Is there a good way to do custom typing hotkeys on Mint?

Recent convert from Windows here, and for the most part everything has been smooth, but I've run into a brick wall with this one.

I write a lot and often like to use non-standard characters. On Windows I was using AutoHotKey to convert e.g. a ctrl-shift-hyphen into an em dash (—) or ctrl-e to type an é.

I haven't been able to find any good way to do this on Mint thus far. AutoHotKey doesn't seem to work, and the built-in Keyboard Shortcuts interface is incredibly clunky and slow (i.e. pasting the character maybe 2/3rds of the time, with noticeable delay).

I'd really like to be able to just seamlessly hit a hotkey and type a character like —/é. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? Thanks.