-Good evening, everyone.
It's truly an honor to have you all here tonight
as we celebrate the author, it means so much to all of us.
Not just as booksellers,
but as for the people who turn to stories for hope,
joy, and resilience.
TJ Klune has a remarkable gift. Through his words,
he builds worlds where queer love, found family, and magic,
whether literal or simply in the magic of human connection,
shine at the heart of the stories.
His books remind us that we deserve softness,
adventure, and happy endings in a time
when queer communities facing uncertainty,
hostility, and censorship,
authors like TJ are more important than ever.
His stories aren't just for entertainment.
They are acts of defiance, celebration, and a radical joy.
Tonight, we are here to celebrate his latest book,
"The Bones Beneath My Skin."
What a great sentence I'll have to hear over and over again, TJ.
Thank you.
It's a story that blends sci-fi, tenderness,
and the power of human and extraterrestrial connection
in a way that only TJ can.
Also, there's a lot of bacon in the book.
His work has been a guiding light for so many of us
and for our bookstore
who has been lucky enough to witness the impact
that they had on readers of all ages.
And tonight we're also joined by Kim Fu,
who holds a special place in our bookstore's history,
and my [indistinct]
as the conversation partner for our very first author event
that we held in early 2024, I think.
And Kim is the author of two novels,
the collection of poetry,
and most recently the story collection of
"Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century,"
winner of the Washington State Book Award
among many book prizes.
Stories in that collection have been selected
for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best
of the Net performed on Levar Burton Reads.
That's super cool.
-YouTube.
-And "Selected Shorts" and optioned for TV and film.
-Woo! -Yeah, no big deal.
Their third novel,
"The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts,"
is forthcoming from Tin House in 2026.
So please join me in giving a warm love-filled welcome
to incredible, incomparable TJ Klune and Kim Fu.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Thank you again to Charlie and Jane
for that very warm and loving introductions.
So I'm very excited to get to talk to you about this book.
-Thank you. -Okay.
So you know, it's a romance novel.
It is a road trip novel. It is a paranormal adventure,
thriller action with gun fights and explosions.
It is -- like, it is, you know,
a very human and like loving story about a family.
It is so many like incredible moving parts.
And so I want to go back to the very first seed
of inspiration for a book this like complex.
-Yeah.
-What is the very first thing that came to you,
like what the -- the first origin?
-Oh, okay. So in 2015, I had this idea,
I wanted to write a book
that was in the vein of a specific kind of trope
where there are a group of children or young people
in an adult novel who are in peril,
somehow think Stephen King's "It" or think Robert McCammon's
"Boys Life," something like that,
where a group of children have to face something.
So I was like, "Oh, cool.
What if I had this group of boys, one of them,
maybe two of them would be queer
and it was going to be set in the '80s,
and they were going to have to protect a little girl
who had supernatural ability, somehow."
And I was like,
"Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
So I'm going to let that click in the back
of my head for a little bit." And then in 2016,
there's a stupid show called "Stranger Things" came out
and I was like, "Screw you, guys!"
So -- so, yes,
if I had originally written the book as I wanted to,
it would've been "Stranger Things."
And so I was like, "Oh, man."
So I knew there was something there.
I knew there was something there that I had to --
I just had to figure out how to do something with it.
And so I just let it sit in the back of my head.
Now, have any of you read a book called
"The House in the Cerulean Sea"? Yeah.
-Woo! -Okay.
You guys should know that "The Bones Beneath My Skin"
and "The House in the Cerulean Sea" were written back to back.
If you meet -- when you meet Artemis Darth Vader,
the 10-year-old at the center of "The Bones Beneath My Skin,"
you're going to think,
"Could she belong on the island for a little bit?"
She's a precursor to what the kids in the island
would eventually become.
But I want to go back a little bit.
So "Stranger Things" comes out, I'm mad, I get over it.
I watch it, it's okay, whatever.
Except for Chief Hopper, I love him, and I -- So I let it cook.
I let it sit in the back of my head.
And then out of nowhere, out of nowhere,
I was watching something on Instagram
and I was scrolling through it,
and a face popped up from my childhood
that I'd never -- I had totally forgotten about.
A face that if you know this person's name
or if you go to look up, up online afterwards,
you will know why this face is embedded into so many
of a psyche of a certain generation.
If you were -- came of age or if you were alive in the '90s,
you probably remember something called Heaven's Gate,
Marshall Applewhite.
For those not in the know was a cult.
Marshall Applewhite was their cult leader.
Now, Marshall Applewhite has a very strange figure.
When you look at the videos
because he recorded all of his videos online
and posted them about his work and everything
that he does or that he did,
and he is -- imagine if ET had a baby with a human being.
Marshall Applewhite would be that ET human being baby.
He has very dark tan skin, shaved head,
his ears stick out really, really far.
He has the most intense eyes out of anybody that I've ever seen.
They look -- they don't look dead,
but they are alive in ways that are not quite right.
So I think a very -- you know,
what fascinates me is not the cult itself,
but the psychology behind the cults.
How can a charismatic person suddenly take
over the will of so many people?
So what Heaven's Gate whole deal was --
and here's another fun fact. When you get done here,
go to heavensgate.com when you leave tonight.
It is the exact same website that was there in the '90s.
It looks like a [indistinct] hellscape.
There's like flash stuff going on.
It's neon and stuff like that.
It's not "active," but it's there is like a museum piece.
I talked to the people who run that website
when I was writing this book in 2017
because I wanted to know what it was like,
what was Marshall Applewhite like?
What was he this? So what did they believe?
Well, in the mid-'90s,
a comet called Hale-Bopp was coming to the Milky Way,
was coming and going to pass by Earth.
It was bright, it was beautiful, it was huge.
And when it passed, it would go back and disappear for 1,000,
2,000 years, something like that.
Heaven's Gate believed that there was an alien spaceship
in the tail of the comet.
And that when the comet passed by the Earth,
they were going to ascend into the spacecraft
and be taken away from this earthly plane.
How did they do this? Mass suicide.
So they all wore tracksuits, Nike tracksuits.
You'll probably remember, if you're of that time,
you'll remember the indelible images of the aftermath
with all of these people laying in bunk beds
in these bunkers covered in white sheets.
And you can see their feet sticking out the blue
with their tracksuits.
So it stuck out to me the psychology behind that.
Think about a little bit further back.
You had Jim Jones in Jonestown, you had David Koresh in Waco,
in a certain way,
you had Ted Kaczynski who was a cult of his own.
