Welcome to BookEnds, Michelle Hazen!

  • By: admin | Date: Apr 06 2018

I am overjoyed to welcome Michelle Hazen to BookEnds. Michelle is a first-place award-winning author of three contests, and a romance author who spins relationships in high-stakes stories with heroes and heroines that are sure to make you swoon! Michelle is a wonderful author to work with, who writes fantastic stories fast that always take me by surprise. – Naomi Davis

If you’re not reading or writing, what would we catch you doing? 

Editing, book coaching, kickboxing, yoga, riding horses, canyoneering, crocheting, rock climbing or trying to dig up tortoises in the Mohave Desert. I was last bored in 1999, but high school graduation appears to have cured that problem for good.

What’s your favorite quote about reading or writing?

This is from the lofty files of Some Girl I Saw on Twitter (aka Emily Henry):

“Your writing was never meant for those who hated it. It was always, only, meant for those who needed it.”

What book do you wish you had written, and why?

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Everything in writing is about balance, and Laini Taylor nails balance on every level. Beautiful sentences with fast pacing. Conflicts that rip your heart out. Characters that make your heart grow three sizes. Worlds more real than our own and layers of metaphor that are deeply wise without ever dragging into the naval gazing and slow. Any time someone tells me literary fiction is about language and commercial fiction is about entertainment, I say to them: Laini Taylor.

You can have your cake and eat it too, but dang you have to be a good writer first.

If money were no object, what would be your dream writing location?

If money and calories were no object, New Orleans. No contest. There’s something about that place that nourishes my creativity and gets my muse singing. I spent part of a winter on writing retreat there, and I’m headed back this year for another round in a new neighborhood!

What’s the last book you read?

Artemis by Andy Weir. Fun page-turning heist set on the moon.

The best book I’ve read this year was a dark horse by Margarita Montimore called Asleep From Day. It has literary-quality language, thriller-quality pacing, and a mystery that will drive you bonkers.

What advice would you give to other authors in the query trenches?

#PitchWars

Really, that’s it. Pitch Wars is the best place to find writing info you need, meet other writers at your same stage in the journey and writers in the next step up, the best place to get your writing mentored and improved AND the best place to get noticed by an agent. It is a no-lose situation.

What excites you most about joining the BookEnds family?

I’ve always admired BookEnds because the agency manages to be prestigious and well-established while also seeming warm and welcoming to new writers and up to date with the ever-changing publishing world. I think #BookEndsChat is the best example of this: how the agency reaches out to give tips to aspiring writers. I like how they agency emphasizes that they’re in it for the long haul of the author’s career, wherever that might go.

Where can readers find you on the web and social media?

You can usually find me on Twitter, posting writing tips and events, pictures of Norman Reedus’s biceps, or baby otters (or biceps AND otters, because the world needs more of that).

Website: https://michellehazenbooks.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/michellehazen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichelleHazenAuthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellehazenauthor/