On Inspiration: Interview with Samantha Greene Woodruff

My guest today is Samantha Greene Woodruff who is the author of two #1 Amazon bestselling historical fiction novels, The Lobotomist’s Wife and The Trade Off. Sam has a BA in history from Wesleyan University and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business. She spent fifteen years at Viacom’s Nickelodeon before leaving to parent her two young children. After studying in the continuing education program at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Woodruff completed her first novel, The Lobotomist’s Wife, which was an Amazon First Reads pick. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Writer’s Digest, Female First, Read 650 and more. In addition, she has contributed an essay entitled “Jew-ish” about her lifelong conflicted relationship with Judaism, to the USA Today bestselling anthology, On Being Jewish Now (2024) edited by Zibby Owens. All proceeds from the book go to Artists Against Antisemitism, a non-profit founded in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel. Woodruff lives in southern Connecticut with her husband, two children, two dogs and a small reptile zoo.

You can connect with Samantha via her website, Instagram, Facebook and Threads.

You can follow Samantha and buy her books on Amazon.

What or who inspired you to first write?

I’m not sure there was one person or book that inspired me to start writing. I always loved to write, but it was a very personal outlet – I used creative writing more like journaling. Professionally I wrote tons of strategy presentations and reports analysing things like TV ratings (I worked on the business side at Nickelodeon.) The first time I tried to write a novel in earnest was in 2015 when I took a beginning novel writing continuing education class at Sarah Lawrence College. I discovered that I loved writing fiction and that writing a novel was a specific skill I wanted to hone. Fun fact: Annabel Monaghan was my first writing teacher.

Which authors have influenced you?

As far as influence, like most writers, I’m a reader, so I think I’ve taken a little from many books I’ve read in my life. I’ve long loved historical fiction so, when I decided to start off in that genre, I looked to some of the contemporary greats like Beatriz Williams, Kristen Hannah, Kate Quinn, Martha Hall Kelly. They all do such a terrific job of putting the reader in the time and place in which their books are set and keeping the pages turning with compelling characters and story.

What is the inspiration for your current book? Is there a particular theme you wished to explore?

My inspiration for The Trade Off came from a 2021 event in the stock market, the GameStop “short squeeze.” GameStop was a business in decline and one prominent hedge fund manager was short the stock, when the price started to soar, costing the hedge funder a fortune. It grabbed headlines because the people who drove up the price were a group of amateur investors—mostly day traders who were home because of the pandemic—who banded together to “stick it” to what they perceived to be “evil” hedge funder. It was dramatic and personal, the hedge fund investor was reviled on social media and even received death threats.

The stock market had never interested me before, even though I have an MBA and am married to an investor, but the human piece of the GameStop story piqued my interest. I think there is this assumption that most of the very rich, especially in finance, are evil and greedy while the poor are good. But is it accurate to tie make moral and ethical judgements of a person to their wealth?  Nothing is ever that black and white. I wanted to wade into the grey area.

What period of history particularly inspires or interests you? Why?

I am relatively time-period agnostic. I go to the period that makes sense for my story, or perhaps, the era I which an interesting person who I want to write about lived. Right now, I’m working on a dual-timeline book where the “historical” period is in Romania in the 1980s. The one thing that I know is that I tend to avoid WWII, so many authors do such a wonderful job writing about numerous aspects of this time in history, but it isn’t one that I want to tackle.

What resources do you use to research your book? How long did it take to finish the novel?

I start with articles I find on the internet and then go to books. For The Trade Off, there were a wealth of sources about the stock market crash of ’29, the roaring ‘20s, the Jewish immigrant experience on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Wall Street in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the same was not true of women on Wall Street in that era. I found a total of three books on the subject and a few articles that were excerpts from the same books. Ultimately, I connected with the author of one of these and interviewed him several times. I also chatted with archivists at the NASDAQ and J.P. Morgan Chase. I wrote the first draft for The Trade Off in eight months. Then I had two intense editing periods, one for six weeks and the other for three. I sold this book on proposal, so the timeline was tight!