So what I find fascinating again,
is not that cults exist or that the evil
that they purport to do, that some do,
or that the fact that what they believe in,
that's almost ancillary to me, to the psychology.
Like, how does a person do that?
How can a person be so charismatic,
have such a way with how they present their ideas to the world
that everybody is like,
"Okay, you can have my money and my life.
I'll cut out all of my family,
I'll cut out all of my friends
and I will do whatever you tell me to do."
And that eventually leads to these unfortunate incidents
where in the case of Heaven's Gate, they all died.
An unfortunate part about being an author,
this is a long story to make this short,
unfortunate part about being an author is two words.
What if?
So after I discovered Marshall Applewhite and after
that whole thing came flooding back, I was like, "Oh man.
Oh, but wait, what if they were right?
What if something happened?"
And why did I want to set it in the '90s?
Here's a very cool reason.
Think about the beginning of the '90s.
Nobody had cellphones, nobody had internet.
At the end of that decade, almost every person,
at least in this country, had a cellphone.
The very end of the decade -- that decade in this country,
almost everybody had internet to the point
where we thought we were all going to die
because of something called Y2K.
If you don't know what that was, boy you got --
if you're too young to know what that is or that you miss that,
you missed a hell of a good time, man.
It was insane.
But I posit that the '90s were the biggest technological leap
that we have ever seen in terms of human connection,
for better or worse.
Because with this ability to be on the internet,
we can talk to people in countries and cultures
that we might never experience on our own.
That also means that people who are crazy can go online
and talk to other crazy people.
You want a real-life example of what that looks like.
It's called QAnon.
That's what happened in --
they are essentially a cult who were connected by the internet.
So there's this power behind this idea
of the '90s being this weird and crazy time.
And I can't believe I'm still talking.
-You spoke like 10 things I wanted to ask you.
-Yay!
-You will ping back to a lot of that.
-Okay, cool, cool, cool.
-But --
-Yeah, so basically it started out as "Stranger Things,"
and then I joined the cult kind of.
-And you're all [indistinct] that has evolved from
"Stranger Things" to your [indistinct] psychology
of thoughts and the '90s comet and the technology evolution
we have -- you know, it just resulted in a rationale for it.
-And like in case you can't tell I have ADHD.
-Welcome to my club --
-So when I look back on reading it,
this is, you know, 0.1 of the 10 things
that you brought up I want to talk about.
When I look back at reading it,
one of the things that really sticks with me
is Artemis' voice, the Artemis, the little girl who had --
who is maybe not everything she seems.
-Right.
-And like the way she speaks, the way she observes the world,
the way she learns and she takes things in, it was like,
so it was like one of my favorite things about the book.
And -- -Thank you.
--- I would love to know more about the development
of her character and of that voice.
-So I -- look,
as you all know, from "The House in the Cerulean Sea,"
"Somewhere Beyond the Sea,"
I like writing the kids that are curious about the world,
about what to ignore or what to explore, what things mean.
Not necessarily because -- oh, hi, I love your Chauncey --
not -- that's Chauncey sweatshirt.
Only Chauncey mega fan. All right.
And I wanted to let kids be kids in
"The House in the Cerulean Sea."
There's a line that I've crossed before that
I try to be better at. But there's --
how many of you have read a book has a child character
then all of a sudden that child character opens their mouth
and they sound like a 40-year-old man?
And you're like, "That's not how children speak.
That's not how kids speak."
Because at some point we make them too precocious,
we make them little adults.
So there was a fine line that I wanted to walk with Art
because A, she is a kid in a way,
but she's also something else that has the curiosity
that we have in childhood.
Think about when you're kids and you're exploring the world
and you're going out and learning everything that's new.
Everything is like a sensory experience.
But now imagine, say you,
any one of you was plucked from this world
and dropped on an alien planet
where things existed, flora, fauna, fruit, whatever, food,
anything that you can imagine,
wouldn't you be interested in every single thing
that's different?
I would be fascinated by the plants, by the animals,
by the fish in the ocean, in the waters, by the trees,
all this kind of stuff.
That's what I wanted to instill into Art
is that if you were not of a place
and you were set to that place,
what would that look like through your eyes?
What would you -- what would the --
would it be the big things or would it be the little things
that would mean the most? And to me,
I've always felt that the little details matter just as much
if not more than the big picture.
And I love putting little details in the book
to give the book a more visceral,
lush, cinematic experience.
But I also wanted to make sure with art,
that I was leading the reader as she saw things.
Yes, Nate is the main character of this book,
but Nate, Alex, and Artemis are the three main characters.
They are almost all on every single page.
They could not be Nate and Alex without Art.
There could not be Art and Alex without Nate.
It's just they are three pieces of a puzzle
that may not go to the same picture,
but when you put it together, it still fits.
And Art is their curiosity.
Art is the wonder in the world that these two people have lost.
Because when the book opens they're both broken,
defeated people,
and they get to see the wonder of somebody who is not that way
that sees things differently. -So on that note,
I had seen you say in another interview
that it was really important to you
that the relationship between Nate and Alex
develop in a way that felt like a real relationship
and not just trauma bonding. That --
-Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
-All these like very difficult extreme situations together.
But I want to hear more about your thoughts on that,
about that distinction.
-Yeah. So -- -You do that on the page.
--- how many of y'all seem like an action movie
where the guy gets a girl,
they go through some big, huge and horrific thing,
and at the very end they're like,
"We're in love," and then they walk away?
And you're like, "Well, do you even like each other?
Like, what do you know about each other, man?"
Like, I mean,
when you watch like in like one of those big action movies,
you don't think,
"Oh, that's a love that's going to last in like forever."
Unless it was gay people in the action movie,
then that will last [indistinct]
I mean think about how much better "Die Hard" would've been
if Bruce Willis got a boyfriend.
-This is not entire not what this book is, guys.
-Yeah.
I look at a lot of queer action movie,
it's like probably like that. But what were we talking about?
-Trauma bonding.
-So about the relationship.
Right, right, right, right. Yeah.
-Relationship feel like is going to last on the page.
-But think about it, in this book,
these characters go through something life-altering.
Nate has his entire world shifted, his entire worldview.
Alex and Art
have been there so now they know what Nate is going through
to a certain extent, but they do not know Nate.
They do not know what he's been through.
And you get to hear about that in the opening pages.
Nate is beaten down and there's a lot of stuff
that has gone wrong.
Some are his mistakes.
He made some very unethical choices in his job.
Some are family-related.
A pretty horrific tragedy happened in his background.
