E.L. Chen: It’s the Challenge That Makes It Rewarding
In this interview, author E.L. Chen discusses how a love for self-aware horror movies helped inspire her new novel, Slasher Summer.
E. L. Chen is the author of Sweetside Motel and One of Us Is Already Dead. Her YA fantasy Summerwood/Winterwood was longlisted for the Sunburst and recommended as a Best Book for Kids and Teens by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, On Spec, and The Dark. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her son and a towering TBR pile. Follow her on TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky.
In this interview, E.L. discusses how a love for self-aware horror movies helped inspire her new novel, Slasher Summer, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: E.L. Chen
Literary agent: Dorian Maffei of Kimberly Cameron & Associates
Book title: Slasher Summer
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Release date: June 23, 2026
Genre/category: Horror, Slasher
Previous titles: Summerwood/Winterwood, Sweetside Motel
Elevator pitch: The Breakfast Club meets Scream. Seven old friends, former members of their high school’s horror film club, reunite at a remote cabin where a cult slasher was filmed, only to find themselves targeted by someone dressed as that movie’s iconic killer.
What prompted you to write this book?
I’m afraid my inspiration was rather prosaic. I was between projects and my agent thought I might be interested in writing a slasher, because I’d touched on Final Girls—the archetypal “last girl standing” in slasher films—in another book I’d written. At first, I wasn’t sure I had a slasher in me, but I started thinking about the kind of slasher movie I’d want to watch. Being Chinese Canadian, I’d want to see an Asian Final Girl, and I love comic, self-aware horror films like The Final Girls, Freaky, and The Blackening. The next thing you know I had about 20 pages of notes, so I thought, Welp, I guess I’m doing this!
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
It’s been roughly two years from idea to publication. I’d learned a lot about pacing from working from my agent’s feedback on a previous book, and once I got started I couldn’t stop. So, I was able to write a fairly clean first draft in under four months—smiling the whole time because I was having so much fun.
The core idea of a killer imitating a cult movie slasher never changed, but it grew layers as I kept asking myself questions. In a world dominated by the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, why is this movie also famous? I decided a small-town festival and Rocky Horror-like interactive showings had kept it alive. Then how do the characters relate to this experience, and to each other in the roles they’ve been expected to play, both in life and as teenagers performing slasher character tropes for an audience? And so, the book evolved from there.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
It’s common knowledge that publishing moves at a glacial pace, so I was prepared to sit and bite my nails with anticipation of the book’s release date. But I’ve been surprised by how fast the time flies, and how full it is. From acceptance to publication, there have been rounds of edits, then copy edits, multiple proofs to scrutinize, emails about marketing and publicity and cover art, plus authors are more engaged in self-promotion these days. And you have to do all this while simultaneously working on your next project. At no point do you dust off your hands and wait for the book to magically show up in bookstores. I was recently on a conference panel about querying, and the other panelists and I half-joked that we should warn the audience of aspiring authors to be careful what they wish for, because you’re signing up for homework for life!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
This was my first time writing a book with multiple POVs, so I had to come up with an entirely new writing process! I’m a plotter as opposed to a pantser. I need to hit the ground running when I write because as a single parent with a day job, it’s rare to get more than an hour to myself at a time.
Normally my outline is a list of bullet points, and I draft in a very linear fashion. Multiple POVs posed a challenge because I needed to decide who would be the best POV character for each scene before I started writing. But how can you know who will be the best narrator until you have a better idea of the big picture?
A lot of people think that writers generate words out of sheer instinct. That it’s all rainbows and lightning bolts. Even writers themselves—I was one of them for the longest time! For years I resisted working on craft because I assumed writing should just come naturally. But I’ve since learned to be more intentional and pragmatic with my writing practice, and I think my work has improved a lot because of it. So as boring as it sounds, I came up with a spreadsheet. I put my scenes along the x-axis and characters on the y-axis, and then I entered notes on what each character is doing in that scene, even if they’re off-page. This way I got a precise view of the book’s timeline and could also see who would be the best character for telling each scene. (I did end up rewriting a couple scenes from a different point of view, but my method was largely successful.)
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I had so much fun writing Slasher Summer, and I hope readers have just as much fun reading it! I intended the experience to be like watching a movie like Scream or The Blackening, slashers with characters you root for in scary situations, but which also have moments of levity. I also hope fans will enjoy recognizing the various nods to other horror films, but you don’t need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of slasher movies to enjoy the story.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Just because something is hard doesn’t mean you’re not good at it. I suspect a lot of aspiring writers and artists give up too soon because they think if they were “talented” then it would be easy. “Talent” is mostly hard work, persistence, and a willingness to learn as well as fail. Slasher Summer is the fifth book I’ve written, and although some aspects of writing get easier as you pick up more skills and start to recognize your own habits, it’s never completely smooth sailing. And I wouldn’t want it to be. It’s the challenge that makes it rewarding.
