PIHM Interview: Jamison Shea

Jamison looks like a rockstar: pierced, inked, and clad in band merch, sipping a matcha latte in a cosy cafe nestled in a Helsinki neighborhood at the edge of the Baltic Sea. It was sheer luck and serendipity that I found Jamison on social media, a fellow immigrant and nonbinary author of YA who shares my love for metal. Given the often lonely lives of authors, made even lonelier by being a foreigner in Finland, I knew I had to reach out and I’m so glad that I did.

After a lunch discussing the state of the publishing industry and the woes of the world at large, we moved outside to escape the percussive noise of the coffee grinder and milk steamer. Here, huddled in a corner in the first stirrings of spring warmth, Jamison graciously agreed to answer some questions about their life and books.

Xan: Who are you not? Why aren’t you a “insert whatever your alternative career path might have been”?

Jamison: Okay, when I was younger, I wanted to be an astronomer by day and a vampire by night.

Xan: Ambitious.

Jamison: I really loved studying space and learning about space and so I wanted to be an astronomer. That was my career goal from age 7 until 19. That was it. And then in university, I started taking more advanced math classes, because you had to get to a certain level before you could actually take proper science classes. And I sucked at advanced calculus, which is required for astronomy. I didn't realize how much math is involved. And so yeah, I'm not good at advanced calculus. I loved the theory. I enjoy learning about the theoretical, like particle physics. But as soon as you get an equation in there, my brain just shuts down.

Xan: I can relate. I wanted to be a quantum physicist for a while until I realized how much I sucked at physics.

Jamison: It sounds so fun until you have to actually do the math and then never mind.

Xan: So that's why you're not an astronomer.

Jamison: Yeah, because I'm bad at math.

Xan: But are you secretly a vampire?

Jamison: You know what? Yes, I think I did fulfill that. I have a blood bag that I put wine into.

Xan: Do you want that to be public knowledge?

Jamison: I'm pretty sure I put that on Instagram at some point. It looks like a blood bag, but you fill it with wine and you just sit there. I write like type O negative on the blood bag, so it seems like a blood type. Oh, and I'm going to the vampire ball again. So yes, I am a vampire.

Xan: Give us three songs, food, artworks, cocktails, whatever to get to know you and or your book by.

Jamison: The first would be a song, Sucks 2 Suck by Alpha Wolf, featuring Ice-T. It's such a fun song. This is my favorite song. I love just jamming to it. It's very bouncy. It's groovy. You want to dance, but it's also metal. It's got Ice-T in there screaming, “you want to die, motherf*cker”. It's everything that you could want in a song. I think the lyrics are pretty catchy.

Cocktail would be Death in the Afternoon. It is a cocktail invented by Ernest Hemingway that is equal parts absinthe and champagne.

Xan: Sounds deadly.

Jamison: It is very, very strong. It's very decadent because those are both very expensive and not very easy to come by. But I like it. I served it at a party to my friends once and they all hated it and said it was disgusting. Wouldn't even finish the glasses.

My favorite artwork is Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya. It's just disturbing and beautiful and I could stare at it all day.

Xan: And I think that sums up your book pretty well as well. Next question… Why horror? Why not thriller or cozy fantasy or sports romance?

Jamison: Horror is both intentional and unintentional. It is my favorite genre of everything. I love horror movies, TV shows, books. I grew up watching horror with my grandma and my mom. They're both horror fans and so that's how we bond by watching disturbing movies together.

Xan: Horror is your love language?

Jamison: Yeah, whenever I call my grandma, she has some terrible horror movie like, Ginger Dead Man or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. So, she'll always tell me what terrible horror movie she has seen. It is my love language. It is how I view the world, through a horror lens. It also happens anytime I sit down to write a fantasy, it is a dark, dark fantasy just because that is what I see. So, I think I'm writing a fun adventure book and I'm told that it's horror.

Xan: Which trope needs to be taken out back and shot?

Jamison: Colonizer romance. I hate it. Not just colonizer romance, any kind of oppressor romance where people are like, if I just love my oppressor hard enough, then they'll stop. And like, no, no, I hate it. It never works. Even when they try to make it so they're not really an oppressor or it's actually subverted because the oppressor is the villain. I don't like it. I don't mind the villain romance, but keep the oppressors out of it. They're not invited.