And I have to have --
any time I write any kind of romantic relationship,
whether it be Arthur or Linus
in "The House in the Cerulean Sea" or something more -- oh --
or something more intense like say with Victor and Hap
in "In the Lives of Puppets,"
something that is this -- it has to feel organic.
It has to feel earned.
I know there's some people out here that I'm speaking
to the "romance readers" who are like, "Slow burn.
Ew!" Slow burn is my...jam, man, okay?
Like, if I want these characters to get together,
you can bet they'll get together
but it'll probably be at like the very end of the book.
Like, "Oh man, here we go."
Because they have to have a basis,
they have to have -- first, they have to have an introduction,
then they have to have a reason to be near each other.
And then they have to have a reason
to actually trust a little bit.
And that doesn't even get to start to liking them
as an individual, as a person.
And then going from that step to liking them
or something more to that step
to seeing them as something vital into this group.
And it's a very tricky, tricky line to walk
because I thought a lot about that word,
that phrase, trauma bonding
because that is a very real thing that happens.
People go through something traumatic together
and it does create this bond.
But is that something -- a bond that could last?
And maybe it does or maybe it doesn't.
But I wanted to take very specific care with any time
that the book itself or the narrative
approaches Nate and Alex
in a relationship lens that it's earned
and that it feels right for what is going on in the book.
Because let's face it.
Half the book, these people are on the run,
it's not going to be like, this is so romantic.
"We just blew up a bunch of people.
Isn't that lovely?" You know? So I have to think about,
is this something that would I see these characters lasting?
And let me say this, if Art was not there, I don't know, maybe.
But Art is there because she's the third necessary piece
of this triangle.
She's not involved,
obviously not involved with the romantic relationship,
but she is part and parcel part of them.
And that's why it was important for that to feel that way.
-Those scenes of the two of them or the three --
or more often three of them,
like having like these quiet moments,
like together, these like stretches to know each other
and sort of build routine together.
And you know, make coffee, make -- you know,
live their lives together.
Versus the scenes where there's like big action sequences,
explosions, death,
like do you approach those differently on a writing level?
Like, do those feel different to you in terms of process?
-They do, because with like the opening of,
let's take it back to,
I think a good comparison to
"The Bones Beneath My Skin's" opening section
is equivalent to say the opening section of
"In the Lives of Puppets,"
where I want to give you this world.
I want you to feel this world.
I want you to live in this world with these characters
for a certain amount of time because when the...
hits the fan, I actually want you to care about them.
I actually want you to care about them not as individuals
per se, but yes, that's wonderful too,
but again, as that triangle, as that trio.
So when the big stuff starts happening,
I want you to feel like, yes, they need all three of them.
All three of them have to go.
If they got rid of Nate, they're gone.
If Alex says no, then nothing will happen.
If Art goes, nothing's going to happen.
You know, if Alex goes, nothing's going to happen.
It has to be all three of them.
And so that's why I love that long extended idle
at the beginning where you can soak it in and get to learn them
before I take it all away.
Sorry. That was not an evil laugh.
You can't quote me on -- oh...it's on Tubi.
-Yeah, I think the evil laugh is scary.
-Yeah. -Okay.
Speaking of that early,
you know, and you mentioned atmospheric detail.
So one of the first really important settings in the book
is in rural Oregon.
And I just learned that you were coming from Leavenworth today
and, you know, we're at the Seattle Public Library.
And I was wondering about your relationship to the landscape.
Because I did feel like the Pacific Northwestiness of it
was also important like in the details of it,
like the blackberries. -Yeah.
Yeah, I was born
and raised in a little town called Roseburg, Oregon.
If you -- oh yeah, the people who know that know
why we're laughing a little bit, huh?
Yeah.
So in the mid-'80s and '90s,
Roseburg was obviously the math capital of Oregon.
Hurray!
I grew up in a very, very poor, very impoverished home
who did not like me one whit because, oh, why?
Because I knew I was by the time I was 10 years old.
I also had undiagnosed ADHD.
So I was like a little swishy
and wouldn't shut up and all of that.
But there were summers
that all we had to eat were blackberries
that were out in the bushes that's around the house.
There were summers where all I would do is go into the woods
and not come out until the afternoon.
I'd take a book or I'd take a notepad to go in and write.
Or summers where I would ride the bike into town,
into Roseburg because we lived outside of Roseburg
in an even tinier little conclave called Melrose.
And so I'd have to --
I literally had to ride my bike into town
5 miles to get to the library.
And I would spend every day during the summer there
in the library reading books and stuff like that.
So I know the Pacific Northwest,
so many of my books are set there
because the KMW is in my bones.
It absolutely is in my bones.
I am born and raised --
even though I came from straight-up trailer trash, even
though I am straight-up trailer trash with how I grew up.
I came from a redneck family.
I came from a family of loggers.
And every man in my family above me was a logger.
They had lived and died by logging
and everything like that.
So I knew what it felt like to be
in that kind of area at this very specific time period
because I was there, I lived it.
All those descriptions of Oregon
in the beginning of this book are there,
because that's what I experienced when I was a kid.
-That really comes through.
I was going to say immediately,
who is your Louis L'Amour?
But I feel like I have to explain.
-Yeah.
-Art and Nate bond over a shared love
of these Westerns written by Louis L'Amour.
And it becomes like a shared language between them.
And like a big part of kind of Art's interpretation
of the world too in a way that's really fun.
And yeah, I was wondering if there were books
and an author that played that role for you.
-Like, again, this is a good thing
to be talking about being the '80s and '90s,
because like too many people of my generation,
I read Stephen King afar too young in age.
The very first book I read of Stephen King was
"The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition"
when I was 11 years old.
I did not understand 90% of that book.
But what I did know was that I was enthralled by it.
I did not know words could do that.
I did not know words could be put in that order
to make people feel this certain things.
I didn't know words could be ugly like that
and show gross horror, horrific things.
So what did that happen to me?
I've read everything
Stephen King has ever put out multiple times.
I will continue to read it.
He has a new book coming out like in May, I think.
Long live the King, man, 70-something years old
and still writing books one or two a year.
Jesus Christ.
I hope I'm that prolific when I get to be that age.
But he is [indistinct]
-Almost no one is as prolific as you are at your age,
to be clear. -Yeah.
But so like Stephen King is that important to me.
See, like, I don't write in horror yet.
But Stephen King is --
because look, whatever you can -- whatever else you can say,
if you -- let's say,
let's remove the horror from Stephen King for a moment.
Let's talk about a book like "Needful Things."
The small town felt real.
Castle Rock feels like a real place.
Derry feels like a real place.
Why? Because he spends time building them up as real places.
