Making Time for Magic

Michelle Harris on writing her way to a second career as a novelist

Michelle Harris hasn’t slept a full 8 hours in over three years, but the reason why isn’t what you might expect. Sure, she works hard in her role as the department manager for UT Austin’s Department of Religious Studies, but it’s not her day-job keeping her up late. It’s her fiction writing, and all those late nights just paid off in a major way.

This spring Harris announced that she’s sold not one but three novels to big-name press Berkley, a Penguin Publishing Group imprint, with more already in the works. The story of how she made the book deal is as exciting as any fantasy title, involving last-minute tickets to an Adam Driver show off-Broadway and an almost supernatural level of serendipity, and the months since have been a whirlwind of edits and prep in advance of her first book launch. Her romance novel A Latte Like Love drops March 2026 and will be followed by The Book of Graves, the first entry in a new romantasy series.

Earlier this summer Harris and I met for coffee to discuss her double life as an academic staff member and soon-to-be published author, and we continued talking over email in the weeks after. Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation. You can find more information about Harris at her website here and pre-order A Latte Like Love here.

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Michelle, congrats on the book deal! Before we get into the details of your work, can you walk me through how this all came about, from you deciding to pursue writing seriously to having an editor sign on? I’ve heard it’s a wild story.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and dabbled in creative writing for most of my life, but not at novel length. When I was a kid I would write and draw little picture books. I wrote short stories in middle school, and in high school and college in the early 2000s I did Harry Potter online roleplaying, which is a kind of collective storytelling. That was my first dip into actual narrative work. And I thought I wanted to be a literature professor for a while, so I always was kind of flirting with the idea of writing.

Then in December 2020 I was working at a late-stage startup and was miserable. That caused me to sit down and be like, “What do I actually want to be doing?” And the answer was, “I want to be a writer.” I hadn’t written for the longest time because I was afraid of failure and didn't think I could actually follow through on a novel, but at that point I decided to just go for it.

So I started writing and I came back to UT, where I’d been a student and a staff member before, to work in the Department of Religious Studies. I specifically took that job because I thought it would allow me time to write.

The first year that I spent writing, I read 40 books and wrote about 30,000 words. Those 30,000 words were the first seven chapters of what will be my second published book. That first year was painful — it felt like I was just flailing around trying to figure out how to do this — but then January 2022 rolled around and I had a brainwave about a particular character that changed everything. I became obsessed with my own story and wrote the next 160,000 words in five months. That was when I stopped sleeping.

Fast forward now to meeting your editor…

I started querying agents in 2023 with what will be The Book of Graves, which didn’t go well — agents wouldn’t read it because it was too long, but I got frustrated trying to hammer it into shape, so I took a break to write the first version of A Latte Like Love. Then, while I was working on what I’m writing now, I took a trip up to New York to see Adam Driver in an off-Broadway play called Hold On to Me Darling. And the second night that I walked in, I ended up sitting next to the woman who’s now my editor.

We had met in line two nights prior, because if you're going to go all the way to New York to see an actor like Adam Driver on stage, you'll see him more than once, and my group and I had been making friends in line with people. So when Cindy was in the seat right next to mine, I recognized her and we started talking. I told her about how I was a writer on the side. Then she was like, “Well, I'm an editor.” I said, “Oh, for what imprint?” And she goes, “Berkley.” And then the lights went down, and I proceeded to have an existential crisis while Adam Driver was stripping on stage in front of me. (His character, Strings, gets a very plot-relevant massage early in the show.)

Cindy ended up going out with us after the show, and she gave me her contact info and asked me to send her my fiction. I sent her my Book of Graves, which at the time was 219,000 words, and the earlier version of Latte, a coffeeshop romance. She was interested in both, and it moved really fast from there. I flew back to New York two months later to meet with her, and she basically sat me down in a café and was like, “I want to offer you a three-book deal.” So we talked through that and then I bawled on the plane back home.

The whole story feels fake, like something out of a movie. I tell people this and they're like, “what?!” But that's what happened.

What’s been the most surprising part of the publishing process for you, aside from meeting your editor? Any advice for a writer navigating a similar point in their career, or something you wish you would have known before jumping in?

It’s a really small industry. It doesn’t seem like it would be to an outsider, but everyone seems to know or know about everyone else. So, the most valuable advice I can give is to go out and intentionally make connections with other writers. That was key for me even before I met my editor, if only for the sanity factor. Writing is such an individual and subjective art that it’s easy to let the doubts creep in and the imposter syndrome take hold. Make good, solid friends and connections and writing partners who are working on the same things you are. You’ll understand and help ground each other to beat those demons back, even when everything else is a whirlwind.

Early on I also started attending author events where I got to directly ask questions of the people who had reached the summit I was trying to climb, and their advice and help was invaluable for navigating the process of connecting with my agent in particular. I also reached out to a few authors on Instagram to ask them to chat, and they were incredibly helpful with preparing me to enter the industry.