Me: What non-literary hill will you happily die on?

Jamison: Chocolate is disgusting. Chocolate does not deserve to be on anything, in anything. It was not meant for humans to consume.

Me: Okay, that's it. Interview's over.

It was at this point, I started reconsidering this nascent friendship and whether or not the solitary writer’s life was, in fact, preferable…

Jamison: It's horrible. It's gross. I hate it.

Xan: What…what do you eat then? Candy?

Jamison: No, I don't really like sweets in general. But the most perfect dessert is mango sticky rice. I like fruits. I like glutinous things.

Xan: Mochi?

Jamison: Love mochi. I just don't like chocolate. I like chewy, delicious things that are sweet. As soon as there's chocolate on something, you have ruined it for me.

Xan: I will forgive you the chocolate hatred because I know you like peanut butter.

Jamison: I love peanut butter.

And just like that, Jamison redeemed themself and the interview could continue…

Xan: If you could resurrect any dead author and have them write one more book, who would it be and why?

Jamison: I don't know. I find this very hard. Sometimes I think Oscar Wilde, but I feel like he would get into a lot of trouble. He would get himself cancelled really fast. So, not him. And then… I like William Blake's poetry. Fun fact, we share a birthday. But I don't know. I'm gonna say The Bard.

Xan: We're gonna go Shakespeare. Okay, I can get behind that. What about Charles Baudelaire? Do you like his poetry?

Jamison: A little bit, yeah.

Xan: You know who I'd love to read another book from, especially in this day and age, is Octavia Butler.

Jamison: I was thinking about Octavia Butler, but then I was like, it seems cruel to this timeline. She warned us. She said, this is not going to go well. And then nobody listened. And now I feel like it would be cruel to make her wake up and be like, see, you were right. We didn't listen.

Xan: She deserves to rest in peace. So, if you could collab with any non-author to write a book or short story, who would it be and why?

Jamison: Does Guillermo del Toro count? Because he's kind of an author.

Xan: Can you choose somebody else who's very specifically not an author or writing scripts?

Jamison: Megan Thee Stallion.

Xan: I was wondering if you were going to go with that or Garrett from Silent Planet.

Jamison: I was thinking about him as well because he's just very up there. His music just tickles a part of my brain. And so I think that would be a very fun collab. I think we would make a kick-ass dark fantasy together. And then with Megan Thee Stallion, she’s a bisexual weeaboo and horror lover, and so I feel like she would have some really interesting ideas that we can sprinkle into something together. I think with her it would definitely be horror, where with Garrett it would be dark fantasy.

Xan: Would you only have one album to listen to or rather one book to read for the rest of your life?

Jamison: One book to read.

Xan: What would it be?

Jamison: This is hard. It would be a tie between The Picture of Dorian Gray because every time I read it I have so much fun. I'm always kicking my feet. Everyone is so annoying and horrible. It's just so fun to me. Everyone sucks in that book and that's why I love it. Dorian is such a little shit and that is why I love it. So it would be a tie between The Picture of Dorian Gray and there is one book that is not very popular. It's called Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet, and it is about a teen boy in the middle of nowhere in Michigan who suddenly inexplicably gets this feeling when people are going to die and their souls move through him like music. But then his small town is freaked out by the whole thing and so he becomes ostracized.

Xan: Oh my God, I need to read this book.

Jamison: He's just like a random pothead who suddenly starts to know when people are going to die and it freaks him out and (spoiler) then he ends up stopping his best friend from committing suicide.

Xan: That sounds amazing.

Jamison: It is so good. I read it in high school. It changed my brain chemistry and I read it repeatedly.

Xan: If the story of your life was a romantasy, what would it be called in the The____of____and____ format?

Jamison: The Death of Men and Decorum. I hate decorum. I hate trying to be nice and following the rules for horrible people. I'm also being menaced by the Democratic Party, who keeps trying to, like, color coordinate as a form of resistance. Come on, throw a brick.

Xan: The anti-Demure movement.

Jamison: I'm anti-Demure. Correct.

Xan: Okay, so I want to read this book, The Death of Men and Decorum. Please write it.

Jamison: I’m on it.

Little do they know, I will hold them to this and demand to read said romantasy in the very near future, or I shall start pelting them with chocolate.

Xan: Okay, you can only have one. Matcha or chai?