Now, do they all need to be a thousand pages long?
No, they don't.
But that sense of feeling the dirt under your fingernails
when you're walking with the characters,
that's what I want.
That's what Stephen King taught me,
is that not everything that --
sometimes horror doesn't have to come from monsters.
It can come from humans and it could be just as horrific.
But also that there's loveliness in slow moments
and slowing down and letting something breathe
and getting to know the characters or the neighbor,
in Stephen King's case,
here's a side character that'll be in like three chapters
and they'll never appear again.
But you got to know every single thing about them.
And I love that.
I love those little side missions
into all these other things.
And look, if you --
has anybody who read Louis L'Amour,
the Westerns by Louis L'Amour?
Okay, look, I'm going to tell you what they are.
All right?
Louis L'Amour had a very specific set of stories
that he liked to tell.
And he told them over and over and over
and over and over again.
And I ate them up like freaking crack, man.
It was insane.
There's always a guy,
a gunslinger of some kind who has to either save a town,
a valley, has to fight off banditos,
somehow there's always a girl.
And it always ends with the gunslinger getting his way.
It's not "Lonesome Dove,"
which is my, I think the best Western ever written.
It's not "Lonesome Dove,"
but Louis L'Amour had a style that's basically like popcorn.
You finish the -- each book is 200 pages or less.
You finish it, you're not full.
You think, "Well, I could go for another one,"
and you know it's going to be the same thing,
but you're going to do it anyway.
Why? Because you're not full.
And then pretty soon it is like you've read all like,
I don't know, 75 or whatever many books he's written.
And it's all the same story but it doesn't matter
because it's Louis L'Amour, it's popcorn.
And that's -- I love those Westerns.
So I wanted to put my love of Louis L'Amour
because I think he's, you know,
granted obviously by the reaction from this audience
that he's kind of forgotten at this point.
He's not -- I don't know if he's as well remembered
as I think he should be.
Louis L'Amour is one of the greatest Western novelists
who did a very specific thing.
-I'm sure a solid percent will go home and look about that.
-Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Read any one of the books.
It does not matter which book, pick one.
It'll be the same thing as you get through the entire catalog.
It's perfect.
-You mentioned in the Greek Room
that you might want to write a Western.
Is it just now like or not yet?
-Yeah. Oh, God. I would be so [indistinct]
I have an idea for a queer Western
that it's so freaking cool.
I just need to sit down and write it
and also figure out how to not be really,
really like step on toes because,
you know, I'm a White dude
and you can't write Westerns like Louis L'Amour
wrote Westerns then.
Because look, some of it -- you know,
like those old cartoons now that get played on HBO,
they're like,
we don't -- this doesn't reflect the period of the times now.
Louis L'Amour books are kind of like that.
So I want to --
I would want to take extraordinary care
with what I'm doing as a White dude writing about Western times
when, you know, White dudes were like,
"Hey, we're cool."
And everybody else was like, "Oh..." So yeah.
-I mean, yeah, that carries it all the more --
-Right? Yeah.
-I want to ask you about the title.
-Yeah.
-So it does come up like textually a couple of times.
But I was interested in kind of the --
its broader thematic meaning to you.
And also like, what is the process you landed on it,
like when you were like, "Yes, this is the title"?
-Okay.
So this is going to be -- before I came here today,
when I was just getting in my hotel room,
I was taking a break and I was looking at Instagram.
And this Instagram reel came up with
a teacher teaching her young kids.
She handed out M&M's to the kids and said to the kids --
she was just filming herself so no kids were on camera
or anything like that.
And she goes, "Okay, everybody, now listen.
Everybody that has the blue M&M is the best person in the room.
And the blue M&M kids were like, "Yes!
I'm the best person in the room!"
And then she asked the other kids,
they had to be at four or five years old,
"Who had a red M&M?" And they raised their hand.
And she goes, "How did that make you feel to hear that?"
And they're sad.
You hear kids in the back going, "Sad!
Mad!" You hear one kid eating his M&M.
And so she goes,
"Okay, I want you to take a bite.
Look what's on the inside. What color is it?"
Long story short,
she wanted them to know it's not about what's on the outside,
it's about what's on the inside.
It is -- I mean, that is a trivial lesson that you think,
yes, obviously she's teaching that to young people, to kids.
Why is it so hard for adults to do that?
Why is it so hard for adults to not understand it's
not necessarily what's on the outside?
It's what's on the inside.
Because why -- we all have the same things on the inside.
We all look exactly the same on the inside.
If you died,
probably one of the few straight people in the audience,
if one of you straight people died
and they look through your corpse,
they're going to be like, "Oh yeah, he was a flaming homo."
That's not how it works.
And I don't understand now more than ever I --
I can't believe we have to keep --
me having to keep having to have this conversation now in 2025
when it just seems like things are getting worse and worse
and people are becoming full-fledged
Nazis at this point.
I just -- why does what we look like,
what the color of our skin is, who we love,
why does any of that matter?
You are here for literally the smallest blink
of an eye in the human timeline and that's what you care about?
That's what you're angry about?
I don't understand why we put so much,
or not us, we're all obviously amazing.
But why people put so much stock in going after,
let's say, oh I don't know, trans kids?
Why do we have to do -- why -- what the hell?
Who the hell do these people think they are?
Who the hell do these people think they are in states
where they change laws for one kid
who was just trying to play a sport?
They changed entire state laws all because of
one trans kid trying to change -- trying to play a sport.
Adults, we should be so much smarter
than we are showing ourselves to be.
It is "The Bones Beneath My Skin" was always about
how the fact that nothing else matters.
That we -- no matter where we come from,
even if it's across the universe itself,
we are all made of the same exact things.
Because at the end of the day,
every single one of you is here because you're made of stardust.
That's essentially what it is.
And why is it that we don't think about that more?
Why don't we think about the miraculousness of our existence?
We live in a universe that we don't know
if there's anything else out there.
Does that make us feel lonely?
Could you imagine the Earth out of everything in the universe,
infinite space, and we're the only ones there?
Doesn't that make you feel lonely?
But doesn't that also make you think,
"Well, maybe I should give a...
about other people in this world?
Maybe I should actually care about other people?
Maybe I should speak up
when I see other people being downright jackasses"?
It's all about -- that's why "The Bones Beneath My Skin,"
that's why I landed on that title.
And it was not until Art said that,
that I knew that was going to be the title.
-I think we're going to move into the audience questions,
so I'm going to ask you one more question
that you've kind of teed up while the mic get [indistinct]
Which is, like you've already touched on this
with kind of almost every answer,
but like what do you think like the role of books
is right now in this like political moment we're in,
like the role of like books and writing community?
