I'm not going to
try to generalize the world mostpeople in America, if they have
any relation to the story ofPinocchio. It's the 1940s Disney
version, yeah. And, you know,Disney, Disney is, you know, any
kind of fable that you can thinkof. Little Mermaid is, is based

(25:29):
on Hans Christian Andersen, hisgay parable. And, you know, they
take them and they, they Disneyfi them. They in the 1930s and
the 1940s and 1950s they allowedsome darkness in, if you've if
you remember the Disney versionof Pinocchio, the scene with the
boys was quite terrifying. Yeah,that's quite but yeah, the

(25:54):
original story, as like withmost fables, is so much darker
and so much funnier than then,then what the retelling is. And
so, like for, for instance, thethis story opens with Collodi
just like trolling the crap outof the children that he's

(26:15):
supposedly reading to because,because he is. Story opens with
him saying, Do you know whatthis is? And the children cry
out. He goes, No children,that's not it at all. This is
just a block of wood. It's sofunny to me to see that. But
originally, Collodi wrote thisto be a serial, which was, you
know, they used to write storiesand publish them weekly or

(26:36):
monthly in newspapers andmagazines and and when he wrote
the original story, the originalending for this story was that
Pinocchio gets murdered and hungfrom a tree for his hubris of
wanting to become human andCologne. His editor came in and
said, Hey, if you're writing achildren's story, you can't

(26:59):
really do that to the child, socologne changed it to the story
that we know today, and thenthrough the Disney version, but
the undercurrent of darknessthrough the Adventures of
Pinocchio is extraordinary, andI love that like with most
fables, and Pinocchio has alwaysstuck out to me to be a story

(27:22):
that could be told in so manydifferent ways. And I remember
at the time when I was writingthis, and in the lead up to the
book coming out, I was like,wow, nobody has done anything
with Pinocchio in a long time.And then right before my book
came out, there was a Pinocchiovideo game. There was a
Pinocchio Roberts, a meccasmovie. There was a different
Pinocchio movie. I was likeJesus Christ, but it just it

(27:46):
lent itself, and I have to behonest, it lent itself to the
story. And the reason this storyexists because I was trying to
figure out a way to to to retellthe story of Pinocchio, or at
least do a version of Pinocchio,the only reason that book exists
at all is because I bought aRoomba vacuum cleaner, and I and

(28:08):
like humans do, we tend toanthropomorphize or give human
like qualities to in humanobjects. So I put googly eyes on
him, and I named him Hank now,when you turned on the machine
for the first time, it has to goand map out your house so it
knows where to go. This stupidlittle machine got itself stuck

(28:28):
in a corner and made the saddestbeeping sound I have ever heard
a machine make. And all of asudden I have this huge
explosion in my head. Pinocchiogot pulled in. And then all of a
sudden, I was like, Wait, whatif there was a character in a
book that was a Roomba vacuumcleaner, but he had social
anxiety, and his name was Rambo,but he wouldn't be the main

(28:48):
character. The main character isgoing to be human, so the real
boy, you know, puppet thing,could come into play. But if
he's human being, raised by afamily of machines, he would
have to have some kind of doctoror some kind of nurse, okay,
what if? What if you had like anursing machine, but what if she
was a sociopath, and then whatif you named her Nurse Ratched,

(29:10):
but nurse ratchet was an acronymfor registered automaton to
care, to care, heal, educate anddrill and what if? And so that
just kept going. What if? Whatif? What if? What if? And that's
how that story came to be. Ilove that book because the only
reason it exists is because ofcapitalism, because I bought a
freaking room of fact,

(29:33):
I love that. I love as I said, Ilove the book, and now I love it
even more. Your first book ornot I don't know was, was the
house in the Cerulean sea? Wasyour first book to hit? Or your
debut? Was that the debut novelI was
with in an indie publisher from2011 to 2018 and then and I did

(29:59):
okay enough. I was able to quitmy job and write full time. And
then then I got called up to thebig leagues via tour and with
the house in this really insaneand and that was in 2018 and
then in 2019 they gave me thebest news I could possibly
imagine, a release date for thehouse in the ceiling. Sea.

(30:21):
March, 17, 2020. Dude. Oh God,guys, remember what happened
that way? Gosh, here in theUnited States. So I want you to,
I want you to imagine this.Okay, get ready. Imagine you
are. You are getting ready to goon your first ever national book
tour. You've never doneanything. It's your first book
in hardcover with a majorpublisher, and then the Thursday

(30:45):
before the book comes out, youget a call from the publisher
saying, Hey, have you heard ofthis saying called COVID? And
you're like, Yeah. And they go,Okay, well, it's getting pretty
bad. So your tour is canceled.Everybody who's on tour, they're
getting sent home, but your bookstill comes out next week. So
hooray.

