*Special Edition*: Interview with New Co-Host, Ashley Hasty
Starting in the 2022 season, Ashley Hasty, founder of The Hasty Booklist will be joining Lainey Cameron as a host on The Best of Women’s Fiction Podcast.
Learn more about Ashley, what she likes to read, and what she’s writing now. Also how, together she and Lainey will be choosing the guests to invite for the early 2022 season of The Best of Women’s Fiction Podcast.
More about Ashley:
Ashley Hasty is the book blogger behind HastyBookList.com, a site for reviews, features, and interviews with authors, audiobook narrators, and book jacket designers, where she has interviewed over 500 authors!
She has a Ph.D. in fashion history so it’ll come as no surprise that her favorite genre is historical fiction, but she enjoys and features a variety of genres on the blog. When not reading or blogging, she teaches college courses in marketing, merchandising, and fashion history.
She lives in Chicago with her husband and dog Huxley (named after Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.)
Key Links:
25 Authors and their Failures by Ashley Hasty
Form to request consideration for 2022 Podcast season - click here to be considered for an invitation to Best of Women’s Fiction Podcast in 2022
Sign up for the Podcast Newsletter!
Connect with Ashley Hasty:
Connect with Lainey Cameron:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey Cameron 0:00
I think this might be the interview I am most excited about this year. Ashley, I am so grateful that you are going to be joining me as a co host on the best of woman's fiction podcast,
Ashley Hasty 0:11
I am so thankful that you asked me that someone recommended me that after the our initial chat you offered it to me, I'm just so excited to be here.
Lainey Cameron 0:22
So I'll give folks a little bit of the background because this is a special episode where we're talking about, you know, why you and how it's gonna work. And it's been just astounding to me since the podcast took off at the beginning of this year. And before it was a podcast, it was actually a video series of interviews that I did on my Instagram, I want to make sure we can keep growing it and it's actually gotten a little bigger than I can do by myself. And so I reached out to my network of author friends and said, Okay, if I was looking for someone who's super books savvy, who is excited about all the new releases, and ideally who loves historical fiction. And the reason I said that is we haven't had a ton of historical fiction on the podcast, and I feel like it's a gap. And I don't read as much of that and I read more contemporary. So I reached out to a lot of auto author friends, and I said like, Okay, if we were looking for this person, who would this person beat? And it was actually Alison hammer, who said, you know, I've got the perfect person, I don't know, she'll say yes, but you should go talk to Ashley, who runs the hasty book list. She's a big book, blogger. She loves books. And she recently came up as an author. And so that is how you ended up being the person that I lobbied to join me as co host on the podcast.
Ashley Hasty 1:34
I will forever owe Allison hammer.
Lainey Cameron 1:38
So I'm excited to talk to you to find out more about your background. I know our listeners will be too. Let's start with where are you joining us from today? And why don't we start with a little bit about your background, I know people will be interested, if you're not following the hasty book list you should be but like, tell us a little bit about you and your backgrounds.
Ashley Hasty 1:57
Well, I started the hasty book list blog as actually a hashtag on Instagram, it was just a way for me to keep track of what books I'd read so that I could easily reference it. When somebody asked me for a book recommendation, like I always blank. When someone asked me like, what's the last book I read. So this hashtag was just a way for me to keep them all organized in one place. My husband was actually the first one to suggest that I create a blog. But I resisted for a really long time thinking that writing about books would take away from the time that I had to read about books or read books. So one day, he just created the website for me said it's there, if you want to do something with it. I posted a few reviews that day. And that kind of took off from there.
Lainey Cameron 2:44
And did that see somewhere that you've had? What was it hundreds of interviews at this point? Like you've had tons of authors, right?