Jamison: Matcha.

Xan: Peanut butter or biscoff?

Jamison: Peanut butter.

Xan: Bibimbap or bibingka?

Jamison: Bibingka!

Xan: E-books or audio books?

Jamison: E-books.

Xan: Brain freeze or stubbing your toe?

Jamison: I would choose stubbing my toe, because if you curse a lot, you feel better sooner. Like, imagine if you stub your toe and you just start screaming, Motherf*cker, son of a b*tch, blah blah, the pain subsides a lot faster than a brain freeze.

Xan: It doesn't work the same way for a brain freeze?

Jamison: Not for me.

Xan: Last bonus question. Would you rather have squirrels for fingers or toes for teeth?

Jamison: That is disgusting.

Xan: You're a horror writer. You're going to have to deal with this one.

Jamison: Squirrels for fingers.

Xan: Do you think you'd type faster?

Jamison: No, I would just dictate everything, but at least I'd be able to dictate with my real teeth.

Xan: Fair enough, I didn't think about that one.

Jamison: Just the imagery of that is awful. Oh my God.

Xan: I was inspired while reading your horror book.

Jamison: That's fair.

Xan: Any last comments or anything you want to tell readers?

Jamison: Roar of the Lambs is coming out in August. It is a gothic fictiony book about a psychic who lies all the time. And then the only person who believes her is a genderqueer juvenile delinquent. So, the one person who can't really help. And they try to stop a mad scientist tech bro from destroying the world. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Xan: Yeah, it sounds amazing. And this is not YA, right?

Jamison: No, this is.

Here’s the official blurb for Roar of the Lambs, perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White and Tochi Onyebuchi.

If you knew the world was ending, who would you save? And would they let you?

Sixteen-year-old Winnie Bray is a liar. As the resident psychic at an oddities shop, Winnie truly can see the future. But her customers only want reassurance, and Winnie only wants their money. Favorable fortunes are a fast track to funding her way out of Buffalo, New York for good, after all.

All of that changes when a vision sends her searching through the remains of her family home that burned down 10 years ago. Among the ash and rubble, Winnie finds a box made of bone, untouched by flames and… whispering. When she touches it, the box shows her a vision of death, chaos, and apocalypse, with her and rich kids Apollo and Cyrus Rathbun at the center.

Apollo knows their cousin is up to no good; with the Rathbun influence dwindling, Cyrus is aiming to present himself as the new patriarch. Despite an initial attraction, Apollo is reluctant to believe a con artist like Winnie. But soon it becomes clear that their family histories are intertwined around this whispering, hungry box, and more than their lives are on the line. Together, they must discover the origins of the box and stop unforeseen forces from opening it, thereby fulfilling the apocalyptic prophecy, or die trying.

And so our conversation comes to an end, thanks in part to the chilly wind reminding us winter hasn’t quite relinquished its hold on Helsinki just yet. We leave the cafe and stroll back toward the metro stop, Jamison telling me all about the haunted houses they’ve been to in an attempt to convince me to check one out sometime. Unlikely, considering I cannot handle jumpscares of any kind but Jamison will just have to accept my aversion to fear the way I grudgingly accept their aversion to chocolate, finding solace in our shared affinity for all things queer, vampiric, anarchic, and peanut buttery instead.

About Jamison Shea

Jamison Shea (they/them) is a dark fantasy and horror author, flautist, and linguist hailing from Buffalo, NY and now dwelling in the dark forests of Finland. When they’re not writing, they’re drinking milk tea or searching for eldritch horrors in uncanny places. I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME is their debut novel.

Jamison is represented by Jennifer March Soloway at Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

About Xan van Rooyen:

Climber, tattoo collector, and peanut-butter connoisseur, Xan van Rooyen is an autistic, non-binary storyteller from South Africa, currently living in Finland. Xan has a Master’s degree in music, and–when not teaching–enjoys conjuring strange worlds and creating quirky characters. You can find Xan’s stories in the likes of Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy’s Edge among others. Their latest releases include adult aetherpunk novel Silver Helix (Android Press) and adult aetherpunk novella Waypoint Seven (Mirari Press). Xan is also part of the Sauútiverse, an African writer’s collective with their first anthology Mothersound out now from Android Press. Feel free to say hi on socials @xan_writer.