Alan Bailey (31:05):
Oh no. Then wait,

Unknown (31:06):
it gets even better. And then the book came out. And
of course, that's what the weekthat pan, that pandemic exploded
in the United States. So Ithought the book was just going
to get swallowed up by by thepandemic, which it rightly
should have been. Yeah, I'veheard countless stories from
people whose books did justthat, people who had been

(31:27):
working for years to get to thatpoint, much like I had, and
COVID ruined so much for so manypeople across our industry. But
for some reason, over the courseof that year, more and more
people kept picking up that bookeight months after it came out,
it debuted on the New York Timesbestseller list. Yet this on

(31:48):
January 6, 2021 Oh, no. So youknow the New York Times the
bestseller lists get releasedlike at 5pm eastern time, 6pm
Eastern Time, yeah. So imaginewhat all of us have been doing
all day on January 6, 2021 wewere watching the Capitol
insurrection. Yeah. So youreditor calls and says, Hey, and

(32:11):
you're like, Hey, she goes. Iknow this is really weird
timing, but you're a New YorkTimes bestseller. And I said, I
can't announce this. And nowguess what? I totally did. I
totally didn't announce thatright then I said, Hey, I know
everything sucks right now, butlook at me. Oh my God, it was,

(32:33):
it was a very awesome time.
I think your book did reallywell because, I mean, it was a
time when people, a people wereinside reading and and we people
needed comfort reads. I mean,absolutely, in some ways, I
think you kind of were theforerunner of this whole wave of
cozy fantasy.

(32:54):
I think, I think that's fair. Ialso think that you'd want to
add in Travis Baldry to thatlegends and lattes, and he's a
delightful human being too. Butyeah, I my book came out, and
then legends of lattes came out,and it did, you know, and you
can look back at that time withrose tinted glasses and think,
Oh, it's just because of thepandemic that that happened. But

(33:14):
no, I think, I think it showedthat while, you know, cozy
fantasy became the nom de plume,the term of the day at that
time, you have to look. You canlook back to Diana Wayne Jones,
she was doing it. She was doingit already. And you can look
back to Terry Pratchett doing italready, with that kind of
humor. You can look at Guards,guards, which is my favorite
Terry Pratchett book, and lookat that and see that that was

(33:37):
already there. It's kind of likeHow romantic is the big thing.
Now, Fantasy has always beenthere, yeah, they just got a
shiny new name for it.
But, I mean, a lot of it's aboutkind of like, oh, let's do a
special book, yeah,
exactly what it is. It'smarketing. It's marketing,

Alan Bailey (33:54):
yeah, yeah. 100%

Unknown (33:57):
Well, uh, speaking of marketing, you have declared
that you are the anti JKRowling.
Hell yeah. I
am sorry. There is a need for ananti JK Rowling, because she's,
she's a horrible woman, but Ithink, well, a mantle, well
assumed. Well,

(34:18):
thank you. Thank you for thatlook. That was, that was in the
afterward of somewhere beyondthe sea. I wrote that book and
dedicated it to the transcommunity, who have always been
part of the queer community, whowill always be part of the queer
community. And I can't imaginethe absolute horror it would be

(34:40):
to have a writer you look up tosuddenly turn around and say,
Your existence means nothing, oryou shouldn't exist, or you're
wrong for existing. I can'timagine what that would feel
like. Look, I read all the HarryPotter books. I stood in line
for the very last one when itcame out. I've seen some of the
movies, but. Fuck. Look. Youknow, you can, you can, you can

(35:03):
have that part of Harry Potterin your life and and look back
fondly on it, while also knowingthat JK Rowling has turned into
that which she wrote about thatthe children should fight
against. She, she became thevillain. She became the monster.
And it's not it's not enoughthat she is is, you know, coming

(35:24):
down on one of the mostmarginalized groups in the
world, the group with some ofthe highest suicide rates in the
world, right? She is coming downrepeatedly. It's, it's her
personality. Now, that's all itis, I mean. And then, you know,
it sucks that, that, you know,people are still giving her
money. I didn't like to say itlike that. It sucks that that

(35:50):
somebody like her can mean somuch to so people, to so many
people, and then turn around andand stab them in the back.
Essentially, look she she saidit. She has a right to think
what she wants absolutely and Ialso have a right to think that
her way of thinking is prettyshitty. So that's when I when I
say I want to be the anti JKRowling, it's not because I'm

