Welcome to the new epoch
It’s snowing tonight. Heavily.
You didn’t think it’d be this bad when you finally left the bar: the bitter wind slipping under your coat and raking blades of ice up your sides, the snowflakes falling faster than stars, everything blanketed in so much white you can't see more than a couple feet in front of you. Your shoes are just shoes and not boots, so they slide a little with every step to the nearest bus stop. Frost kisses your exposed ankles and nips at the back of your neck.
It’s miserable out. So miserable that you’re the only person on these dark, lonely streets—the only one waiting for a bus anyway. The only sound is the howling of winter and your shuddering breaths as you try to stop your teeth from chattering.
But there’s a roof over this little stop to save you from getting buried, and it blocks out most of the wind if you stand flush against the glass. There’s even a streetlamp to illuminate just how alone you are and just how miserable these five minutes of waiting are going to be.
If it’s only five minutes. You didn't take into account delays because of so much snow.
Somewhere between your third and fourth internal sing-along of Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u” to pass the time, you hear footsteps. The crunch of powdery snow warns of an approaching figure, the only signs of life in the hellscape besides you, crawling closer and closer with sinister calm.
You strain your frozen muscles to look and instantly regret the pain. It’s a figure with thick boots, snow-pants that rustle, a puffy coat bursting at the hood with black fur, a scarf wrapped so tight you can’t find their face within. It’s a little freaky how wobbly they move, inhuman, like someone unused to snow, or pants, or walking.
Or maybe it’s sentient winter gear here to find itself a body.
The harbinger stops on the other side of the glass, away from the safety of bus stop’s roof, out of its walls and exposed to the vicious wind and deluge of snowflakes. They don’t shiver or pace like you do to keep warm. No, they only turn to face you. To stare at you from behind mounds of wool.
In silence.
They stand so uncomfortably close to the glass that it fogs, and if you weren’t slowly freezing in place, you’d back away. You want to back away so badly it aches, but the winter chill has staked its claim on your bones.
Run, your brain seems to say, but run where? In these shoes? Your toes transitioned from numb to stinging, burning, frostbitten pain two “good 4 u”s ago.
The stranger raises a gloved hand and carves letters in the fog. A message for you. Spelling your doom. It writes:
JAMISON'S BACK.
Welcome to the new epoch
Hello dear readers, new and old. Welcome to the new epoch of The Hel Dispatch, the monthly newsletter where Jamison Shea reflects on the cosmic curse and joy of writing from a nondescript den in Hel(sinki).
On account of some recent developments with my old newsletter host, I’ve had to jump ship and start fresh somewhere else. Worry not, I’m still a dweeb, but now I’m a ✨professional✨ dweeb. Just your luck! From here on out, I’ll be limiting newsletters to just the fun stuff, sticking to once a month or so and linking to all the boring craft stuff on my blog.
Now let’s dive into the news, shall we?
Some book news 📚
We have a publish date: August 29!
It’s officially official. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I, Jamison Shea, wordsmith, person of letters, three decaying furbies in a leather jacket, am going to be published August 29 with Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan.
My little hellion debut, I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME, will be available wherever books are sold this fall. (And more info on that coming soon.) It follows a teen ballerina’s dark descent after she bathes in the blood of an eldritch god for the power to best her competition.
Perfect for fans of women’s rights and more importantly women’s wrongs, supporters of useless bisexuals in crisis, and anyone who ever watched Black Swan and thought, “It’s good, but what if she was more demonic?”
You can read more about my inspiration and my editor Jess Harold’s thoughts in the announcement in Publishers Weekly, “Holt Acquires Sought-After Debut YA Horror Duology.” If I seem really cool, calm, collected, and blasé about all this, don’t be fooled; my brain keeps crashing to a backing track of AOL dialup.
As the publishing season looms closer, I will share more updates, including a cover reveal, preorder campaigns, goodies, etc. but in the mean time… I have a sequel to write and a lot of planning to do.
Thank you for all of your support and enthusiasm for horrible, horrible girls. I hope that it lives up to the hype.
In the meantime, stay wicked.
Jamison Shea