Friday, September 5, 2008

"The Custom of the Army"

WARRIORS anthology – "The Custom of the Army."

WARRIORS is a cool, multi-genre, multi-author anthology with stories on the theme of…well, warriors. I haven't yet really started work on LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER (the third Lord John novel)--and won't, until after ECHO goes to bed-- but I am using Lord John for my contribution to this anthology, which I'm titling "The Custom of the Army":

" On balance, it was probably the fault of the electric eel. John Grey could--and for a time, did--blame the Honorable Caroline Woodford as well. In all justice to the lady, though, she certainly hadn't meant him to fight a duel, and had been appalled at the outcome. The fact remained that if it had not been for the Honorable Caroline, he wouldn't be in Canada, hip-deep in Indians and Highlanders, and facing one of the most disagreeable prospects he had encountered in a long career of soldiering. Still...no, it was the eel's fault."


Thus begins a story that takes us from a duel in London to the Plains of Abraham. The anthology doesn't yet have a publication date, but it does have a publisher. Tor will be publishing WARRIORS, and presumably _sometime_ in 2009. Check my website (www.dianagabaldon.com) or theirs
(http://us.macmillan.com/TorForge.aspx) for announcements next year. In the meantime, I'll put an excerpt from "Custom" in the next posting.
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7 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 5, 2008 at 4:55 PM

    I saw this on the excerpts board and went over to Compuserve to read it. Eel parties... what a shocking experience (snerk!) What people did for entertainment before TV! : ) Bizarre!

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  2. MerrymagsSeptember 5, 2008 at 9:03 PM

    Dear Diana:

    I feel as though I've won the Lottery and the pay out is all of these wonderful excerpts. Woo hoo! It almost seems gluttonous.

    Midge

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  3. Linda M AuSeptember 6, 2008 at 6:55 AM

    Wait, I already own three Lord John novels, so wouldn't this one be the fourth? (Am reading Brotherhood of the Blade right now. I just love how Jamie shows up in these novels too.)

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  4. Diana GabaldonSeptember 6, 2008 at 10:21 AM

    Dear Linda--

    No, "The Custom of the Army" is (as I just said in the explanation you're replying to [cough, cough]) a _novella_ (it's about 23,000 words), which will be published in an _anthology_ (a collection of short(er) pieces)by multiple authors.

    LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS, for instance, is a collection of three novellas: "Hellfire Club," "Succubus," and "Haunted Soldier".

    If and when I should come up with another couple of Lord John novellas (for other anthologies, or just because [g]), I might then be able to publish those _with_ "Custom" in another volume. That's not likely to happen for a few years, though, since when you do a piece for an anthology, you normally keep the reprint rights--but agree that you won't use them for something like two years after the original publication of the anthology (since the anthologists, reasonably enough, don't want your reprint to be competing with their book).

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  5. Linda M AuSeptember 6, 2008 at 10:27 AM

    Aha, there was my mistake, although it wasn't about The Custom of the Army. I was commenting on this one line: "I haven't yet really started work on LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER (the third Lord John novel)...

    And although I have Lord John and the Hand of Devils on my bookshelf, I am still immersed in Brotherhood of the Blade and hadn't yet opened HoD to realize it was not itself a novel but rather a collection of novellas. My bad!

    (I'm reading your books s-l-o-w-l-y so I can spread out the Gabaldonly goodness throughout the time in between new works.) ;0(

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  6. Elisha EdwardsOctober 6, 2009 at 8:08 PM

    Diana
    Thanks for the outlander series! They are my favorite books ever! You are an amazing writer,don't know how u do it. Echo was great too. I didn't expect the cliff hangers. They were gut-wrenching. I can't imagine what it takes or the time involved to write a book like that, but i beg u to get the 8th book out as soon as possible. I heard u already started the 8th and are almost done. Is that true? I hope so, but if not ill just patiently wait. Thanks again for the great reading

    I look forward to the graphic novel in 2010 too.

    Also what about the series with the reporter in arizona? I read the excerps from your webpage and it looks great, but cant find it any where.

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  7. Elisha EdwardsOctober 6, 2009 at 8:10 PM

    sorry got carried away looking for a place to write to u and clearly blogged at a place where u were discussing the LJ books.

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