DJ Taylor shares an incredible family story which inspired Anna’s War and her process of shaping Anna into a resilient and inspiring protagonist.

What inspired you to become an author? What do you love most about writing?

For me writing is magic. I start with a blank screen and with black strokes I can create a world very different from my own and be transported to other times and places. When writing fiction I’m a pantser writer and I enjoy finding out what will happen next without any planning whatsoever.

Anna’s War is your debut novel. Were there any parts of the process you found surprising or challenging?

I started writing Anna’s War in late 2019. Anna’s War was a story I had to write, it simply wouldn’t leave me alone. In some ways, it was a relief to start writing it and once I started it happened very quickly. 

I wrote the first draft in seven weeks. That surprised me! I committed to writing one chapter a day. Sometimes a chapter took 30 mins and other times a couple of hours to complete. The first draft was 32,000 words. Although the final story is now about 62,000 words, the core of the story never changed with each new draft.

I found the entire process of writing the first draft very enjoyable. I looked forward to sitting at my desk each morning to see what happened next. I’m a very organised person, I like to plan, so it also surprised me that I had such an open-ended approach to writing the storyline. The story had control of me rather than the other way around.

You’ve said that this book was inspired by your mother-in-law. What was it like to learn about this part of your family’s history?

Yes, my elderly parents-in-law, especially my mother-in-law were the inspiration for Anna’s War. They spent their formative childhood years living under Nazi occupation in southern Netherlands. They lived in different villages and had different experiences and would often talk about them. One day about six years ago my mother-in-law, Catherina, mentioned that she helped hide her father in a secret cellar under their house to avoid deportation to Germany. She had never mentioned this before. When I did some initial research I found it compelling and it was a story that had to be told.

It’s devastating to learn how innocent families, especially children, can be caught up in a war and the effect it has on their lives and outlook on life.

Anna’s War is set in the Netherlands during World War II. What sort of research did you do in order to create an authentic and properly representative story?

I did very little research before writing the first draft. The exception was reading about the forced deportation of Dutch men to work as slaves in German factories. I initially concentrated on telling a story and relied on the oral history of my parents-in-law. They migrated to Australia in the late fifties and have never read any books on the war and had seen very few documentaries so the first draft was based on their memories. However, I was conscious that memories can be a tricky thing but found that when I researched the war’s events there was a high correlation between their oral history and formal documents and other people’s accounts.

My parents-in-law guided me throughout the writing process as to the whether the scenarios I created could have occurred.

Anna is an incredibly brave and resilient character. What was your process of bringing her to life?

I was determined to have a girl for the main character not only because she is inspired by my mother-in-law’s experiences but because I wanted to recognise all the girls and women who sit unknown on the edges of history when they have made a major contribution.

The world Anna lives in and the choices she makes are rooted in real-life acts of bravery and sacrifice. After the completion of the first draft, Anna had no character arc and I didn’t like her at all. I had to give her a backbone and it took many drafts to develop her character from being an unsure, hesitant girl to the brave, wonderful girl that she becomes.

What do you most hope readers will take away from Anna’s War?

What I most hope readers take away from Anna’s War is a deeper understanding of the strength and resilience that can be found in ordinary families during extraordinary times. When the world turns upside down—through war, occupation, or political upheaval—it’s often families who bear the burden and quietly carry each other through. In Anna’s War, we see how love, loyalty, and sacrifice within a family can become a lifeline when everything else feels uncertain or dangerous.

I also want readers to reflect on how the major political decisions made by those in power ripple down to affect the most innocent—especially children. Anna’s story is one of countless others where young people are forced to grow up quickly, face moral dilemmas, and make impossible choices simply because of the political circumstances they’re born into. History doesn’t just happen on battlefields or in government buildings—it happens in kitchens, schoolyards, and living rooms, and it leaves its mark on the people who live through it.

You also have a passion for watercolour painting. Do you have any plans to illustrate any stories in the future?

Illustrating books is such a specialist field. I’ll leave it up to the talented artists who do such a wonderful job.

Do you have any other projects in the works?

The sequel to Anna’s War is running around in my head. Anna’s War started like that so one day I think we may see Josephine’s Journey.