An Interview With TJ Klune

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle
the Podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Jr. And
today I am so thrilled to have our guest TJ.
Klune is the number one New York Times in USA today,

(00:36):
best selling Lambda Literary Award winning author of such works
as The House and the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door,
In the Lives of Puppets, The Green Creek Series for adults,
The Extraordinary Series for teens, and so many more.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Today we will.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Be discussing his newest work, The Bones Beneath My Skin.
I am so thrilled to have TJ. Clue at the
Full Circle Table.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, TJ. How are you? I am good, Charles. Thank
you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I have been looking forward to talking to you because,
let me tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I love the book. That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
The Bones Beneath My Skin is a fabulous book. And
you know one thing I am so grateful for. When
I got the invitation to read the book, I saw
queer science fiction, and I got a little nervous, only
because I love the genre of science fiction. But when

(01:41):
it's a book, authors tend to do one of two things.
Either they get bogged down in the science or they
embrace the fiction. And when you do one and not
the other, it's just not fun. But the same can
that cannot be said about this book. This book was
so much fun. In fact, when I wasn't reading it,

(02:02):
I was thinking about reading it, and I love when
that happens. So tell me a little bit, tell me
what the bones beneath my skin is about.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, So this book follows the character of Nate. When
the book opens, Nate is probably at the lowest person
a person can be. He's at the lowest of low's.
His parents are dead through a horrific act of violence.
His brother wants nothing to do with him. He's just
been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington,
d c. For some unethical practices on his part. So

(02:38):
we have a very flawed, broken person when the novel opens,
and what he wants to do is with nothing left,
he goes to the only thing that he has left,
which is a cabin in the mountains of Oregon, and
he wants to go there to refresh and regroup and
figure out what his next steps are and when he
gets there, he expects the cabin to be empty. It

(02:59):
is not. Inside is a man with a gun and
a little girl who calls herself Artemis darth Vader, who
is not exactly a normal child, And from there Nate
learns about them and about their past, and he has
to make a decision if he wants to let himself
continue to drown in his anger and his grief, or

(03:22):
he wants to do something that could change the world.
And the book follows his journey with these two other characters,
Artemis and Alex. And what I love about the book
for the most part is, yes, there's the big sci
fi adventure that goes on on top of it. There's
all there's a big cast of characters, but at its heart,
it is about Nate and art and Alex. They are

(03:45):
a triangle. Without them, Without any one of the three,
the picture wouldn't be complete. They are pieces from a puzzle,
from different puzzles, but when they go together, they still
somehow fit and still form a picture. And you know
when you're writing, when you include romance in books and
stuff like that, that there's a tendency to focus on
just the two main characters that are as part of

(04:07):
the romance. But with this art she is ten years
old and she is on every single page because she
is just as important as Nate and Alex are, and
her journey is what sends Nate off into a world
where he realizes it's not what it seems and he
has to go and figure out how to do what

(04:28):
Nate or what Alex and art have started out to
do trying to get her home.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's yes, it's so. It was so much fun to read,
and the character of Artemis is very charming, it's so charging,
and the you know, I had suspected what made her
special a bit beforehand, but I was almost wrong. And

(05:02):
I love that, and it kind of gave me. The
dynamic between the three kind of gave me Louis Lastadt
and Claudia vibes, except not quite as creepy.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Not quite as creepy. We do not want to go
to that direction, Yes, and I doubt that art Art
can be a little creepy sometimes, but she's not a
child vampire queen, right, So.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
What drew you to the creation of this story?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
So initially, the genesis of this book goes all the
way back to twenty fifteen. I wanted to do my
own spin on a specific kind of story you have
to think of, like Stephen King's It or Et or
Escape from Which Mountain, which is basically a group of kids,
a group of young people have to come together to

(05:54):
face something. I hadn't quite figured out what that something was,
but I knew I wanted to go in that direction,
and so the more I started thinking about it, the
more I thought, Okay, what if we put these young
teenage boys in an adult novel and have them have
to surround and protect a girl who moves to their
town who exhibits some extraordinary abilities. And I hadn't started

(06:19):
writing anything, which is probably good because the very next year,
a funny little show called Stranger Things came out and
completely did everything that I was wanting to do, And
that happens sometimes. My novel Under the Whispering Door, a
rumination on grief and what it does to people, was
initially going to be something very different. It was initially

(06:39):
going to be I was initially inspired by a very
specific scene from Beetlejuice where Alex Baldwin and Geena Davis
first die and they go to the afterlife and they
sit in the bureaucratic room where everybody has to take
a number and do that. And I had this idea
that that's what the afterlife was, and that there would
be like some kind of system where it assigned morality,

(07:00):
and then what came out after that the good place,
and there the exact same thing that I did. Right.
It happens, though, and you have to roll with the punches.
So with the bones beneath my skin, I set it
aside for a little bit and let it cook in
the back of my head and maybe something would come
of it, maybe something wouldn't. But then when I was

(07:22):
randomly doing one of my research spirals where when I
have I have ADHD, so that means when I find
something interesting, I hyper fixate on it and it becomes
a personality, like right, exactly like a kid, it becomes that.
And I stumbled across something that I had not heard
about since I was a kid, and that was a
man named Marshall Applewhite. Now that name might not be

(07:45):
familiar to younger people, but to people of a certain generation, saying,
like born in the eighties and nineties like I was,
you probably remember that name. Marshall Applewhite was a leader
of a cult called Heaven's Gate in the late nineties.
He believed this cult believed that the recently discovered comet Hailbop,
had an alien spacecraft in the tail of the comet.

(08:09):
And you can go online and look at all of
Marshall Applewhite's videos. They're still available. He is a very
striking figure. He's very planned, leathery skin, his ears stick out,
he has the most inhuman eyes I have ever seen
on a human being. And he talks about what the
beliefs of Heaven's Gate are, what they do and the Again,

(08:30):
these videos are readily available. But what happened. They all
ended up committing mass suicide and there's some very indelible
images that came out after this. For the most part,
when people remember Heaven's Gate, they remember a the comet,
and b the aftershots of what happened, which were in
a bunker with bunk beds, people with their tracksuits and
their white sneakers and sheets applied all over everyone. Then

(08:54):
they were dead. And to this day, Heavensgate dot Com
still you can go to the website right now and
look at it. It looks exactly like it did in
the nineties and I spoke to the people who run
Heaven's Gate the website. It's basically it's not an active,
come join our cult kind of thing. It's more like
a museum piece and archive of what it was like

(09:16):
at the time. And from there I just became fascinated
by the idea of cult leaders like Jim Jones and
David Koresh and how one person can be so charismatic
that they can insert their will upon a group of
people and basically mold them into whatever they can be.

(09:39):
It is an astonishing and terrifying thing that for some
people it is so very very easy to give up
your friends, your job, your family, your money, all of
that so you can follow something specifically. If you want
a more recent example, think of QAnon when that happened
during the first Trump administration. That was all online, but
that is in essence a cult.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
There's yeah, I was thinking of the arm Cheeto monster.
I was like, ooh, too real.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Right, And there's a cult in the news right now
called the Zizians where they have murdered six different people
over the past like eight months, and they are a
It's mostly made up of trans people in this cult
who worked in the in the technology sector, and their
beliefs are that AI is going to take over the world.

(10:27):
So their leader, the cult leader Zizian, who has just
recently arrested, believed that if they cuddled up to AI,
that AI would when it eventually took over, would allow
them to live while destroying the rest of humanity. And
they've killed people because of this. This happens to this
day in the year twenty twenty five. There are active
cults all over the world and they fall under some

(10:51):
of the most similar patterns where there's one person with
an idea and an entire movement in their heads, and
it's like an infection to other people until other people
come in and start doing things that they would never
have done before, like taking their own life because they
believe in alien spaceship is in the Tale of a Comet.