-Last September I did -- I released
"Somewhere Beyond the Sea."
I did an event in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
which is the Bookmarks Festival.
I was their keynote opening speaker, which side story,
imagine me sitting up there telling my --
giving my speech in front of this entire church filled
with hundreds of people.
And I look down in the audience
and freaking Stacey Abrams is there and she's laughing.
Apparently, she's a fan of mine.
[ Laughter ]
But I haven't gotten to your point.
So then I gave my speech
and then afterwards a gentleman came on stage
to go back and forth with me.
This gentleman on stage was like a very big donor,
a doctor, a very intelligent man in his probably 50s and 60s.
And he asked a similar question to what you just asked me.
And he prefaces because I had in my speech
had basically said J.K. Rowling is the devil.
And so I wanted to --
he was talking about he has a nine -- non-binary 13-year-old.
His non-binary 13-year-old recently discovered
"Harry Potter" and was enthralled by it.
And he asked me, "What do you think I should do?"
And I said, "Don't you dare take a book from a kid.
Don't you ever take a book from a child?
Your child is 13.
They know themselves to know they're non-binary.
Present the facts to them.
Tell them who --
what the author is, what their beliefs are,
and if they want to continue reading it, that is okay.
Because you know what? They are a kid.
Never take books away from a kid, ever."
Books now we are -- it's the most important thing.
Okay? Why?
Every year from the last, oh, I don't know, 5, 6, 7 years,
the American Library Association releases their Top 10 banned
and challenged books in the United States.
Every single one is queer, every single year.
And not just White queer books, we're talking trans books,
we're talking books by Black authors
about the Black queer experience.
Those are on that list. Why?
Because they want to take the books out of the hands
of the people who need them most.
There's a book called "Flamer" by Mike Curato.
It's a graphic novel.
It is one of the most transformational
young adult books that I have ever read.
And it is one of the most banned books in America.
If I had had that book when I was a kid,
that book would've saved so much of my heartache,
so much of my pain.
There's a blurb across the top of that book that said,
this book will save lives.
And I absolutely 100% agree with that.
This day and age, again, still like it was in 2016,
like it was in 2020,
like it is now in 2025, librarians,
teachers are at the forefront of a culture war
that they want no part of,
and A, are not paid enough to be even giving a crap
about in this situation.
But we still have people who go into libraries
during Pride Month
and check out every single queer book on the display
because they think that'll keep
other people from getting them not realizing
that libraries love it when you check out books
so they can put more stuff on things, you know?
So it is so important for us. I know we live in Washington.
We're speak -- I'm speaking to an echo chamber here.
We're very lucky where we live.
My rights are going to be protected.
I know that queer people in other places
don't have that same insurance.
Florida, Texas, the Bible Belt.
How many -- if you think about this, 2015,
10 years ago, same-sex marriage was legalized.
Do you know what would happen if they overturned
that like they said they weren't going to do with Roe v.
Wade? Do you know how many marriages would --?
-My marriage would be gone. -Say what?
-My marriage would be gone.
-Right. Marriages would be gone.
Do you know how many states have anti-same-sex marriage laws
still on the books?
Thirty-six.
So if Obergefell falls,
all those marriages would be invalidated
and they would be banned together.
Books let us walk in other people's shoes
and other people's lives.
And it is so important that marginalized creators,
specifically queer,
trans creators get to tell their stories
and only the way they know how.
Do you know why they're getting scared?
Because they know young people are coming up
and young people are not going to take that...
They're not going to take that...
I've spoken to so many kids over across this world
they are so much smarter than we ever were at their age.
They are so much more empathetic,
so much more worldly.
And they know when their trans classmates are being targeted.
They know when books are being removed from their schools.
They're going to change everything.
We just have to give them the time to get there.
Thank you for listening to me blab.
Hello! -Hi.
-I like your vibe. I love -- -I love your bouncing foot
because my foot's been bouncing sometimes too.
-Yeah. It is, you know, it's all I do.
-Well, that's actually my question.
And thank you for talking about that
because it's tough as a writer I think sometimes
if you got a little attention problem.
So I'm curious about your process
in terms of being an ADD/ADHD human,
maybe emphasis on the H and trying to find a way to,
well, kind of a process that works for you.
-Yeah.
So I -- part of my ADHD for better
or worse is hyperfixation.
Has a huge -- like probably one of the biggest things
when I find something that I find interesting
or fascinating or horrifying, what do I want to do?
Read everything about it.
And so what happens sometimes,
well I start by being on one website
and then clicking links and links and links and links
until it's like five hours later
and I'm nowhere near the original topic
I was even thinking about.
That happens a lot. But no.
Okay, so I have to be very diligent with myself.
So you know the meme from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
where Charlie is standing in front of a conspiracy board
he's smoking a cigarette like that?
I have that board in my house. I have a board in my house
and I have post-it notes that I put up in a row
for just what I'm working on for that day.
But the biggest thing that I do, and this is excessive,
is I outline like a...
Like I'm not talking like,
oh here's, you know, 5,000 words on what I want this book to be.
"The House in the Cerulean Sea" and
"Somewhere Beyond the Sea" outlines
are 100,000 words combined.
-Oh, my God.
-And they're filled with stuff that does not go into the book,
it's just meant for me.
It's stuff like, what is their favorite food?
What do they like to wear on weekends?
What is their birthday?
Stuff like that that goes into the book
that has helped me to know the characters.
Last thing I'll say, I do all of my research
before I start writing a book
because I don't want to get to a point in a story
where I have to stop
because I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
And I want to make sure that I have that momentum.
Does that happen? Yeah, it will happen.
And you have to account for that.
And it's easy to get frustrated,
especially when you're neurodiverse.
It's very easy to get frustrated over stuff like that.
But I know myself well enough now to know
that what I feared as a kid,
that ADHD was me somehow being broken
was absolutely not the case at all.
ADHD is just me having something a little extra and it's amazing.
Thank you for that question.
Hi. -Hi.
I wanted to ask about your short stories.
-Yeah.
-Particularly I know the "Blasphemy!"
and "Blasphemy! 2!" -Oh, boy. Oh, no.
We're about to corrupt some people.
-Okay. -Yeah.
-Kind of came out after a certain presidential era.
I'm wondering unfortunately how we are back in.
-If we're going to -- if I'm going to do the final third part
of my [indistinct] trilogy kind of thing going on?
-Yes. -Yeah. So uh-oh. Okay.
