Episode 94: Heather Webb, USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of The Next Ship Home
Heather Webb shares the real-life stories of people passing through Ellis Island, as well as the historical backdrop of the time, that inspired her latest novel THE NEXT SHIP HOME, which is about the unlikely friendship of a Sicilian immigrant and a matron that works at Ellis Island who does not like immigrants.
We chat about Heather’s reading world which transitioned into us sharing some of our favorite con-artist television shows. She also shares the best advice she has for aspiring authors.
Books Mentioned:
The Next Ship Home by Heather Webb (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
The Last Flight by Julie Clark (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Ashley Hasty 0:00
Heather, it seems to me that anyone who's ever met you sings your praises. Recently, Spiro Penner said, You've been an incredible mentor, my friend Allison hammer says you're one of the biggest champions of authors. So I am absolutely thrilled that I finally get to meet you in person if we can contact and chat about your upcoming book.
Heather Webb 0:21
Yeah, well, thank you. That's very sweet. I am a teacher at heart. I mean, I was a high school teacher for a decade. And now I am, I'm an adjunct at Drexel University, and I'm a freelance editor. So I'm constantly helping either published writers or aspiring writers. And I don't know, I think it fulfills that teacher need in me. So
Ashley Hasty 0:43
I didn't realize that we had the teacher thing in common love to talk about that after recording too. Sure. Let's start if you wouldn't mind telling, here's what the next ship home is about.
Heather Webb 0:54
So you have a beautiful little graphic there, have it in the corner, so I don't have to hold it up. The next ship home. So it is a book of Ellis Island. It's set in 1902 and 1902, you have the subway being built. So the roads are torn up in New York City and people everybody's complaining about it, you have 1000s of immigrants arriving on the shore of Ellis Island every single week. And all these people have somewhere they need to go. So you have those 1000s that become millions quickly flooding into the Lower East Side, which they now call the East Village in Manhattan, because it's the cheapest place to live and tenements there. And then you also have got all this stuff going on. So I found that really a fascinating landscape. And I love New York City. I'm in Connecticut. So I'm not that far from from New York. And the history there's just really so rich and varied and interesting. So I've got that as my backdrop. And then I have Francesca, who is a Sicilian immigrant who comes through Ellis Island as one protagonist. And she very quickly hopes to get through and to find a job and start her new life. Things do not go according to plan is so often is the case in life. The other main character is a matron who works at Ellis Island. And she does not like immigrants. And she has been raised to sort of fear them and a poor them. She's German American first generation, and she has very much to learn and crosses paths with Francesca, they become unlikely friends quickly and decide if they're going to confront the corruption rippling through the halls of Ellis Island or not. And in the process, there's a big secret that that happens along the way. So what's going on?
Ashley Hasty 2:36
Yes, yes. And as you mentioned, this novel is inspired by true events. How did you learn about these events? And what was it in particular that inspired you to dedicate a full novel to it?
Heather Webb 2:48
Yeah. So I knew that I wanted to explore the building of Ellis Island itself to this place, and you can feel the millions of souls that have passed through there, it still kind of lingers in the air, I feel. And then from there, I started just reading a lot of resources, of course, about, you know what the process was, and in this book called American passage by Vince Coronado, he's a history professor at UMass. He started detailing some of the awful things that was happening there. And I thought, Oh, my God. Okay, so there's a lot more to this story than just, you know, land of the free home of the brave come to our shores, you know. And so I started digging into that a bit. And I ended up in the New York Times archives and found between 1900 and 1903, a series of articles that talked about the corruption happening at Ellis Island. And when I hit one that was about 40, people that were hauled in before a grand jury for swindling the immigrants for for stealing extortion, for sexual harassment, all kinds of things I knew I had, that that was my story, that would be the backbone. And so So that's what's happening in the background, you have Roosevelt, who's just hired a new commissioner to go clean house at Ellis Island, and to find out who these people are that are caught up in all of the corruption. And then you have my two girls moving women moving through this environment. So yeah, how could you I mean, that's so juicy and and awful, and also fascinating. So I got kind of hooked into that.
Ashley Hasty 4:25
Definitely not the history I learned in high school. Yeah, personally, my favorite part of the writing process is researching. So I always like to ask authors what their research process is like, especially since the pandemic has changed the way that many historical fiction authors have been able to do research. So first, I want to know if you were able to travel while researching this book, and then what particular sources you found useful, besides of course, the articles and the textbook that you just mentioned during your research process.
