Ahhhhh.... NaNoWriMo has finally arrived and I am writing into the small hours on this challenge. A wonderful opportunity to make some real progress on this historical fiction novel. I've been gathering information on this one for a long time, and had to overcome some serious obstacles to get this back on track. But I have done so now, in part thanks to Writers Victoria's short course on Writing from History, which has been instrumental in providing research and structural pathways as well as renewed momentum. I have scaffolded the entire work now and begun in earnest this journey back in time, to an era before my own time, when the little girl who would become my mother faced the onslaught of war in her beloved village of Helmond in the south of Holland, when this tiny country found itself in the crossfire between Germany and England.