By Suma Subramaniam

Your debut YA novel, A (Dead) Thing Like Me (Holiday House, 2026), is about a teenage ghost in love with life. She becomes bound to the house of the grieving artist who summoned her via Ouija board. The novel is a darkly funny YA paranormal. What was your inspiration for this story?

Okay so … I may have had a ghost roommate.

When I lived in a 1920s garage apartment, I (maybe) saw an electric-blue ghost girl sliding up my bedroom wall. Just a dream, I thought. But one morning, I woke to find scrambled, backwards letters — like mirror writing — carved into the kitchen countertop. I had no idea how it got there.

Then I remembered how my cousin once had a ghost roommate she named Victoria. (A psychic and an observant dog confirmed my cousin’s sighting.) Victoria fluttered around, flickering the lights. She hovered by my cousin’s bed — melting the wax candle despite the cold A/C — observing her sleep.

Not in a malicious way! More like she was curious about my cousin’s human life.

I became fascinated with this idea. In A (Dead) Thing Like Me, the narrator is a teenage ghost in love with life (especially junk food, which is why her name is Hot Dog). Hot Dog desperately tries to befriend the human girl whose house she’s haunting. But sometimes she’s accidentally terrifying. It’s hard communicating with the living!

I’ll never understand the mirror-writing on my countertop, but if it was from a ghost, I like to think it was a friendly — if unintentionally spooky — message, just like Hot Dog would have sent.

You also co-founded, alongside D.M. Hoffman, The Quiet Ones, a literary magazine dedicated to short-form quiet horror and author interviews. Could you share what draws you to the paranormal in your own writing?

Horror stories are learning experiences: They let us experience fear in a safe space, so we’re prepped to deal with scary situations in the real world. (A study showed that horror fans were more resilient during the pandemic.)

Personally, I love a spooky story, so long as it’s not too scary.

(If you’re wondering: A [Dead] Thing Like Me is a horror-comedy — the scary level is  “Stranger Things” Season 4 — and things do turn out well in the end.)

I also love paranormal stories because they let us explore what it means to be human. Hot Dog spends most of her story attempting to be a real, normal, living girl. But she has no clue how to accomplish this. If she could just eat a hotdog, would that make her human? What about an invite to a Halloween party? Or a Human Girl Potion? Of course, there’s no one right way to be a person, as Hot Dog eventually realizes. It’s a lesson I would have told my teen self — and that I still need to hear as an adult. We are perfect just as we are, and honestly, the weirder the better.

What themes carry through from your work with short fiction into longer prose? Did you make any informed craft-related choices?

I always try to tell a story from a deep, character-driven point of view. This was especially true for A (Dead) Thing Like Me. Hot Dog has spent a long time floating around as an invisible ghost — stuck in her own head — before Logan summons her, so she’s developed a unique inner voice. (So has her semi-sentient dress, which literally does not stop chattering.)

I kept her POV in very close first-person present tense. The book is both funny and spooky (often at the same time — think “Widow’s Bay”) — and Hot Dog’s close POV heightens both the humor and the scares.

To maintain Hot Dog’s unique voice, I had certain rules for myself:

• She repeats herself when she’s in a high emotional state (“Something is crawling up my cheek. It has little wings and fuzzy feet. It is making a buzzing sound. It is nothing nothing nothing to be afraid of.”)
• Sometimes she doesn’t use contractions, which gives her a strange voice unmoored from modern teen life.
• In some chapters, the prose dissolves into unpunctuated poetry, becoming as formless as she is.
• Without a body, she experiences physical sensations in more mystical ways (like the “heartbeat of stoppered stars” she carries in her chest).

What narrative techniques did you study to create the interstitial chapters in the book?

Without a body, Hot Dog is literally fluid — at one point, she stretches across the floor like early morning fog. I wanted the novel’s style to be just as creative and unbound.