Ashley Hasty 2:51
Yeah, so I do written interviews with authors, where I just send them a series of signature questions. And I ask every author, and I've done over 500 of
Lainey Cameron 3:01
those now. Wow, wow. And also the link to I'll put the link to hasty book list in the in the show notes here. And people will find it on the website, too, which is best of women's fiction calm. So I want to talk about the fact that you're also a writer, and you only recently like came clean and told the world on your social media. But this was there a little bit of fear, like being you know, someone who reviews all these fabulous books. Were you afraid of also admitting that you were a writer?
Ashley Hasty 3:31
Yes, absolutely. 100% I was so terrified. Again, it was Alison hammer, who suggested that I come clean, so to speak. But I had actually been working on my first manuscript since 2018. So it was several years of secretly writing. Before I publicly announced it, there were a few very close friends that I told. But other than that, it was like this big secret that I didn't want anyone to know.
Lainey Cameron 4:02
Okay, so now I'm gonna put you on the hook. Like I'm gonna, I'm not gonna let you off for that. So tell us like, What's the book about what genre? Is it? Like? Is it modern? Historical, like, what are we allowed to know?
Ashley Hasty 4:12
Its historical fiction. I actually am now working on my second manuscript. So rewinding a little bit, I started researching in 2018. Actually, again, this all started with my husband, he was the one who said you read so much. Why don't you try giving writing a go? And of course, I was like, No way. My apologies to my husband for never like agreeing to his really. Initially, it wasn't until I interviewed Fiona Davis and I had a huge author crush on Fiona Davis, and she asked me if I'd ever considered writing since I read so much. And of course, as soon as she planted the idea, I was gung ho about it. So I started researching the subject that I was interested in. I started taking classes through Gotham, online class. on how to write a books, I've never done anything like this. And then eventually I had my first manuscript, it was historical fiction, I will probably only ever write historical fiction, it's my first love will say, um, and I pitched it, I wrote the manuscript, pitched it to agents and a few nibbles. But it didn't really go anywhere. And I had one agent who was super nice to me, and gave me a ton of great feedback. And I learned a lot from her. So first of all, my manuscript was not ready. It wasn't polished. I think every author, when they first start out makes a very common journey. Yeah, commercial. It was a pretty depressing story is definitely a tragedy. And I was pitching in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, and people just did not want to read a tragic story when we were all living tragic stories. So I'm now working on my second history, historical fiction manuscript. And this one is about fashion, which is what my history or my background is in, I have a doctorate in fashion history. So it makes sense that I would write about fashion. So I know much more about this subject. So it's set in the 1940s, and about 1940s. Fashion.
Lainey Cameron 6:14
Ooh, exciting. Well, I'm gonna have so much fun watching as this one or the next one, or the last one makes it into the world, one of these books, one day, we'll be interviewing you as the author on the podcast. But in the meantime, have you choose what to read? Because you're, you're such a voracious reader, you're reading so many books, and you're, you've become so educated on all the different books in this genre? Like, how do you choose like, it must be really hard because you get all these? I think it's probably like the public podcast. Now you've got all these publicists and authors coming to you asking you to read their books? How on earth do you choose?
Ashley Hasty 6:48
That's a great question. So pre blog, I basically read whatever book was getting the most attention in the media, or whatever my book club selected for them. After the blog, once it really started taking off, I was scheduling what I was going to read, like six months in advance. So whether or not I was in the mood to read that book, or if it even sounded good to me anymore, I had already committed to reading it. And I was committing to about one book a week, which is a lot for me, I'm not a speed reader, I'm just a normal, relatively slow reader. And I got really burnt out really fast. So now I don't commit to reading any of the books that are sent to me and I get about 20 books a week from publicist. At the time, I could never possibly read them all. So now I just go through my stack of books and pick one that is appealing to me in the moment. So it's really there's like no rhyme or reason to it. It's when I finish a book, and I'm ready to start a new one. I look through the stack and just whatever is speaking to me at that moment.