Heather Webb 4:58
Yeah, sure. So First of all, the book was finished in January of 2020. And we were ready to take it to publishers. Yeah. But then we sat on it until June because of the pandemic. And it was the first wave. And we were all terrified, and we had no idea what was going to happen. And so we just, you know, you're not pitching books in New York City while it's under siege, from the virus, so So I was able to, almost all of my research was done way before that, you know, how books are in production for at least a year or so. But also, I dug through a bunch of compilations of immigrant interviews, which were great, I found really different experiences from each other, some were amazed by how much food they got in Ellis Island and the kinds of things they got, because they were starving and poor. Some were completely disgusted by what was what was served there. People who had never seen bananas, they had never had ice cream, or white bread, they had just this huge list of things, some that had an amazing experience there. And it just kind of, you know, amazing isn't very easy. And they were excited and hopeful and ready to start their new life. And then you had some that were abused, and treated very poorly, either physically or through the way they were spoken to. So So yeah, it was, those were really fascinating. I got a lot of little tidbits from there. But I also they made me cry a lot. I mean, they were very emotional. These people gave up everything they knew in their lives, to come to a place where they hoped they could have a better life. And that's, I mean, that's, that's so big, right? It's It's hugely emotional. So,
Ashley Hasty 6:45
absolutely, absolutely cannot imagine what that what was the most interesting, interesting thing you learned from your research that you weren't able to fit into the story or it had to be cut?
Heather Webb 6:55
Oh, there's so much I'll narrow it down to two major things. One was that Roosevelt actually came out to Ellis Island because he kept hearing all these rumors about all the horrible things happening, and was trying to decide if he was going to have another inspection done of all of the staff and all of the protocol and all of the routines and such or not. And so the day he was coming out there, they plan this big lunch, this, you know, fancy with champagne and oysters, etc. But it was a really, really stormy day. And if you've ever been to that part of Manhattan, you know, where the Hudson meets the East River is actually pretty tumultuous. And so with this crazy storm, his boat almost sunk, they had to keep going back to shore. And it took him two and a half hours or something to get to Ellis Island. And it's only a 15 minute ferry ride that that tells you anything. So it was it was very hard to get out there. He finally did. You know, lunch was cold, naturally. But I really wanted to put that in because I thought you know, Roosevelt, everybody wants to know more about Roosevelt. It's big name, you know, and I wanted to show him having this danger, but arriving there and just like an immigrant would and all this stuff, but it just it was a year later than the book, the backbone that I was talking about was set and I just could not figure out a way to fit it in.
Ashley Hasty 8:11
This is your fourth solo novel. Plus, you've written three novels with hazel Gaynor, and you've contributed to three anthologies, if I counted correctly. Yes. What have you learned between writing and publishing your debut novel? And now and what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Heather Webb 8:32
That's a huge question. Because what haven't I learned is really the answer. I've learned so much about writing books, in terms of craft and so much about the business of publishing, they don't work very well together, often, but they have to so so we figure it out. So that's one of the things I've learned but many, many other things. So when I would tell, an aspiring writer in particular would be to finish your first draft, stop editing, and re editing, and, and writing beautiful sentences and cutting, get the first draft down, you're gonna make it pretty and do layer after layer after layer for many months after that, but if you don't have a first draft, you've got nowhere to go with it. And you're not going to really know what the story is until you get the full thing down on paper. So I always say get your first draft down. And I'm trying to think what else gather so there's so many things but that's I think that's the one of the most important because it's very easy to just stop and to keep editing and then you never really get anywhere. You're shaking your head like you know.
Ashley Hasty 9:40
Yeah, it's so hard to get that first draft written. You just want your first chapter to be the best first chapter you can ever be. So moving on and actually finishing the story. It was some of the earliest advice I got to and it was the best otherwise I would still be writing my first chapter which would probably not even be my first chapter.
Heather Webb 10:00
Well, that's the thing is that you discover after you've written a whole first draft, that you may not have even started the book in the right place. Right? You can't know that until you've written the whole book.
Ashley Hasty 10:09
And of course, as you mentioned, in addition to writing novels, you also offer editing and consulting services. So tell us a bit about those services. What can authors expect when working with you?