(11:11):
It's it's fascinating because the psychology behind it is at
this point really kind of unknown. We don't why do
people follow Why is like say, Donald Trump, a cult
leader in a way of shape or form. These are
people who can do and say whatever they want and

(11:32):
people will follow them to the ends of the earth.
It's fascinating, but that is what brought on the new
way for the bones beneath my skin? Instead of kids surrounding,
you know, trying to fight some great evil, what if
we had two men? And I made this almost like
a sad Dad kind of story, right, which is, you know,
some kind of trope that happens. And I just I

(11:53):
loved the dynamic that came out of this between Nate
and Alex and Artemis, because not only did I get
to to go on an adventure with them, I got
to incorporate things like cults in the psychology behind it
and what that means for for people who who would
say I would never fall for something like that, but
then they do and they believe it. I mean, why

(12:16):
do you think, why do you think people still fall
for Nigerian fishing scams? Oh, I'm a Nigerian prince. Here's
two million dollars that I need to have saved and
you're the only person that can do it. People fall
for that. Yeah, maybe a lot of them are older,
but people still fall for stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Well, I feel like there a lot of times there
is an element of desperation, you know, a yearning to
cling to something, you know, whatever, or a yearning.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
For community, a yearning for people who think exactly like you. Yeah, right. Look,
when I when I when I go out on tour
and I talk to the audiences that I have, I
have to remind myself. Then in a way, that's like
an echo chamber, because I'm sure there's people that I
speak to who are or that are in the audience
that don't think trans people don't deserve to exist. So

(13:09):
in a way, I am speaking to an echo chamber
and getting validated by what I'm saying. And on the
flip side, there are people who desperately seek that validation
because they've never been listened to before, right, and they
want they want, And when someone finally listens to them,
or when someone finally you know, acknowledges their beliefs and
maybe even agrees with their beliefs, that's like this fusion

(13:32):
that happens. Then they're all like, guess what we should
We should spread our ideas together. You think, like I do,
Let's come together and talk about more people. See if
we can get more people into what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Right, and that can be a source of good, and
that can be a source of great.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Evil exactly, And it's fascinating how how sometimes the line
between the two isn't that you know thick that Sometimes
it's some people who are thinking they are doing great
good actually cause great evil in effort to get to
that good. And to me, it's the idea of moral relativism.
You have your actions have to be honest and good

(14:11):
if you're trying to achieve a good result. If you
step on, hurt, or kill people to get your way
to a good result, is that result good? No, it's
not because you harmed so many people to get there, right.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
And how often, like in the case of you know,
this widespread fear against trans people, it's like all you
need is a little bit of well, in this case,
a lot of bit of misinformation and just lies, and
people will grasp onto it just because it clicks with
that little thing that they think they believe in the

(14:43):
back of their head. And it's like, oh, I'm not
the only one.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
You know, it's you know, the fact that this book
is set in the nineties is a little bit ironic because.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
I was going to ask you about that.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, because of the fact that the morality panic that
is going on right now about trans people is no
different than the morality panic of the Satanic panic of
the nineties, where people were saying, all these terrible things
are happening with the devil and children and nothing was
actually going on. People just chose to believe because that's
what they were told, and they thought, oh, well, yeah,

(15:15):
people would do that stuff like that gay people or
teachers or whatever. They would believe in their pedophiles and
all of this, But there was nothing to it. Nothing happened.
It was just misinformation that had been spread. Could you
imagine if the Internet had been as ubiquitous then as
it is now what that would have done for the
morality panic. Look what it's done for the transphobia that's

(15:36):
spreading across the North America and the UK. It's because
all of these people can come together and find people
who think just like them and create an echo chamber
to make sure that they are listened to and that
their beliefs are validated.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
And that's the thing I think of yea E. Tangents,
I think.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
ADC spiral. Here we go.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
You know, I read a lot about like the KKK
when I was in college and how there were so
many white supremacist groups around the country, highly concentrated in
Pennsylvania believing.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And Oregon that's the state where I was born and raised.
I'm actually, it's so funny you brought this up, and
I'll let you continue in a second, because the book
I'm currently working on right now talks about the founding
of the KKK in Oregon and what happened and everything
that went that, So I am like knee deep in
that history.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
As interesting well. And also it's like the one of
the reasons why there are so many different factions and
subgroups is because nobody can get their shit together enough
to come together in organized.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
But we're still seeing now. I mean, I have to
be honest, I after the last selection, I kind of
disconnected myself from the news. It is a very privileged
position to be able to take. But I knew that
the news was going to be just a repeat of
twenty sixteen, that every single headline was going to be
Trump did this, Trump did this, Trump is this? And

(17:12):
I remember when he was inaugurated in January. I just
I happened to look in the news thing and it
said Trump declares the United States a country of only
two genders, male and female. And I was like, this,
this is what we're doing that it works, right, you
have you have billions, you have millions of people complaining
that they can't buy eggs. Right, and this this is

(17:34):
what we're focused on. But then again, this is the
same country where there are entire states that have that
have enacted laws to go after one trans kid in
their states who wants to play sports. Entire states have
changed laws because of one child in them.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Sometimes that one child doesn't even want to play sports.
It's the fact that they might want.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
The child was merely inquiring if they into play sports,
and that's what we're focused on.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Or they bought a new pair of sneakers.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Right, We're not focused on We're not focused on inflation.
We're not in focused on crime. We're not in focused
on having necessary conversations about how to help immigration actually
become something that is feasible for this country. We are
not trying to help the people who are down and out.
We are not trying to help poor people. We're not
trying to solve houselessness or food you know, insecurity, we're

(18:26):
trying to We're trying to say, here's one person who
isn't like most other people, so let's make sure that
they know their place. You are not normal, you are abnormal,
you are weird, you are strange, and we're going to
make sure the laws dictate that. And that's what's happened. Look,
the right to same sex marriage in the United States
is ten years old this year. Yep, ten years old. YEP.

(18:50):
Thirty six states in the United States have same sex
marriage bands on the book. So if oberg fell, the
right to same sex marriage were to fall, like Roe v. Wade,
there would be states where queer marriage, same sex marriage
would be immediately invalidated. So imagine you've been married, you've
been with your partner for forty years, you've been legally

(19:12):
married for the last ten. But if a Supreme Court
justice gets a bug up of their ass like they've
been hinting that they're going to do, they'll get rid
of they'll overturn the right for gay marriage and leave
that to the states. And what's going to happen. Look,
what's happened with Roe v. Wade. There are people dying, yeah,
because they can't get the medical, medical care that they need.
And you know, bringing this back full circle on this

(19:33):
tangents there trans people are some of the have some
of the highest suicide rates out of any marginalized group
in the world, yep. And the response is to punch
down on them. That is nothing but cruelty. That is
absolutely nothing but cruelty. And you know, we've heard it
many many times over the last eight years that cruelty

(19:55):
is the point. But here's the thing. When you're cruelty
is on display like that, yes, you may be sending
signals out to other people who think like you that yeah,
this is what we're doing now, But at the end
of the day, history, history, that ever pervasive thing, is
going to view you like we view people like Annita
Bryant now, like we view people that, you know, all

(20:18):
the Chuds in the fifties and sixties, like we view
Reagan after he let an entire generation of gay men die.
The history is going to be the ultimate judge of that.
And it's unfortunate that we can't say, you know, fuck
you now, get out of the office that we voted
to put you in. But I just I don't understand

(20:39):
why certain people fill the need to punch down on
some of the groups that they do, especially when it
is never easy to be a transperson in the United States, right,
It's never easy. It doesn't matter if you're passing or not.
It's never easy because you're always going to have somebody

(21:01):
who hates you for who you are, simply for finding
your true self and finding your identity and finding your
your your your right to live the way you want.
Queer people, the best revenge we can get is to
live happily and successfully. But unfortunately there's so many people
that don't want.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Us to do that exactly. And that's you know, getting
back to getting back.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
To the book, look at that to people we did it.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Like I like to focus on, especially with the podcast
now because we're starting to burn around the news, focusing
on queer joy and queer excellence because you know, like
you said, the best way to battle this is to
be let our light shine so bright that you know
it pushes them back into the shadows where they belong.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Now, I wanted to burn their eyes out.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
I almost said that, and then I'm back, thank you, No,
that's your job, than I look.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Last eight years have taught me something very, very very important.
It's when Michelle Obama in twenty sixteen started to use
the phrase when they go low, we go high, and
I understood it at the time. I understood it now though,
when they go low, we go lower. We drag their
faces down into the muddy, We step on the back
of their necks.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
That's how you sound like my bestie, she said, when
they go low, you kick him in the face. I mean,
they're already down there.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Absolutely, they're already down there. Why not get down there
with them? What's the worst that could happen. They're going
to call you a fag, They're going to call you
they're going to call you some a horrific slur.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
I have no idea that right I have.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
I have heard that from far worse people in the world.
And if you want to go now, we'll go in
the mud. We'll go in the mud.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
And that's the interesting thing about setting the book in
nineteen ninety five, because I was just having this conversation
last night at our local p flag meeting. I was saying,
how this is feeling like I came out in ninety two,

