Diana Gabaldon's Blog, page 22
July 28, 2012
A Chronology of the OUTLANDER series
Chronology of the Outlander series
The Outlander series includes three kinds of stories:
The Big, Enormous Books that have no discernible genre (or all of them);
The Shorter, Less Indescribable Novels that are more or less historical mysteries (though dealing also with battles, eels, and mildly deviant sexual practices);
And
The Bulges—These being short(er) pieces that fit somewhere inside the story lines of the novels, much in the nature of squirming prey swallowed by a large snake. These deal fr...
July 23, 2012
HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES
HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES
Copyright 2012 Diana Gabaldon
[This is a short piece that I wrote on request for a Canadian magazine called Chatelaine, earlier this year. I have the reprint rights back, though, and since a Twitter acquaintance recently expressed a desire to “write smut”—I thought I’d at least provide him with the basics.]
Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emoti...
July 22, 2012
Deal with Sony Pictures for Adaptation of OUTLANDER for Cable TV Series
July 12, 2012
A Brief Footnote on Tidiness
I’m as fascinated by y’all’s responses to my bookshelves as y’all are by the books, etc. [g] It seems to be about 20:1 in terms of “OMG, this looks just like my shelves!/I love it!” vs. “What a mess!/How can you FIND anything!/Let me come and organize that for you!”
I appreciate both schools of thought—and my sincere thanks to the kind souls who think I would do better (in some undefined way), if my books were alphabetized, sorted by color, arranged by height, or generally tidied into a visual...
July 8, 2012
A GUIDED TOUR OF DIANA’S BOOKSHELVES…Part 1
I get a lot of questions about what I read, what resources I find “useful”, how much research I do, etc., etc. And when interviewers come to talk to me at home, they always want to see my office, and frequently spend half an hour or more browsing my bookshelves in fascination. So I thought y’all might want to have a peek, too.
(One question I often get is about how I organize my material. It is to larf, as John Lennon so eloquently put it. I have two—no, three—ways of organizing research mater...
June 26, 2012
THE BACKSIDE OF BEYOND, and other ways of describing nowhere
When you start wondering where a figure of speech came from, you sometimes find yourself on dark literary backroads, if not actually in BF Egypt.
It was during a search for the town of Waldo, New Mexico that my husband described our extremely rural surroundings as “BF Egypt.” And such is the nature of our car conversations on these occasions, I was shortly whipping out my iPhone in an effort to discover just why “B*** F*** Egypt” (to use the full (more or less) expression) should be a common...
HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY(S)!
The German version of THE SCOTTISH PRISONER (now called, for some inscrutable German reason, DIE FACKELN DER FREIHEIT (“The Torches of Freedom”. Don’t ask me, I have _no_ idea…)) is now out!
And…the trade paperback edition of THE SCOTTISH PRISONER is now out in the US and—I hope—Canada!
IF you’d like a signed copy (of either of these, or anything else, for that matter [g])…please go to www.poisonedpen.com. You can order any of my books there, and if you’d like a signature or personal inscriptio...
June 5, 2012
MUST-READ for NURSES! Quite an honor!
I was Charmed to be informed that the Licensed Practical Nurse to Registered Nurse site has chosen OUTLANDER as one of its (Fiction) Must-Read books for Nurses! Thanks so much to you, and all the nursing profession!
May 30, 2012
The SCOTTISH PRISONER now out in paperback!
THE SCOTTISH PRISONER is out TODAY (well, yesterday…sort of…I work late, OK?) in trade paperback, for the US and Canada! (It came out in paperback already in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.)
Besides the story–half Jamie, half Lord John (and below is the beginning of the book)–this book also includes several preview excerpts from WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD, the next upcoming OUTLANDER novel. Some of you will already have seen some of these excerpts, some of you won’t. FYI, the excerpts...
May 10, 2012
THE METHADONE LIST – TWO ROBERTS
THE METHADONE LIST – Good Crime Fiction by a Couple of Roberts What I Know: Rob Byrnes and Robert Dugoni
I was amused, but pleased, to have my novella, “Lord John and the Plague of Zombies” recently nominated for an Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America, for “Best Short Mystery Story” of 2011. Given that that particular story is not exactly a mystery, and certainly isn’t short [g], I didn’t really expect to win (which was a good thing, since I didn’t), but certainly was flattered to be...