Lainey Cameron 7:53
I love that, you know, I've I can't really do paper books in the same way. In some ways. It's good, because I probably would have stacks and stacks of them if I if I could, but I'm doing electronic. But I also struggle with this. Like I try to tee up the ones and I'm doing a lot of like, I'll offer that or I'll say yes when someone asks for an endorsement, but then I have to be realistic about timeframe. And I have gotten myself sometimes into the situation where I'm like, Oh wait, I committed to do for endorsements this month, and we've got the podcast going and other things. And I'm like I have over committed myself. And then it just becomes like no fun, right? You're fried instead of enjoying the reading.
Ashley Hasty 8:27
Yeah, it was interesting, I was getting really burnt out because like you said it was just fried from overeating. Two days after we moved into our house, it caught the unit below ours caught fire, and it spread through the rest of the building, and it destroyed our units. So at that moment, I was like, I cannot read all of these books I committed to I'm like, in survival mode, trying to figure out where I'm going to sleep the next night. So I contacted all of the people I work with. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm going to drop the ball for several months. And that really gave me permission to stop over committing myself. And it's been a silver lining of that experience.
Lainey Cameron 9:02
Well, so one of the things I want to talk about is how we're going to select the books for next year because I'm dealing with a little bit of the same thing on the podcast, we have way more interest in being on the podcast, then I have space for even if we do every week, our goal just so folks know is we're going to go back and forth week by week. So I'll do I'll be the host one week, actually, we'll be the host the next week. And we'll try and cover more historical fiction than we did in the past but we're still gonna have a real challenge in selecting the books I could tell you that we've been booked through 2020 ones since I want to say May or June which is pretty crazy. And so what we're gonna do, I'll explain a little bit here we are by invitation. So so it's not a you email us and we email you back and say yes, and it's been by invitation since the start, but I think folks got excited and wanted to get on so I started getting a lot of inbound emails, sometimes 30 or 40 a week of people asking to be on which just became overwhelming for me to your point, right? It was just too much and so So what we're gonna do is it is by invitation, but we're going to open up a forum starting next week, actually, depending on when we are this this week, it's going to be coming here, look in the notes, because I'll put more information in the notes for the show. But we're gonna let you submit all of your information as an author or publicist, if you'd like to be considered for an invitation, we obviously can't promise but Ashley and I will go through all of the people who asked to be considered and then early next year, or before, but most likely it will be for most books early next year, we'll send out invitations to those that we're inviting to join the podcast. And our goal is to run the next season from February through probably February, March, April May ish, like at least three months, which will let us fit in however many weeks that is every week. And it won't be enough, but we're gonna do our best to select it. And so I wanted to kind of chat a little bit with you, actually, because you're going to help me with this process on how the heck we're going to go through that process. So we're going to do open open here for everybody. I will share that for me, one of the priorities is I like to highlight a diversity of stories. And what I mean by that is not just ethnicity and background. What I mean is, there are certain storylines that tend to get kind of repeated and once fiction and become almost like tropes and women's fiction, so like maybe one might be like a character gets divorced moves to the country opens, a b&b refines her life and her mission, love those books. They're beautiful books. But it's been done. And it's maybe not adding diversity when the next one of those stories gets told, unless someone put a unique spin on, it always can put a unique spin on a trope, right? But I'm especially interested in books that take me into cultures, locations, life experiences that women have that maybe haven't been written about enough. All of those things, the stories that haven't had the attention that maybe they merit. So like that's important for me as we think about this. What about you, Ashley, what kind of gets you interested in wanting to talk to an author?
Ashley Hasty 11:58
Well, like you said, I'm primarily doing historical fiction, I won't say I'm exclusively doing historical fiction, but that will be my leaving and historical fictions the same, there are tropes as well that tend to be done over and over again, everyone who's a historical fiction fan knows that World War two novels have been done exhaustively. And I did my research in World War Two, I love a world war two novel, but like you said, there needs to be something new, different twist on it, if it's going to be World War Two. So like, I am also looking for something different. I'm really excited about the form that we are going to set up so that there will be new authors that I'm not familiar with, hopefully, who apply to be on the podcast. So I'm really excited to learn some new names, research, some new authors that are either debuting or have books out and I just haven't crossed their path yet. So I'm really looking for someone new.