Heather Webb 10:19
Well, so I, for consultations, I've talked to people who are multi published, and they're changing directions, or they have questions about, you know, marketing, et cetera. But I've talked, you know, the, the entire range people who are just starting out who just have basic questions about, okay, what do I do after I read the book, what's next. And I sort of walk them through some of that stuff, I work on query letters, and Synopsys. I do chunks of pages, I do full full novels, with a deep developmental edit with, you know, a big editorial letter and inline comments. My, you know, my goal is to be as positive and upbeat as possible. But to be honest, because I don't think you're serving anyone, you're not, you're not helping anyone by by being too nice. And so So I think it's, it's a real fine balance of optimism, and, you know, you can do this sort of motivation. And this is what needs to be fixed. This is, here's the real deal, this is what I see happening. And this is what I would recommend kind of stuff, and then sometimes, you know, I have to help them kind of break it down and figure out how to apply that kind of feedback. But that that tends to be more sort of the on the aspiring end than some of the other clients I get. So, you know, even as a multi published author at this point myself, I mean, I get I have beta readers, you know, critique partners, and I work in stages with them. And I usually have at least four reads, so, I mean, and they give me pages and pages of notes, we all need this. So you can't see everything yourself. You know, it's it's too it's, you know, it's too hard. There's too much going on, if you want your book to be, you know, layered and interesting and compelling. You're gonna want those reads. So
Ashley Hasty 12:04
yeah. And I found that I, when I read edit so many times, I kind of forget what's in there and what I took out, so having an additional eyes. The background of it
Heather Webb 12:17
helps. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true, you get to, you know, especially, especially when you're starting out, you kind of forget, you know, you've done so much on it already, that you kind of forget where you're at, I think, and I think of editing is like this giant octopus with all these arms, and you have to figure out how to tame it. And there is a way to do that. There's a way to be very systematic in the way that you work through your edits. So that's, that's actually something I talk about a lot at conferences to?
Ashley Hasty 12:44
Well, I'm going to ask how you got into this. But now that I know you have this teaching background, it makes perfect sense.
Heather Webb 12:50
Yeah, I mean, I taught French I didn't teach English or history, amazingly. But it's the principles the same, I mean, it's still language learning and, and all that good stuff. So
Ashley Hasty 12:59
Well, in my experience, authors always have the best book recommendations. So I want you to tell us a bit about your reading world. What do you like to read? What would you recommend that we read right now?
Heather Webb 13:10
So I'm reading all the time I read, I find that I, the best way that I have grown as an author, besides feedback from my partners is through reading other people's amazing books, and just learning about structure and all these things as I'm reading. And so yes, I'm reading all the time, and I read very widely, you'll see me reading some murdery suspense book, and then I will follow it with a rom com and then I will be reading some historical or some sort of, you know, mythology based fantasy, or, you know, I'm kind of all over the place I like I love ya. So contemporary and fantasy and paranormal. I like this huge range. So I kind of go in phases where I gets kind of obsessed with one kind of topic and I read it for a while and then I get saturated and I move on to the next thing. So I just finished a book right now I'm obsessed with con artists. I don't know why I'm blaming inventing Anna on Netflix. I don't know if you saw that.
Ashley Hasty 14:07
Yes, loved that show.
Heather Webb 14:09
And then there's like the tinder I don't know what the tender swindler, and then there's the cake or the vegan one, that vegan. I know. That's so funny. So, so Julie Clark, her she's a suspense writer. And her novel, The Last Flight came out two years ago, and it was fantastic and hit the New York Times list. So her follow up is the lies I tell and it's about a con artist and I got an early copy. So I read it very quickly and loved it. So that's a great book and her first book is a great book too. And then I am currently reading Mary Jane. That was a I want to say it was one of those book club picks. I'm pulling it up on my phone because I do a lot of audiobooks. It's Jessica Anya Blau. So this has been and there's another cover for it where there's like a multicolored record player. You may have seen in hardcover, yeah, it was a really popular and people just kept talking about how it's a fun book. It's a young girl who has very straight and narrow parents in the 60s, and she ends up being a babysitter for these hippies. And it's just totally opens up her whole world. And so you get all that lovely like 60s and 70s kind of pop culture stuff mixed in. And it's been a fun read so far, so.
Ashley Hasty 15:24
So I definitely agree with your obsession with the con artist stories. I think they're new, like cult stories, there used to be all about the cult that were taking place in history. And now I feel like it's a con artist to wave
Heather Webb 15:38
the corners to and I love. I'm really interested in white collar crime, like, you know, stealing art and, you know, artifacts and jewelry and these kinds of things.
Ashley Hasty 15:51
Another good one is that we work document for Docu series called we crashed
Heather Webb 15:58
I need to look at that.
Ashley Hasty 15:59
That should be the next minute.
Heather Webb 16:01
Yeah, we'll check it out for sure.
