TJ Klune Interview: ‘The Bones Beneath My Skin’

The Bones Beneath My Skin is the perfect entry in the career of author TJ Klune. Wielding a tender heart and empathetic, layered characters, the novel once again finds the author dabbling in the lives of found families. This time, instead of a human and his inventor, android father or a lonely man and a gaggle of supernatural children, he finds something in between.

Nate, a man who has lost everything meets the older, gruffer, Alex. But Alex isn’t alone, hiding away in Nate’s cabin with a ten-year-old girl who is more than she appears. Artemis Darth Vader. Art, for short.

Set in 1995, The Bones Beneath My Skin melds together action and science-fiction with drama and heartfelt romance. Anchored with characters who continually unveil greater pieces to their innermost desires and previously untested strengths, it’s one of Klune’s most engaging cinematic novels. Now that it’s approaching its official, traditional release, it’s bizarre to think that it was once dubbed too ‘weird.’ 

I firmly believe that books — all media — come into your life when you need them most. That was the case with his popular book, The House In the Cerulean Sea when I read it in 2021. A warm embrace of a novel, the story moves us through the demonstration of a character’s ability to transform out of a rut and find life and love anew. The Bones Beneath My Skin offers a similar respite as I read it leading up to the inauguration, a lifeline to a world in which love paves the way. A world where love overcomes extraordinary obstacles. In which even at our darkest hour, there’s a chance for hope and small delights that pepper our days, making them whole.

My conversation with TJ Klune was similarly engaging. There’s something about talking with someone so clearly passionate about their work and about how transformative books and reading can be when we see ourselves on the page that’s necessary — vital — these days. 

I spoke to TJ Klune about writing romance, how to perfect a first chapter, and the importance of LGBTQ+ characters as action heroes.

How does it feel to see The Bones Beneath My Skin be traditionally published, reaching this bigger audience now since writing it and initially self-publishing in 2018? Is it a triumphant feeling — does it feel weird? 

It is a little weird because I wrote this book back in 2017 and submitted it to the independent publisher I’d been with for quite a few years at that time. I saw a note that was meant for my editor—that was not meant for me—that I was still cc’d on that said, ‘Here’s TJ Klune’s new book. This one is weird, even for him.’ 

And I remember thinking, ‘What?!’ Because when I was a kid, the word ‘weird’ was used as a pejorative to describe me. It was used to describe me by my parents, teachers, and classmates. I was the weird kid. And I embraced my weirdness as I got older, and I love that part of myself. So, to see that prior publisher go that direction felt like a punch in the gut. 

So, I decided to pull the book from the publisher and self-publish it. But what I didn’t know when I made that decision was that this publisher was on its way down. They had been embezzling money from their authors, their editors, their cover artists, and everything like that. Not only did I need to self-publish The Bones Beneath My Skin, but I also took back the twenty-plus novels I had with this publisher and published them all at the same time. Because I had to get my stuff back out there to keep it available. And The Bones Beneath My Skin got lost in that shuffle. 

When Tor came to me a few years ago and went, ‘Hey, we really love the books we’re putting out with you now. Do you want us to publish some of your backlist,’ my mind went immediately to two sets of books. The Green Creek series, which is one of my most popular series, and The Bones Beneath My Skin. The reason I went with ‘Bones’ first is because I love this story. I love everything about this book, from the characters to the setting to the message and the action. I love all the bits and pieces of this book. So, to get it republished in hardcover with Macmillan and Tor has just been the greatest thing. It has felt like I wrote this book for a reason, and now is this book’s time to shine. And I can’t wait for people to get their hands on it. 

You mention in your author’s note that the novel is kind of an action movie in the form of a book — did that add to the cinematic feeling of the book, did you find the action daunting or exciting to write compared to books like Cerulean Sea which doesn’t have action?

Yeah, The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, and even, to a degree, In The Lives of Puppets aren’t necessarily action. But the first part of this book gives you a sense of place, the idyllic nature of where they are, and then, as I usually do, I take that all away. I make them go out into the world, and yeah, there is a very cinematic feel to this for a reason: I wanted to write an action movie. I wanted to put it in book form. Even more than that, I wanted to write a Queer action movie. With Queer people running from government officials and helicopter explosions, and evil cults and stuff like that. 

Think about it. When was the last time you went to the theater or saw a movie where there were action and explosions and also Queer people as the main characters? Probably never. 

Especially in the theater. 

Can you imagine if, in Die Hard, Bruce Willis was like, ‘I gotta save my husband or my boyfriend?’ That’s what I wanted to do! I wanted to write an action movie, a thriller, in book form but have it centered around queer people being a part of the action rather than their heterosexual counterparts who are all wearing their white tank tops and looking grungy and muddy. Why can’t Queer people do that? We can get dirty too [laughs]. We can run really fast away from scary things. We’ve done it all our lives, so why not let us run away from governments and explosions and cults and all that kind of stuff, too? 

It’s why I think films like The Old Guard has such a huge fandom around it. Because it’s like the ONE we get to have [laughs.]

God. When are they going to release the sequel that’s been teased for years and years and years. 

