When I moved to LA three years ago after (finally) getting a book deal for my debut memoir Tweakerworld, I was determined to find a queer lit community. I started reading the type of fiction I was interested in writing next. Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks Ramage didn't only rivet me, it held up a mirror for me to see the young gay artist who moved to NYC teeming with blind ambition and sexual frustration. JPR made me feel seen. Is there a greater commodity? After some DM sliding followed by some convivial flirting, a coffee date occurred and bam, I'd found a friend for life. Not only is JPR an incredible talent, he's the kind and welcoming girl from the high school cafeteria who says, "you can sit with us." Few people make me laugh so hard. The other day, I visited my buddy at his home in Echo Park. We sat in the backyard — I was on a swing his boyfriend insisted they install — and we gabbed about the decade-younger boy who was breaking my heart and how I'd finally had success cruising at Ginger Rogers Beach. Just two giddy giggling gals. Then we dived into his newest novel, It’s Not the End of the World. This book terrified and titillated me. And it will fuck you up in all the best ways...Here’s my interview with LA’s resident sweetheart Jonathan Parks Ramage. 

Jason Yamas: 

JPR, your new novel, which I read, blurbed and love, is about so many things...the dangers of an oligarchy billionaire class, climate change, industrialized weather control, queer family making. What aspect were you most passionate about conveying? 

Jonathan Parks Ramage:
I think for me, the book sprang out of a desire to find hope, which may feel weird being the book is very dark and takes place in a near future dystopia that isn't the result of some sort of civilization ending event, but rather it's a very grounded projection of where we might be based on where we are right now. And so for me, I think the question was how to find hope. Like if this is where our future is heading, how on earth can anyone find hope? 

JY:
What kind of research did you dig into for this type of speculative fiction? 

JPR:
Oh my, I fell down a rabbit hole researching anarchism. I feel like people have an idea that anarchy means destroying everything, blowing everything up with bombs, but anarchist tradition stretches back centuries and is actually the opposite of that. Anarchy isn't just: no rules, light everything on fire. Anarchy is organization. It’s mutual aid, which is actually a very old term. It's creating communities that are not hierarchically managed, communities that deal with direct democracy in which everyone has an equal voice in how their lives run.

I did a lot of research into classic European anarchism. Noam Chomsky has a great book called On Anarchism that details much of this history. David Graeber talks a lot about this history. There's also a Black radical anarchist tradition in the United States. The idea is — and people do this already — to create units of care that exist outside of the State, outside the oppression of the State or the lack of protection of the State. It's about creating communities that exist to care for each other outside of the machinations of the state. In researching where we might be in the future, I did a lot of research into the past. When you look into the past, you realize that the world has been ending for many people since the dawn of time, and that there's always been activists, organizers, people on the outskirts of society organizing who’re finding community and ways to resist. So, I found a lot of hope in observing that these movements have existed since statehood has existed, and that people have been resisting statehood since it has existed. 

JY:
It's interesting just how much you dug into the past in order to convey the future... 

JPR:
Yeah, I feel most good speculative fiction delves into the past because history famously repeats itself. I kind of use the Margaret Atwood rule of not making anything up out of the clear blue sky, which helps keep it grounded and realistic, which can usually be more terrifying. A lot of the response to the book has been, well, some people love it, and for some people it hits too close to home for what we're going through now. 

JY:
My roommate's reading it and is like seven chapters in, which is the point where somebody might think it's a zombie book... 

JPR:
Well, (chuckles) I do like playing with genre, and it isn't ultimately zombies, but it feels zombie adjacent. It’s eventually revealed that they aren't zombies, but they behave in this very zombie-like way. I love subverting genre tropes because they’re tropes we're all so familiar with. People have an idea of what happens within certain genre elements. I love taking those, then completely subverting them. It gives a way to hook people, then completely subvert their expectations and toy with what they’re expecting. I love “queering” genre, if you will. 

JY:
Without giving anything away, I noticed that this novel, much like your debut, takes a hard pivot about halfway through. Is this a style that you identify with? Can we expect the same to happen in your next novel? 

