We chat with debut author Jamison Shea about I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, a slow-burn horror that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.
Hi, Jamison! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! I’m Jamison, an author from Buffalo, New York, in love with all things doom, gloom, and monsters. I also drink a lot of milk tea and believe that The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker is one of the greatest stories of all time.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve loved stories probably ever since I first saw the original Sailor Moon anime, like the moon princess reveal was seared into my brain. I’d never felt so attached to a story or cast of characters before. As for writing, it started with a fanfic reimagining of Charmed when I was around 9 or so, but once I got into original vampire fiction a few years later, I couldn’t be stopped. I loved writing, and it was all I wanted to do.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading is Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I still have my copy from like 1998 that has completely fallen apart. In The Forests of the Night and Demon in my View by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes made me want to become an author, no question. And I don’t think I will ever stop thinking about The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde—I collect different editions of the book, and it’s my most reread.
Your debut novel, I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, is out August 29th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Unhinged, bloody, desperate, yet cathartic
What can readers expect?
Picture Black Swan and Venom set in Paris. It’s a wild ride about a girl who’s so desperate to join these ranks that she’ll do anything, including offer herself up to an eldritch god demon thing that takes the form of a river of blood. You watch as a person like that goes off the rails and does all the wicked things we can’t do in real life. Especially because she comes out of it alive and mostly in one piece.
Also, there’s a dash of bisexual pining and a good-sized helping of body horror, but otherwise it’s not too scary.
Where did the inspiration for I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me come from?
It started as just a writing exercise—I wanted to write a story about a character who became a monster, liked it, and stayed that. I wanted to see if I could get a reader to root for their becoming.
And also around that time, I’d recently bought an intermediate viola for over $1000 because the cheap one I bought on Amazon was holding me back. I hated that it was actually true, that I sounded better and progressed faster on a more expensive instrument because it’s such a ridiculous barrier for music. It reminded me of past frustrations as a classical flautist and attending an elite private school, of being surrounded by rich people with their expensive instruments and their private lessons while I was largely self-taught, practiced for hours every day, and had to borrow a teacher’s flute for competitions. I tore stitches in my mouth so that I could play, I was so dedicated.
So memories of those frustrations seemed like a perfect recipe for a monstrous disaster. It’s just that ballerinas make a more dramatic subject than violists.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I really enjoyed writing the body horror. Ballet is such an intense activity that the more research I did, the more gruesome stories and photos I found, dancers pushing through the pain of gnarled, bleeding feet and splints and sprains. There was so much raw material before I even added in the river of blood and eldritch monsters. It was fun to write from the flowery perspective of a ballerina who romanticizes the violence they put their bodies through.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to getting I Feed Her published?
It was a very chaotic and in some ways atypical publishing journey. I’d original written the first draft just for fun and didn’t plan on sharing with anybody, but once I got to the end, I liked it so much I wanted to revise and considered publishing. I’d submitted to Pitch Wars twice before I finally got in and landed a mentor. And though I only really cared about learning how to revise well, I had an agent within a month of the program ending. We did another couple rounds of edits and suddenly I found myself in a seven-house auction, and then the book was announced and coming out in less than a year with my dream editor.
I’m grateful for the course that all of this has taken. Even as I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best, this exceeded anything I imagined. And all from my silly writing exercise about a ballerina with a short fuse.
What’s next for you?
Well, I’ve just finished editing the sequel! I AM THE DARK THAT ANSWERS WHEN YOU CALL is all about exploring the grief and disenchantment that comes with turning 18 and suddenly being on your own and lost and not having the people you grew up with while you try to reinvent yourself. But it also leans even more into Lovecraftian mythology and expanding that dark underbelly.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
So I recently devoured THE CHANGING MAN by Tomi Oyemakinde and GORGEOUS GRUESOME FACES by Linda Cheng, both of which are spine-tingling, hair-on-the-arm raising, and great stories (and authors!) that I highly recommend. And I’m starting on THIS DARK DESCENT by Kalyn Josephson and loving it so far.