So for the uninitiated,
I sometimes release short stories for free on my website
or lately it's been on with Reactor with a tour with like
"In the Lives of Puppets" short story that I've put on there.
I wrote a short story called "Blasphemy!"
about a twink that seduce the Satan.
And there's a sequel called "Blasphemy! 2!:
Jesus Goes to Hell on Vacation!"
And deals with Jesus having daddy issues
over the trauma of what His dad did to Him.
And by the very end, Jesus is engaged to a human.
And Satan, Jimmy the twink is engaged to Satan
and there's supposed to be a double wedding
that I have in that third part for.
And in those stories, I make very and
explicitly clear what happens to the Trumps when they die.
So now that we're back in this era,
I probably have to finish that.
Huh? Kind of make me feel good. Yeah, I'll do that.
There's people here going,
"I didn't know -- we didn't sign up for this.
I thought this was the guy that wrote Chauncey.
What is this?" -Just seeing more [indistinct]
-Yeah, for real.
No, trust me,
those are not meant for anybody under the age probably anybody.
Probably age of 18 if you have a child and your child's like,
"Oh, TJ Klune has a thing called [indistinct]
You'll be -- have to answer questions
that you are not prepared to talk about.
Okay? So do not read.
Let your children read those and maybe don't write yourself.
Where are we at now? Okay, I see.
Right here?
-Yes.
-Okay. -I also have a comment.
You are right up there with like Lieutenant Uhura for me
because it's the first time I've seen a character
that I recognize myself in with Kelly Bennett.
Thank you for the ace character. -Oh, yeah. Hurray!
Asexual people represented in ace.
-The question I have is because I --
there is a character in this book.
It's only in there a tiny little bit in one chapter,
but you wrote an entire book about and that's Benji.
Will he get recorded his --?
-Okay. So thank you for asking that.
So into this, "The Bones Beneath My Skin" as you open,
as you start the book, and before Nate gets to the cabin,
he stops at a gas station in a place called Roseland, Oregon.
Roseland, Oregon was the setting of my 2014 novel
"Into This River I Drown."
These are the same places. And Ben -- Big Eddie,
the character that is met at the gas station
in this book is the center of the book
"Into This River I Drown," which changed place two decades later
and follows Benji, Big Eddie's son.
And yes,
I can say that that book is probably going to be rereleased
through my amazing publisher.
So yeah, that book won the Lambda Literary Award.
That was my first time ever winning a big award.
And I was like, "Really?"
Because "Into This River I Drown" was me attempting
to write a Faulkner kind of story.
And so that's what happened with that book.
And that book is that -- I love that book.
Okay, so if you've read "Under the Whispering Door,"
you know, and you've read the foreword or the dedication,
you know, I wrote that book after losing my partner Eric.
I wrote that book to try to understand the grief.
So there was the soft grief in that book.
"Into This River I Drown" is about the death of my father.
And so that is a very -- it's a very different side of grief.
It is a very angry kind of grief.
So that's what "Into This River I Drown" will be in.
So we're probably looking at like 2026, 2027 but,
yeah, I think that's going to be rereleased.
-That's awesome.
-Thank you.
Yeah, because it's basically not a sequel,
but a siquel that follows some of the same characters
that you meet in this book.
Yeah. That's cool. Thank you for bringing that.
That's cool. Yeah. All right. Where are we going next?
Okay. Hi! -Hi.
My question is, the very first time we were being published,
what impact were you hoping to make
and how has that changed now
that you have a more established audience?
-Oh, that is a good question.
So back in 2010,
I decided, like most 20-year-olds said I was going,
or 20-something said,
I was going to write The Great American Novel as my first book.
I didn't know how to write a book.
For some reason though, I wrote a book in 2010.
It was called "Bear, Otter, and the Kid,"
it was my first victory. I know there's some OGs in here.
But it was my very first book.
I didn't know what I was doing. I had this book inside my head,
so I wrote it and then I went online
and I Googled gay publishers and I clicked on the first one,
and I submitted that book to them.
And they were like, "Sure, why not?"
Eight months later, that book came out.
A few months after that, Amazon was like,
"This is one of the best books published in 2011."
And I was like, "Shit, yeah." And then I wrote a second book
that was a complete heel-left turn, and it flopped like crazy.
It was awesome. So what have I learned?
Or what -- is that what you -- right, what I learned?
-I was asking what impact you wanted to have --
-Oh, right, right, right, right.
--- and how that's changed now.
-When I wrote that first book, I said,
if even one person walked away learning something new,
then I would've done my job.
That's what I wanted.
And I don't know that that goal has changed really,
because I try not to think of, you know,
my readership as like this undulating mass of people
that is like staring at me currently.
But I try to think of people as individuals,
you know, readers as individuals,
and that you never know
when somebody's going to need the one story
that you wrote the most.
"Under the Whispering Door," a story about grief.
I can't tell you how many thousands
of messages I've received with people sharing
their own stories of grief.
I've become like a secret keeper
in a way for their own stories of grief.
Why is that?
Because it's easier to tell a stranger something hard
than it is to tell something hard to somebody you love.
And look, I am very grateful,
I'm very lucky and very privileged to have the platform,
and the opportunities that I've been given,
doesn't discount the fact that I worked my butt off to get here.
But I still think of that if one person picks up my book
and walks away learning something new
or finds the story when they need it the most
then I've done my job.
That hasn't really changed.
-Thank you. -You're welcome.
Isn't it crazy to think
that I could be so much more egotistical?
[ Laughter ]
Okay, next question. -Hi.
So I discovered you through the "Green Creek" series
and the "Wolfsong" really -- -Yay, trauma!
-I wanted to ask if you have a favorite character in your
"Green Creek" series.
-Gordo, 100% always will be Gordo.
It'll always be Gordo.
Gordo is an...
but Gordo is always right about everything.
Think about it.
If they just listened to Gordo from the beginning,
the "Green Creek" wouldn't have happened.
Yes, he's my baby.
And "Ravensong" is my favorite story out of that entire series
because, you know, it -- when I referred -- God, I --
"Wolfsong" I started writing in 2014.
That's crazy. I'm so old.
But "Ravensong" was the hardest book out of that series
to write because I started writing "Ravensong"
and I got like 50,000 words into it and I hated it.
I hated what I was doing and I realized why.
It's because I was trying to make Gordo too much like Ox
from the first book.
So once I realized where I was going wrong
and I just listened to Gordo and told that story,
it just became my favorite
because Gordo's anger isn't something that I tend to --
I don't always have angry characters as main characters,
but when I do, boy, are they dicks.