What do you do if stuck for a word or a phrase?

I put the idea I want to communicate in square brackets and move on. I know I will find a better way to say it when I go back later.

Do you use a program like Scrivener to create your novel? Do you ever write in long hand?

I wrote my first two novels in Word. But when I finished my drafts, I made a PowerPoint presentation that was essentially index cards summarizing each chapter, which I then used to move things around as I edited. For the novel I’m working on now, I’m attempting to use Scrivener. I’m fairly certain that I am using about 1% of its capacity but just being able to slide a whole scene to a new spot feels like a win for me.

Is there a particular photo or piece of art that strikes a chord with you? Why?

I was recently introduced to the photography of Karen Knorr and it is just spectacular. She has this series of animals in ornate, exotic settings that I could just marvel at for hours.

What advice would you give an aspiring author?

Becoming a published author takes strength and perseverance. You must be continually self-motivated and believe in yourself even when you feel like a fraud and a failure. Unfortunately, publishing is a business, and these days most authors have to do a lot of hustling to sell books. You are an entrepreneur establishing a new product: you and your writing. So, yes, you need to sit down and write; and, yes, you need to have the stamina to keep coming back to the page day after day, but you also must be willing to market yourself, to network and make connections, to participate in the author world. The good news is that, in my experience, authors are some of the most wonderful and supportive people I’ve ever come across. Oh, and find your writing “tribe.” This is a vulnerable career, and it is so important to have a person, or people, who are in it too and can be there for you in the high moments and the low ones. If you don’t know other aspiring writers, workshop groups or classes are a great way to meet them

Tell us about your next book.

I am working on two ideas at parallel right now.

The first, which I mentioned briefly above, is a dual timeline story that takes place in New York City in essentially the present day and communist Romania in the 1980s. It is about a woman who discovers that she was a Romanian orphan adopted right after the collapse of communism in 1989, who goes on a journey to find out the truth about her past. And, the story of her mother, a true believer in communist propaganda in Romania in the last years of the Ceausescu rule, who comes to see the truth about the evil dictators, with painful consequences.

The second is a new genre for me: contemporary social satire/suspense. One year after making the move from Manhattan to one of the tiniest towns in the world, Greenwich, CT, a 30-something young mother thinks she’s finally figure out how to navigate in a world where everything is a competition. She has a a small group of true friends, a ridiculous waterfront home (thanks to her husband’s entrepreneurial success) and a happy three-year-old daughter in the best preschool around. But as she struggles to conceive her second child, odd, taunting things start happening: overly-personal gifts arrive on her doorstep, anonymous emails about her darkest struggles start to populate her in-box, her most sentimental keepsakes begin to disappear from her house. Suddenly, she wonders if her new friends and this town are really as perfect as they seem, or if this move has become the greatest threat to the future she always dreamed of.

A brilliant and ambitious young woman strives to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street in a captivating historical novel by the author of The Lobotomist’s Wife.

Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market’s stocks and patterns in the financial pages. After college she’s determined to parlay her talent for the prediction game into personal and professional success. But in the 1920s, in a Lower East Side tenement, opportunities for women don’t just come knocking. Bea will have to create them.

It’s easier for her golden-boy twin brother, Jake, who longs to reclaim all their parents lost after fleeing the pogroms in Russia to come to America. Well intentioned but undisciplined, Jake has a charm that can carry him only so far on Wall Street. So Bea devises a plan. They’ll be a secret team, and she’ll be the brains behind the broker. As Jake’s reputation, his heedless ego, and the family fortune soar, Bea foresees catastrophe: an impending crash that could destroy everything if she doesn’t finally take control.

Inspired by the true story of a pioneering investment legend, The Trade Off is a powerful novel about identity, sacrifice, family loyalties, and the complex morality of money.

Thanks Samantha – what a terrific storyline for a book! Thanks for sharing your inspiration and insights.

You can buy The Trade Off here.

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