(23:05):
ninety three, and this kind of feels like that, where
you know, Whereas then my mindset was I'm here, I'm queer,
and you're going to deal with me. I'm taking up space,
whether you like it or not. I'm taking that same energy,
and I'm using it to protect folks now because you know,

(23:28):
I'm not scared of anyone anymore. But it's crazy like that.
I remember standing on street corners in broad daylight and
having a car go by and bottles be thrown at me,
you know what I'm saying. Like, at that level of
ignorance and hatred, it's like it's it's coming back, and
I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right and so right this book, it is set in
the nineties, and it is for a very specific reason.
First and foremost, I posit the idea that the nineties
were the biggest technological leap for humanity because at the
beginning of the decade, nobody had cell phone or internet
in the United States. At least by the end of
the decade, internet was ubiquitous and most people had cell phones. Yea.

(24:07):
And what did that allow you to do? Well? It
allowed you to contact people from other cultures, other parts
of the world that you may never have gotten to
have interaction with in your entire life. Yes, And it
could broaden your horizons, it could open up your mind.
I was a white kid from rural Oregon who did
not have any people of color in the tiny little

(24:27):
town that I knew, white right, right, we were white
trash that is that I come from. I come from
that background. And so you know, getting the Internet in
nineteen ninety eight, I was sixteen years old. Yeah, it
would have been, Yeah, nineteen ninety eight. It was the
first time we got and we didn't even have we
had three channels on our television. The first time that

(24:50):
I had anything like that was when we got internet,
dial up internet. Yeah, but internet all the same and so.
But at the same time, you have to remember this
was the nineties, and it's weird how we were then
versus where we are now. In the nineties, we were
coming off the HIV in the AHS crisis. It was
still a very big thing. We were also entering the

(25:10):
Clinton era, which became the era of don't ask, don't tell, which,
for those who weren't alive in or don't quite remember,
was basically the military's way in the United States government
way of saying, hey, gay people exist, but we don't
want you to talk about it, and you can't talk
about it either, so say that There was like a
military bigger closet benefit, a military ball, a military event

(25:34):
where people were invited. Straight people could bring their partners
gay people. You could not why because you don't ask
and you don't tell. Basically, it's none of our business.
But if you make it our business, we have to
do something about it. There were people in Don't Ask,
Don't Tell in the military who were dishonorably discharged because

(25:55):
of don't ask, don't tell and because of their homosexuality,
who who in only recent years have gotten that overturn
to be an honorable discharge, Because think about it, that's
a shitty way of doing things in the nineties, but
that's where it was. In the nineties. We had gone
from HIV and AIDS, a gay cancer that only affected

(26:17):
gay people, to let's not talk about gay people. Let's
not talk about them. They exist, but they're over here.
And I wanted to explore that in this book. I
wanted to explore that what it felt like to actually
meet somebody who is like you, who is there. I
remember the first time I met a gay person who

(26:38):
wasn't me, and I was like, you're like me, right,
we're friends. I remember the first time I went to
a gay bar in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of
eighteen with my fake ID. I got to go in there,
and what happened. I immediately ran into a drag queen
who adopted me and took me up to the where
the drag queens were and told me all about drag

(26:58):
and everything like that. These were my people. I got
to be surrounded by people like me. And I think
that even now in twenty twenty five, people forget how
important that is for queer people, especially queer people who
live in rural areas, especially queer youth who live in
rural areas, who don't get that kind of exposure unless

(27:20):
it's on the internet, right, And that's not always the
safest place for young any people to do anything like that.
So I think of the nineties. I don't necessarily think
of them fondly, but I do think of the nineties
as a very pivotal time, not just for queer people
but for humanity as a whole, because at the beginning

(27:43):
of the nineties we weren't connected. At the end, so
many of us were, for better or worse.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, Because like I spent the bulk of the nineties
ninety three to two thousand in college, because it took
me seven years to get my four year degree, and so.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
If it makes you feel better. I have one semester
of community college under my belt, so you understand.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
But so I associate the nineties with that time of
being a rebel, being an upstart. I was getting a
dance degree, so it was like I was a creative
you know, so everything was you know, challenging what's going on.
So that was the perfect time. The nineties was the
perfect time for all that. And the birth of the

(28:34):
Internet created so much culture, like cyberpunk, you know, became
so prevalent.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
But it also allowed you know, it also allowed gay
people to talk to other gay people. I'm not talking
about like like you know, hookup apps or anything like that, and.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
I'm talking about like community at all, chat.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Rooms, chams, message boards, all of this kind of stuff
where people who were once unable to talk to anybody
like them were able to actually talk to other gay people,
queer people, lesbians, trans people. You know. It's just it's
for all that I hate that the Internet has brought
upon this world, I still have to remember that it

(29:16):
has connected so many people who've probably felt alone and
finally found somebody like them a community.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
And created helped create conversations like so much of the
vocabulary that is frankly being weaponized against us. The word
woke comes to mind, was born on the Internet, like Tumblr,
for instance. If it wasn't for Tumblr, I don't know
when I would have learned the term non binary. I

(29:45):
don't know when I would have had the larger conversation.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
About the gender spectrum.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
You know what I mean. And that's when the Internet
is being used as a tool. It's a wonderful thing.
But then it's like the snake eating its own tail.
Because yeah, because of things like now Grinder, where you
can order dick like pizza, you know, the the community
that is the gay bar and queer spaces, they're going

(30:15):
away because you know, the underlying reason for these places existing.
You can separate out and and like I said, order
like pizza so you don't need to go through the
the the social dance of meeting other people.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
And and then if you haven't met the right person
standing outside the bar during like the meat market hours
after the bar closes, and everybody's trying to find someone
to hook up with, so you can go home after that, right,
you know, and and and you know even further beyond that,
you know, gay bars are are I don't think that
they are as prevalent as part of our culture as
they used to be. But even worse than that is

(30:55):
lesbian bars. Those are pretty much not existent at this point. Yeah.
I when I lived in two on Arizona, there was IBT's,
the gay bar, and then there was the lesbian bar
in another part of town. And the lesbian bar was
closed a few years after I got there. The lesbian
spaces for queer women, those shut down quicker than the

(31:19):
spaces for gay men ever did.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, it's so sad. And like every time I hear
about someone trying to open up a lesbian centered space
or women's centered space, I shouted to the mountaintops. It's like, yes, please,
let this succeed longer than five minutes.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Right exactly exactly, because you know, when we're talking about
queer women especially, we don't just necessarily mean lesbians, because
these women centered spaces were there for trans women too,
They were there for all of these people who identified
as a woman. And when you get rid of that that,
I mean, look what is out there right now. Youth centers,

(31:56):
which are very important, absolutely important, But your journey doesn't
stop once you reach eighteen or once you reach twenty one,
and hell.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Your journey doesn't start when you hit eighteen.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Right. This is one of my biggest issues, is this
idea of coming out being the be all and the
end all of our journey. Like when you look, there
are far greaters authors and I who've written coming out
stories about young people. But at the end of the day,
that is not the end. No, because anybody you meet
for the rest of your life is someone you potentially

(32:28):
have to come out to correct forever. That's always going
to be something that will be part of a conversation
with anybody new that you meet if they plan on
sticking around in your life, right, And it's it's the
fact that you know, we don't have spaces necessarily geared
towards older queer people that aren't you know, alcohol related
in bars or hook up related and stuff like that.