I think that’s why people gravitate towards your books, too, because we have so few. Like yes, Queer lit that’s has grown over the years. However, it’s still such a rarity in action and fantasy and more prominent titles. Anyways. Another thing about your author’s note. It’s wild to me that there was a question on whether or not Bones could be classified as a romance since, to me, the romance in the book is so tender and so yearning. Could you talk about crafting that relationship and maybe even the significance of having that romance that isn’t reliant on physical intimacy? 

A big concern I had going into writing this book, specifically because of the relationship I had planned between Nate and Alex, was whether this would be a real, viable relationship or if it would be trauma bonding. Because you see movies where people are thrust together and have to survive a horrible experience, and then they find each other. Is that a real relationship? Is that something that can survive beyond the ending of the movie? Or is that something where we went through something horrible together, no one else understands, and now we’re bonded? Is that love, though? Is that compassion? Empathy? Or is that just because you were just in that situation together? 

I wanted to be very careful with that. If there was going to be a growing relationship between Nate and Alex, I wanted to make sure it would stand the test of time. That you wouldn’t close the book and be like, ‘Well, they probably didn’t make it.’ In that regard, it is a very slow buildup. The romance aspect is not even the main focus of the book. It’s there and a good part, but I didn’t want that to be the focus. And yet I still crafted that relationship, taking it page by page, slowly. Because if you do it too soon, the idea of trauma bonding comes into play. 

But now that they’ve gone through these experiences and taken the time to learn about each other and break down the walls and defenses. Because both these men have their walls up as high as can possibly be when they meet each other for various reasons. 

To me, Nate, Art, and Alex are broken pieces of a puzzle. They don’t necessarily fit together to make a perfect picture, but they do fit together. They are parts of a whole. And putting those three together…to me, you can’t have Alex and Art without Nate. You can’t have Alex without Nate and Art. You can’t have Nate and Alex without Art. She is intricate to their relationship but isn’t the be-all, end-all. That has to come from them. So, I had to be careful when crafting it and building this relationship, and I took the utmost care to make it believable by the time it happened. 

I’m jumping around a bit, but I love how the worlds feel so immediate in your work. When my ADHD wins, sometimes it can take a good five chapters to really settle into the BEST book. 

Me too. Or you have to re-read pages and go back and figure out what happened. I’m there. 

Exactly. But your books just hook me so quickly. Do you think there’s a trick or element to crafting the perfect first chapter? 

When you’re talking to authors, everybody is going to have a different answer to this kind of question. But to me, it’s all about little details. The little details have to matter as much as the story itself. Because if you don’t have little details, the world doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel lived in. You can really remember that you’re reading a book. And I want people at times to forget they’re reading and feel like they’re on that adventure. 

So, in that first chapter, specifically in a book like this, you want to introduce a bit of mystery. You want to introduce a bit of tension. But you also want to make sure that it feels like you’re actually there. That’s why I wanted to describe how the trees look and how the area smells. Because in this Pacific Northwest — this book is set, initially, in the mountains of Oregon — they have a very distinct scent that is different than anywhere else in the world. Hell, the book opens with the song “Hey Jude” by The Beatles. That gives you an immediate sense of time and place. 

And then, as the first page opens, it gives you very clear indicators of when this is. It’s a very specific time period of when this is happening. That to me is so important because when you’re writing a book that [laughs] — and I hate to say this because it makes me feel old — when you’re writing a book that could be considered “historical” for reasons I don’t want to get into because the ‘90s were just a couple of years ago to me…When you’re writing historical in that sense, you have to make it feel like that time period. 

Many of my readers weren’t born in the ‘90s. Which, again, makes me feel so desperate. I came of age in the ‘90s. The ‘90s were when I turned eight, to a teenager, to an adult. I started the ‘90s as this weird, quiet, little — well, not quiet — ADHD-addled, effeminate kid in rural Oregon, and by the time I reached adulthood, I was living in Tuscan, Arizona. It’s all these different changes that come up, and I know my younger readers won’t remember or don’t know about the time period of the ‘90s where we were at the tail end of HIV and AIDS and where we lived in the time of the Bill Clinton era where Queer people were “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That’s how the military worked, but that kind of went all over. 

Basically, we were allowed to exist, but we couldn’t talk about it. If you went to a party like a work party and your friends brought their wives and you brought your partner, what do you think that was going to be like? Don’t ask, don’t tell. You can exist, but we don’t want to know about it. So, a sense of place and a sense of time are important in this work because this is a time when cell phones were these little squares, sometimes bigger. This time, specifically, it was Nokia, and the only thing you could do on them was call and play Snake. That was the only thing that was there. I wanted to make this book feel like it was actually in the ‘90s with those little details coming into it. To me, those little details are the most important things. 

You had an interview where you had a comment where you said ‘humanity baffles me.’ First, same. But also I think you see that in Art and a lot of her observations and how she sees the world but she also has this keen love and curiosity for it. Did you instill part of yourself in her. Do you inject part of yourself into all of your characters? I just have to imagine she was a joy to write. 

