Are you a fan of edge-of-your-seat thrillers? What about villain origin stories? If yes, you won’t want to miss I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me. But if you need some extra incentive to pick this one up, be sure to check out this interview with author Jamison Shea! What makes Laure fierce? Laure is particularly ambitious and competitive beyond what makes sense for self-preservation. Any threat to her future and what she wants is met with teeth and claws, and she won't show any remorse. What's the most interesting thing you learned while researching I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me? On her way to the big finale, Laure walks through Place de la Concorde (think  Champs-Élysées). It used to be called Place de la Révolution because that was where the first executions by guillotine took place: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. More than 1000 others followed in that specific square which has since been rebranded into a shiny tourist trap with the Luxor Obelisk, gold fountains, luxury shopping, etc. If you'd met Laure as a teen, would you have been friends with her? Absolutely not. She's really intense. I tended to gravitate towards people who knew how to have fun, laugh, and touch grass. That's why writing her was so exciting. What's one fun fact most people don't know about you? During my intensive Japanese language program in Yokohama, I went to this one ramen shop near my apartment so often that the cooks had memorized how I liked my order (hard noodles, extra fat). The head chef hugged me goodbye when I moved away. What's your favorite part of being an author? Getting lost in research. I love just going into research rabbit holes or getting deep into fact-checking because there's so much horror and twisted things in our mundane, human, not-possessed world. In some ways, it's worst than anything I imagined in my book--elite ballets and gilded opera houses are no exception. What 3 words would you use to describe I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me? Unhinged, yet relatable. ABOUT THE BOOK There will be blood. Ace of Spades meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story. Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom. But Laure quickly learns she’s not the only monster around, and her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first. From debut author Jamison Shea comes an edge-of-your-seat thriller 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.