One of my author besties, Gillian Eliza West, likes to say “colleagues not competition” when talking about the writing community, and she’s absolutely right. The truth is that everyone in publishing is navigating individual journeys together, and no reader just buys one book (they’re like potato chips). There’s room for everyone at the table, and we can always uplift others and make more space for more stories, and more diverse ones at that.

As to what I was most surprised about, it was actually how much input I had in the Latte cover design and how quickly it came together! This probably varies by publisher, but I wasn’t expecting to be consulted as much as I was, and it was an utter delight to get to work with the Berkley art department and my cover artist to conceptualize what A Latte Like Love would look like. I’m absolutely over the moon about the final look. It’s so pretty. A dream come true!

You say you write long and then edit your books down. How do you approach those two parts of your process? Is there one you enjoy more? How does a story change when you’re editing?

Honestly, this process has looked different for every work, and I suspect my process will continue to evolve as I have to do something different every time. For example, I’ve had to cut down the original draft of Latte significantly, which required streamlining transitions between cut scenes, condensing characters, and changing certain plot points. I had guidance from my editor on which parts would work best to cut and change, so I kept her suggestions in mind as I worked on the story, doing my best to keep the overall spirit of it intact but also wrestle it into something more conventionally book-shaped than what it was originally.

The Book of Graves is a completely different exercise: I’m cutting the book by splitting it in two, which means that I’ll actually have to add scenes and storylines. While I’ve cut a work before, I’ve never done something quite like this, so I’m still figuring out the process as I go. Right now, I’m starting with a complete reread of everything I’ve written for the series, which is a considerable amount — more than I’ll admit to publicly (let’s just say it’s more words than the entire Lord of the Rings saga).

Transparently, I don’t love editing and revising — it’s not my favorite. I love drafting a lot more. For me, the most fun is doing the initial draft, while I’m staring at a blank document and a blinking cursor at 2 am, wondering where my characters are going to take me next. I might have an idea, but I also might not quite know until whatever happens in the moment, and that’s the part I love. It’s when I get to sit down and watch the movie in my brain for the first time, and that’s where I tend to find the most magic. That’s where the alchemy happens. It’s play.

Revision is work. It often requires more deliberation and problem-solving rather than raw intuition, so I find that the exciting AHA! moments tend to be less hard-hitting. It’s not as much of a dopamine rush for me as that initial discovery.

The two books / series you’ve sold so far sound very different at first glance. How do you think about the projects in relationship to one another and to the rest of your work? What, if anything, connects them?

This question came up when I met my agent, and part of it is what kind of author I decided to be. I’ve always known I wanted to be a multi-genre author; I want to play in every sandbox I find interesting, especially because different genres have their own sets of conventions and rules to either flout or flaunt. I find it fun to try to write something different every time, so I’m very excited that I was contracted both for a standalone contemporary romance and a romantasy series straight out of the gate.

The two sets of stories aren’t at all connected, except probably through the romance — it’s something I need and want in stories that I read, and that tension and yearning in relationships is something I deeply love writing. And you know that at the very end I’m going to promise you a happily ever after, even if I might make you doubt it along the way from time to time!

Thinking of connections between books or projects — are there recurring themes or messages you find yourself coming back to in your writing? If so, what draws you to them?

I do see certain themes popping up that I seem to be fascinated with. One of them is dreams and the intersection of the subconscious and the conscious, as well as the spaces between. I have a fascination with liminal spaces in particular, one of which plays a prominent role in The Book of Graves series. There’s another liminal space that is a key set piece in my work-in-progress, and it will only continue to get darker and weirder as I go.

I’m also often grappling with questions of fate versus free will, of determinism and the concept of god or gods or the lack thereof, of abuses of power in all forms, especially economic, governmental, and religious. There’s a lot of rumination on traditional gender roles and expectations — in both historical-ish settings as well as modern / contemporary — and I like to explore what it looks like if those things are flipped on their heads in those contexts.

I also tend to write a university or, at the very least, a library into every work. I love books and I love academia, so both tend to play prominent roles in one way or another in whatever I’m writing.

The world of A Book of Graves sounds fascinating but also very complex, blending history, magic, fantasy, and religion. What initially inspired that project, and how has it changed over time? Has it surprised you in any way?

I’ve always had a fascination with witches, in both historical and fictional contexts. It’s a bit morbid, but when I was a kid, I loved Hocus Pocus and used to build gallows out of my Tinker Toy sets so that I could have townspeople try to hang my witch Barbies, only for them to escape with magic and then wreak havoc and vengeance upon them. I’m not saying that’s what happens in The Book of Graves (I’m not not saying that either), but it’s safe to assume that the initial kernel of story came from that background.