(36:12):
against her writing or againsther books. I'm against her
beliefs that somehow transpeople are lesser, because that
is absolute bullshit. Absolutebullshit when you come down
again on an already beaten downcommunity that doesn't make you
a good person, that makes you anabsolute bully, and I just do
not stand for that. I know whatit's like to be bullied. I'll

(36:32):
never know what it's like to bea trans person, but I know what
it feels like to be bullied forwho I care about, who I am
attracted to. I get that, andnobody should be made to feel
lesser, especially not by somebillionaire on the internet.
Yeah, yes. Amen, sorry, that wasmy that

Alan Bailey (36:52):
was my rant. Absolutely Go ahead. Alan, I was
gonna say, is there, is therelike a published way to, like a
published intervention, like apublished, JK Rowling
intervention that you can have,like so many people look, here's

Unknown (37:08):
my thing, like I would give transphobic people the
benefit of the doubt if theyhadn't become what she's become
there, I would never want to doan intervention for her, because
she, I believe she is lost tothe brain rot. I absolutely
believe that and and it shouldnot be up to to queer people or
trans people to do somethinglike that, to educate her. She

(37:30):
She has made her choice toeducate to believe what she
wants. And we have the right totell others that she is morally,
ethically wrong, she'sreprehensible. I mean, it comes
down to it irreprehensible Whenyou can use your millions of
followers to single out veryspecific, tiny little Twitter

(37:51):
accounts about trans people, orif you, if you retweet pictures
of of trans women who, who, whodon't look like you think women
should look then, then, andyou're basically pile driving.
You're forcing all of yourfollowers, and many of whom
agree with her, to attack theseindividuals. What? Who? Who has
the right to do that? What?What? Yeah, what is the what is

(38:14):
the point? What is the purposeof going after an individual
like that? I just don'tunderstand, I don't understand
cruelty. I have this sayingwhere I do not like people. I
love humanity, because humanitygave us books and movies and art
and dancing and all of thiswonderful thing, but people just
suck. And that's that's becomingmore and more apparent.

Alan Bailey (38:39):
Oh yeah, I can relate to that? Yeah, yeah. I
was, I was referring more to thethe people who are still
obsessed with the Harry Potterbooks, right? Because I feel
like, I feel like I go on to,like, some of these book boards
and stuff that I occasionally goto, and there's still people,
and I just be like, Hey, you,you do know that she's like, a
terrible person, right? Like,

Unknown (39:02):
let me, let me tell you how I dealt with that when I was
in or last year for somewherebeyond the sea, I was invited,
wonderfully, to be the keynotespeaker at the bookmarks
festival in North Carolina. AndI was getting interviewed on the
stage after my speech, and wewere having this discussion
about JK Rowling, becauseobviously I talked about her in

(39:25):
my speech. And the gentleman whowas on stage with me, a
psychologist, now that I thinkabout it, I wonder if that was
just a big group interventionfor me. He was, he was talking
about how he has his kid is nonbinary, and how they are loving

(39:47):
Harry Potter. And he asked mestraight up, do you think I
should take this book away frommy kid? And I told him,
absolutely not. You never, evertake a book away. Away from a
child. Never take a book awayfrom a child. But your kid, your
13 year old kid, who knowsthemselves so well, to know that

(40:09):
they're non binary, who has thatkind of inner voice, to know
themselves so well, present themwith the information. Tell them,
hey, yes, you're reading thesebooks. You're enjoying them. I
just wanted to let you know thisis what the author believes.
This is what the author believesabout people like you. If you
want to continue reading them, Iwill support you in that.
Because, again, your kid don'ttake books away from kids, but I

(40:34):
think it's important to havethat conversation. If your kid
has the the wherewithal to knowwho they are inside, they can
handle that kind of conversationand make a decision for
themselves. So many decisionsare being made on behalf of
children, what books they canread, what what their trans
classmates can or cannot beinvolved in, but nobody's asking
the kids what they think theyare smarter, more worldly, more

(40:56):
savvier than we ever were attheir age, and they are more
empathetic. Why is nobody askingthem what they think? Yeah,
yeah. Absolutely

Alan Bailey (41:05):
good point question for you. I mean, with everything
happening in US politics rightnow, I mean, are you frightened
to write about queerrelationships and things like
that?

Unknown (41:15):
Absolutely not. I'll do that too with my dying breath.
Absolutely not. I will never beafraid of of who I am. I spent
the first half of my life beingafraid of who I was. I grew up
in a very shitty home that didnot like me in any way, shape or
form. I spent the first half ofmy life being afraid now I'm
just pissed off. Never. Everyone of my books will always have

(41:37):
queer people front and center. Iwill tell our stories, like so
many awesome other queer authorsare doing, and nothing is going
to stop me. And I'm so lucky tohave the publisher I do, who Tor
is one of the best publisherswhen it comes to queer
speculative fiction. And I am sograteful that I get to be part
of that awesome,

Alan Bailey (41:56):
awesome, nice I asked that just because, you
know, I find myself being anoutspoken person, myself and
fairly progressive, I findmyself wondering, like, you
know, should I should I beworried? Should I be concerned?
You know what? I mean, should Iworry about my family?

