We recently connected with Stacey E Haught and have shared our conversation below.
Stacey E , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
I think it’s very easy to fall into typecasting or a niche in any industry as a creative. When you’re someone who sits down and literally gives birth to whole worlds with your words. The stroke of your brush? When others’ opinions and interpretations determine your entire success, they can definitely misunderstand you.
My publishing experience was with a boutique publisher. At the time of my publishing, it was in the height of the pandemic. When everyone was getting publishing deals. The publishing houses were booming, and writers were literally coming out of holes in the woodwork. Every TikTok cosplayer had a story to tell, and it seemed like they were getting publishing deals for just the amount of Instagram followers they were getting. Not the stories they had to tell, and for writers like myself who were burning themselves out querying agents without huge social media followings, the rejection letters were coming in quicker than I could catch up with.
I had, of course, gotten offers from boutique publishing firms, and I did do my research. I wasn’t ignorant. But I was desperate. Desperate to tell my stories. To write and feel successful. I didn’t want to self-publish. Not that I had anything against self-publishing. I just didn’t have the skill set at the time. So I took a deal with a London-based firm. But I didn’t know my role as an author.
Looking back, I can admit that I had relied too much on them. Too much on their editor and treated it as a traditional publishing contract, so that they wanted my success as much as I did. But I had accomplished something that others still dreamed of. I had published. Internationally, at that. My novel had been translated into ten different languages. It was kept in the royal libraries both in London and Dublin. So tell me why three years later, I was sitting in a cafeteria being misunderstood and defending my novel to a reader who caught a mistake. A simple editor’s error that mischaracterized me completely as an author. That entire experience. Me accidentally mixing up the names Fred and Frank in one scene in a chapter, causing a chain reaction. A reader. Making fun of me. Which caused me to stop promoting my book entirely.
Subsequently, resulting in my novel being removed from the catalog of the publisher entirely… So now, when my novel “Good Hope” is reaching some semblance of popularity again… I don’t feel excited. Because I’m still sitting on that hard plastic chair, frozen in embarrassment because my entire career as an author was called into question by one person’s snide remarks.
So the question remains. What insights have I learned from the experience of my work being misunderstood or mischaracterized? Mistakes are human. I am human. And storytelling is a human experience, and if you, as a reader, want a flawless experience, then you don’t want a human writing your stories…
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Stacey E. Haught. Most of you don’t know me. And that’s totally fine. So, let me tell you about myself! I grew up in unconventional circumstances. Circumstances that shaped me into the person I am today. However messy that might be.
When I was four years old, my parents sold the only home I ever knew and quite literally ran away to join the circus. No, that’s not a pun or a metaphor. My dad had aspirations of grandeur, and I was along for the ride. I was raised in a small, tiny travel trailer, and that’s the entire life I knew for a really long time. My entire existence was performing and traveling. I didn’t know how to stay still. Fight or flight raised me in the middle of the center ring, and at the time, I was okay with it all. My dad changed careers when I was twelve and moved into a more traveling, performing-arts career. Which was clandestine. I met my passion. Storytelling.
I got off the road when I was nineteen and was on my own for the very first time. I’m sure, as you can imagine, a very sheltered girl being in the world for the first time, this was a very big deal, and my friend. It wasn’t as interesting as you think it was. I didn’t rebel; I went to work. I worked five jobs just to keep my head above water. One of them being an acting instructor at Florida’s oldest volunteer theatre. I
The most rebellious thing I had ever done was taking classes at the theatre, and that’s how I got the job. I could only take certain classes. An “On-Camera Acting Class” wasn’t one of them. I had impressed my acting instructor so much that when she booked a job and returned to LA, she put my name down as her replacement. One class turned into three, and before I knew it, I had a whole roster of classes. I blinked and was planning my first directorial debut. I had become the youngest female director to ever direct on stage. I may not have been doing what I wanted to do. What I had set out to do. To be on the other side of the camera. But my students were booking feature films. Commercials. Any actor I had prepped to meet with an agent was getting signed.
Life bloomed and blossomed, and I met my husband while I was assistant directing and stage managing my first main stage show. It was magical and perfect timing. I was ready for a change in my life. I had felt on this cusp in my life. I was ready to either grow in my career or grow in my personal life, and I got married. His career took precedence, and I retired from my career, and suddenly, I felt lost. My world of creating was gone. I had no purpose other than housework and his life, and then I had kids, and before I knew it, life took me back to the theatre. I went back to teaching, and it was exactly what I needed, and then life hit again.
