Michelle Hazen (Book Coach) releases Playing the Pauses

Author Accelerator Success Stories

Jade @ Author Accelerator

Published in

No Blank Pages

3 min readMar 5, 2018

Michelle Hazen (Book Coach) sat down with us for an interview about her new release!

What inspired you to write this book?

First, Playing the Pauses is Danny & Kate’s story: a Dom rock star falling for a very confident woman that also happens to be his co-worker. Tagline: when an ultra-independent tour manager meets the one musician she can’t resist, their kinks fit together perfectly, but their lives don’t.

The funny thing about Danny is that he already existed.

He came fully formed, as a tattoo artist, a bassist and a Dom. I always knew exactly what he would do; the challenge was explaining it to other people because he doesn’t think like anyone else. Half the time, he doesn’t think at all. His brain is this silent, beautiful plane. It’s why I didn’t write his book from his perspective: it wouldn’t make any sense. I had to let Kate tell it for him. There’s a novella later in the series half-told from his perspective and it’s an utterly exotic experience. Remember that old movie Being John Malkovich? It’s like that. It’s tourism into the brain of a person so different from you and I that it’s hard to comprehend.

Danny’s real in a way none of my other characters quite are, and that would creep me out if it didn’t feel so…utterly natural.

Tell us one surprising thing about your book

You don’t often see a book where the man is the sexual dominant, but he’s getting help discovering his sexual identity from a sexually confident woman who is distinctly a submissive. It sounds like a contradiction of terms, but when you meet the characters, it makes complete sense.

What was one struggle you had in the writing of this book?

Honestly, this was one of those books that poured out of me so easily that it was harder not to write it. The only issue was explaining to people why Danny makes the decisions he does because he’s very much his own person and he doesn’t particularly care to explain himself or act like other people.

If possible, he gets even less predictable in the next book of the series.

What do you dream your ideal reader will say to her best friend about your book?

That this was a book that realistically tackled the thorny issues of long distance relationships in an age where both members of a couple have important careers that don’t necessarily land them in the same city.

What’s next for you in your writing life?

I wrote this whole series ahead of time, and I’ve got it rolling out all this year at binge-reading speed. I’m also playing with a Walking Dead fanfiction about a biologist and a construction worker, and looking to get into writing a YA Contemporary!

Where can readers find more information about you and your books?

You can purchase Playing the Pauses here: