Hazel Hayes: I Wrote the Story I Needed To Tell

Hazel Hayes is an Irish-born, London-based writer and director who for many years wrote primarily for the screen. Having graduated from Dublin City University with a degree in journalism, she went on to study creative writing at The Irish Writers’ Centre, before honing her craft as a screenwriter through numerous short films and sketches. Her eight-part horror, PrankMe, won Series of the Year at SITC, as well as the award for Excellence in Storytelling at Buffer Festival in Toronto. Out of Love was her first novel. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Hazel Hayes

In this interview, Hazel discusses how the world in shutdown led her to write her new literary novel, Better by Far, the surprises in the publishing process, and more!

Name: Hazel Hayes
Literary agent: Sabrina Taitz, WME
Book title: Better by Far
Publisher: Penguin Random House // Dutton
Release date: April 23, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: Out of Love
Elevator pitch: Better By Far is a genre-bending story about love and heartbreak, hope and loss, and those in between spaces, life’s little limbos where you’re no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I actually had a whole other book planned, and it involved a lot of traveling in order to do research. Then the world went into lockdown and that idea went out the window. So, I turned back to another idea that had been brewing for a long time but which I didn’t quite know what to do with. At the time I was furious; it seemed like such a huge inconvenience—but I’ve since realized that instead of writing the story I wanted to tell, I wrote the story I needed to tell. And what’s more, my life has changed in so many unexpected ways, and offered me such a wealth of new experiences, that I can now go back to that original idea with so much more to say!

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The seed of this idea came to me before my first novel, Out of Love, was even published. I’d been through a breakup where we had to keep sharing an apartment for a few months after we split up, and I thought this would be a great premise to explore the concept of liminality, which I’d become more and more interested in.

Liminal spaces, or “life’s little limbos” as I’ve come to call them, are like physical or figurative waiting rooms, where everything seems to stand still, but real growth and change are taking place. I wanted to look at what happens in the space between grief and healing following a heartbreak, but I got way more than I bargained for. Over several years my little seed grew into something completely unexpected; the person telling the story and the way they were telling it changed; the setting changed; the ending changed (several times); the genre warped and shifted throughout; and the central grief—the loss of a romantic relationship—took a back seat to the death of the narrator’s mother, which is the real healing she needs to do.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

My first book was published in the U.K. and then picked up by Dutton in the U.S. I wrote three extra chapters for that version, and we did what’s called a U.S. edit, where the language in the book is Americanized for U.S. audiences. This is standard in the industry; however, as an Irish author with a distinctly Irish voice, I have since wished I’d kept the language as it was. With Better by Far, there are elements of Irish culture, language, and mythology throughout, which made it even more important to me this time around to keep the language intact. Dutton were wonderful about this and even asked me to include an author’s note explaining the importance of the language in the book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

So many! The entire writing process was a surprise, in fact. There’s been a beautiful synchronicity and symbiosis between my life and this story, and I could honestly write a whole book on the ways that this book has shaped me, and vice versa. But in particular, I’d say that going on this journey with my narrator, Kate, and witnessing her reconnection to herself and to her roots, has given me a much deeper appreciation of Irish culture and ancient Celtic practices. I learned about Keening—the ancient pagan art of grieving through song—and about imbas—a sort of divine inspiration that before writing this book, I didn’t have a word for.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

In one word—healing.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

This may sound silly but … write. That’s it. Just write.

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