What is the title of your latest release?
A LATTE LIKE LOVE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Love is brewing as a barista falls for a reclusive artist struggling with the tragic aftermath of an accident in this charming, epic romance.
Or: what if the two sweetest people on the planet, who had both been through therapy, met and actually worked with one another on moving through grief and overcoming their greatest emotional challenges?
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
You know, I didn’t really think much about it – I knew it was in Brooklyn during the fall, but I couldn’t honestly tell you why, other than I was absolutely correct to set it there. There’s just something about fall foliage paired with brownstones and cute cafés that makes it really cozy. We don’t get those kinds of seasons in Texas, and it wouldn’t have made for the same story. New York City is always kind of a character of its own rather than a setting.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. I would be friends with both Audrey and Theo. They’re so nice! Audrey and I would spend hours talking about environmental issues while eating Cheetos and Theo is my favorite kind of film nerd. There’s a lot of myself in both of them.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Audrey is self-assured, independent, and sweet. Theo is introverted, creative, and anxious.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Answer: I learned a LOT about Theo’s artistic medium, which I’m not disclosing here because it’s a massive spoiler. But it is VERY cool, and I’m a big fan now – I want some for my office! I have every intention of reaching out to a local artist who works in that medium and asking for lessons/a demo so I can have a piece for my wall after I turn in my next book.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I self-edit as I go. I tend to write in loops: every scene gets a minimum of three passes, and I always re-read and tweak the previous section at the beginning of a new writing session before I start on the next. I find that it’s a great warmup to get back into drafting mode without jumping straight into cold water, and it makes the text cleaner, even if it might take a little more time.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Vietnamese cha gio (fried egg rolls) with fish sauce, green leaf lettuce, and fresh mint. I’m constantly on the lookout for the most perfect ones in an attempt to rediscover my favorite childhood lost restaurant menu item (RIP Saigon Elite). It’s an ongoing search to find ones as good as those were. A lifelong quest.
Describe your writing space/office!
I only just recently got an actual office and it’s been a game changer! I wrote the entirety of Latte in a second-floor landing nook facing a wall with my back to the stairs. Now I have a dedicated writing room with a 34” curved monitor (the perfect size for having two full-sized documents displayed side-by-side), full desk setup, and wall of bookshelves (which I also didn’t used to have!). There are bright neon LED lights everywhere, and I have three keyboards, two of which light up and make the good clicky-clacky sounds.
Who is an author you admire?
There are so many, but the ones that really come to mind first are the ones I found formative: the ones I read as a kid or a teenager. Gail Carson Levine, Tamora Piece, and Philip Pullman made me who I am.
I read ELLA ENCHANTED so many times that my copy fell apart, and my Alanna the Lioness books weren’t in much better shape. I have long listed HIS DARK MATERIALS as having had a deep impact both on me as a person and as a writer; THE AMBER SPYGLASS came out when I was thirteen, and it absolutely destroyed me while it formed me into something new. I think about it a lot, and I think it’s really influenced my own writing and conception of fantasy at a cellular level.
People don’t talk about Pullman’s Sally Lockhart series often enough, either. THE SHADOW IN THE NORTH is the first book that I remember sobbing over at 2am.
Those stories have stayed with me my whole life.
Is there a book that changed your life?
I could answer this question so many ways. I could say that it was any that I mentioned in the last question. I could say it was reading PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in high school that really cemented for me that I wanted to study literature instead of chemistry. I could say that it was Villette that got me started thinking about taking French in college instead of Spanish, which was how I ended up switching majors from English lit to French lit. I could say that it was Le Diable amoureux, which was the book I wrote my honors thesis on, which was the thesis that got me into grad school, which made me decide not to become a professor, which is why I’m now writing the fun stuff: fantasy and romance. It’s the book that inspired what might be my favorite secret manuscripts so far.
But it’s not any of those.
It’s THE KISS QUOTIENT by Helen Hoang.
Getting my masters in French literature really did a number on my brain. My MA exam for my program at the time was more difficult than most PhD qualifying exams in the humanities, and once I left Virginia in tears and moved back home to Texas, feeling defeated and like a failure when my dreams didn’t work out, I didn’t really pick up another book for seven years.
