Horror & Romance: A Guest Post by Shailee Thompson

When speed-dating takes a deadly turn, sparks fly amid bloodshed and mayhem. Jamie won’t stop until she finds the killer — or a boyfriend. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Shailee Thompson on writing How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates.

I have always been a rom-com girl. Growing up in the nineties and aughts they were hard to escape, and when I started writing novels in my late teens, I always gravitated toward creating stories that featured romance. The love for horror came a little later in life.

I’d seen a few of the classics—Psycho, The Shining, Poltergeist—and I’d always come back and watch Scream, enjoying the meta commentary and dark humor. But it wasn’t until I met one of my best friends, a horror connoisseur, that I started developing as deep an appreciation for final girls and first kills as for leading ladies and first kisses.

At the end of 2023, I was in the querying trenches with a different book, and rather than twiddling my thumbs while waiting to hear back, I decided I wanted to challenge myself to write in a different genre to the one I’d become comfortable writing in for a decade. This is when I stumbled across a screenshot of tweet lamenting how there were too many Christmas romcoms and not enough Halloween ones. I immediately associated this with a ‘horror rom-com’, and while one part of me doubted whether these two ostensibly opposed genres could work together, the other figured there was only one way to find out. Two months later, I sat down and wrote out a scene involving an epic first kill at the end of a speed date, and How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates was born.

What I love about horror and romance—and what I think makes them work so well together– is the intensity of emotion they display. They’re peak escapism; the stakes are high, the conflict is palpable, and whether we’re dealing with matters of the heart or a life-or-death situation, they deliver on their promise of a heart-pounding experience. Romance and horror allow us to explore distinctive universal emotions in a safe and controlled environment, acting as a catharsis for our anxieties surrounding love and death.

Having a cinephile, Jamie Prescott, as my main character was an obvious entry point for me to pay homage to my favorite kinds of films, but it was also a way for me to address and critique aspects of those films that never sat right with me. One gripe I have with a lot of the classic slashers (and some of the iconic rom-coms, honestly) is the unrealistic representations of female friendships. I’m sorry, but if I’m being hunted by a masked killer there’s no way I’m shacking up with the Chad I’ve known for 5 minutes; I’m sticking with the best friend I know and trust and would fall on a blade for (because she would do the same). So, one thing I wanted to do when writing How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates was incorporate a ride or die friendship that felt reminiscent of the ones I’m lucky enough to have in my real life.

This is my love letter to female friendship, set in the modern dating world where your date is just as likely to kill you as kiss you.