Ashley Hasty 16:04
And I always like to hear and I have to ask what our favorite word authors are working on. So you can you tell us anything about your work progress
Heather Webb 16:13
I can. So I haven't actually been given the green light to officially announce it online. But I'm when I'm doing an event or I'm chatting with somebody, I just, I'm done hiding it. I'm done hiding it because we have a due date. And we have a title. And so it's coming out January in January, and it's called strangers in the night. And it is a novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. So So yeah, they had a very tumultuous tragic love affair that lasted their whole lives after they met. And they were absolutely nuts. Um, the two of them were nuts. They were nuts together, they were not apart. And they were fabulously talented, both of them, and just really, really fascinating people. So my publisher actually asked me to write this book. And so I said, Sure. It's Frank Sinatra, who says no to Frank Sinatra.
Ashley Hasty 17:04
I am such a big Frank Sinatra fan. I'm doing an Instagram series right now on reels like Frank Sinatra sings about books and my love of books. Oh, funny. Funny. Oh, I cannot wait to read this. Thank you for sharing. I have something to look forward to in the next year.
Heather Webb 17:21
Yay. It's very different from the next ship poem. You know, it's a tragic love story. That's a dual biographical. So it's a different setup. But you know, you don't turn your publisher away when it's a great idea. So
Ashley Hasty 17:33
I'm trying to remember. Have you written about real characters before
Heather Webb 17:38
like I have. So my first book was becoming Josephine about Josephine Bonaparte. Yes. My second was Camille CODEL. And oh, Gustavo Danna, I did both of their points of view. And they also had a very tragic, passionate love affair. And they were these famous sculptors and in 19th century France. And so I do like to write biographical is on occasion, I actually prefer books more like the next ship home creatively, because you can you just create the characters and the story almost from the ground up, I find that really satisfying and fun. But the other, you know, biographical is are fun in a different way you feel like you get to know them as if they were your friends. You know, because they were real. And you feel like you can almost talk to them. And it's, it's a really interesting, cool feeling. So,
Ashley Hasty 18:26
no, I couldn't. I am writing a biographical novel as well. I'm finding that it's difficult this dichotomy between wanting to write fiction primarily, but also sticking true to facts and what happened in their lives. It's a fine balance, I think that I would like to explore and not writing about real people to see what that is, like.
Heather Webb 18:48
Yeah, it's, um, it's, it's tricky. The thing with real people, too, is that they're not always nice, or likeable. And sometimes they're not sympathetic even. And so you have to find ways to within the sort of arc of their lives, their lifetime, find the piece of their lifetime that you want to where the story is that you want to tell. And then you have to figure out ways to reveal who they are in a way that would be appealing to a reader. And that's tricky. Yeah. You know, I mean, with Ava and Frank, you know, there are a lot of things that the two of them did that were absolutely abhorrent to each other, nevermind to other people, you know, but they were human beings and they made mistakes. And so you I find find humanity in that personally, but it'll be interesting to see how the readers take it
Ashley Hasty 19:38
for sure. Curious, do you like the more or less after writing this book?
Heather Webb 19:43
Oh, I love them both. I love them. Yeah. I mean, initially, I was like, What is going on? I was reading the research, like, what is she doing? What is he doing? But I you know, I just I do I have an affinity for them. I was just in Palm Springs in February. I'd never been there and I went out there to visit Frank grave and take pictures and I went to where his house was out there in the desert, which is now this unbelievably gorgeous gated community of millionaires. But his his grave was this quiet little tomb where there was no big headstone or anything. And there were a bunch of flowers and some some Jack Daniels left for him. And yeah, and so and there were there are people there that were doing the same thing I was doing so that was kind of interesting. I've
Ashley Hasty 20:29
been to Palm Springs, but I've always associated Palm Springs with Elvis. I didn't know that Frank Sinatra was very there.
Heather Webb 20:36
Yeah, yeah, he lived there. He had a house there for many, many years, starting in like 1951, or something like that. So
Ashley Hasty 20:43
now I need to go back? I do.
Heather Webb 20:46
Yeah, you definitely do. So
Ashley Hasty 20:49
I'm gonna share how people can find you. Can you tell us are you hanging out on social media?
Heather Webb 20:53
I'm on Twitter, although I think that's kind of more of a writer's Hangout, but it is a readers hang out. But you know, I have a Facebook page, a public page. And I'm also in a lot of reading, reading groups on Facebook and chatting with readers, which is fun. And of course, I'm on Instagram. And all of these are at Ms. Heather Web. They're all the same across the board. So I'm easy to find. And then you know, there's my website with any editing information and my contact info so you can find me I'm there.
Ashley Hasty 21:22
Well, it's such a pleasure meeting you. We've emailed back and forth. I featured you on my blog, but this is the first time we've gotten a chance to chat.