But Gordo is my favorite creation out
of that entire series.
Look, I love all of the characters in there,
but Gordo will always be my Number 1.
Yep. Okay. Hi!
Oh. -Oh, hi.
-Uh-uh.
-I'm sorry. It is my first microphone.
Not to add to the ego on the note,
but your comment earlier about how having that book
when you were younger would've done so much
and saved you.
That's how I recommend
"The House in the Cerulean Sea" to anybody --
-Aw. --- when I talk about that.
-Thank you. That's very kind of you.
Look, trust me,
if little kid TJ could see that he'd be doing this one day,
he'd be thinking you're all...crazy.
But that it would be -- it's unbelievable.
I would not be here without A, my readers and that's with that.
And the biggest, the biggest thing --
look, I'm sure there's aspiring authors in here
that hope that one day be published
or maybe are on their own publishing journey.
I'm going to tell you the biggest,
the biggest thing that could be on your side is word of mouth.
If people like your book,
they will talk about your book
and they will shove that book into other people's faces
and they'd read that book
because they want to talk about that book with you.
And if you don't read that book,
"Oh no, here's another copy.
Yeah. So I am so appreciative.
It's, again, it's why I think of --
I don't think of you as one entity.
I know you're all individuals and I try to treat you as such.
So thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.
Where are we now? -Hello?
-Oh, hello!
-Hi. -Hi back there!
-Follow up to what you just said.
What advice do you have for an upcoming author?
-All writing advice that you hear from people is bull crap.
Because look, no matter who you ask,
you're going to ask one person one thing,
what works and they'll tell you.
And you ask a second person,
they'll tell you something completely the opposite.
So I'm just going to be bare bones.
Read as much as you write.
Please read as much as you write.
I have talked to authors
that say they don't have time to read.
And I say,
"You don't have time to be an author
if you are not reading a book."
Focus on your dialogue. Dialogue, so important.
Dialogue, why?
Because you don't want to throw your reader out of a book
that because you -- no human person speaks like that
with their human mouths.
You want to have your dialogue down.
And you know what's a really good way to get dialogue down?
Fan fiction.
You want to know why it's good to have --
to try dialogue in fan fiction because A,
you don't have to worry about the world building
because the world is already built there for you.
B, you know the characters so you can focus on
how you think that they would talk
and therefore you could learn how rhythm happens
when it comes in conversations.
Have you read a book where the person --
the people are speaking in conversation and
every other sentence somebody says their name out loud?
That doesn't happen in real life!
If you're sitting here with your partner
when was the last time
you actually said their name out loud like that, you know?
Right? That's not how it happens.
And last but not least, don't write to chase trends.
What's popular now is not going to be popular two,
three years from now.
However, if your heart is in that trend,
let's say, I'll just use romantasy for an example.
If you want to write to romantasy
because you want to write a romantasy, do it.
But if you're wanting to write a romantasy
because it's what's popular right now, don't.
Nobody's going to care in two years when the trend has passed.
But if you write your story because you wanted to write it,
people will notice and people will care.
Thank you for that question.
Read more books, please. Oh, one other thing,
read Stephen King's book "On Writing."
One of the best how-to-writing books ever.
I've gone through three copies and I still use it to this day.
It is monumental. Hi, Chauncey.
-Hi. Sorry, I'm blanking. I'm sorry.
-No, you're okay. Go ahead. Take your time.
You're fine. Don't worry.
-I was like star-struck because you're
like my favorite person.
-Oh, my goodness. I am so desperately uncool.
You want me to tell you how uncool?
Okay, before you ask the question,
can I tell you how uncool I am?
I just packed for a weeklong trip.
I put on two left shoes.
I have like three pairs of black Converse
and I brought two left ones.
I am desperately uncomfortable right now.
The toes on this foot are like this.
I'm not cool. Go ahead. Don't stare at my feet.
-Okay, so I don't have a great question because I
just really want an excuse to talk to you so I [indistinct]
But I was just curious if any of your characters,
like especially the kids in
"The Cerulean Sea" book are like based on the people
you have in real life? -In a way, yes.
Okay, so let me -- Chauncey is my favorite kid in the book.
I love Chauncey.
I actually made no qualms about my love for Chauncey.
Chauncey exists
and Chauncey's whole existence is just
because of the curiosity of children as we talked about.
Remember when you were a kid,
and I'm speaking to you too because you're still a child,
but remember when you were a kid and you found something
that interested you so much it became your entire personality?
Yeah. For me, it was "Indiana Jones" because I wanted to be
Dr. Jones' boyfriend.
I wanted to get into archeology.
I wanted to be an archeologist
because A, I thought that that's what you did.
You would go and dig up treasures
and have to run for boulders, sometimes Nazis,
and get a boyfriend named Dr. Jones.
And so I -- that's what I -- that's what Chauncey is.
He's the childlike wonder that we have when you find something
that you want it to be your whole personality.
And that means Chauncey became a bellhop.
He wanted to be a bellhop.
So what did he do? He became a bellhop.
That was his dream.
And I will say that there is in Talia is large -- uh-oh.
Large parts of Talia are based
upon my most wonderful little sister.
She is -- my sister Tori is a combination of Talia and Phee.
And I could not ask for a better sister,
even though when we were kids,
she used to beat me up even
though she's like two years younger than me
and I was really tall and had a very large head.
So Lucy was going to be always be
in extreme because I wanted the idea to filter
in of nature versus nurture.
What would that look like if a person
whose nature was supposedly to be evil,
what if they were nurtured by somebody like Arthur Parnassus?
And Theodore exists because I got something in my head
that I could not shake called receptive bilingualism.
Receptive bilingualism is
when you can't speak yourself in a certain language,
but you can understand multiple languages.
And that's what Theodore has.
He has receptive bilingualism.
He can speak wyvern and people around him can speak wyvern,
but that's his only voice.
And who am I leaving out? Sal. Sal was big part me.
Big parts of Sal were me because I was the kid
who didn't feel like they had a voice when they were a kid.
And I was the kid who wanted nothing more to write.
Authors put bits and pieces of themselves
in almost everything that they do
because it's what we know for better or worse.
Because our ego is like, eh, it's kind of like you,
but that's why I do the kids.
So yes, some are based,
but not entirely, it's mostly bits and pieces
like I usually do.
-What about David?
-What? -What about David?
-David was based upon Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes."
"Calvin and Hobbes" is my all-time favorite comic strip.
Bill Watterson is a genius of unparalleled legacy and I am --
there's a very specific character that Calvin plays
that is a private detective, Tracer Bullet.