(32:50):
You know, I've seen in bigger towns, I've seen like
like queer book clubs or queer meeting spaces. I mean there.
I did a tour last year for one of my
books releases, and one bookstore that I went to was
a trans owned Everybody who worked there was trans and
it was one of the most joyful experiences I've ever had,
because I was surrounded by not only trans joy, but

(33:12):
queer joy. And that's something that no matter what people
try to do, they can't take that away from us,
because we found each other, we've found community, we've found
other people like us, and you can't take that away
from us anymore. You cannot. You can try, you can
scream and shout and say horrific things about young people
who are trans and finding their truth, but at the

(33:35):
end of the day, we still have each other, and
we have always been here and we will always be here.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
And that's the thing I was thinking about this just
the other day. It's like these people, not all of them,
but most of them that are trying to take away
all of our rights and trying to like legislate us
out of existence. It's like they're these basically like cis had,
white people who've never really had to like overcome anything

(34:04):
right going against us, who historically have had to overcome
all of the things. And we are nothing if not resilient,
we are nothing if not creative, We are nothing if
not a bunch of people who make a way out
of no way. So it's like, ultimately, you can't fuck
with us like.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
That, and some of us, some of us are very vengeful.
M M, I can't like you know, it's funny. You're right.
Our entire country is a patriarchy. It is run by old,
rich white men. And look, I hate that I have
to say this, but frankly, I sometimes I just don't
give a shit. One day soon all these old white

(34:40):
people in power are gonna die. They will. Maybe they'll
be replaced by clones who are younger and just as
white and just as rich. But maybe, just maybe, when
all these old rich white people die, right, And why
haven't they yet? Honestly, if I haven't seen Mitch McConnell's
face one more time, I swear to Christ.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
What if old give up?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
I don't know. I don't know how is he functioning
as a person. But regardless, change will come. It will come.
It will take time, and it's going to be a
lot of work. But when these old white people die,
who's going to replace them? Young people? Young people who
are going to change this world to what it should
have been from the beginning. Welcome to all, Welcome to everyone, God,

(35:22):
where we get to exist and be who we want
to be without fear of retribution from people who think
that because we're different or othered, that we aren't worthy
of life, existence, happiness. If these people cared as much
about anything else as they do about queer and trans people,

(35:43):
we could probably solve world hunger. We can solve Musk.
If Elon Musk gave seven billion dollars to the United States,
it would be able to solve the United States hunger
and housing housing problems like that. Yeah, we could. If
rich people, If Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, all
of them came together and said, hey, let's use our

(36:03):
money to make the world a better place. Right, it
could be, but it won't happen. It won't happen. We
have to fight tooth and nail for everything. And you
know what, when I was younger like you, I had
a chip on my shoulder when I came out. I
came out in nineteen ninety eight, and then I graduated
high school in two thousand and I was the out
and proud young queer punk kid who when we did

(36:26):
Pride parades would be the one yelling in the faces
of the evangelist, standing there with a sign saying it
all burn in hell, and stuff like this and as
I got older, I started to soften a little as
I was trying to find myself and trying to find
who I wanted to be in the world. And I
honestly expected it to get myself to get softer as
I got older. But holy fuck, dude, in twenty twenty five,

(36:49):
I'm just now as pissed off as I was when
I was eighteen years old. If I see Evangelsis on
the street with it in a queer celebration, I'm forty two,
I will go up and yell in their faces to
ask him what the fuck they think they're doing. You
know what you have to sometimes, you know what, Sometimes
even though my job is words, sometimes words just don't
cut it. Sometimes you have to show them that you

(37:11):
mean business. And frankly, you know, it's like the idea
of all those Nazis that we see pop up in
Ohio and they're standing on bridges with their thing and
they're saying, we're proud of being white, we are the
white racist superior. Why don't they ever show their faces?
If there's part of being who they are, why don't

(37:32):
they ever show their faces? Because they know the repercussions
of what happens when you're a Nazi or when you're
you know, some kind of racist homophobe. Transform They know
the repercussions because they know it's shitty way to be,
so they hide themselves while telling everybody else that they're
better than everybody because they're white.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
White supremacists are very very very rarely slash never any
kind of superior white.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Because they all look the same. That's why whenever I
see those news and there I'm proud to be white.
I'm like, but you're wearing a you're wearing a black lavah.
You're wearing something over your entire face, so nobody can
tell that you're white. You're wearing and you.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Left your mama's basement to come here, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
You rented a U haul moving truck where you all
hid in the back to be driven to this area
where you got out and hung up your signs, and
then when confronted by other people, you're like, oh, and
then they run away. That's what I love. It's it's
so fascinating to me. People are filled with so much hate.
They go online, they spout hate, they scream hate, but

(38:36):
when they're confronted in person, uh huh they crumble, They crumble,
the argument suddenly flee out the window, and they go about, well,
this is this is what I believe, this is what
I think. Let's shut up, shut up. Nobody cares about you.
Nobody cares.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
And part of that is, you know, there's a whole
generation of people that were not raised with like I
believe your your generation A listen to me, but like
I think your generation might be the last generation that

(39:17):
was properly socialized.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, yeah, we were. I was my generation probably the
last that was not raised by computers, right, stuff like that, right, right,
because we didn't. I mean, I remember when I was
eighteen years old and I got my first text message.
I was like, what is this?

Speaker 1 (39:34):
My first text message? Is the wrong number? And I
was like, what is this going on?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Too? It was wrong? It was meant for me. It
was like some ad for something I don't remember. But
I remember being eighteen, going you can do this now
that part phones and stuff like that, I mean, hell
to show you how much of a ludite I am.
When smartphones first became popular in like twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
I didn't get on that train. I was like, I
don't know what that means. I have my flip phone

(40:00):
when I was happy with it, and then in twenty
like fourteen, I got a smartphone for the first time,
and I'll never forget going to the Verizon to get
my smartphone and asking the gentleman behind the counter what's
the address for the app store, because I thought it
was a physical location you had to go to in

(40:22):
order to get apps on your phone. So, yeah, ours
is probably the last generation that was not you know,
Internet was not a part of our daily lives, right.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
I remember I remember going, have you heard about this Google?
You can just ask it questions and it gives you information.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Or jeeves, Yeah, ask jeeves what? Oh and did you
do that too? Do you remember using AOL instant messenger? Oh? God,
and the and the AI called smarter Child where you
could write to you could write it was a friend
on your friend's list in uh instant Messenger and you'd
write to and it was just like AI that they

(41:01):
have no right back to you. It was very It
wasn't very proficient, but smarter Child was a big thing
in the late nineties where you would talk to an
AI on AOL instant Messenger. I remember just being like
fascinated by that, like this is this is the future,
and now I look where they are in twenty twenty
five with Ai, I'm like, y'all, right, y'all need to

(41:22):
do human things. That's why. Look, I've said this often.
I do not like people. I love humanity. Humanity gave
us movies and books and music and art and dancing.
People just suck.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
And I'm not trying to say this like with any
edge of cynicism, you know, I try not to be
a cynical person, but it's the truth.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
So it's hard to yeah, because every time you try
to be like, well, maybe I should be softer towards
other people because.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
You know more understanding. You don't know what they're going through.
You don't know if they have trauma that formed their beliefs.
But before you can finish that thought, so like, Okay,
I moved to I live in a very small town
in the state of Washington. I live in the mountains,
in the Cascade Mountains in a log cabin. I live

(42:22):
up in the mountains, up on a hill. And what
did I do when I first moved to my house.
I put a gay pride flag outside my house, you know,
the big one with the trans and everything on it,
because that's my belief. And plus, when you buy a
new house, you have to make it gay. It's just
what it is exactly. And what I did not know
when I put that up was that my neighbor, who

(42:45):
I had not met at that point, was a raging homophobe.
And how did I find that out? Well after I
put up the flag, my handyman was leaving one day
after having a meeting with me about a project that
we were going to do, and my neighbor, again who
I'd never met and my handyman had never met, stopped
my handyman on his way out of driving past his house,

(43:09):
made him roll down the window, and then asked him
point blank, what's that faggot up to up there? My
handyman is a straight man with children, and literally, not
before he left, we were having a conversation where I
told him, look, this is a pretty big project that
I'm hiring for. I trust you. We've worked together for
a while, and I trust that you do what you do.