After two decades of inhaling everything I could get my hands on, I stopped reading entirely.
At least, until the pandemic, when I was home alone all the time and depressed, and my friend Caroline recommended a book to me. She pitched it as, “reverse Pretty Woman, I think you’ll have a really good time with it, I loved it,” and when I read it, I cried – because I felt so seen.
I saw a lot of myself in Stella that I hadn’t really read in a female protagonist before, and it meant a lot to me. And it opened the floodgates to contemporary romance and me reading again. Those floodgates were open for about a year before I sat down at the keyboard myself and wrote the first draft of my first book – THE BOOK OF GRAVES, which is now currently slated for a Spring 2027 publication through Berkley.
THE KISS QUOTIENT also happens to be one of my editor’s books, and she doesn’t know this tidbit about me yet, that it was the book that got me reading again – I hope she finds out when she reads this interview. Truly wild that she ended up finding me, liking my writing, signing me, and now I get to write for the imprint and work with the editor that set me on the path to reading and writing again in the first place.
And this isn’t even the craziest part of our story.
Not by a longshot.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
Speaking of my editor –
This is a good question, because I do have one of the wildest publishing stories I’ve ever come across.
I did everything backwards.
In September 2024, I was unagented and not actively querying work when I met my editor, even though I essentially had a pile of manuscripts sitting in a digital drawer. I had flown up to New York with a group of friends to see Adam Driver in an off-Broadway show called Hold On to Me Darling. We weren’t able to get all of our seats together that night; one ticket was solo and a little further back from the other three. I volunteered to take the solo seat because I had seen the show two days prior and didn’t mind sitting alone, and instead, I ended up sitting next to a woman named Cindy, who I recognized from earlier that week when we’d been standing in line and talking to people before the first showing we attended.
We got to talking, and eventually I mentioned that I was a writer, because it’s not something I ever shut up about. She started asking me questions about my work and my process, and I was having a great time just chatting with a random nice stranger until she smiled at me and said, “Oh, full disclosure: I’m an editor.”
That’s when it felt like all the blood drained out of my body.
Somehow, I still managed to ask, “Oh really? What imprint?” without my voice cracking too much. Her smile widened, and she responded, “Berkley.” The lights in the theatre went down, Adam Driver (beautiful man) came out on stage and started stripping down to his underwear (very plot-relevant, I swear), and I proceeded to have the most intense three-hour long internal existential crisis of my life because I had forgotten I was in New York and it never occurred to me that sitting next to an editor from a major romance imprint might be even a remote possibility.
It turned out that “Cindy” was Cindy Hwang, Vice President and Editorial Director of Berkley (and also Helen Hoang’s editor). She asked to see my work, I sent it to her, I flew back up to New York a few months later, and she took me out for coffee and told me she wanted to give me a three-book deal. I tried not to cry into my yogurt bowl and chai latte while I frantically scribbled down rapid-fire editorial notes for my debut romance (A Latte Like Love), and then I took a call with an agent back home a few days later who had been waiting in the wings for me to have that meeting – and who immediately offered me representation (thank you, Jess, love you).
Kismet, on so many levels.
Fate, undeniable and unavoidable.
What an absolute dream.
Pinch me.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Adult contemporary romance and fantasy, though I’ll read almost any type of fiction. I’ve been wanting to read classic historical romance lately as well, and I want to research more dark academia (an aspirational genre for me to write in, since I work in actual academia).
What’s your favorite movie?
That’s a four-way tie between Pride and Prejudice (2005), The Last Jedi, Paterson, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
What is your favorite season?
Summer. I’m a lizard. Give me heat and sunshine and a pool/beach and I’m a happy camper (even if my ultra-fair skin is not).
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Ideally, by boarding a plane without telling anyone where I’m going and spending it somewhere beachy and remote with a stack of books, spa appointments already made, and room service at the ready. That’s theoretically, though: I’ve never actually gotten to do that. Usually, it’s just going out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants with a small group of close friends (love you, Odd Duck).
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’ll admit to being obsessed with both Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man. I watch a lot of movies in the theatre, and those were easily two of 2025’s best along with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, in my opinion. I recently got to see Jim Jarmusch’s Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, and I really enjoyed it for something slower, more contemplative, and more French than your usual fare.
