• “The smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting 'Scrooge McDuck' comics.”—Salon.com
  • A time-hopping, continent-spanning salmagundi of genres.”
    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
  • “These books have to be word-of-mouth books because they're too weird to describe to anybody.”
    —Jackie Cantor, Diana's first editor

Tag Archive for ‘Diana Gabaldon’ rss

Well, THIS oughta take your minds off the election for a little while…

“Well, THIS oughta take your minds off the election for a little while….(don’t forget to vote, though!)….

7-Book E-book Bundle!

Random House announces a Halloween Treat! They’re offering all seven of the extant OUTLANDER novels AS E-BOOKS, in a 7-book bundle for $49.99. Which is pretty good, I think. Here’s the link for the Nook version at barnesandnoble.com and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-outlander-series-7-book-bundle-diana-gabaldon/1112927368?ean=9780345541109 Here’s the link for the Kindle version at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Outlander-Series-7-Book-Bundle-ebook/dp/B009C9C77E/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351598745&sr=1-9&keywords=outlander

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION on Availability of the SHORT PIECES

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION on the SHORT PIECES Well, it’s like this. Over the last few years, I’ve written several novellas for various anthologies. (An anthology is a set of stories on a common theme, written by a number of different authors.) The thing is, anthologies don’t usually stay in print for a long time, so the stories will revert to the writer after some period of time—and then the writer can sell them again through other publishers or publishing venues. My old stories are starting to come back to me (that sounds mildly sinister, doesn’t it? Like ghosts…), so I’m figuring out how to make them freshly available, since some anthologies are less easy to find now, and some readers don’t want to buy an anthology for the sake of one story by a favorite author. Now, because publishing rights are Just Plain Weird, I have back the rights to publish some stories in some territories, but not (yet) in others. Basically, I have back the rights to four stories that can […]

THE METHADONE LIST – THE SKYBOUND SEA

THE METHADONE LIST: THE SKYBOUND SEA To answer a frequently-asked question of late: No, I’m not going to DragonCon. (I got home from Younger Daughter’s wedding and a short recuperative stay in the UK just day before yesterday. I have to stay home and write!) BUT….Sam Sykes, epic fantasy author (and brother of the bride) came home from the wedding much earlier, has already recovered from the festivities (in spite of being struck in the face with a handful of rice thrown by an inebriated guest shouting “Viva los Novios!”), and _will_ be attending DragonCon, at which he’s launching his third novel, THE SKYBOUND SEA (published in the US by Pyr Books; UK publication happens a little later this fall, published by Orion/Gollancz). [Pyr booth, #709 at DragonCon, Marriott Marquis Hotel] Scott Lynch says of Sam’s books: “Sam Sykes does blood and noise in the liveliest tradition of contemporary fantasy, with all the brash vigor of youth, and with a sly, penetrating sensitivity all his own. Not many writers can […]

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 frequently—but not exclusively—with secondary characters, are prequels or sequels, and/or fill some lacuna left in the original story lines. Now. Most of the shorter novels (so far) fit within a large lacuna left in the middle of VOYAGER, in the years between 1757 and 1761. Some of the Bulges also fall in this period; others don’t. So, for the reader’s convenience, here is a detailed Chronology, showing the sequence of the various elements in terms of the storyline. _However, it should be noted that the shorter novels and novellas are all […]

HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES

Copyright © 2012 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved/ I wrote the short piece below on request for a Canadian magazine called Chatelaine, in 2012. 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. This short piece has also been expanded into an ebook titled I GIVE YOU MY BODY (HOW I WRITE SEX SCENES), which was released in 2016. Click on the cover image at right for more information. 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 emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation to exultation, tenderness, or surprise. Lust is not an emotion; it’s a one-dimensional hormonal response. Ergo, while you can mention lust in a sex-scene, describing it at any great length is like going on about […]

Deal with Sony Pictures for Adaptation of OUTLANDER for Cable TV Series

Look here and here and here etc., etc., etc., as the King of Siam might put it. [g] Really, if you Google “Ron D. Moore OUTLANDER”, you’ll find a _lot_ of announcements like these. most of them reasonably accurate.

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 visually pleasing (to them) formation that has nothing to do with what’s actually _in_ the books. Now, putting aside any of my private opinions regarding the psychology that causes people to value Tidiness Uber Alles, tidiness _qua_ tidiness has two possible aspects that recommend it as a virtue: aesthetics and/or function. As to aesthetics, I’ll just note that there are people who like Gustav Klimt and there are people who like Mondrian, and leave it at that. [g] Aesthetics rests on […]

A Guided Tour of Diana’s Bookshelves…

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 material. The books live in bookshelves. Loose papers, maps, reprinted emails, etc. go into one of three zippered… things. (I can’t really describe them; they’re about the size of small briefcases, but made of nylon fabric, mesh on one side, and they zip on three sides.) The red one holds all the printed miscellanea for the contemporary mystery that I’ll eventually get round to finishing, the black one has stuff about the Lord John stories’ background—maps of […]

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 idiom for the backside of beyond. It was an entertaining search, during which we discovered that all kinds of cultures have an idiom that pretty much means, “Out in the sticks,” if not absolutely, “Farther away than nowhere.” The British do not use “BF Egypt,” which seemed odd in light of their expeditionary and exploratory history in the desert regions. Still, they do seem aware of their adventurous heritage: current British idiom is “in the bundu”—“bundu” being an African word (specific […]