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About Heather Webb

Heather Webb is the international bestselling and award-winning author of 6 historical novels set in France, including her latest Meet Me in Monaco and Ribbons of Scarlet. In 2015, Rodin’s Lover was a Goodread’s Top Pick, and in 2018, Last Christmas in Paris won the Women's Fiction STAR Award. To date, Heather’s books have sold in over a dozen countries worldwide and received national starred reviews. As a freelance editor, Heather has helped over two dozen writers sign with agents, and go on to sell at market. When not writing, Heather feeds her cookbook addiction, geeks out on history and pop culture, and looks for excuses to head to the other side of the world.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • What Fiction Trends Say About Us
  • Speaking Your Truth Through Fiction
  • Stepping Out, Stepping In, Bringing the Light
  • What We Can Learn About Fiction from Cute Videos on Social Media
  • Revising, Revising, and How to Make it Through
  • When You Feel Like You’re Treading Water (in Publishing)
  • When You Don’t Want to Write
  • Behaving Badly in Publishing
  • Because Gosh Darn It, Writers are Special
  • Will Writers be Replaced by Machine?
  • How a Writer Lives with Yearning
  • The Haves and the Have-Nots:  Surviving Writer Envy

    • What Fiction Trends Say About Us

    By

    The book market is shifting again as it has quite often in the last five years. Let’s face it. It’s desperately trying to keep up with our fast-paced world. How we discover books, how we purchase them, and how we read them have changed completely. All of that change is difficult for an industry that’s been around a couple hundred years, and it’s arguably even more difficult for those of us who create books in the first place. But the market is bound to evolve, especially in a digital, global world that must meet the needs of different kinds of readers. The market changes, sure, but is the craft of writing evolving too? I asked some established authors to see what they had to say. This is what I asked:

    How has the craft of fiction changed in the last decade? Specifically, what have you noticed about books in terms of structure, characters, topics, trends, etc? 

    They said:

    “I think in genre fiction, the readers are pushing for shorter chapters, quicker reads, and less depth. The publishers are following their lead. Literary fiction still allows the full beauty of the language to be explored, but genre authors have a unique challenge. Many of us try to inject a literary tone while still producing a page-turning quick read. That’s the sweet spot we are all shooting for, but with shorter attention spans, it is becoming a greater challenge.”—Julie Cantrell Perkins, NYT Bestselling author of The Feathered Bone

    “I think the lines between genre and literary fiction are blurring. I think genre lit is becoming more character driven and nuanced. Literary fiction is becoming a little less self indulgent… stuff needs to actually happen in the book. In all cases I think the reader is beginning to expect more in terms of balance between engaging story and well-crafted prose.” —Aimie Runyan, author of The Daughters of France series

    “Many published novels are shorter than earlier works, often less than 100,000 words and/or 300 pages and also much more first-person and multiple viewpoints rather than third-person following one pov.”—Sally Koslow, author of The Widow Waltz

    “In women’s fiction, we’ve gone from which designer shoes to wear to much darker, beefier themes. I see this as women claiming literary equality: there’s no problem a male character can tackle in a novel that a female can’t–and the female may learn more from it.”—Kathryn Craft, author of The Far End of Happy

    “I think there are expectations to crank out books faster and faster. Especially for romance and contemporary books (thrillers, woman’s fiction, mystery, etc).”—Amy E Reichert, author of Luck, Love, & Lemon Pie

    Other changes authors have noticed include: [Read more…]

    Speaking Your Truth Through Fiction

    By

    With so much happening in the news these days, I’ve been thinking a lot about truth. What is truth, exactly? Is it an objective fact that can be validated by concrete evidence, or is truth an abstract construct that gleans its meaning from the emotional experiences of an individual?  Judges and cops will tell you, […]

    Stepping Out, Stepping In, Bringing the Light

    By

    While I write this post, I’m sitting in a café in Brooklyn, watching servers whip by carrying plates of breakfast food to eager customers. There are no piles of pancakes or greasy omelets and sausages, but rather breakfast salads with kale and seasoned sweet potatoes topped with grilled scallops, or biscuits dressed with chorizo and […]

    What We Can Learn About Fiction from Cute Videos on Social Media

    By

    Raise your hand if you find yourself clicking all of those little videos on social media? Maybe you don’t even click them, but they start playing automatically and next thing you know, you’ve wasted five minutes on a baby smearing yogurt on their face, a goat “laughing,” or a SNL skit of the latest debate […]

    Revising, Revising, and How to Make it Through

    By

    There are some who are lucky enough to write a novel and make it beautiful in two or three drafts. (Secretly, I loathe them. Why can’t I do that?!) Most of us, on the other hand, spend months and months, sometimes years, perfecting our works. By the time we’ve seen that story seven or eight […]

    When You Feel Like You’re Treading Water (in Publishing)

    By

    It’s the dog days of summer, and what a scorcher it has been. With my kids home from school, family vacations and activities have been underway. There’s lots of client work stacking up in my inbox, and other household responsibilities festering. I’m trying to take advantage of the weather and jam in as much exercise […]

    When You Don’t Want to Write

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    We’ve all been there, in that dark place where we procrastinate and downright abhor writing. We avoid the imperfect sentences, the sagging storyline in need of an overhaul, or perhaps we avoid the new project. We think about that twisting road to completion and it overwhelms us to the point of shutdown. There are loads […]

    Behaving Badly in Publishing

    By

    I’m going to rant a little today, I’m afraid. It’s a post that I had to write, both because I care about my work “environment”, and I care about my colleagues. I’m talking about internet road rage. You know, the cyberplace where you don’t have to face the music in person so you act out […]

    Because Gosh Darn It, Writers are Special

    By

      I’ve just returned from Europe and as usual, enjoyed my time immensely. Each day, I relished mapping out my plan for the day and traveling around the city unencumbered. There’s something energizing about that kind of freedom—choosing where you’d like to go without a computer or responsibilities, the thrill of adventure zipping through your […]

    Will Writers be Replaced by Machine?

    By

    It’s like something out of a science fiction novel—literally. A computer science professor and his team co-created novels with an Artificial Intelligence system. Eleven of these novels were submitted to a Japanese literary contest called the Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. ONE NOVEL PASSED ON TO THE SEMI-FINALS! Here’s the kicker. The judges, while they know […]

    How a Writer Lives with Yearning

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    Today I’d like to talk about the part of writing that doesn’t get stressed very often—the days we haven’t finished anything, we haven’t hit any goals, we haven’t achieved a single damn thing, save sitting at the keyboard. In those days of limbo, we loll about in our sweatpants and coffee-stained shirts, eyes red-rimmed after […]

    The Haves and the Have-Nots:  Surviving Writer Envy

    By

    Being in a creative field has never been an easy pursuit. Low wages, the subjective nature of the arts, and the struggle to be seen pretty much ensures we’re all a little bit nuts for doing it. As if all those factors aren’t bad enough, non-writers often belittle the incredible time, effort, and care that […]

     

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