Lainey Cameron 12:58
And we're going to put that on the forum just so folks who are listening know, like, there's a space where you can tell us why you think your story is interesting. And we should pick it for the podcast. I mean, we are trying to pay, we give you the chance to tell us that. And so I know it's hard, like part of why we're taking this approach is I hate rejecting other authors. Let me tell you that when I was like oversubscribed and I was literally replying to everybody when we got to July saying sorry, sorry, sorry, that doesn't feel good for me either. I don't like Bridget telling, saying no to other authors. So I'm hoping this approach will avoid me having to send those exact emails and instead we can focus on the folks we really want to invite and you'll get an invitation if we if you've got caught our interest.
Ashley Hasty 13:37
We like first and foremost, we're readers that we love to read. We love books, we don't want to say no to anyone. So
Lainey Cameron 13:44
I am so excited. What are you excited about? I know you've shared with me that you're thrilled that you're going to do this? Is there anything in particular that has you excited for next year as we go go into 22? And start doing this together?
Ashley Hasty 13:55
Well, the first thing that appealed to me when you reached out about CO hosting the podcast was having like a colleague, someone to collaborate with some writers are often work alone. And so I'm really excited that we'll collaborate and kind of brainstorm together and and create this podcast, or not created, you've created it but build this podcast together. So that was the first thing that appealed to me. I'm also very excited to interview some of my favorite authors next year, but also meet new authors. You have a great community of authors here. Just in the introduction. Instagram posts that we did, I met a lot of new people that way. So I'm really excited about meeting new authors.
Lainey Cameron 14:38
Yeah, no, that's been the best part of it is getting to meet other authors and I love how honest authors are about sharing their journey. Like my favorite episodes are the ones where an author shares the hard bits like the things that weren't so simple along their career, the moments they struggled like I feel like for other writers, those are the important things for us to hear because we always see the success Like the highlights reel of other authors, right, we see the Instagram moment where the TV deal gets done. And some authors now actually make a point of talking about but you know, this book took 15 years in the making. And when you see the TV deal, it wasn't like, you know, I wrote the book and banged it out in a year like this was tough. But you can't always do that. Right? Every moment of triumph can't be yes, but in the same post, and so I love when authors share that because there's always so much struggle behind the successes. And I think, you know, we should never compare ourselves to other people's highlight reels, because it's not an accurate picture. And comparison is just the thief of creativity and joy in this.
Ashley Hasty 15:39
I did a blog post just recently, where I invited 25 authors to share their failures. Those things that did not work out according to plan, manuscripts that are still in the drawer, whatever they they felt was a failure, which is really we know, just a stepping stone to something greater. But that was one of the most powerful posts because it aired, all of their dirty laundry will say, their failures. And it was so inspiring. There were debut authors who shared there were really well established authors who shared authors that you think just made it overnight and really had written four or five manuscripts before they ever got one published. So I would love to explore more of those stories on the podcast too.
Lainey Cameron 16:24
Awesome. And isn't that funny that we both like appreciate and went after the same topic, I'll make sure that we put the link to that, that blog post in the show notes as well, so folks can read it. And I'm excited to read actually. So I'm so excited. We are going on a journey together here. Like you said, as colleagues, this is gonna be a blast, and I can't wait to get going and work with you towards 2022.
Ashley Hasty 16:46
Me, either 2022 cannot come fast enough. I'm really excited to get started.
Lainey Cameron 16:51
Well, I hope everybody enjoys their holiday season. We're almost at the end of the season. I think we only have a couple more episodes to go and then we'll be wrapping up for 2021 and I only have one left to record so we're very close at this point. And then watch for that farm, everybody if you want to be considered for 2022 It's coming within the next few days.
Ashley Hasty 17:10
I mean, this was a lot of fun.