(43:31):
But if you hire anyone that's homophobic, or anybody who's
even remotely smacks of that, I will fire all of
your asses without a second thought.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
And so when that happened, right after he left, he
called me, He goes, I just want to let you
know that I took what you said seriously, and your
neighbor called you some really horrific things, and I said,
all right, straight ally, you got right, right, right right?
And so what did I do as a queer person?
I thought, what should I do in a situation like that?

(44:00):
This is the house I want to live in for
the rest of my life. I love it here, and
what can I do knowing that my neighbor is a
homophobe for all I know, Maybe he's the type of
person that'll escalate. Maybe he'll get angry at me, Maybe
he'll come up, maybe he'll talk to someone who hates
gay people more than he does. Maybe they'll do something.
Maybe somebody could hurt me, come after me. So I

(44:21):
got revenge. And the way I got revenge was I
found out that he does not own the house, he
rents it. And I found out that his realtor was
a big or. His landlord was a big realtor in
the state of California who worked for a very big
realty company. So I tagged the realtor his realty company
on Instagram, and I asked, why do you rent to

(44:41):
a homophobic tenant? Why do you rent to this person
who is very vitriolic in what he says. I have
never gotten a call from a realty agent that fastened
my entire life. They called me, and of course they
said things like I'm so sorry that I did not know.
He was like that I would never do this, and
I told him flat out, here's what I want. I
want you when you get back into town to Mark,

(45:03):
bring your tenant up, march up your way up to
my house, knock on my door, and when I answer
the door, your tenant will apologize. The reason I want
this is not to rub it in his face, not
to make him feel lesser. The reason I want this
is that my books are taught in middle schools, high schools,
and colleges all over the world. He has children. What
happens if one of my books is taught in their schools?

(45:25):
And what happens if one of their kids picks up
the book and says, Daddy, I really love this book.
I heard this author lives here. Can we go meet him?
And this daddy has to say sorry, honey, I call
them a faggot. We can't, we can't go see him.
That's what I wanted. I wanted him to know that
actions have consequences, not just because I was upset, but
because what happens if your kid turns out to be queer?

(45:48):
And if you think that this gentleman who stops someone
he never met and use that kind of word, do
you think he's never said that in front of his
kids before, Come on, come on. So that the landlord says,
I'll do what I can. Never happened. Never happened. But
what does happen is two different things. First and foremost,

(46:08):
whenever these people see me, they run inside their house. Second,
the landlord reached out to me late last year and said, hey,
their lease is up in April. Either they'll move or
do you want to buy the house? Do you want
to become their landlord? I had to weigh that for
a moment because a most I don't want to be

(46:29):
a landlord, even if it means having these people. So
what am I going to do? I'm buying all the
land around the house. Work. Yeah, I'm not buying that house.
So even if they choose to renew the lease, I
will still own all the land around their house. So
now when they try to go outside and try to

(46:49):
go on in my property, I will tell them you
cannot be on my property. I'm sorry. Then, so I
don't have to be a landlord, but I still get
to be a dick.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
And those are my three favorite qualities when it comes
to queerness. Our resilience are our creativity and our pettiness.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
I love that I don't. I don't take you know,
when I was a kid, I took a lot of shit.
I'm in my forties now, I don't take shit from anyone,
anyone at all. If you want to try to walk
all over me, that's fine, you can try, but you
should not be surprised when this faggot fights back, because
I won't. I won't let people win like that. I won't.

(47:32):
I refuse. I refuse because for all I know, maybe,
just maybe this will be the one thing that this
dude needs to be like, holy shit, I'm a fucking asshole.
Maybe that's what will happen. I doubt it. I rarely
find that homophobes are introspective in any way, shape or form.
But maybe it could happen. Maybe he'll stop and think,

(47:54):
holy crap, I did this that chances of that gut
thrown out the window a couple of weeks ago, because
now they have a big Trump flag sitting in front
of their house. So I keep waiting for him to
be like, hey, what do you think about my flag?
And I want to say, I don't care about that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Like you do, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Just remember revenge, revenge, living happily, living successfully, being your
own person, making space for yourself, and never letting anyone
take that away from you exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Well, like in our immediate area, like I love where
we live. I was a city boy for forty two years.
I lived in Philadelphia and now we live in Jersey
in the suburbs, and I love where we live. We've got,
you know, a few Trump flags around us. We noticed

(48:45):
that they would have their flag poles and they would
have their American flag flying, and then underneath that we
either have a Trump flag or a Blue Lives Matter
flag or something like that.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Or like the Virginia flag that says don't tread on
me with a snake that exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
So we're like, okay, well, on our flag pole, we're
going to have our American flag in our progress part
pride flag because you know, we're following the rules and
we dare you to say something. And we have four
corners to this property, so we're going to have four
pride flags. You see us coming, So you know that. Plus,
you know, Martha and I we've had we're getting ready
to start our fourth season of this podcast, and we've

(49:23):
noticed that the listenership in our immediate area and the
surrounding areas has gone up a lot, so folks know
who we are, and I think that's helped create our
bubble because it's like they've heard the things we'll say,
and I have no problem saying it.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
But the the biggest thing that I think is it
should be the focus now, especially going forward, is how
we can protect young queer people, How we can how
we can You remember a few years ago, it's probably
even longer now, when that that movement came out, that
that it gets better movement. Yes, I hate that with

(50:00):
a fiery passion, because you were telling young people it
gets better, not now. It's not going to get better now.
It'll get better at some point in the nebulous future.
It gets better, not today. Coming up tomorrow, but when
you get older and you don't have to live under
your parents' thumb or live with under this kind of homophobia.
It was never actionable, It was never It was more like, hey,

(50:22):
let's put things off for a little bit. My big
thing is now is that we have to remember that
there are queer trans youth that are getting picked on,
not just by their classmates or their teachers, but by politicians. Yeah,
and there are. And here's the thing. I've spent the
last few years talking to young people all over the world.

(50:44):
They are smarter, savvier, more empathetic than we ever were.
Oh my god. Yeah, because they have the phone. They
literally have a little magic box that can connect them
with any piece of information known to humanity. That's what
they can do. And they know that their LGBTQIA transmit
classmates are being targeted. They know books are being removed

(51:06):
from their schools, they know laws are being enacted to
target one person, and they're pissed off about it. They
are angry. They're upset because they see how older generations
are built on the backs of marginalized communities, without giving
them their due, without giving them their respect, without giving

(51:27):
them the hope and enjoy that all other white people
get to have, so why not let other people have that?
Young people, I know it's going to be a difficult fight,
but they are going to change the world. They absolutely will,
because they are better than we ever were never.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Oh, I love like every time I read about students
having a walkout.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, over their queer classmates, or over a jurisdictional thing
or everything. They walk out because they know. Are some
of them walking out so they don't have to go
to school? Yeah? Probably, But you know what a lot
of them are doing standing up for what's right, right,
fighting for what's right. We saw it. We've seen young
people do this for generations. We've seen we saw the

(52:13):
queer riots in the Black Cat and Silver Lake and
Stonewall in New York. We saw the young, queer, young
trans people, young people of color coming together to fight
for the rights of us, the rights that we now
take for granted. Sometimes I just I wish not only
do I wish for the safety and protection of young people,

(52:35):
but I wish that more people remembered their history, especially
queer people, knowing where we came from, knowing who fought
for your rights, that it was trans and women of color,
who really were the ones fighting for our rights? That
the reason it's called LGBTQ. The reason why lesbians are
first when it used to be glbt is because lesbians

(52:56):
were some of the only people who came into the
hospital rooms of dying Hi being an age man. They
put us first, so gay men put them first. This
is why it's LGBTQ. We need to know. Most a
lot of people know about Marsha p. Johnson and Stonewall
and everything that happened there, but the police raids actually
started in Silver Lake, California, where there was an entire

