Meet Stacey E. Haught

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stacey E. Haught a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stacey E., appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
I’ve lived what I feel like is a long life, though, in comparison to others, it doesn’t seem like I’ve lived that long at all. They say to write from your own experiences. Write what you know and all that. But for me. I’ve lived that. I don’t want to relive it. My story is the most boring of them all. But what I find the most inspiring, and where you can say I draw my creativity from. Are those around me. The constant, and never-ending well of creative flow are the people I meet, the ones whose stories I learn. The stories my children tell me. The moment where I let my mind wander and the story just builds itself, where I can ask myself “What if I wrote a story with a character like them? What would it look like?” Then that’s when the magic happens.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Stacey E. Haught, but some readers will know me by my penname Anastasia O’Hare. I started writing three years ago during lockdown when my brain needed an outlet to what was happening in our world. I felt not only isolated in my environment but mentally and emotionally isolated as well. My husband gifted me a computer, and I wrote my first full-length novel in just under a month. A few months later I sold the novel, and a year later my debut novel “Good Hope” a story about a serial killer who thought he was an ancient werewolf but turned out to be a cult leader, was published, and I caught the bug of telling stories with a twist. That following March I was introduced to the eGlobal team through a written submission and signed on to publish my first serial romance fiction novel, under their bootcamp projects. Thirty days to write a full-length episodic romance novel. A challenge I had never been faced with before. But I tackled it and “Blind Date With an Underboss” was published and as of this article has amassed over seventy-six-thousand reads in just under a year, and is the first of three in a series of Blind Date romances that can be read at just any serial fiction platforms.
My most recent serial romance fiction novel “Fates Spare” was just released in February, a story of love, loss, and fated mates. Writing has opened doors for me to be able to explore new worlds, hold conversations, and occupy spaces I would have never have been able to have dreamed of.
But it’s just starting. Literally. With the outline of my next book taking shape this month, my readers both current and future can expect to see loads of Contemporary Romance Fiction coming from my desk.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
In my attempt at trying to navigate all of these opportunities in the beginning, I had a hard time trusting myself. Therefore, I would trust those who I deemed were either more successful, or more experienced than me. These people didn’t really need to have a huge laundry list of experience for me to deem them as trustworthy or more experienced in these fields. But because I didn’t trust myself, or my own talent, I would let them, for lack of a better word, guide me and navigate me in my own journey. Even assigning me to their own projects that utilized my talent but propelled them further into the stratosphere of the spotlight of recognition. I allowed myself to be used selfishly by these kinds of individuals, all because of not trusting myself. It was because of this that I learned three valuable lessons.
1) You are your biggest advocate in every avenue in life, especially your career. Your talent, your work. It deserves the respect you deserve, so advocate for it.
2) Don’t let someone use your talents unless there are boundaries set. Before someone collaborates with you or asks you to participate in a project. Set clear defined parameters that are not “Mutual benefiting gain. ” Know exactly what each party will be getting from your partnership.
3) Anyone who wants to use your talent, but not give you the credit is not worthy of your work. Period. Walk away.

And one last final thing for those authors, writers, editors, and anyone working freelance in the literary world, be it in the editorial world, or in print. Projects will sound enticing at the first pitch, they will sound like the best thing ever. But before you assign yourself to something, know who you will be working with, what is going to be expected of you, and your compensation ahead of it. It’s a great way of vetting individuals who actually have what it takes to see a project through from beginning to end with stability when you start asking questions, especially about compensation. Those who are familiar with the industry won’t bat an eyelash. You’re in control. Remember that.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Take a step back. Turn off the computer. Power off the phone, and do something completely different from I was doing before. My brain operates in a constant state of being “Overwhelmed” It’s building a story. it’s constructing the plot, it’s thinking if I just left out that big plot hole. My dreams are even consumed by the story I’m either writing or the one I “need” to write. But there are those days that I get in front of that computer and my brain draws a big blank. If I force it I will write literal crap. I find that if I don’t force it. Walk away from it and come back to it when I can “see the story” again. I end up being ten times more productive than if I sat there and panicked over it.

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