Unknown (42:15):
But I mean, Alan, think about, think about what happened
with the world con in Chengdu,the American administrators
basically censored things, notbecause they were being pressed
to be censored, but because theywere worried about censorship,
right? So, like, don't, don't,don't obey before they actually

(42:37):
ask you to would be my, myadvice, my
whole thing is this, the queercommunity has been through the
trenches before, and if we haveto go through there again, we're
going to drag you down in themud with us. It's how it's going
to be. It has to be. We havefought so many generations
before us have fought and diedfor our rights. An entire
generation of queer men waskilled out with the HIV AIDS

(43:00):
crisis, and nobody gave a crapabout them there, except for
lesbians. So here's what's goingto happen. You want to come down
in the dirt, we're going to getlitter. I have no problem with
that, because I am the personthat believes that people should
mind their own goddamn business.Yeah. How hard is that when you
have entire states enacting lawsthat prevent trans kids from

(43:22):
playing sports when,legitimately, there's only one
trans kid in the entire statethat's, oh, my god, yeah,
they're changing the law just togo after that one trans kid.
What do you think that transkids gonna think grow up? None
of these people have my back.None of these people trust me.
It's just It blows my mind thatthis is what we're focusing on.
All these billionaires that arenow in power. If they pulled

(43:45):
their money together, they couldend hunger in the United States
together. But instead, we'regoing after these nonsense,
culture war things, going afterteachers, librarians,
booksellers, who who have arenot paid anywhere near enough to
deal with this bullshit. I justdon't understand where empathy
has been lost. I don'tunderstand where why you can

(44:08):
have empathy, why minding yourown business isn't an option for
so many people. What I do in myown home does not affect anybody
else in the entire world. Aslong as I am being safe, legal,
and, it, you know, absolutelysane. It's totally fine, yeah,
it just it doesn't. I neverunderstood why so many people
care about what others do whenit doesn't affect Yeah. And tie

(44:29):
this back

Alan Bailey (44:30):
to your writing. Do you feel like your focus on
empathy is related to the quote,unquote, coziness of your
fantasy novels? No,

Unknown (44:40):
I'll be honest, I don't really like the term cozy,
especially when it comes tobecause it feels like, at times,
it feels like it can be pigeonholed into into something. And
I'm never going to write thesesame books over and over and
over and over again. That's nothow it's going to happen. But I
empathy. I. Don't I don't carewhat what genre I'm reading, if

(45:03):
my favorite genre to read ishorror. When I'm reading horror
and I see empathy in horror, I'mlike, Okay, I like, I like when
people act like human beings,how people should be acting when
there should be empathy. I don'tknow when that was lost. I don't
know how that was broken for somany people, but empathy is one
of the strongest attributes aperson can have. It makes it

(45:26):
shows that you actually can careabout other people that are not
yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

Alan Bailey (45:32):
It's making me think about the characters that
you've written in here and yournovel. Two of the characters, I
would say not, not Artemis,Darth, Vader, Nate and Alex.
Nate and Alex, that's a they'revery they're very hard headed
people, right? They're idiots,yes. Oh, that's hilarious.

(45:54):
That's hilarious. You know, howdo you? How did you go about
writing a relationship likethat, because they're, like you
said, They're idiots. They'revery hard headed. They, you
know, they kind of bounce off ofeach other for a really long
time, right? But gradually, theykind of drift together, right,

(46:15):
right? So,

Unknown (46:16):
so to me, look when, when the novel opens. This is,
this isn't going to be aspoiler, since it's, it's
literally their first chapter.Nate is a broken individual. He
has lost everything. He has nofamily or the family he does
have does not want anything todo with him. He's lost his his
job as a journalist by his ownfault, for some pretty egregious

(46:36):
conduct. And you know, he's losteverything. The only thing has
left to him is this tiny, littlecabin in the mountain, Cascade
Mountains in Oregon. And so whenhe goes there, and he finds two
people who should not be there,in this case, Alex. You know,
it's this idea of of Alex doesnot know that Nate is coming,
obviously. And so what are thesetwo people that that are broken

(47:00):
in different ways when theyfirst meet, what's going to
happen? Every single defense isgoing to go up, everything. Alex
has a very good reason for hisdefenses going up, and Nate does
not expect people to be in hishouse. So when he gets there,
his defenses are immediatelyright? But when my I love the
idea, and I want to make sureI'm very clear with this. The so

(47:23):
many people think that they'rebroken when something bad has
happened to them and when, whenor tragedy, some kind of it
doesn't even to be a bigtragedy. It might be the loss of
a person, it might be the lossof an opportunity, and they
think themselves broken. Butwhat they don't realize is that
maybe there are broken a littlebit, but they might find
somebody else that can fit themthe same way, the like little

(47:45):
two little puzzle piecesinterlocking, and that's what
Alex and Nate are. They are hardheaded, they are stupid and
stubborn, but they're alsocoming from a very similar place
through their own uniqueexperiences. And I like the idea
of people who are lost, findingeach other and realizing that

(48:05):
they fit together, not just neatand Alex, but also Artemis, who
has her own journey that shegoes on she is too broken in her
own ways, with everything thatshe's been through that you
learned over the course of thenovel. So these three, they were
just they were meant to be,that's how they are. And then
Nate and Alex's relationshipbeyond that. It's just a slow,

(48:26):
slow grind towards that. And Idid worry for a moment. You
know, when you get towards theend of something like that with
like it's a big action, allthese big things happen. Is this
a relationship, or is it traumabonding? You know, is there
still something there at thevery end? Because when you go
through all these hugelyexciting things and big things

(48:47):
happen, of course you're goingto navigate or you're be drawn
to the person who is on yourside in the same going in the
same direction. So does that, isthat trauma bond? Or is that
something that unless and so Iwanted to make sure that the
foundation was there so thehouse that I built for them was
not on shaky ground.

(49:09):
Nice. Are there going to be moreCerulean seabooks?
There will be one more? Onemore. It is. It is years off at
this point. I actually juststarted writing it last month.
Oh, I know the title. I knowwhat it's going to be about, and

(49:31):
I'm not going to say anythingabout it, but I think a good
interval house in this reallyinsane to somewhere beyond the
sea, was 2020, to 2024, thatsounds like a good interval for
the next time give let me dosome other things, and I have
some really cool other things inthe works over the next couple
of years that I am very excitedthat show a different side of my

(49:52):
writing.
Well, that's exciting. Oh

Alan Bailey (49:58):
yeah. Well, we are coming up. On an hour here. Do
we want to try and fit in acouple more questions, cat, or
do we want to,

Unknown (50:05):
um, I think we should probably start winding down.
I remember this will go on fortwo and a half hours.

Alan Bailey (50:14):
Well, that's, that's a perfect, you know, a
perfect segue and to one of ourquestions. I don't usually ask
this one before the other endingquestions. But since we're on
the topic, you know, what? Whatnew work do you have coming out
soon?

Unknown (50:27):
So actually, I'm going to be doing something a little
different with with the bonesbeneath my skin being my only
novel this year. I'm notreleasing anything else because
I'm going to give myself abreak. I have not been able to
take a break in many years, soI'm going to give myself a break

(50:47):
this time, because a very coolopportunity fell in my lap that
that will be announced at somepoint this year, I believe, for
a book of mine coming out thatwill be released in 2027 but I
can say this in after my break,I have a book coming out in 2026

(51:08):
that is a literary speculativefiction novel about two men in a
queer couple in their 70s.They've been in a relationship
in the for 40 years, and whathappens when the entire world is
going to end and they have tofulfill a promise before that

(51:29):
happens? So it's these twoelderly men getting into
Winnebago, driving from one sideof the country to the other, and
the whole book is about thepeople they meet along the way.
And it is, I am so, so excitedfor people to read this book,
and it's going to be very cool,and that'll be 2026, or
something like that. I think so.But I get a break first, and I'm

(51:50):
very happy about it. Well,

Alan Bailey (51:52):
well earned. Yeah, I think so. Okay, awesome,
awesome. I was waiting for youto say you're running some
horror in there, since you'resuch a horror, I

Unknown (52:00):
I will say that with Tor night fire, there's most
likely going to be a very coolannouncement soon. So we'll see
what happens. Oh,

Alan Bailey (52:13):
interesting. Okay, yeah,

Unknown (52:14):
horror is my number one, and I've, I've always
wanted to get into it, and Ithink I got something going on
with it. So we'll see whathappens with it. Cool,
cool, nice.

Alan Bailey (52:24):
So now the more traditional ending question
here, What is bringing you hoperight now?

Unknown (52:31):
So a bit of a downer. First, I'm sorry I had, I had a
lovely, a lovely cat namedotter. I've had her. I had her
for 17 years. I rescued her as aferal kitten born that my sister
found outside her apartment inthe bushes, and she lived with
me through five states, orexcuse me, five different homes,

(52:53):
three different states, andunfortunately, last November,
she was diagnosed with a veryaggressive cancer, and she ended
up passing away on January 1 ofthis year, so just a little bit
ago. And so what has brought mehope since then, and what has
helped me through my grief, ismy idiot dog, Hendrix. He is my

(53:16):
baby. He is my boy. He knowsthat I've been pretty sad about
losing one of my one of my longterm friends, and just today, we
went to the park, and it feltlike I hadn't laughed in a
little while. And then all of asudden, these Canadian Geese
just came up running through thesnow towards us, and Hendrix

(53:37):
lost his damn mind. So whathappened? He pulled me on the
leash. I fell face first intothe snow, and he came right back
and looked at me, you know, withthat sheepish dog face
expression that they have,licking my face going, I didn't
mean to do that. I'm sorry. Youokay. I just laughed my ass off
laying on the ground in themiddle of my driveway in the

(53:59):
snow with my dog and that I feltgood, I felt hopeful, and I felt
happy,
awesome. That is love. Thankyou, awesome. That is, yeah,

Alan Bailey (54:09):
I love that we are, we are both animal people here,
and we both have cats, multiplecats, actually. So there's,

Unknown (54:18):
I hope to, one day get another cat i i just need some
time before that happens,because that that otter, was
everything. She went with meeverywhere, and she is just she
loved. For some reason, sheloved only me, if, if there were
people at my house, she wouldsit on top of the couch and hiss

(54:39):
at them until they left. But sheadored I. I got to be her
person, and there's no greatergift than

Alan Bailey (54:46):
that. That's awesome. Yeah, we I know when my
wife and I's first cat passed,and we waited for a couple
years, then we got a new one,and now we have four.

Unknown (54:57):
See that's what I'm worried is gonna happen. I was
like. Well, I've been a good,responsible account owner for 17
years. What if I just did? Whatif I go there? Like, yeah, these
three are bonded together, andI'm like, okay,

Alan Bailey (55:10):
exactly, exactly

Unknown (55:14):
that would take all three of

Alan Bailey (55:16):
them? Yes, we probably would do. And my wife
keeps trying to talk. I said,Well, maybe just one no no more
is good. That's

Unknown (55:25):
how I got Bruce and Clark, where they were brothers
and they were kittens at theshelter, and the lady that had
been fostering them reallydidn't want them split up. So
those
were, those were Bruce and Clarkwere the name of my brother's
dogs before they passed away.Yes,

Alan Bailey (55:45):
baby bear. We can't forget baby bear.

Unknown (55:48):
And Baby Bear, he's like, he's he's the stray who
came in from the cold.
Well, you know what? I keephearing this thing about the cat
distribution system, and so I'mhoping that that helps, happens
to me again. So maybe one daythat will
I they do sometimes just showup. Yep,

Alan Bailey (56:07):
I'm looking Yeah, definitely. That's happened to
my parents three times,

Unknown (56:13):
I think, in the middle of nowhere. So it's probably
gonna be a little harder for me.Oh

Alan Bailey (56:19):
yeah. Oh, yeah, oh, well, where can everybody find
you? Online?

Unknown (56:24):
My remaining social media is Instagram, TJ klune
books. If you want to seepictures of books and my dog,
that's where you can go. And mywebsite is TJ, klunebooks.com
and I really do not update blogsthere at all. So don't worry
about that. But if you want tosee where I'm going to be on
tour, all the information is onmy website.

Alan Bailey (56:47):
Awesome. And that's because he's going to be
blogging for If this goes on,don't panic once you blackmail

Unknown (56:56):
him any blog,

Alan Bailey (56:59):
yeah, yeah. All right, so All right. With that,
this has been our interview withTJ Clune. Thanks so much for
coming on. We really appreciateit. Thank you so much, Alan Kat
for having me. I greatlyappreciate it Absolutely. Thanks
so much

Unknown (57:12):
for coming on. Yeah, it's been fun.