JPR:
For whatever reason, I think it's just my personal taste. I absolutely love what I like to call a “Vertigo-type twist.” I love a narrative in which there is a twist at the center of the film, like in the Hitchcock film Vertigo, that completely recasts everything you've seen before in a new light. I love how this type of twist can shift perspective. It’s incredibly powerful and satisfying when that happens. I wouldn’t say there's any deep thematic esoteric reason why I do these twists. I just find them structurally satisfying. I love that type of tactic for suspense in fiction, even in film. 

JY:
I do too. I screamed at that point in both your novels. Okay, I would love to get into some more technical stuff. Realistically, how many hours a day do you write, and when you’re writing, do you hide the phone? Do you go on Grindr and distract yourself? 

JPR: 

Realistically, when I'm not immersed in book promotion or other projects, when I'm writing a novel, I do like to write every single day. But I only write three to maybe four hours max then my brain quits. I do all my procrastinating before I write. In an ideal writing session, I'm just going and going hard for that three-to-four-hour window. I try to not be interrupted. The minute I go on Grindr, the day is absolutely destroyed. So no, I try to have a no Grindr rule.

JY:
Can’t be Grindring when you’re grinding. 

JPR:
Exactly. Yes, honey, when I'm actually writing, I need that uninterrupted time. I like to get into a “flow state.” That's the most satisfying writing session for me, when I can tap into a flow state, when I'm almost not even thinking, I'm just allowing the words to come out of me. Obviously, that's during generative writing, when I'm writing a first draft. Editing is different. Editing, I can do for longer stretches, cause that's tinkering. It requires less of my brain, heart and soul. I try to absolutely not go on Grindr. As we know, that is the ultimate gay-guy-time-suck 

JY:
What do you do if you set aside the day to write but feel stuck? 

JPR:
I feel really annoyed quite frankly, I always just try to write through it. I always try. 

JY:
What can inspire you in these moments? 

JPR:
I feel like inspiration comes from putting your butt in the seat and working. I can get inspired by novels, by nonfiction books, by movies, by other works of art, by people, but ultimately I think the “inspiration” just comes from putting your butt in the seat and working through feeling stuck. That being said, feeling stuck sucks, as all writers know. 

JY:
What’s your approach for writing sex scenes? They’re so steamy and tbh I became incredibly horny reading them. Some authors really bastardize sex scenes. What would be your advice to writers to keep sex scenes fresh and titillating? 

JPR:
My approach for writing sex scenes, well yes, they have to be hot, but more importantly, I feel the best sex scenes are rooted in character. I think sex just has a way of revealing things about people. As in real life, I think sex reveals things about people, or shows you what they're hiding, or can illustrate what they're working through. In my novel, there is some kinkier sex that happens and people are sublimating certain anxieties and feelings that they're not processing in their lives, that perhaps bubble up in the bedroom and get processed that way. I think BDSM can actually be a very healing practice when utilized ethically and consensually, but the key is to have it rooted in character. Also do not shy away from being explicit. I think some people get so “pearl clutching” about sex, but sex is a part of being a human being. I think being overly elliptical or kind of eliding details... Are you panning away to the moon? I'm like, No. If we're going to live with these human beings and really see them for who they are, we need to see and understand their sexuality. I think what makes a sex scene most titillating is the feeling these are real people having sex. Everyone obviously has what they're into and that varies very wildly. The best sex scenes make these people feel human and render their desires real. Also just, you know, lots of dick sucking. 

JY:
I'm curious how much you outline before you sit down and start composing your sterling prose. 

JPR:
I feel like every book starts with kind of just like an outpouring of just kind of inspiration. I have to vomit out a draft, or not a whole draft, but vomit out the first few chapters just to figure out what it even is. Where are we? What's going on? I can fly by the seat of my pants for a while, but eventually — and this book has many sort of interlocking stories and dual timelines — I will have to start getting ahead of myself a bit and outlining the next few chapters. But that outline is always a living breathing document. As I write each chapter, I might discover something new or realize I want to do something else. It's always a push and pull between writing in the moment, but then also outlining where I think I want to go and revising that based on what I actually end up writing. For this book, because there are dueling timelines, I had to do a full-blown post-writing outline to make sure that all the timelines did in fact make sense and line up. 

