A story to tell

If you aren't using Chameleon or Technical Writer, then this isn't really "derived from" the Novelist, since the interaction between those cards was the entire purpose of that deck.

Some of your other design decisions similarly stop making sense when you remove that. Scheherazade was in The Novelist because you could repeatedly install Chameleons on it--but this deck has very little repeated installs, meaning the MU would probably be spent better elsewhere. And Aesop's Pawnshop isn't nearly as strong if you take out Harbinger--other than Cache, what do you have that's worth selling?

There's nothing wrong with Stealth Hayley, it's a tried-and-true deck design. But it's a very different idea than The Novelist and you should make sure you understand the difference.

Uh...I do understand the difference, but I like to give credit to people when I derive inspiration from someone's ideas...I apologise if this wasn't the right thing to do. Sure I'm not taking all of the ideas, but uh...sue me?

And there's plenty of things to sell. Three Caches is always a good start, SMCs once a rig is complete, Ghost Runners with one cred left, loads. Not perfect efficiency, and I'm pretty sure I straight up said that it would be better with Tech Writer and Harbinger in the description.

And Scheherazade doesn't cost MU...so I don't know what you're talking about there.

Sorry if that came across a bit harsh. My point is that The Novelist is trying to pull off a very specific combo: Chameleon+Sahasrara+Scheherazade+Technical Writer, and the entire deck is built to support that concept.

Your deck wants to do something different, namely, build up stealth credits and build towards an inevitable late game. And that's fine! But if someone looking over this site wanted to see other decks using the Novelist's combo, and found your deck, they would understandably be a little bit confused.

Scheherazade doesn't cost MU, correct, but it does cost influence and deck slots. So the question is not "is Scheherazade good in general" (answer: yes) but rather "is this the best card for my deck (answer: probably not).

Consider this: Scheherazade is the only 0-cost program in your deck apart from SMC. If you have your entire rig hosted on it, a single Power Shutdown will make you lose the game.

I also think memory is going to be an issue for this deck. If you want to have both Cloak, Refractor, Corroder, and Switchblade, that uses up all the MU in your deck, meaning you don't have any space left to recycle Caches for money.

To respond to your points:

• Sure I don't disagree it could be confusing - but with all due respect, my goal in tagging as 'derived from' (remembering the other side is 'inspiration from') is a credit thing. I don't think I'm claiming to use any specific combo, just that I derived inspiration from a certain deck.
• MU is a thing. I'm thinking of tossing in a couple of Akamatsus, and also maybe Sahasrara (a thing in the novelist, but absent here). I'd probably maybe cut Kati, maybe a Scavenge.
• I'm not particularly fussed about Power Shutdown because it's not very common in my meta. But by the same token, it's a thing, and it's a consideration. But I can't really tech against it hard - since there are a lot of things that blow up the Scheherazade - any program trashes, Marcus Batty, the upcoming Keegan Lane, etc. Just having Harbinger or other 0 cost cards isn't a magic bullet - so I just have to cop it. What I've been doing is just putting some stuff on Scheherazade - namely caches, SMCs, and maybe 1 breaker. Enough that I won't cry if it disappears. Sure I lose a couple of credits, but it's worth it for long term security.
• Is Scheherazade the best card for the slot? Maybe not, but I am having a lot of fun with it. It gives maybe 9-15 credits over the course of the game, and for the slots / inf - it's good enough.