Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Daniel Willard
Book Title: The Mobster’s Daughter
Released: 11/13/24
Genre: YA Coming-of Age/Romance Fiction
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “The Mobster’s Daughter”?
Willard: I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which at the time (1960s-80s) had an unfortunately well-deserved reputation for political corruption and organized crime. They called it “Little Chicago” for a reason! My father was an elected official, so I had a front-row seat to a lot of the “excitement.” In March of 2023, one of my sons gave me a book about Youngstown, Crimetown USA: the History of the Mahoning Valley Mafia, by Allan R. May. (Good book, by the way.) As I was reading it, I saw a lot of names I recognized, including people I met personally dozens of times. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and that got me thinking and plotting out a story about mob conflicts in Youngstown during the time I was growing up. I started putting together my plot timeline in May ‘23, and wrote a couple of chapters about the same time, as much to establish my narrative style as anything. One of the first scenes I came up with had a mob boss stopping in at my old high school and arm-twisting the principal into making his illegitimate daughter the homecoming queen. As I kept working on the story, I realized that I was enjoying the subplot involving the daughter and her boyfriend, whose father is an FBI agent, more than the main story, and that it could be a novel all by itself—and so I turned that subplot into The Mobster’s Daughter.
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Willard: I tried to come up with names for most characters that would sound authentically Youngstown, which had a lot of distinctly ethnic neighborhoods and social groupings at the time--so you get the Irish-American Flanigan family who attend the Irish parish on the West Side, St. Brendan's and belong to the Irish-American social club, the AOH. "Carly" is a name I always liked, so I gave the title character a name (Carlotta, which is appropriately Italian) that could be shortened to that. There are some minor characters—TV news people and a radio talk show host—who are historic people.
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Willard: I’m married, with two adult children and one baby granddaughter. I’m on my third career: I started out as a schoolteacher, went to law school and was in private practice for 25 years, and for the last six years I’ve been an in-house lawyer and executive for a software company. Writing stories is something I’ve always wanted to do, but I’m not looking to quit my day job . . . just yet, anyway.
If "The Mobster’s Daughter" were adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Willard: Danny and Carly would have to be played by unknown teenage actors in their first major role. Danny’s father and mother would be someone along the lines of Jim Caviezel (Person of Interest) and Janine Turner (Northern Exposure). Mob boss Carlo would be played by Domenick Lombardozzi (Boardwalk Empire, Rosewood, Reacher).
When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Willard: If I'm sitting at the keyboard and not accomplishing anything, I either work on another part of the story (each chapter is a separate word processor file) or just take a break.
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Willard: I’ve tried writing stories before without having a roadmap, and it never worked out. This time, I had a timeline and a destination mapped out, and that helped me persist until I had a finished product. Approach writing your story systematically—know where it’s going and how it’s going to get there—but remain open to discovering things along the way.
What is your favorite book, genre, and/or author?
Willard: Hard to say. I read a lot of science fiction, techno-thrillers, history, and historical fiction. The two writers who’ve given me the most inspiration are novelist Tom Clancy and naval historian Jonathan Parshall. Both were successful in other careers and took up writing as a hobby, did it well enough to quit their day jobs and become full-time authors, and turned out two of the best books I have ever read: The Hunt for Red October and Shattered Sword: the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, respectively.
What are you working on next?
Willard: When I started working out the character relationships for what eventually became The Mobster's Daughter I decided, for no particular reason, that Nguyen, Danny’s youngest sister, was adopted. That detail turned out to resonate rather nicely with the main story arc, and a few people have told me that Nguyen was their favorite character. I've started writing the story of her adoption and how the Flanigan family adapted to her, and she to them; the title is The Leprechaun from Saigon. I also still have the outline and a few chapters of the larger mob war story (which I call Youngstown Tune-Up), so I’m thinking I will finish that up at some point. Neither will be exactly a sequel or a prequel to The Mobster’s Daughter. All three stories take place in the same sort-of-fictional universe and involve the same people and there will be a fair bit of overlap in the timelines.
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