Author TJ Klune on queer representation and the book that always makes him cry

For Charlotte, March is the time to get started reading for the year.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library kicked off their Community Read program for 2026 by welcoming “The House on the Cerulean Sea” author TJ Klune to speak with the public at the end of February. Klune’s popular novel will be the Library’s pick for the annual, community-wide book club program centered around a signature book and theme.

“Community Read is a chance for readers across communities to connect through a shared story that embodies themes that matter locally and nationally,” said Angie Myers, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Interim CEO. “Throughout February and March, Library branches across the system will host programs, community conversations, and events inspired by this year’s book.”

We sat down with Klune to talk about his work and how he approaches writing. These answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Question: A lot of people probably ask about how you prepare yourself to sit down and write. I’m curious about that, but the thing I also wanted to know is where do the ideas come from for you?

Klune: “Yeah, that’s a very good question to start with because most people seem to think that ideas have to be big to make big things like novels and everything like that. But I’ve found that to be not the case in any way, shape or form. I’ll give a very specific example. I wrote a book called ‘In the Lives of Puppets’ that was a retelling of ‘Pinocchio’ by Carlo Collodi, except I wanted it to involve machines. I wanted it to involve this futuristic, kind of post apocalyptic world, but I wasn’t quite sure how I could marry the two.

“And then I bought a Roomba vacuum cleaner. And humans, we have this saying where we tend to anthropomorphize or give human-like qualities to inanimate things. And so, of course, I put googly eyes on him, and I named him Hank and when you turn on these vacuums for the first time, they have to map out their house so they know where they’re going. This stupid little machine that I love with all my heart got himself stuck in a corner and made the saddest beeping sound I have ever heard a machine make.

“I was just doing my normal stuff. I have ADHD, so I’m thinking a billion thoughts at once, and all of a sudden, with (it) made this beeping sound, I thought, huh, what if you were real? And then they just kind of built from there.”

Q: Especially in the sci-fi fantasy realm, it’s sometimes like, ‘Let’s take something that’s happening in the world, but bring it down to this level;’ explain it in these terms.

Klune: “Well, that’s also a fair assessment. ‘The House in the Cerulean Sea’ was written in 2017-2018 and we were in the middle of an administration that we’re now in the sequel of. It was horrifying we know, and we see it even more now, but back then, you’ll remember one of the huge stories out of the Trump administration was how they were separating families at the border, taking children and putting them in cages, just because, I mean, because cruelty was the point, but just because they were different, they were setting them aside because they were different, and that kind of evolved into ‘The House in the Cerulean Sea’ but it was because I heard the character start talking to me and telling me the kind of story I was going to tell with them.”

Q: I saw in a number of other interviews that you wanted to be a writer since you were a kid. What was the moment when you realized you could turn that dream into a reality?

Klune: “The hubris that comes with being in your 20s when I told myself I was going to write the great American novel and then wrote a pile of dribble that was never published. And of course, that first attempt was an absolute failure, and it was not very good. When I was writing it, I knew it wasn’t very good, and then I stopped for a few years because I was in the workforce. I’d gone directly from high school into the workforce, and I found myself working in a cubicle hell for an insurance company and while I was working there in 2010, I told myself I’ll be 30 in 2012, and I need to figure out what I want to do with my life because I can’t be here forever.

“So I began to write again, and I wrote what became my first novel, and that was published in 2011 with a small, independent publisher. It was basically just me saying nobody else is holding you to this. You either are going to do it or you’re not. I was working 60 hours a week, and then I would come home and write until like, one o’clock in the morning, get up at five o’clock in the morning and do it all over again. But when you’re in your 20s, you’re capable of doing stuff like that, even if it might be a tad unhealthy.”

Q: What was one of the first pieces of writing that really clicked for you?

Klune: “This is the first book that ever made me cry, and it is a book I re-read once a year, just to make sure I’m not dead inside, that I can still cry. And that’s ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ by Wilson Rawls. If people don’t know what it is, it is the saddest dog book ever written. And that book altered my brain chemistry because I didn’t know that words can do that in that order. I didn’t know words can make you feel like that.”

Q: What has it been like to explore queer lives in your own work?

Klune: “It’s extraordinary. Look, I mean, if I had books that exist now, I’m not talking about my own I’m talking about there’s so many amazing queer and trans authors who are getting to tell their own stories in ways that they weren’t able to, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genre, which, barring a few notable exceptions, has always been a straight white male game and the fact that we are at a time, the futuristic sounding year of 2026, and we’re getting to have so many people, so many marginalized communities, getting to tell their own stories in the only way that they know how. It is extraordinary. But obviously we see the rising opposition with that coming in from book bans and books being removed from schools for the people who probably need them the most…

“The thing that I’ve noticed, especially over the last five or six years that has been just extraordinary to me, is how many older queer men are picking up books and reading them for the first time. I’ve had so many people of a certain age tell me I did not know books like this existed, and now I’m reading everything I can. Your book brought me back into reading. And there is no higher compliment that can be received under anything like that.”

This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 5:30 AM.