Funnily enough — and I’ll get to your question in a second — I wrote this book, and then this book was immediately followed by The House in the Cerulean Sea. Art, to me, is a precursor to the kids on the island. She’s a little bit more precocious because she’s not necessarily just a kid. But I believe Art could find a very happy home on the island. I think she and Lucy would get along like gangbusters. 

I love Art so much because she is kind of like me. Yes, authors put bits and pieces of themselves in their characters, but there’s a big difference between me and her though. I don’t like people. I love humanity. Humanity gave us books and music and arts and dancing and movies and all of these wonderful things. People just suck [laughs.] That’s what I want to focus on. You’ll see certain people in this book who have certain machinations and plans of their own, specifically wanting to control Artemis Darth Vader. While she’s concerned about that and has her protector, Alex, then they rope in Nate; at the same time, she’s still a person in a new place that she’s never been before. Of course, she’s going to want to learn about everything. 

And then comes that childlike nature of that. Think of Chauncey from House in the Cerulean Sea for example. He wanted to be a bellhop. So much so that it became his personality, and that’s what he did. Being a kid means finding something that you love and making your entire personality. Making it everything. Art loves books; she loves music, and she loves bacon. Above all things, she loves bacon. 

When you get the hardcover of The Bones Beneath My Skin and you take off the cover jacket, on the book itself, imprinted on the cover is two slices of bacon. 

That’s so fantastic. 

Isn’t that fantastic? It’s the stupidest thing in the world; it’s so dumb, and it’s so cool. I love it. I love how my publisher sees, like I said before, that little details like that make something greater. And I just love Art to bits. I love her to pieces. I love all the kids for The House in the Cerulean Sea, but Art and Chauncey are two of these child characters that I’ve written and that I just adore. 

There’s just a pureness to them. If you’ve ever hung out with a kid, you just see them in these characters. 

Right. And Art says — again using the term child loosely with her — Art says a lot of out-of-pocket stuff because that’s how kids are. To get to write that down on the page and give Nate and Alex a run for their money. It’s just fun as hell. 

I’m going to end on a bit of a personal note, but The House in the Cerulean Sea became what I like to call my “Traveling Pants” book. I have no idea what house it’s in. Because it’s traded so many hands. It went from me to my husband, to my friend, her husband, her mom, etc. It is somewhere in this ether being a “right place, right time” book. Do you have a recent book that you’ve finished and thought, “It must go somewhere else now; someone else needs this book”?

Yes! There’s a very specific book, and I have a copy of it right here. I buy multiple copies, and I will give this out to everyone I can. Especially younger Queer people. This book is a graphic novel. It’s called Flamer by Mike Curato, and it is a graphic novel done in black and white that uses color extraordinarily sparingly to the point where it’s always about red. About the color anger, the color of fire, and the color of betrayal, and what that feels like. The color of hope and joy because when you think about it, when fire burns, new life can grow from the remains. 

Across the top of the book, there’s a blurb that says, “This book will save lives.” I absolutely, 100% agree with it. This is one of the most banned books in America. That will tell you how important it is. If I had had this book when I was young, so many things would’ve been different for me. I want this book to be in the hands of every young Queer person out there because they will find something in here to relate to. They will find anger; they will find hope; they will find laughter and love. They will also find angst, homophobia, and that kind of thing. It also shows how we rise above and how we fight back. And while it can be a heavy read, it is also one of the more important pieces of Queer literature out there. 

Again, one of the most banned books in America, and I wish every kid could have a copy of this, Queer or not. It is absolutely, 100% one of the most remarkable pieces of literature I’ve ever read. 

Sorry, I’m writing it down and realizing I don’t have to since I’ll be listening back to this interview later [laughs].

[Laughs]. ADHD man. It’s how we do because I do the same thing. Because when I see something that fascinates me or something I want to read, I write it down because, if I don’t, five minutes later, I won’t even remember talking about it. 

Yeah. It’s insane — well, not insane, but is when talking about myself. But looking around my desk right now, there are at least seven sticky notes of just reminders. 

Yup. People will know the meme that goes around online of Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia standing in front of the conspiracy board with a cigarette. That’s my entire wall over here. Sticky notes up the wazoo. I have them everywhere. Because if I don’t, my ADHD will jump in and be like let’s go do shiny things. So I am right there with you. Isn’t it funny how ADHD is different for everyone, but so many of us found the same things to help us work through it? 

Cope. 

Cope, yes, exactly. Survive. 

It really is because I want to look up the book. The world is what it is right now, and the biggest thing I can do that I can think of is buy a lot of banned books. 

Please do. The American Library Association releases its top ten banned books every year, and for the past four or five years, every single book on that list has been LGBTQ+. And/or Black authors writing about the Black Queer experience. So yeah. Pick up that list, and you’ll find many cool Queer novels and novellas on there. But this [Flamer] will probably always be right at the top because people hate this book. And it is vital. 

Thank you so much; this has been such a pleasure. 

Thank you! I have to say that the only reason I have gotten as far as I have is because of people doing exactly what you did: talking and sharing my books. The best thing that I have on my side is word of mouth. I love that feeling of getting a book, loving it so much, and wanting other people to share that with you so you can talk about it. 

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The Bones Beneath My Skin releases on February 4, 2025. Order your copy here.