Alan Bailey (57:16):
And that was our interview with TJ Clune before
we keep going, just to remindeverybody that we have a
Patreon. It's patreon.com/ifthis goes on, please check us
out there. Actually, I have beenthinking I need to update it and
ask our patrons who they wouldlike to have come on the podcast

(57:36):
next, because we haven't doneone of those in a little while.
So it's time. It's time with abunch of other stuff too. I
encourage you to go out andcheck that out. If you're not
into that. There's also coffee.That's K, O, f, i, that's more
good for like, one timedonations. If you'd like to do
that, just look us up on there.And then finally, the thing that

(57:56):
we most ask of you is pleaseshare us with your friends on
whatever social media you're on,or just like, even in real life,
if people do that anymore, justjust, just share us. That's
that's the best thing. Justshare us. That's all you have to
do. Just share us. So what areyou reading right now? Kat,

Unknown (58:18):
I actually my one of my Christmas presents to myself was
I filled out the last of the 10book collection of Theodore
Sturgeon stories, and I amworking my way through that. I'm
about. I'm on volume six rightnow, and I'm awesome. Hell,
there's 10. Yeah, there's 10.It's amazing. It really is a

(58:41):
really interesting read. On theother book I'm reading is called
three rocks, the story of ErnieBucha, the man who created
Nancy, and it's done by BillGriffith, who is the guy who
does Zippy the Pinhead, ifyou're familiar with that comic.
And it is a graphic novel aboutthe story of Ernie Bush Miller,
the man who created Nancy. Andit is really interesting.

Alan Bailey (59:03):
Huh? Interesting. Okay, well, I am reading Moby
Dick right now.

Unknown (59:10):
You're reading Moby Dick. I am. I am. Why? What? So
I put a, I approve of this, butB, what has has led you to read
Moby Dick?

Alan Bailey (59:22):
Oh boy. Okay, I think there's a whole like
conglomeration of things really,what comes down to it? Well, you
know, first of all, I was, like,I was an English major, right?
So I've read a significantnumber of classics in college
and past College, and this isone I just never got to wow. You
add that to Sam Miller alwaysgoing on about it, yeah, yeah.

(59:46):
And then our friends over atHugo girl, the Hugo girl
podcast, they're huge fans ofmovie Dick as well. And yeah. So
between Sam and our friends overat Hugo. Go. Girl, they finally
convinced me to purchase it. SoI've had it sitting like in my
AUDIO BOOK pile for a while now,and I'm like, okay, you know, I

(01:00:07):
try to read at least one classicevery year. Yeah, it's good. I'm
gonna I'm buckling down and I'mdoing it. And so have you
started it? Oh yeah, yeah, I'mprobably, what do you what do
you think so far? Gosh, I am.I'd say I'm over a third of the
way in. Okay, okay, wow. It'swell, okay, so multiple
feelings, first of all, is wayfunnier than I thought it was

(01:00:31):
going to be. Yes, I had no ideathat it was funny at all. Yeah,
the first 12 ish chapters, likewhen Ishmael meets, oh my gosh,
I'm forgetting his name. Quick,quick, yeah, quick, yeah. Quick,
quick, quick. When Ishmael meetsQueequeg is, honestly, it's like
a sitcom. It's just likestraight out of a sitcom, I

(01:00:52):
think, because so so he'llbasically have like, some
narrative chapters, and thenhe'll have some very, like,
thematic chapters, yeah? Solike, he has some chap. He has
one chapter that's basically,like, all these descriptions of
whales, yeah, another one that'slike a meditation on the color
white, yeah, that's, that's,actually, I just finished that

(01:01:13):
one yesterday. I think I, youknow, in, in, like, it gets a
bit pretentious. I thinksometimes, yeah, yeah, you know,
um, but uh, ultimately, I'mactually liking it more than I
thought I was going to like it.Excellent, excellent, yeah,
yeah. And I'm surprised at howexperimental it is. Like, I did

(01:01:33):
not expect that at all.

Unknown (01:01:35):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, that's back when
they're still trying to figureout what novels are, right? And
so, yeah, lotto, kind of wildstuff going on. And now

Alan Bailey (01:01:44):
that you mentioned that, it's kind of interesting
to think about that and thencompare it to where things are
now, where I could see this,yeah, a modern book being
written in this very same way.You know, yeah, it's kind of
like full circle here. You know,

Unknown (01:02:01):
everything old is new again. Yeah, yeah,

Alan Bailey (01:02:04):
yeah. I'm also about to start a book called
cryptid bits, by cryptid, yeah,by Jess Sims. It's very tiny.
It's about, let me see I'mlooking here. It's about, it
says 65 pages. But let me tellyou, this is about the half the
size of a normal book. Oh, nicepages. So I probably read this

(01:02:27):
in, you know, one go. Oh, yeah,but I bought this from the
author who was at a table atparsec. Oh, I shouldn't say
Parsec at confluence, which isour local,

Unknown (01:02:40):
yeah. I hear they've got a good gift of honor coming
up. Yeah, that's the rumor,

Alan Bailey (01:02:48):
you know, being on the board. Now, I have things to
say about that, you know,important, because I'm important
now, there you go. There you go,

Unknown (01:02:59):
combo, though. And a night they kind of, that's,
that's an interest. It's a nicerange, right? Kind of like
modern indie stuff and then aclassic, yeah, yeah.

