Book Deal News!

That’s right, friends, I have another book coming out! It comes out fall 2026 and you can save it on Goodreads HERE. I normally use this blog for writing craft tutorials and writer’s life pep talks, so in the spirit of that audience, I’m not just here to celebrate happy news with y’all.

*clears throat*

*hides champagne glasses behind back*

Instead, I’d like to take this moment to continue the tradition that I’ve begun with other authors—doing a blog interview during big milestone moments, to let them share their publishing path and what they learned along the way.

What was the inspiration behind this book?

In 2018, I was walking down the streets of New Orleans with my 16 y/o goddaughter, and she said, “I saw my first dead body in Walmart.” Probably, I should have been concerned about what kind of Walmarts she’d been frequenting, but I’m an author so deep down that my DNA twists are constructed of fountain pens. So instead I stopped dead, got chills down my whole body, and said, “There’s a book in that.”

That idea was like being handed one end of yarn. If you tugged too hard, the whole thing would unravel. But if you pulled just the right way, a whole sweater would drop into your lap.

I wrote the first third of this book four completely different ways. Once I managed to claw my way to a complete draft (single POV YA Contemporary Romance), I threw it all out and rewrote it as dual POV Adult Psychological Suspense, with a completely different plot and all new cast of characters. By the end of this journey, the book had been through 14 completely different drafts, and at least four vastly different endings.

What was it like to finally get The Call?

I put these stories on my blog and newsletter primarily so authors understand how many DIFFERENT paths to publication can still work. Even when it happens, it often doesn’t happen the way you’d pictured.

The first plot twist was that this book was on sub once under my first agent. When it didn’t sell, I couldn’t quite accept it because every reader who’d seen it was electrified by the experience. I knew I had something there. But you can’t query for a new agent with a book that’s already been on sub. So I wrote another book. And I queried for another agent. Landed one in record time because *insert glitter of fairy dust here* she’d read one of my previous books, Breathe the Sky, and loved it. Her name was Eva Scalzo, and she supported me completely-both in putting my new romance out on sub ASAP, and in championing my thriller that had already had one go-around at being on sub.

The second thing that’s unique about this book’s journey is that it came from an R&R from a publisher. They wanted editorial changes. It was an editor I hugely admired because of her work on an excellent genre bender I’d read a couple of years back. Sure, I said! Whatcha thinking? They wanted…oh. For me to change the giant plot twist ending that I’d written the whole second draft of the book for. A younger Michelle would have dug in her heels and said, “No, my vision for this book is the best one.” But Current Michelle felt a little guilty about that, because as an editor, I’m constantly asking authors to be flexible about feedback. To consider what the heart of the book is and see that there’s many ways to tell the same story. So I said, “Okay, let’s see if I can write a version of this ending that I love.”

Friends, I wrote a new ending every day for five days. And when I hit the fifth, it was finally fun enough and wild enough to convince even me. So I sent it off and promptly forgot about it. Again, a younger Michelle would have lived in her inbox after an R&R on a book she loved that much. But Current Michelle had tired years ago of living her life in Publishing’s waiting room, and finally got the hang of living her actual full life now.

So when my new agent called, I didn’t even get that jolt like, “Oh my god!” Instead, I figured it was about the other new romance I sent her last week. “Hey, Eva,” I greeted. “How was your trip? The pictures looked amazing.”

When she told me I had a book deal, I literally told her she needed to hang up and call me back because I hadn't been ready. It didn’t start to feel real until I called my oldest CP (love you Katie!) and she screamed in my ear.

What did you learn from this experience that you’d like to share with other authors?

Look, getting this book written and sold took me 7 years and 14 complete revisions. It was on sub for a total of 38 months under 2 different agents and also the Book Pipeline Award people, who shopped it around to their contacts. It’ll be nearly a decade by the time anybody can actually read it. It won 3 awards while it was sitting on sub, which made me feel like I was frankly insane. Was it good, or was it bad? It was Schrodinger’s novel and the verdict was not yet in.

I think the advice in these situations is usually: never give up.

That is not my advice.

This novel drove me to a year-long bout of writer’s block, in which I threw out everything I wrote. It drove me to a book coach (thanks, Heather!) to a therapist, a hypnotherapist, an EMDR therapist, to running, to PT from running too much, to daily meditation…and today, the day it finally sold, I am supposed to feel like it was all worth it.

Friends and fellow authors, nothing is worth that much suffering.

What I learned from this book is that no matter how good you think the book is, you need to love yourself more than the book.

You need to live your life now, not once you get to whatever moment you’re holding your breath for (signing with an agent, signing with a publisher, release day, not until you hit any bestseller list, not until you hit THE bestseller list, etc etc onward into infinity).

You need to not be a writer.

Anybody have to read that line twice? Yup, I said it. You need to be a friend, a wife, a mountain biker, a basket weaver, a BTS stan. A question I get all the time is, “When is it okay to call myself a writer?” and it always makes my stomach curdle. For the love of puppies, I always want to say. Don’t. Never hang your whole identity on this one unpredictable thing.

Writing is beautiful and nourishing, but publishing that writing is not under your control. 99% of the time when people are thinking of whether they qualify as “a writer” or not, they’re thinking of a “published writer.” Which would be fine, if publishing were under your control. If you could go to school and get a job and follow a prescribed path like a lawyer or plumber or doctor can. Instead, publishing is more like a lottery. It’s a numbers game, not a meritocracy. Way more people are writing books than there are spaces on the shelves, so after you’ve achieved a certain level of publishable writing, it’s all a game of luck and how many chances (aka books or submissions) you have to throw into the pot. You’re more likely to win the lottery if you play 100 times than if you play once, right?

If I’d given up on this book after the first year on sub, it wouldn’t have gotten published. So there is something to the advice, “Never give up.” Not giving up gives you more chances at a win. But if you just try to sprint for that finish line and ruin your lungs and bloody your feet and tatter your heart in the race, chances are you’ll burn out before you get there. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, they say. Except it’s not a race at all.

This is your actual life.

The only wild and beautiful life you’re going to get. How do you want to spend it? Refreshing your inbox waiting for a stranger to tell you that you are good enough, to validate all the time you’ve sacrificed for your writing is worth it?

Or do you want to spend that time actually living? Writing something you love. Picking wildflowers for your kitchen table. Giggling with your kids or cuddling your cat until you forget that Microsoft Word is even a thing.

I promise you: if you make yourself a life worth living today, that’s the best way to last long enough in the publishing game to see another win.

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Michelle Hazen is the critically-acclaimed author of nine contemporary romances. Her books have won the Book Pipeline Award, Fiction 101 Award, Lonestar Award, Great Expectations Award, and Linda Howard Award of Excellence. She started out volunteering to mentor aspiring authors in PitchWars, and loved it so much that she opened Sanctuary Editorial. As a writing coach and freelance editor since 2016, she specializes in helping authors fall madly in lust with their own manuscripts.

If she’s not reading or writing, she’s probably hiking, rock climbing, staring longingly at a horse, or driving an indefensible number of miles to get to a Revivalists’ concert. She’s semi-nomadic with a home base in Idaho, but her muse lives in New Orleans.

You can find her at https://michellehazenbooks.com/

Or sign up for her newsletter for writers at: https://sanctuaryeditorial.substack.com/archive