I also love history and fantasy settings, so when I decided to sit down and tell a story about two witch sisters hiding in plain sight, I blended all of my favorite elements together across British historical eras and mashed them up with the sort of elemental/nature-based magical system I’ve always wanted to read — the kind of intuitive, visceral magic my Barbies might have wielded once upon a time. It's set in a world that flips a few historical events of ours on their heads (for example, what if the ancient Scottish tribes had built Hadrian’s Wall instead of the Romans, and why? What might they have been trying to keep out, and what might an ancient religion steeped in the magic of the British Isles have looked like?) but still grapples with issues that face us in the here and the now, as most fantasy stories do.

What are you reading now? Assuming, of course, that you have time to read amongst all these edits!

I just came off of an intentional writing break to read, and I read five books in May before I picked up re-reading my initial drafts of Graves. Four of them were contemporary romances, since I’m trying to catch up on what’s been going on in my genre:

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

And then my Libby hold for Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins came in, so you know I had to drop everything to be emotionally devastated by her once again. It’s tradition.

Up next on the TBR are two more contemporary romances, First Time Caller by B.K. Borison and Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood, as well as The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon and The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig.

I also have a whole host of ARCs on my iPad that I’d love to get to, so we’ll see how many I can devour during writing breaks! I’m hoping I can at least read Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz and Hopelessly Teavoted by Audrey Goldberg Ruoff before they come out this fall.

You were training to be an academic and completed a very intense-sounding MA in French at the University of Virginia before deciding the professor life wasn’t for you. Does your academic training influence how you approach your creative writing? Or do they seem like separate parts of your identity and work?

In the most obvious sense, my academic training taught me how to write and revise. I had the epiphany the other day as I was working on developmental edits for Latte and revisions for Graves that I approach the process exactly the same way as I did when I was in graduate school. Drafting is drafting. Revising is revising. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a critical analysis of sense, sensation, and sensuality in Scève’s Délie or revising for character development and story beats in a tale about the healing journey of an artist who falls in love with a barista — I’m approaching all of it in the same way. I still get everything out at the beginning, hand edit for large adjustments on paper (or the equivalent) during the second round, and then consider refinements at the end. The structure is the same.

I also did an undergraduate French honors thesis while I was a student here at UT titled L’onirique dans les œuvres de Jacques Cazotte: le rêve littéral et le rêve métaphorique, which translates to, “The oneiric in the works of Jacques Cazotte: the literal dream and the metaphorical dream.” That honors thesis, in which I looked at liminal spaces and dreamscapes and how they relate to notions of morality, sexuality, and gender expression in an 18^th century French occultist’s works, serves at the base for my mysterious work-in-progress, and I can’t wait to unveil it in its entirety one day. It’s going to be a weird genre-bender, much like its inspiration.

Aside from literary demons, I’m a big believer in what V.E. Schwab calls “feeding the story demon.” I don’t really like didactic craft books, and I don’t read them, so when people ask me for writing references, I’m usually at a loss for recommendations. But what I did do was study literary theory and criticism in undergraduate and graduate school while I was pursuing my degrees in French literature. Part of that process not only entails an insane level of the raw textual consumption of hundreds of works (feeding the story demon—filling the creative well) but also reading and writing criticism. I had to learn how to pick apart a story down to its bones and analyze the fragments under a microscope. So much of it is pattern recognition, and it’s a much more forensic process than you’d think at first glance.

This is why studying the humanities is so important: you learn how to research, how to analyze and think critically, and how to problem-solve within a specific literary or historical context, while also discovering your voice and learning how to effectively communicate your ideas in writing. It fundamentally changes the way you think.

Every bit of that has been so vital to how I approach creative writing. Yes, I do heavily research whatever I’m writing. But in some ways, feeding the story demon is learning how to tell a story by osmosis. Every text is in conversation with what has come before it, as well as the world and context in which it was created. I wouldn’t know how to separate my academic training from my creative writing even if I wanted to — and I don’t. It’s a part of me and a part of how I write and approach the process of writing.

To shift back to your day job here at UT: Has your role in the Department of Religious Studies influenced your writing in any way? If so, how?

I’ve been in six different roles over the course of almost 12 years at UT and I’ve done so many things here that it would be weirder if my experience hadn’t influenced my writing. All writing counts as practice, fiction or not, because it helps you find your voice, and I’ve had to do quite a few different styles of writing in my jobs at UT. I’ve had to write marketing copy, social media copy, nonfiction narratives. I’ve ghostwritten for deans and department chairs, and I’ve also written some longform reports with high stakes. Even though this isn’t what we classically think of as creative writing, it’s always storytelling of one kind or another, and that has helped hone my skills as a fiction writer.

You’ll also see my more direct university experience in my stories themselves. We’ll visit a fictional college at Oxford in The Book of Graves, and in A Latte Like Love, my female main character works as a barista while she finishes her last year at NYU. My work-in-progress features an important supporting character who’s a professor in the humanities, and I fully plan on writing at least one academic-centered contemporary romance (if not several) in the future. I would also like to make my way into the dark academia genre eventually.

I wouldn’t have considered becoming a professor if I didn’t love academia, so it’s integral to who I am as an artist at this point. And in terms of Religious Studies — well, you’ll just have to wait and see.