Several chapters are short — less than a page — and read more like poetry than prose. Other chapters consist entirely of her Ouijia board conversations with Logan. In one chapter, it’s just an ingredient list for her Human Girl Potion.

I used a lot of freewriting and surrealist techniques to create these chapters. Here’s some tips if you’d like to try:

• I listen to the same soundtrack (or song) on repeat and stare into space until I’m practically hallucinating my story.
• I mentally “feel around,” the scene and free-write every sensory detail.
• I write down even the bizarre, seemingly unrelated images or words that pop into my head.
• Then I use these slightly unhinged notes to craft a scene that often surprises me. It’s how I ended up with a demon snake named Horse who likes margaritas and the politics section of the paper; eerie ghost crabs that carry Hot Dog’s memories; and a Needle Finger ghost eater who Hot Dog has to defeat.

You’ve got an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from VCFA. Tell us how that led you into the world of publication, Emily.

My mentors and workshop leaders at VCFA made me the writer I am today. Big shoutout to Nova Ren Suma, A.M. Jenkins, Louise Hawes, A.S. King, Margaret Bechard, Will Alexander, Susan Fletcher, and — oh, the list could go on forever. But truly, VCFA professors showed me how to connect deeply with my characters and find the emotional truth of a novel. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have been equipped to tell Hot Dog’s story.

How do you see A (Dead) Thing Like Me connecting with readers?

I hope readers have a good time hanging out with Hot Dog. She’s a great person, even if her head sometimes does swivel around unnervingly, and I love to see her out here making friends in the real world.

There’s also a lot of themes in the book — healing, friendship, self-acceptance — that I hope resonate with readers on a deeper level. One early reviewer said they wished their teenage self was able to read the book.  That made my entire month!

I’m really excited to partner with book clubs, schools, and librarians to reach teen readers, and I offer a free 16-page resource and activity guide on my website.

What do you love most about the creative life/ being an author? Why?

The community! Writing may be a solitary activity, but along the way it’s also led me to some of my best friends.

As a YA author, it also feels like a big honor and responsibility to have an impact on teen readers. When I was in my early 20s, I found out I have OCD thanks to YA author Maggie Stiefvater, who openly shares her experiences. I try to do the same with my author platform so I can be that person for someone else.

What are you working on next?

I’m first-drafting two secret YA fantasies and revising an adult vampire fantasy I cowrote with Elliot Thomas, one of my best friends and fellow VCFA grads. Cowriting has been a blast because it’s sort of like when you were a kid and invented imaginary worlds with your friends, except this time there’s also due dates. (Hi Elliot! I promise I’m gonna finish the chapter I have due this week!!)

I’ve also been working hard on the launch for A (Dead) Thing Like Me. If you preorder from indie bookstores Tombolo Books or The Book Lounge, you’ll get free swag: two custom stickers and a mystery Oracle card from a deck my friend Marianne and I made for the book! You’ll find preorder links on my website: www.egyoungbooks.com

Thank you, Suma, for chatting with me today — and thank you readers for spending time with me and Hot Dog (your new ghost BFF)!

Cynsational Notes

E.G. Young (she/her) is a speculative fiction author living on the Gulf Coast of Florida. In her books, you’ll find weird-but-tender vibes, strange girls, dark humor, spookiness, and animals who all live at the end (promise!). She writes 90 percent of her drafts using voice-to-text dictation (shoutout to fellow hypermobile humans).

E.G. holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from The Vermont College of Fine Arts and is represented by Linda Camacho at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency.

Suma Subramaniam is a recruiter by day and children’s book author by night. She writes picture books, middle grade, chapter books, and poetry.

Her works include Crystal Kite Award winner: Namaste Is A Greeting, New York Public Library Vibrant Voices Selection: She Sang For India, ILA Notable: My Name Is Long As A River, and the V. Malar series. When she’s not recruiting or writing, Suma volunteers with SCBWI and We Need Diverse Books or blogs about children’s literature. Learn more at https://sumasubramaniam.com.