Goodreads asked Clive Warner:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Clive Warner I've already used that plot device. As a kid, I wondered what had happened to Uncle Buddy, whose photo in army uniform sat on the mantelpiece. My mother wouldn't discuss it and I failed to ask my grandparents until it was too late. I discovered much later in life that he'd died in his Seaforth barracks of the 'flu, before he'd ever fired a shot.
I used this as the driver of the 1942 part of my historical novel, When Things Go Bang. The main story is set in 1959. Uncle Buddy emerges from a stain in the wallpaper in young Jim's bedroom, and takes him back to 1942, where he has to fight - and die - in the Battle of Alamein, against Rommel's final attempt to beat Montgomery.
Buddy becomes Jim's mentor, helping him to negotiate serious problems in his 1959 life.
I loved writing the story and acknowledge the help I got from Critique Circle during its rewrite. Last year I visited the UK and went for lunch at the village pub, and it was obvious that some of the older residents hated the novel because it paints the 1959 village as a very bizarre, cranky place!

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