My husband suffered a life-changing injury, losing his job within a week of his injury. Resulting in us having to move three hours north. Just at the same time, I was offered a promotion at the theatre. One I had been waiting for for years. So I left again. For the final time. This time, I didn’t just put away my hopes and dreams, tucking them into a drawer to be explored later. No, I burned them. Knowing that part of me. The dreamer. The actor. The girl who glowed at the idea of performing was dead. And I followed my husband to one of the worst seasons of my life.
I don’t think anyone prepares you for the emptiness of the waiting room. The hollow halls and the empty hollow feeling of having nothing. Sure, I had been here before, but before I had hope that I would return again. There was a glowing exit sign in that waiting room. This time, there was no green glowing sign marking the way out. It didn’t help that the people who surrounded me during this time in my life were the absolute worst.
(I had never been so verbally and emotionally abused by acquaintances in any other season of my life than this time. I had also never given my husband an ultimatum before. It was either his job or our marriage.)
I started writing columns for Voyage MIA during this, and in that, it unlocked a door in that waiting room. Then the pandemic put everyone in the waiting room with me, and I didn’t feel so alone, and I started writing more than just columns for digital magazines.
I wrote my first novel in under a month and published it in under a year. Signing with a serial romance publishing firm 8 months later and writing under my pen name, Anastasia O’Hare, almost immediately after. At the same time, I was the Editor in Chief for an equity-based online Magazine and lending my professional voice weekly as a columnist to an entertainment magazine in LA. I was writing constantly. In 6 months, I had written 6 novels under my pen name and published my second full-length novel under my name. And then we moved again.
It’s funny when you finally find the thing that moves you out of one mental prison, your mind almost finds a way of putting you in another. Remember, I told you. I was raised by fight or flight. They’re fickle and cruel parents. If you don’t pay them mind, they will beat you down.
Because of how I was raised, with no regular access to healthcare. As an adult, I suffer from senseless illnesses and a weakened immune system. In November of 2025, I fell ill with “community-acquired pneumonia” and was hospitalized twice. My body is still fighting an illness that for all intents and purposes, has healed itself from. Three months later, I am weakened, fighting to recover and not the same, and standing at a funeral pyre of my writing with a match in hand, questioning. Will I have to say goodbye to this dream, too?
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A lesson I had to unlearn? Nothing is transactional. Just because it’s done to you doesn’t mean you have to do it too. I know that sounds weird, so let me explain.
I was raised that everything was transactional. Love especially. That what you give you receive. That your success is based purely based on how you are not on connection. Or timing. Can you imagine the kind of shame and guilt someone carries with them their entire life, thinking they’re to blame because they’re not successful because of their not giving enough? Because they’re not sewing into their life enough to get enough? Or thinking everyone around them is just loving them to be loved in return? Now imagine how freeing it is when you unlearn that. When you realize that you’re not successful because of timing.
That your book isn’t performing well because you just haven’t found your audience yet. Not because you’re a bad writer. But because the timing isn’t right. Has nothing to do with your worth. Or owing anyone anything to gain anything in return.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I think I’m in the middle of that resilience story now. After I got sick and the medical bills started pouring in, and I realized that insurance wasn’t going to pay for 90% of the medication I needed, I started digging deep. Writing doesn’t pay the bills so I needed something that did. I love clothes, and am always told I have good taste. So, I started thrifting and reselling. I don’t have much energy, and doing overly active things for long periods of time exhausts me. But. Listing items? Now that I can do. I knew I was doing something worth my time when I earned a stupid little digital reward from one of the apps for selling 30 items in 30 days… Every item I sell mends a little piece of my soul back together. Reminding me that I’m not worthless during this time of my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://authorstaceyehaught.weebly.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stacey.e.haught/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/author.stacey.e.haught
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@staceyehaughtauthor
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Hope-Stacey-Haught/dp/1800741383/ref=sr_1_1?crid=364F388FZIVYQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xaUnIyWw0taY2zMTEyaiow.aoG8LahK-2Zu9D3ZITNzEQFx1m_8Yf6nUgzbtB93bKs&dib_tag=se&keywords=good+hope+stacey+e+haught&qid=1773862192&sprefix=good+hope+stacey+e+haught%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-1