(53:16):
row of gay and lesbian bars until one nine in
the seventies, the Black Cat was raided. All of those
bars were raided. The Black Cat still exists, it's still there.
It's a historical monument now with a restaurant inside and whatnot.
But you have to know your history. For Tucson, Arizona,
the reason pride started in Tucson, Arizona was because in
the nineteen seventies a gay man came to Tucson from

(53:40):
another state to visit friends. They went to a gay bar.
The man left after the bar closed, where he was
attacked and murdered by four teenage boys. Guess what happened
to those teenage boys. They got parole for what they did.
And that's why Pride started. So many of the things
that we do started because of tragedy, because of death,
because of pain, and we wanted to make it into

(54:02):
something beautiful. It's still a work in progress, but we
are doing the best we possibly can. And last thing
I want to say on this tangent, please please, As
we're getting closer to spring, that means we're getting closer
to summer, which means we're getting closer to Pride month.
Please boycott corporate pride bullshit. The ones that change their
company logo in June and be like we like gay

(54:24):
people now here by day stuff, and then the next
month they're like, we're giving money to Republicans right because
we want further their agenda. Don't fall for that. Don't
fall for that. BS, be queer, be proud, but do
it on your own terms, right.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Yeah, it's it's so crazy. We spent so much time
battling the man and the establishment only to want to
be part of it.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, it is. It is true. We have some great
people in the world, great authors, artists, queer that that are.
They are doing transformational things. We just have to ensure
that those people are protected. Look again, I'm speaking from
a place of privilege. I am very successful, but I'm
also a CIS white gay. I am considered a safe gay.

(55:17):
I'm not a trans person. I'm not, you know, a
person of color. My books do not get banned at
the level that trans authors get their or queer black
authors get their books banned. If you look at the
American Library Association's top ten band and Challenge books in
the United States, every single one of them is queer.
Some of them are by black authors about the black

(55:38):
queer experience. I am in a very safe position. But
what's gonna happen? Do we think they're going to stop
coming after they come for trans people? Nope, of course not,
because once they get done with trans people, they're gonna
be like, Okay, what about non binary people? What about
gender nonconforming if that's not included in the trans umbrella?

(56:00):
What about bisexual people?

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Right?

Speaker 2 (56:03):
I mean exists right? Right? So So either this is
going to either a We're going to go back into
the closet under don't ask, don't tell something like that again,
which I'm a loud, motherfucker man, that will never happen
for somebody like me, or they're going to try to
eradicate the rights and and of of an entire community.

(56:26):
And don't don't think that they won't, because if if
if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
They always yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
That's why Martha always says, you know, I'm gonna be
as loud and open my mouth as much as possible
because if one day I disappear, I will be missed.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, and you will. And that's just that. That's for
me too, for every for every death threat that I get,
for every person who hates me. Because I do what
I do. I think about the thousands upon thousands of
people I've met, or the thousands upon thousands of messages
I've got from queer people, from straight people, from people
from all walks of life, from elderly people, elderly men,

(57:08):
especially especially the generation above mine, who was decimated by
HIV and eighths, not knowing that this kind of literature existed.
They did not know that gay people could be in
books and do what gay people are doing in fiction
and stuff like that. Now to be able to have
that place, especially for older queer people who saw friends

(57:30):
and families and lifestyles devastated, that they get to find
some kind of happiness and peace and joy after going
through that is one of the most remarkable experiences.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
That I've ever had, and that reminds me getting back
to the book you mentioned. You know that you got
pushed back with this book, The Bones Beneath My Skin,
cause you classified it as not just science fiction but

(58:05):
also romance, even though there's only one quote unquote sex scene.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Oh God, that pissed me off, like he would, Yeah,
talk about that a little bit, because that struck me.
So this I was with a former publisher, an indie publisher.
I had been with them since the beginning, and I
sent in this book and I saw a couple of
messages that were not meant for me to see. First

(58:33):
and foremost was a message to my editor about this
book saying, here's the new TJ. Clune. This one is
weird even for him. And then second of all them
wanting to say, hey, we don't know that this can
be considered a romance, because romances because this book only
has one sex scene. And I was lived a because

(58:54):
i'd been I'd heard that word weird used to describe
me as a majority of my entire life. When I
was a kid, my parents would call me weird. They'd
make fun of me for my love of reading and writing.
I heard that from teachers, I heard that from classmates.
I love my weirdness now, but when I was a kid,
that was the thing that set me apart. And I
had an almost PTSD like flashback of Oh, weird, that's

(59:15):
where we're going with this, that's what you think. That's
the word. You don't mean the word weird like when
I mean it like it's a good thing. You meant
it as in like this is weird. And second of all,
they started they started asking me to include to put
in more sex in the book, and I said, no,
I don't even like writing sex scenes as it is,
But a what does that mean for a sexual people?

(59:37):
I'm asexual. Do you think that I am incapable of
having romance because I'm not, like, I don't like sex
that much. I have never. It was the turnaround that
they attempted to do to say face, oh, that's not
what we meant. That's what we met. We just know
that there's certain expectations. I said, I don't give a
fuck about expectations your If you don't think this is

(01:00:01):
a romance, because these people bone once on page, that's
a U problem, not a ME problem. So I pulled
the book. I pulled it from this publisher, and I
had this grand idea of self publishing it on my own.
What I did not know was that this set off
a thing that still goes on to this day, because
what we learned after I pulled that book was that

(01:00:24):
this publisher had been embezzling money from not just me,
but from other authors, from other creatives that they worked with.
To this day, this publisher owes me north of fifty
thousand dollars in back paid royalties and stuff like that.
So I had to pull every book I had published
with them, twenty plus books and the bones beneath my skin,

(01:00:46):
and self publish all of them at the same time.
So the bones beneath my skin to me got lost
in the shuffle with all that. And then a few
years later Tor came knocking and said, hey, thank you
for being successful with the house in Thisralian Sea. We
would like to publish some of your other back catalog
and I thought bones beneath my skin. I love this
book two pieces. I love the message. I love Artemis

(01:01:08):
Darth Vader more than almost any other character I've written.
Please give this book a chance, and they said, fuck yeah,
we'll do that, and then they publish it. No issues,
No this book is weird. No, this book needs more sex.
Nothing they said. They were happy to do it. And
guess what A debuted at number six on the New
York Times bestseller list. Fuck yeah, that's what you do.

(01:01:29):
Remember what I said, revenge happily successfully get revenge where
you can. And that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
I love and I also love like the one sex
scene that there is, you know, it's I feel like
if it were more gratuitous than it was, it would
not be as hot as.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
If I put sex in a book. It is there
for a reason. I'm not writing necessarily to titillate. I'm
not writing, you know, for somebody's massive butty fantasies. Whatever
I'm writing, I'm by that point in the book. If
you can't feel that connection and you need sex to
justify that, then I've failed to do my job. The
organic relationship that blossoms between Nate and Alex was something

(01:02:13):
that I took great care in because I was very
concerned about the idea of trauma bonding, which is what
when you think of when you see a big action
movie where there's terrorists and explosions and the guy gets
the girl, do you really think that they're going to
stay together. They just went through something horrific and profound.
That's what brought them together, is that a relationship built
to last. And so with this book, I wanted to

(01:02:34):
take great care to avoid it reading like trauma bonding,
to actually make it a real, viable relationship. And when
you get to the single sex scene in this book,
you believe that there's already something between them that they
don't need sex to add it on. Sex isn't necessary,
but it is an additive that helps to cement their connection.

