Welcome to Inside the Mind where we here at The Faerie Review interview authors and creators.
Our guest today is TJ Eckhart, the author behind True You 101

Lily:  Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview TJ I loved reading True You 101. I have to ask – what inspired you to write this?

TJ:  This novel was originally a short story.
There was an anthology call for LGBTQ+ short stories set in a magical school. The editor loved my story, but it was the only one without a sad or negative tone, so he felt it didn’t fit that anthology. He told me to shop it elsewhere, and I did. It grew into a novella and then into a novel with feedback from different editors at a couple of different publishing houses. 
I wrote this story because my loved ones and I have never felt at home within the narrowly defined gender roles of the greater culture around us. Through my educational work, I have seen this to be true for many people. I want this book to let young adults and adults know that they are not alone and that the limited models they see around them today do not and need not reflect our only options. 
True You 101 is inspired by my study of gender and sexuality in history as well as the life of my family, friends, students, and myself. It is also inspired by the Magic University series from Cecilia Tan as well as dozens of biographies and autobiographies of people from a wide range of gender, sexuality, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds that I have been reading over the past decade.

Lily:  I love how it grew from a short story into a novel, and I’m so glad it did! Would you want to take a class like True You?

TJ:  On the one hand, when we are teenagers, we just want to know who we are. As we get older, we realize that self-discovery and self-growth don’t stop just because we become adults. As I hope to write about in future Blake Trudeau books, we’ll learn that True You 101 is a big step in becoming fully oneself, but it is not the end of that journey. So, it would have made my teenage years calmer and hopefully given me more guidance for my future, but that class would have been an aid, not a solution.

Lily:  I can totally understand that, and I can’t wait to read more Blake stories. Was Blake inspired by anyone?

TJ:  Not by any one person. As I’ve continued to look into issues of gender and sexuality, and as feminism has become more intersectional, I’ve become more aware of how every part of who we are and every element of our personal and family history combine to make us who we are. We get defined by society and define ourselves by external characteristics, yet no two people (not even identical twins) are the same. Blake’s journey is one that I think everyone can relate to if they are being honest with themselves.

Lily:  I hope other people can relate to it on some level, I definitely did. If readers take away one thing from reading this, what would you want it to be?

TJ:  The first step to becoming the best you that you can become is accepting everything that you are right now in this moment.

Lily:  That’s really great advice too! Now we’d like to talk about you as a writer. Do you have a ritual to get into the right headspace to write?

TJ:  I don’t have a ritual, but I do have a routine. I’ll reread through my notes that I keep for the story or book that I’m working on and I’ll reread what I’ve written the day before so that everything is fresh in my mind.

Lily:  Sounds like a great way to start off a writing session. Do you have a favorite time of day to write?

TJ: I am most creative mentally in the morning. I treat my writing as a regular job. I make time to write in the mornings between 9 a.m. and noon. I have an arm injury that limits how much I can type at any given stretch; I spend the bulk of that time on my creative writing. My other part-time job can be done in small bits of typing, so I do that after I’ve spent the maximum time on the creative work. 

Lily:  I’m glad you’re able to spend so much time on your art. Do you set writing goals (like time spent writing or word count)?

TJ:  My injury limits the maximum to 90 minutes, but I type and create quickly, so I can generally get 5+ pages done five days a week. That can be a short story every week or a chapter every week on a novel.

Lily:  That’s awesome! Let’s finish up with some fun questions and get inside your mind. What do you like to do to relax?

TJ:  I was raised on television, so I love to watch TV or movies, especially horror movies. I’m into computer games (World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo, simulation games) and I’ve been borrowing my hubby’s new Switch to play Animal Crossing for a while every day. I also still love to read, but since I’m a part-time book reviewer and a historian, I have to balance out the reading for work/research with reading for fun. I’ve been coloring since I was a child, decades before the “new” craze of adult coloring; I have a group I meet up with regularly to chat and color with.

Lily:  I love horror movies! I haven’t logged into my Animal Crossing in so long I’m almost afraid to, my town must be a mess. What’s your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

TJ:  I hate routine for food, so I have a few options. I might have toast with peanut butter one day, an egg white omelet the next, oatmeal one morning, or some chocolate covered fruit one morning. During the pandemic, I was turning to food more for emotional reasons, so I had more pastries than normal. I’m hoping to get back to rotating between toast, egg whites, and oatmeal again.

Lily:  Toast with peanut butter is one of my favorites. If time/money/COVID wasn’t a problem, where would you go on vacation and who would you take with you?

TJ:  If money weren’t a problem, I’d want to take at least my husband and hopefully my entire household to Italy and Greece. I spent my junior year of college in Rome and traveled around both of those countries, and I’ve always wanted to show my family what I saw there. Photos just don’t do it justice. But it isn’t cheap to travel well in either of those countries, and we aren’t roughing-it people.

Lily:  I think that would be an amazing trip. If essentials were covered, what 3 things would you want to have with you on a deserted island if you were stranded for a month?

TJ:  Satellite internet connection, my computer, and coloring books with utensils to use with them.

Lily:  That might be more of a vacation than being stranded hehe. Would you rather live full time in an RV, on a sailboat, or in an off-grid cabin in the woods?

TJ:  Goddess, none of them. We are so not the type of folks who like to rough it. However, of the three, I’d pick an RV, because they can be very upscale. Plus I grew up traveling for weeks at a time around the USA and Canada in an RV with my parents before I went off to college, so I know there are many interesting things to see and do.

Lily:  I’d definitely have to go for one of the higher end ones if I was going for an RV. If you could know the absolute and total truth to one question, what question would you ask?

TJ:  How can we get people to care about and value objective truth? If we don’t have good data, we can’t make good decisions. We live in a world where so many people are actively resistant to objective facts that we are doomed to make poor decisions as individuals and groups. Yes, as a historian, I know that has often been a problem, but I want to know why and what we can do about it.

Lily:  Now I want to know the answer to that! Is there anything else you would like to add that I haven’t included?

TJ:  People may want to note that I have twelve earlier books and many short stories out under another version of my name, so if they visit any of my social media sites, they may see those other books mentioned. True You 101 is my first Young Adult novel; it is not like my other work. Try to keep an open mind, and don’t assume that if you love this book, you’ll love the earlier work (though many people have told me that they do).

Lily:  Thank you so much for being here to chat today. How can readers discover more about you and you work?

TJ:  I’m on a lot of social media sites, with the caveat of what I mentioned above about the types of books I’ve had published.

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