Today we say hello to author TJ Klune joining us here at Love Bytes to talk about his new release “Withered + Sere”.

Welcome TJ 🙂

Why It Took Three Years to End the World

Once upon a time, I wanted to end the world.

Of course, I don’t mean the actual world. I’m not that much of a Machiavellian super villain who carries deep-seeded aspirations of global domination.

Mostly.

I wanted to write about the end of the world. I knew the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre was already littered with books and movies and games that were far better than anything I could ever come up with, but I still wanted to try, just to see what would happen. I could easily get part way through, decide it was crap, and then move on to something else. It’s happened before. It’ll undoubtedly happen again. That’s the risk a writer faces when starting something new: it might go absolutely nowhere and leave nothing but tears and anger in its wake.

So there I was, bright eyed and bushy tailed in the fabled year of 2013, ready to start ending the world and putting my own personal spin on it.

Yes, you read that right.

Withered + Sere (and its sequel Crisped + Sere) was started in 2013. The spring of 2013, to be precise. By the time you read this, it’ll be over three years since I started the book. It took two whole years to finish it.

Point of reference: W+S was started before I ever put a word of The Art of Breathing to page. It was finished after How to Be a Normal Person.

            Why did it take so long?

A few reasons.

First, this book was a massive undertaking. The scope of the story, the cast of characters, the ideas that I had for where I wanted the story to go were bigger than anything I’d ever done before. I was juggling so many plot points, so many ideas, that it was daunting to even think about. I’d never attempted anything of this scale before, and I was worried that I’d muck up everything I was trying to do.

Secondly, an idea slammed into me that ended up becoming The Art of Breathing, and I had to set W+S aside to focus on that. I spent most of the fall of 2013 writing the angsty adventures of Tyson and Dominic, and didn’t stop until that was finished.

But W+S was waiting for me when I finished and I was ready to dive back in.

Then December 2013 happened.

If you’ve followed me long enough, you know what happened. I don’t need to rehash anything here. Sufficed to say, I didn’t think about writing for a very long time after that.

I remember being in the hospital and sitting in a waiting room, and one of the Crack Crew at my side. She asked me if I’d been writing anything. I told her I’d been working on a story before all this crap happened. She thought it’d be good for me to try and work on it again. I thought she might be right, and that I could use the distraction. I was sitting in a hospital for hours upon hours with nothing but a shitstorm to focus on, so of course it would be good to write.

I remember opening the word doc for W+S, reading through where I’d left off, and putting my fingers to the keyboard, only to feel sick to my stomach. And it was two-fold. On one side of it, I couldn’t comprehend working on something darker like W+S was. I needed to be in a certain headspace to write this story, and I didn’t want to be there.

And on the other side, it I felt terrible, and irrationally so, that I could even think of writing when the reason for where I was needed my undivided attention. How could I even do such a thing like writing when there were other things that needed my attention?

So I closed it and didn’t even think about it again for a long time.

It wasn’t until September 2014 that I even started writing again.

I didn’t give W+S much thought. I needed something happy. Rainbows and glitter and sunshine.

The Lightning-Struck Heart.

And I still wasn’t ready when that was finished. I needed something happy. Grumpy and oh my god and what the hell.

How to Be a Normal Person.

And after that, I felt okay. I felt like I was back where I needed to be.

So I opened W+S again.

I read the whole thing, the over 100K words I’d already written.

And I started writing again.

And wrote another 100K words.

Which leads me to the third reason it took so long to get this book finished and out: the length. When I finished, the book itself was 207,450 words long, much longer than anything else I’d written before.

I cut some shit out, but it was still too long, at least for me, for one book.

So I made the decision to split it right down the middle.

Look. I know people hate cliffhangers. As I’m writing this, I just watched the season finale for The Walking Dead, and it left off on the mother of all cliffhangers, and I am so fucking angry about it, knowing it’ll be six months before I can find out what happens.

The cliffhanger in W+S isn’t like that. It isn’t one of peril. But it does end just when the biggest questions of all begin to form. But good news! You don’t need to wait forever for those answers to come, given that the second book, Crisped + Sere, will answer those questions in August, and wrap things up in a nice and neat little bow, for the most part.

So. It took me two years to write this book. It’s taken three years to get it ready with edits and illustrations and a whole host of other issues.

But I think, in the end, it was worth it. Because I finished what I set out to do.

It’s the end of the world.

And now, I feel fine.

Withered + Sere Blurb:

Once upon a time, humanity could no longer contain the rage that swelled within, and the world ended in a wave of fire. One hundred years later, in the wasteland formerly known as America, a broken man who goes only by the name of Cavalo survives. Purposefully cutting himself off from what remains of civilization, Cavalo resides in the crumbling ruins of the North Idaho Correctional Institution. A mutt called Bad Dog and a robot on the verge of insanity comprise his only companions. Cavalo himself is deteriorating, his memories rising like ghosts and haunting the prison cells. It’s not until he makes the dangerous choice of crossing into the irradiated Deadlands that Cavalo comes into contact with a mute psychopath, one who belongs to the murderous group of people known as the Dead Rabbits. Taking the man prisoner, Cavalo is forced not only to face the horrors of his past, but the ramifications of the choices made for his stark present. And it is in the prisoner that he will find a possible future where redemption is but a glimmer that darkly shines. The world has died. This is the story of its remains.

Available at:

Dreamspinner Press Publications

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Withered + Sere Blog Tour:

April 12 – MM Good Book Reviews

April 13- My Fiction Nook

April 18 – Just Love Romance

April 19 – Divine Magazine

April 19 – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

April 19 – The Novel Approach

April 20 – Kimi-chan Experience

April 21 – It’s About the Book

April 21 – Love Bytes

April 22 – Prism Book Alliance

When TJ Klune was eight, he picked up a pen and paper and began to write his first story (which turned out to be his own sweeping epic version of the video game Super Metroid—he didn’t think the game ended very well and wanted to offer his own take on it. He never heard back from the video game company, much to his chagrin). Now, over two decades later, the cast of characters in his head have only gotten louder. But that’s okay, because he’s recently become a full-time writer, and can give them the time they deserve.

Since being published, TJ has won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Romance, fought off three lions that threatened to attack him and his village, and was chosen by Amazon as having written one of the best GLBT books of 2011.

And one of those things isn’t true.

(It’s the lion thing. The lion thing isn’t true.)

Facebook: TJ Klune

Blog: tjklunebooks.blogspot.com

E-mail: tjklunebooks@yahoo.com