(01:02:56):
And it wasn't It wasn't full on penetrative sex. It
was really, let's do this. It's not broke back Mountain,
Let's spit on it and let's go in. It was
it was a time and place kind of thing what
they could actually do with where they were, and that
it felt right for that moment to actually happen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
When it did, it felt so real and the tension
that was that you created between the two characters was
like better, way better than the actual sex scene. And
the fact that like what happened was like, like you said,
it's what they could do in the constraints of where
they were.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah. So it's like it went on for a couple
of pages. That was right, That was all right. It
was not. There wasn't sex every single chapter. This wasn't
a ten thousand words sex scene with penetrative sex and
and all this other stuff that goes along with it.
That would not have made sense for this And.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
It's hard to write that and have it be good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
It can be, yeah, and I've had I've written some
that are not very good, and I it's just the
idea that the more you write, the better you become,
or at least that's what I hope, right right, right, So,
but yeah, that sex scene, I'm very really proud, you know,
as an asexual person, sex is for me whatever, But
I'm very proud of that scene in the book because

(01:04:13):
A I feel it's earned and b it feels like, yeah,
that's a next logical step for these two.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
People, right, and having that detail about you makes it
even better because It's like, wow, it was very organic.
That relationship was so wonderful, and it grew from like
real animosity to like, okay, you're you're that little kid
punching the other little kid because you like them, not

(01:04:41):
because you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Right exactly. They were pulling each other's pigtails. Exactly it is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
And then it became that whole will there won't they will?
They all come on? Come on just one time, come
on right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
And I love that interplay. I love that. That's why
most of the books that I write, if they have
some kind of romantic angle to them, I'm going to
make you wait, I'm going to make you work. I'm
not going to write a book where two characters meet
and then all of a sudden they have sex on
the first you know, page or whatever. That's not how
I do. Maybe that's more real life than not. But

(01:05:14):
I love it when you, you as the reader, fill
the pull, and by the time that that does happen,
you're like, come on, huh, fucking chess already you're like
a little kid with your g I jo's and your
barbies and you're knocking them together.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
I'm not going to sit here and pretend that at
one point I wasn't sitting in front of the book
going kiss him, kiss kiss it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I always want to make people reach that line and
then maybe cross it just a little bit more before
I give you what you want.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
I love it. I love it so much. Here's a
question for that, asked, who are who would you say
were your biggest literary influences.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Like many people of my generation, I grew up reading
Stephen King at far too young in age same. I
read my first Stephen King book when I was eleven,
and that was The Stand, which is probably not the
best book for an eleven year old. I should not
understand most of it, but I remember being enthralled in
ways that I hadn't been before. I did not know

(01:06:19):
words could do that can make you feel that way.
And the fact that King is in his late seventies
and still putting out two books a year, right, Jesus,
I mean he just announced a new novel or a
new picture book that's in collaboration with Maurice Sendak, who

(01:06:39):
was passed away many many years ago. Maurice Sendak did
a bunch of drawings for this opera, This mystical, terrifying
opera that never got done. So Stephen King was approached
by this publisher with the artwork and said, do you
want to write a story based on Maurice Sendak's art?
And he said, fuck yeah, and so he did. That's cool, man.
Maurice Sendak, to me is one of the greatest authors

(01:07:02):
that has ever existed. If you don't know why, and
you haven't read it since you was a kid, read
Where the Wild Things Are? Do it? It is remarkable fiction.
It is remarkable fiction. Growing up, I read a lot
of horror, as I said, but I also one of
the first experiences I had with gay people in books

(01:07:24):
was a book called The front Runner. Do you know
that book?

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
I do not?

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Okay, So, in the seventies it was considered the first
critically commercial and successful in terms of sales gay novel.
It was written by a straight white woman named Patricia
Nell Warren. And this book was about a collegiate coach
named Harlan who is training one of his runners, Billy,

(01:07:48):
for the Olympics. And this book was given to me
by my library. And after I came out to her
at sixteen years old, she was the first person I
came out to and so She was like, here's a
gay book, book with gay people in it. You can
read this, And I said, hooray. And so I started
reading the book and I was transported. I was enchanted.
I was moved in ways that I had never I

(01:08:10):
didn't know that gay people could be like this in books.
You know, this is pre HIV AIDS. This was set,
you know, there was It was very New York City
bathhouse era kind of a story. But it was a
love story between Billy and Harlan. And sorry, I'm about
to spoil a fifty year old book that was once
optioned by Paul Newman to be made into a film.

(01:08:30):
But the book ends with Billy running in the Olympics
getting shot in the head by an assassin from the stands.
And that's the end. Oh shit, the end of the book.
So imagine you're first reading gay people in a book,
your first time, and they get murdered, they get killed.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
I told myself I never wanted to write a book
like that. That if I was going to write a
book with gay people in it, they were going to
not get murdered. They were not going to get hurt,
they were not going to get killed. I appreciated their
story because that was funny, A trope for so long. Yeah, fridging, fridging,
the lesbians, burying your days. It's still a prevalent to
this day. I mean you can still see certain TV

(01:09:04):
shows that have that problem. But in twenty eleven, when
my first book came out, I got an instant message
one day on Facebook from Patricia Nell Warren. She had
read my first novel and enjoyed it and wanted to
reach out to me. What did I do? A fangirl,
This is Patricia Nell Warren. She was an institution. She
has since passed away, but I remember telling her the

(01:09:29):
first quote unquote gay novel that I read was the
front Runner, and I'll never forget her response. She wrote back,
I am so sorry. She knew she had heard from
So she was a very fierce LGBTQ advocate ally through
and through, and she heard from so many gay men

(01:09:49):
that the book hurt them. So what does she do?
She went and wrote two sequels, So that book that
showed the aftermath and showed this found family picking themselves up,
putting themselves back together, dealing with trauma and grief. One
of my most prized Possessions is a first edition signed
copy of The Front Writer that I have sitting on

(01:10:09):
my shelf because the story impacted me so much that
I never wanted to write a book like it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
I do too. I love I love miss now Warren.
I miss her terribly. She was a wonderful person. I
got to have many conversations with her before she passed.
She was a delightful human being and did more for
for the LGBTQ community than most street people ever have.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
And that's a conversation that I'm always having with straight people.
You don't get to call yourself an ally, No, you
have to be told that you are an ally right,
Like I say, it's the same as the word diva.
It doesn't count when that must be given to you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Typically it should come from a drag queen too.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Don't hurt?

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Yeah? Is there?

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Uh? Do you listen to music when you write? Is that?
What is the a soundtrack for your writing?

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
If? Well, it depends on the book I'm writing and
for the bones beneath my skin. I made soundtracks that
were all nineties focused. It was R. E. M. It
was Savage Garden, it was Britney Spears, it was it
was all these Michael Jackson, all of these people that
I grew up listening to. I included in the soundtrack
that that I loud, that I listened or that I

(01:11:36):
made for the book. But my favorite artist in the world,
someone that I have gone and seen live multiple times,
will always be Florence in the Machine Good Christ does.
She sometimes make me question my sexuality because she is
a handsome woman and I adore I've seen her live

(01:11:59):
three four times and it's the most amazing is. I
love that music so so so much. But I also
am very, very into hip hop and rap music because
especially music like by Missy Elliott or Buster Rhymes or
Kendrick Lamar, who are such extraordinary wordsmiths. They can do

(01:12:22):
things with words and rhythm that I will never be
able to do, especially Missy Elliott and Buster Rhymes. The
fact that they are so fast and can enunciate so
clearly that you never miss what they're saying, and they
do this wordplay that is so extraordinary. I just I
love all kinds of music. I try to listen to everything,
but man, rap music when it's when it's a good lyricist,

(01:12:46):
when it's a good writer, is extraordinary to listen to
because it can do things with words that you didn't
think were possible. It's so cool how people can do
things with words, put them in certain order to make
them feel a certain way.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
I love it, and I love it when it's clever,
like Kendrick Lamar, I'm sorry you want to strike a chords?
Probably a minor is one of the most disrespectful and
clever words.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
When that song first first came out last year and
I listened to it and I heard that line, I
was like, yeah, yeah. And then the smile he did
at the super Bowl, the smile, I was like, God,
I would not want to be the person that's directed towards.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
It is not a good time to be Drake.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
No, it is not a good time. And Serena Williams
was up there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
I was like, so beautiful. That whole thing is so perfect.
Now you know who is This might may or may
not be surprising to you. You know who is a rapper,
who was a clever lyricist? Who Bob the Drag Queen?