Alan Bailey (01:03:11):
You know, I try to make sure that I read a lot of
indie stuff, because I'm like,does Tor really need one more
person reviewing their books.You know what? I mean, yeah,

Unknown (01:03:23):
yeah, yeah. No, I agree. The Indie, indie amping,
the MD signal is, I think,pretty important. Totally, yeah,
totally, absolutely. All right.Well, you know what? We forgot
to talk about our interview alittle bit. Let's, uh, I thought
that was so good, um, I, youknow, I've read a number of his
books, and so I was very excitedto get the chance to talk to

(01:03:45):
him, and I really wanted to askhim about the Pinocchio book. So
this interview was everything Iwanted. How about you

Alan Bailey (01:03:54):
amazing, amazing. I had no idea what to expect. You
know, I have seen his namearound so much lately, like,
yeah, he just won the the goodreads award, yeah, I'm pretty
sure that his book just won someaudio book award, if I'm
remembering, yeah. I mean, like,just seeing him around
everywhere, and being like, Oh,I gotta check that out one day.

(01:04:14):
I gotta check him out one day,you know. And yeah, and, and
then you and then you emailed,and we're like, yeah. And I was
like, okay, perfect opportunity.So I really know expectations,
you know, sometimes that's thebest way,

Unknown (01:04:28):
yeah, I mean, and it's funny. I mean, it is a kind of
weird business. And sometimes,yeah, we get people who are
fairly big, which is, it's niceto interview them. It's fun. Oh
yeah,

Alan Bailey (01:04:39):
hell yeah. And very down the earth, you know, uh,
command that relate to the ADHDstuff. And I think, I think, I
think we all kept our ADHDtogether, yes, yes, concise to
the point we recoveredconspiracy stuff, which I loved,
and X Files, which I am veryexcited that he Yes,

Unknown (01:04:58):
I I watched the. Shit out of the The X Files, I will
confess. I mean, I like becauseI think I'm, you know, like, a
decade or so older than eitherof you, but The X Files were
huge for me. So, yeah, I didn'twatch any of the new ones yet
though, oh, I'm afraid they willjust swallow my memory of it.

Alan Bailey (01:05:16):
So a couple years ago, I completed my X Files re
watch because I, I decided I'mgonna just re watch all of them,
right? Yeah? Because, you know,back in the day, it's like, if
you didn't watch them when theywere they were on then missed
them, right?

Unknown (01:05:32):
Oh, yeah. Let's see you in all the baggy side like that.
There's like, that second onethat Jack Black is in, and all
of that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alan Bailey (01:05:39):
I went and saw, I re watched all of, oh, and it's
funny that you mentioned that,because, like, Seth Green is in
one and, like, all these famouspeople that weren't famous yet,
we're in a bunch of them. Yes,

Unknown (01:05:50):
yes. It's, it is really interesting to go back and and
see that. Yeah, no. And that wassuch, it was just such a good
show. And I think, like, one ofthe reasons it was so
interesting was, at first therewere a lot of, like, a lot of
holes and gaps that the kind of,like the the watcher, the
reviewer, got to sort of fill infor themselves. And then they
tried to explain stuff too much,yeah, you got stuff with the

(01:06:12):
black goo. And it was just like,yeah, it's, it's gotten boring.

Alan Bailey (01:06:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They definitely did. And I will
say about the new episodes.There's like, two or three of
them that I thought, I can'tremember how many there are, but
there's two or three I thoughtwere excellent. And the other
ones, I was

Unknown (01:06:30):
kind of like, what? Oh, that's too bad, yeah, yeah. But,

Alan Bailey (01:06:33):
uh, I mean, check them out there. There are a
couple of them that are, like,really good. Okay, yeah, all
right. So does that wrap us up?Then X Files. We're gonna end
with X

Unknown (01:06:44):
Files. I think it does. We're gonna end on The X Files.
Gonna do I can't do the song,though, unfortunately,

Alan Bailey (01:06:50):
oh my gosh, I might. Maybe I have to find that
and that'll be our ending musictoday. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well,
thanks everybody for listening,we are keeping hope alive when
episode at a time bye, bye.

(01:07:14):
If this goes on, don't panic. Isedited by and produced by Alan
Bailey. Our theme music is byFather flamethrower. Additional
music is by Christophersnidrosky and outro music by
sable Aradia, Intro by DaveRobinson. Special thanks to our
guest, TJ klune. Thanks forsupporting us, and we'll see you
again soon. I believe

Unknown (01:07:39):
in human causing planetary I believe in unicorns.