And when you meet David in "Somewhere Beyond the Sea,"
what is he playing as?
A private detective because he is my version of Calvin
from "Calvin and Hobbes."
Yeah. Thank you for the question.
-We're going to do about three more questions.
-So better make them good. Okay?
Because people will be like,
"Those last three questions were kind of bad.
Really ruined the evening." Yes. Where are we?
-Right here.
-Okay. Hi. -Is this on? Is it on?
-There you go. -Okay.
So I was at your book event at the Barnes and Noble
for "Somewhere Beyond the Sea."
And I believe you said that you were writing it
and then you eventually changed it because you realized
that Linus shouldn't be telling a story.
It should be Arthur and like Arthur's voice.
-Yeah.
-And so I was wondering general, how do you decide,
like which of your characters is tally the story,
like whose voice?
-It's the person who's speaking the loudest in my head.
I have -- I had a choice growing up,
I could have either been psychotic or a writer
because I hear voices in my head.
And it really depends upon what character is the loudest.
The loudest character that still exists to this day
in my brain is Daniel Henning's narration of Chauncey.
If you've listened to "Somewhere Beyond the Sea,"
or "The House in the Cerulean Sea," the audiobook,
imagine having that voice in your head at all times.
Yeah, really, it depends.
Like with the "Green Creek" series, let's go back to that.
I had to make that clear delineation between
"Wolfsong" and the second book "Ravensong"
because I couldn't write the second book with the way
I was going with it.
I was doing it wrong.
I wasn't listening to the character.
So that's what happens. I listen to the characters.
Do I still make mistakes? Yeah.
I'll be 30,000, 40,000 words into a story before I realize,
"Oh, crap, now I have to do this all over again,"
because I went with the wrong voice.
It happens.
I have like two or three novels written that are so-called
"Trump novels" that will probably never be released
because I didn't find the --
I didn't have the right voice for it.
I didn't find it.
So just when you go to sleep tonight,
just think, there's TJ Klune books that will exist
that you would never get to read.
Sweet Dreams. Yeah. Like "The Bird."
I heard that.
I heard that...
Okay, next question. Got two more.
Hello? -Hello.
I'm enamored of Richard Collins.
-Oh.
-I remember hearing you speak one time about
how you are that person who will have conversations with yourself
in public and even as a random thought.
-Yeah.
-So my question is,
what is the most disturbing thought running
through your head right now?
-Right now? Oh, really right now?
I'm wondering how my pinky toe is going to look [indistinct]
It's going to be tired at night.
Like, am I going to pull off my shoe,
then my pinky toe is going to be like,
"I can't breathe!"
Yeah. So that's the most disturbing thought
that's going through my head
and how I'm going to survive the next six days.
And then I'm also thinking about
if I could like somehow go online and order Amazon
and have it like shipped to my hotel instead of my address
so I can just -- and if I can just buy a right shoe.
Okay, last question.
Yeah, that's you.
Hello!
-Try to turn the little buttony thing.
-Push the button?
-Yes.
-I can do that. I push the button.
-Good. -Thank you. Hi.
I'm like dying to know what Chauncey wears on weekends,
but I'm like deprioritizing that question.
-Okay.
-Because whenever I like get a book I'm like,
"Ugh, do I listen to it or do I like read it?"
So I'd like love to know about your relationship
with like Daniel Henning,
how you found this versus like really bring your characters
to life,
and like what that would like to kind of give
your characters to that extent.
-Yeah.
So Daniel -- I work with three narrators
that I've worked with for many, many, many years.
Daniel Henning, Kirt Graves who does the "Green Creek" series,
who did "Under the Whispering Door,"
and Michael Lesley who does my "Extraordinary" series
and my channels from "Brady" series
and a bunch of other backstory.
I've worked with Kirt and Michael for at least 10 years.
And I found them through auditions
that when my first books were coming out
and they were starting to get more popular,
we started to get more
and more people wanting to audition to take part.
So I would listen to these auditions
and sometimes you're listening to hundreds
of auditions of people reading the same thing over
and over and over again.
And so it got to the point where I just knew click,
click, this isn't the right voice,
this isn't the right voice.
I remember when there was a book that I wrote, uh-oh,
there's a book that I wrote called "Tales from Verania,"
a book series that I wrote called "Tales from Verania."
If you don't know what that is, that is also not for children.
I'm going to give you a two-word description
of the entire series. It's basically erotic "Shrek."
And there's a character in that book called -- named Gary,
who's a gay hornless unicorn
who has a lot of murder on his brain.
And when I was auditioning for that book series one
of the narrators
or one of the auditioners made him sound like George W. Bush.
-Oh, my God.
-And I was like, "Nope!"
And then I just kept clicking through it
and I found Michael Lesley snapped into my head
and I heard his Gary voice.
Kirt Graves who does a lot of my books,
"Green Creek" series, first time I heard his Gordo voice,
I knew that was him for me.
Daniel Henning was different.
When I got signed up with Tor Macmillan,
I did not know if I had power.
Like, I didn't know if I could say,
"I want to use this narrator on this book
that you just paid a lot of money for, please."
And so what they --
so I just kept my mouth shut because,
you know, don't want to make waves.
And they came to me Macmillan Audio came to me and said,
"I have this guy, his name is Daniel.
He has 30 years of theater experience.
Do you want to hear his audition?"
I heard his Chauncey voice.
Bam. Sold. Why?
Because there needs to be a theatricality
to that performance.
You can't have somebody like Kirt Graves,
maybe Michael Lesley could have done that, but Daniel --
that you need to have that theater background
to be able to do something like that to pull it off.
Which last thing I'll say for you all tonight,
one of my favorite things about Daniel Henning,
he's in theater three decades. He's a huge,
huge person in the queer scene in Silver Lake, California,
in the Theater District in L.A., and all of that.
He has -- he tells you stories
that are like lore drops about this person as an individual.
He's like, "Yeah, I was -- when I was a kid,
I would go hang out at --
well, my mom would always take me to go hang at Bobby's house."
Like, "Bobby?" "He's like Bobby De Niro."
And I was like, "Oh, okay, whatever."
But Daniel Henning before he started recording
"The House in the Cerulean Sea," you know what he was recording?
College textbooks.
So Daniel Henning was recording books about
like physics and math and other gross things
and I saved him, you know?
Okay, so at least we're able to wrap it up
and I'm going to shut up now. So thank you all
so much for coming on this first stop at this tour.
I get to go places with wrong pairs of shoes now.
It is going to be fantastic!
Thank you! -Woo!
-And thank you, please...
[ Cheers and applause ]