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
What really did they have music? They music on there?
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Oh yeah, oh oh, Bob the Drag Queen is my
favorite line. It's in a song they put out called
gay Bars. Okay already clever, and the line is I
don't speak Spanish, but I will top of toe you
see clever clever.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I love There's there's have you heard have you heard
of Todrick Hall? Yes, and his song Fag, the rap
song Fag. You should listen to that. It is remarkable.
It is his His lyricism in it is hysterical. I
absolutely love it. It's basically used to call me fag
and now you want up on my nuts and it

(01:14:44):
is the first funniest thing And I love it. I
love that song.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
I have conflicting feelings about Todrick Hall, but I will say,
when you want something, I know, but when you want
some top tier faggety ship, that's what he does. Yeah,
like period.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
But see then I think about, you know, like how
rap music was in the early two thousands, you know
and sometimes can still be today. Where you think of
like Eminem who was you know, notoriously had notoriously homophobic
lyrics and stuff like that, but then he learned, he grew,
then he came out did all these things with Elton John,
did all this music, did a lot of talking, a

(01:15:25):
lot of listening and learning. And yeah, now he's in
his fifties. Okay, I get that, but he's not the
asshole that he used to be. He learned, he listened,
he talked, and he grew and he's still one of
the greatest rappers ever. And but he doesn't have to
do this where he makes fun of marginalized groups to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Do it right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
You don't have to do that. You can, I mean,
unless you're queer yourself, you can make fun of right.
That's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
And that's the thing with hip hop. It's like, you know,
you have to be really good for me to follow
you after a certain point, because sometimes I know what
I'm in for when I hit play, like Buster Rhymes,
for instance, top tier lyricist, one of the best. I
know I'm going to hear some homophobic shit when I

(01:16:11):
hit play. I know I am, but you know, it's
like it's the price of admission sometimes, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
You know what younger me might would have bristled, Probably
like the eighteen year old knee with a chip on
his shoulder who came out and stuff like that might
have bristled this something I don't want to think. I've
softened in my old age, but I also kind of
realized that that was kind of the thing to do, right, Yeah,
that's how That's how it was. And maybe maybe it has,
maybe it's gotten a little bit better than that, But

(01:16:42):
at the time, that's what everybody did, right. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
My dog is going crazy because I just got a delivery.
He's this big, but he has to the entire neighborhood.
You know, this has been an amazing conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Thank you. It has been a delightful and some of it,
I know. We did talk about the book for the
Bones Beneath My Skin right now wherever books are sold,
and if you, if you can, you may be able
to find a pretty cool version with painted edges and
everything like that. So get it now before they're all gone.
Oh it's a really damn good book.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
It really really is. I highly recommend it. I actually
did have one more question about the book. Yeah, so
the book has been described as an action movie in
book form, which, okay, I agree with that. If you
were on a cast it, who would play who?

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
So I want to avoid like, like, okay, you know,
I want to try to make it as queer as possible,
so Alex could be played by Lee Pace, who is
a tall drink of homosexual water. He's been in He's
been in Pushing Up Daisies, he's been in the Lord
of the Rings. All that he is just he's like

(01:18:07):
six foot five and just like gorgeous. Hello. I'd like
to be his friend. And then why don't we get
somebody who's for Nate? Why don't we get somebody I mean,
obviously you'd have to be in as young as he'd
have to be in his twenties. Get one of the
popular boys who hasn't done a Jake Gillanoll, Heath Ledger.
I'm going to be gay for a little bit kind

(01:18:27):
of thing. Let them get get like, what's his name?
What's the the guy? Timmy, Tim Tim Tim True, Tim
Tim Chellamy, Tim Timothy. I don't know. I don't know
young people that way in terms of acting that well.
I could have said Tom Holland, but I just don't

(01:18:49):
want to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
I actually thought Tom Holland, but no, I'll.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Take it no or you know what? Who or oh,
you know what? I just changed my mind. I just
I'm going to change out white people or for me Pace,
what's that guy who's in the top Gun movies. That's
everywhere now. And and what's his name? He was in Twisters?
Glenn Powell, that dude who looks like who looks like

(01:19:13):
every other handsome white guy you've ever seen. You could
do it. You can do it. I could do it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
What about Artemis?

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
I have no idea. It's probably a good thing. I
don't know children actors' names. I have no idea, right, right,
I mean, get somebody unknown, somebody who's never been in
film or television before.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Didn't I see The Eternals? Oh yeah, the actor that
played the Eternally kid.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Oh right, yeah, okay, that could work.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Absolutely, That's why I picture.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
Actually, yeah, there would have to be. There would have
to be you know, a kind of gravitas there because
you're playing a kid. But are you right? Really right? Right? Right? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Wow? Okay, Now I want to see the MOVI so
you have to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Yeah, I'll get right on that. Yeah, absolutely, Hollywood is
if Hollywood isn't broken beyond repair when it comes to
adaptations for books. And here's my thing, here's my thing
that I'll take away from it. Even if my books
never get adapted into anything, which you know, who knows
what could happen at this point? Has there ever really
really been a book that's better that or a movie

(01:20:22):
that's better than the book? Really? Can you think of
can you list like five different things where you'd say, yeah,
this was better. I've never seen a movie where I thought, oh,
you know what, I will take that back? There are
I just lied. There are four. The Lord of the
Rings trilogy is better than the book and also coming

(01:20:43):
full circle, Maurice Index where the Wild Things Are. Spike
Jones adapted that with James Gandalfini doing the voice of
one of the main monsters. One of the best book
to film adaptations I've ever seen, ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Okay, okay, there are I was just and I can't
think of any now because my brain doesn't want a brain. Yeah,
but it does happen. But when it does happen, it's
very rare.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
It is, and book to film adaptations are already rare
to begin with, especially when it comes to fantasy, which
needs bigger budget. Especially when you add LGBTQ i A
on top of that. You would think Hollywood is like
liberal leaning. No, they are very conservative. We had multiple
studios turned down the house in the Crilian see because
they said, we don't know how to position the Antichrist.

(01:21:27):
I'm like, he's a six year old kid. He's just
a kid, but they didn't want to position it. Sometimes
I do wonder, though, is it because of the gay right.
I have one producer who told me he wanted to
tone down the gay stuff, and I said, well, you'll
never be making anything of mine ever, right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
And it's like, what is being a kid have to
do with anything? The Omens series exists, right?

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Or or or that that neo gayman show on Amazon
with David Tennant and and what's his good omens y? Yeah,
good Omens that dealt with an Antichrist out of a
character who is a kid. It's not that hard. It
is not that hard to make. But I'm just happy
that I get to write books. At the end of
the day. That's all I want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
There you go, and I want you to do it
because you've made a fan out of me.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Thank you, TJ.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
Klune. Thank you so much for joining us and going
on Tangent after Tangent with me because it was a
lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Thank you for having me. This is a delightful conversation.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
I have a feeling this will not be the last
time we said no, better not be.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
I've told my publicity team that, look, this is a
safe space. I've told my publicity team that I'm reading
really sick and tired of talking to straight people.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
That's a whole word.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
I hear, You'm because there are certain questions that queer people,
queer interviewers don't even need to ask. You don't even
need to do it. But three people like, so, why
include gays in it? Because that's why, right, Because I
never got to see myself so.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Exactly, the representation is important, damn it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Yeah, And look, I love all of the people I've
gotten to spoke speak to over the past, you know,
a couple of months for the release of The Bones
Beneath My Skin. But at the same time, there's just
something talking to other queer people that can understand that
shorthand and that can speak on things that others cannot
and should not.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Speak on exactly, Because you know, that's how we get
Brendan Fraser winning and Oscar for playing a gay role
and then trying to say it's a universal story.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
Or when Eddie Redmain played that transformed in the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Movie and then became a jk Rowling apologist.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Yes, oh, you know how we can end this interview.
Fuck jk Rowling and everything she stands for. If we
lived in a just society, she would be shunned from
any kind of contact with the human race period.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
Bam. Thank you T. J.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Klum for that word.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
You have a wonderful day, sir, and I can't wait
to talk to you again.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
Thank you you too, Bye bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
Full Circle is a Never Scurred Productions podcast hosted by
Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Never Scurd Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Jr. And Martha Madrigald.
Our theme in music is by the jingle Marys.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
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Episode Transcript

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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