I unfortunately stopped watching TV about 5 years ago. I miss it, but I don’t have enough hours in the day to do all the things, and I traded TV watching for writing time.
I do, however, always watch the new seasons of Bridgerton, and I was excited to get to watch Heated Rivalry, even though I had to wait until after my last manuscript deadline. It was my post-deadline treat (and oh what a treat it was!).
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Most types of Asian food. I literally never say no to sushi, I love pho and banh mi, and when I don’t want to cook, it’s usually Chinese food that’s my go-to. French might be tied for first place, though – I’ve lived in France twice, and I majored in the language in part just so I could go eat over there. I feel like really good, authentic French food is much harder to find in Central Texas than Asian food, however. (Don’t worry, Tex-Mex and tacos, you’re up there too.)
What do you do when you have free time?
What’s free time? (I’m only partially kidding, though I don’t have much right now. I still have a full-time job, and then I also write full time.) Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of sensory deprivation tank floats and far infrared sauna sessions, which sounds weird and bougie, I’ll admit. But I put myself in a float tank for writing research once and ended up finding it so restorative that I try to go regularly just to help my brain rest and percolate while I’m drafting.
I used to play video games and competitive co-ed volleyball and take handstand classes and do historical sewing and wrote fanfic and did all sorts of other interesting hobbies – but then I ended up turning one of those things into a second full-time job, so the others kind of had to fall by the wayside. I’ll pick them back up someday.
I still manage to write a little fanfic in between everything else, though.
What can readers expect from you next?
My next book is my romantasy debut, THE BOOK OF GRAVES, currently slated for a Spring 2027 publication, pending all the things editing encompasses. It’s the first in a new series about two witch sisters struggling to survive in a gritty historical-ish (heavy on the ish) alternate version of London when the oldest sister gets forcibly conscripted as a spy into one side of a brewing holy war. It’s got a three-tiered magic system, old gods, enchanted ballgowns, marginalized communities fighting against a religiofascist regime, sexy assassins, snarky viscounts, secret identities, court intrigue, swordfights, sibling dynamics, sentient grimoires – all the fun things, hopefully!
I can’t wait until people can read it!
A LATTE LIKE LOVE by Michelle C. Harris
Narrator: Beth Hicks, Jay Myers
Love is brewing as a barista falls for a reclusive artist struggling with the tragic aftermath of an accident in this charming, epic romance.
Audrey Adams knows the exact routine for all her regular customers. That’s what happens when you work at the same Brooklyn coffee shop for years. So it’s completely normal that she notices Theo Sullivan, a shy new patron who comes in at exactly 8:17 a.m., right? And that this incredibly tall (and cute) man never drinks his coffee, always leaves a generous tip, only stays long enough to scribble in a notebook, and wears the same KN95 mask. Call it barista instincts or a reasonable reaction to Theo’s undeniable sweetness, but Audrey is crushing hard.
Eagerly anticipating Theo’s visits, Audrey relishes the precious few minutes they chat every time he orders his large, extra-hot Americano. When an incident reveals the horrific facial scar he’s hiding beneath his mask, Theo flees the café in shame, dropping his sketchbook and leaving a part of his broken heart behind.
Audrey decides to find Theo, return his book, and confess her feelings. Before long, they’re inseparable, talking nonstop and meeting up for dates at the coffee shop.
But Theo is reluctant to fully let Audrey into his heart. He continues to hide his scar and refuses to talk about his past. Their feelings are bubbling under the surface, but will Theo—and the truth behind his accident—keep him from finding the love they’ve both been longing for?
Romance Contemporary [ Berkley, On Sale: March 17, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9798217188673 / eISBN: 9798217188680 ]
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About Michelle C. Harris
Michelle C. Harris grew up deep in the heart of the Central Texas Hill Country, devouring as many books as she did tacos. By day, she wrangles academics at a university, and by night, she pens stories about love, magic, and men who yearn under the intense supervision of her Shiba Inu, Pippa. In her spare time, you can find her playing volleyball, buying more tea than she could ever possibly drink, and writing fan fiction about star-crossed space wizards on AO3.
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