WP_Query Fallback

Ok, so I’ve got a custom taxonomy setup of ‘Writer’ and it’s a way to tie posts to an employee on the site but the client doesn’t want everyone to actually be setup as an author. So, on the employee profile pages I pull the posts with the employees name as the ‘Writer’, which works great. I’ve then got a fallback setup – code below.

<?php
// WP_Query arguments
global $post;
$slug = get_post( $post )->post_name;

$args = array (
	'posts_per_page'         => '1',
	'writer'				 => $slug,
);

// The Query
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

// The Loop
if ( $query->have_posts() ) {
	while ( $query->have_posts() ) {
		$query->the_post();
		?>
			// Do Stuff
		<?php
	}
} else {
	$fallbackargs = array (
		'posts_per_page'         => '1',
		'category'				 => 'featured',
	);

	$fallback = new WP_Query ( $fallbackargs);
	while ( $fallback->have_posts() ) {
		$fallback->the_post();
		?>
			// Do Stuff
		<?php
	}
}

// Restore original Post Data
wp_reset_postdata();
?>

So, basically what I’m asking is this: Dear smarter people of the WordPress community – how can I do this more efficiently, or have I screwed up and done this semi-correctly? Thanks in advance!