I’m Ian Clarence, a British computer programmer and the writer of Trees from Ashes. This is my first sustained fiction project, although some of its characters have been in my imagination for many years.
Joe and Rosanna MacKail were a brother and sister whose story I kept returning to. I tried more than once to turn it into a novel. The names changed, the drafts stalled, and I never quite found the shape of the story. I had also imagined their grandfather, Tom MacKail, whose life is told in Shoots from the Ash. Joe and Rosanna’s story now runs through Where Branches Meet, Fruits from the Ash and Woman in the Frame.
I always knew that the family’s roots lay in Scotland, that they later made a life in Ireland and eventually crossed to America after the Great Famine. When I began working on Roots in the Ash with an AI writing and research assistant, we explored what might credibly have driven them from Scotland. The family’s earlier history took shape from that question. I had also carried an idea for years: that, in the story, Killiecrankie Farm stood on the site of a former Franciscan friary, with a hidden well beneath it.
I have continued that collaboration through research, planning, drafting and revision. I shape the resulting material, check how each new detail fits the rest of the family’s story, and make the final decisions about what belongs in the books.
My background in programming has proved useful for keeping track of dates, relationships and what each character could reasonably know. The research has taken me into history, politics and social change, and later into the music and film worlds that shape Joe and Rosanna’s lives. I have learnt a great deal while writing these books, and I am still learning.
Trees from Ashes is a debut project and an ongoing journey of discovery for me. I write in British English and publish as Ian Clarence.