JY:
(audio becomes drowned out)
The irony is not lost on me that the audio I’m recording for this interview is being interrupted by helicopters above supporting the National Guard being sent into LA to provoke peaceful protestors...A real harbinger of the grim reality your novel portrays 

JPR:
*sighs heavily* Yup... 

JY: 

Okay...we’re back. Curious, so you edit as you go along, or do you complete one big shitty draft then begin editing? 

JPR:
I do edit as I go along a little, but for the most part I need to get the whole thing out before I really go back and edit on a sentence level. I'm not editing on a sentence level as I write. I want a full draft before I start fine tuning sentences. I don't want to spend too much time editing something that might never be in the book. Some people craft sentence-by-sentence and spend hours. It couldn't be me. I also need that freedom to just kind of go with my stream of consciousness versus being focused on prose style prematurely. 

JY:
Do you remember the moment when you came up with the original conception of this novel? Where were you? What were you doing? 

JPR:
Yes, it was in the very early days of the pandemic. I was living in an apartment with my boyfriend Ryan. We were, as everyone was, just quarantining ourselves, going on our daily sanity walks. Like, that was the main thing that you did every day is just went on a fucking walk around the block to just be like, "Oh my god, I'm not going to lose my mind today." And then there was a wildfire that happened in LA during this time, and the air around our apartment became too toxic to breathe. And so, we could no longer go outside. It was literally raining ash. It felt like this crazy thing where my sole source of sanity was going on these sanity walks, and then I couldn't go on my sanity walks anymore. We literally had to be inside our tiny apartment in West Hollywood going crazy. I think it was from that anxiety where it did feel like the end of the world. I feel like novels are a way of working out my own internal anxieties and what I am dealing with in terms of how I walk through the world and what I'm thinking about. So, yes, it felt very present and urgent because of that moment. 

JY:
Fiction writers tend to, in various ways, put themselves or their lived experience into their imagined worlds. I’m curious, as I know you've begun a third novel, do you feel that that lessens as you go along? Are you pulling less from your lived experience and more from imagination or...? 

JPR:
No, I mean the novel I'm writing now is partly auto-fictional but also plays with genre in a way in which there are things that did not happen to me at all. So, no. Actually I find myself putting more of myself into my novels. This is different than my debut which felt much more closely hewed to my early twenties  in New York and dating older, famous, powerful men. That was my first novel. This novel is more a projection of who I don't want to become in the future. A warning to myself. The protagonist is aware of his privilege, yet his Achilles heel is his absolute refusal to give it up no matter what, no matter who he has to hurt or what damage he may cause by clinging to his privilege as everyone around him loses theirs, essentially. I feel like I'm putting more of myself into it. I feel like writing a novel is always very personal because again it's just my way of dealing with my own dark thoughts and putting them somewhere. 

JY:
You find it therapeutic. 

JPR:
Yes, I do find it therapeutic. I find it kind of necessary. Yeah. It’s my way of engaging with what I'm dealing with internally and how I feel like I'm moving through the world. 

JY:
I’m just thinking about where I come from with starting a project, what inspires me to dive into a literary work especially —

JPR:
Which is...? 

JY:
I think I lean more into real events or relationships or conflicts I’ve experienced for which I don't yet have any resolution. I’ll take something extremely autobiographical then imagine the resolution and the ending I never got.

JPR:
I fully, fully relate to that. Yes, 1000%. I think that finding the lack of, or seeking resolution of things that don't have resolution. In this case, again, it was the question of, how do I find hope... literally? I think that in the end, there are no answers to these things that don't have resolution, but at least there's an exploration. 

JY:
Yes, mama. Lastly, are you afraid that you've paved the way for a future president, Chris Pratt? 

JPR:
Oh my god. 

JY:
Can we blame you if that happens? 

JPR:
Yes, you can blame me if Chris Pratt is elected to office. Chris Pratt seems to be giving MAGA vibes these days.