And Now for Something Completely Different...

There doesn't seem to be any way to include a playable mp3 file in one of these blogs, so I'm going to provide a link, here.

What is this? Well...

When I went to Edinburgh last year, I met a lovely gentleman named Mike Gibb, a lyricist/playwright, who said that he'd fallen in love with OUTLANDER, and that he and his friend, composer Kevin Walsh, would like to do a song-cycle--a musical telling of the story in the form of 14 or 15 songs. (There's a possibility that this song-cycle might eventually be the bones of a stage production, but for now, it's just songs.)

So this is one of the songs. I'm going to put up a full-scale announcement on my website a little later this week, describing the project, and giving the address from which those interested can order a CD of the Whole Thing, and am planning to post this particular song with the announcement, as sort of a free sample. So I thought I'd try it out on you guys, first.

(Note that the copyright to this song is mine, and I got Kevin and Mike's permission for y'all to download--and share if you like--this song for free. Hope you enjoy it!)

Appearance this weekend - Flagstaff Celtic Festival

APPEARANCE! - July 17th – FLAGSTAFF CELTIC FESTIVAL!

Owing to the knee surgery, I’m not going many places in June and July. One exception, though, is the Flagstaff Celtic Festival, which is held on the 17th and 18th of this month, at Foxglenn Park.

This increasingly popular festival features “heavy events” (caber-tossing, hammer-throwing, etc.) and Highland Dance, as well as bag-piping, music by popular Scottish performers, whisky-tasting (and beer-drinking), and the odd special event, such as me.

Now, the Festival does run two days, but I’ll be there ONLY on the 17th, this Saturday. I’ll be doing a reading at 1 PM (readings and performances are usually either _in_ the beer tent, or close by), and will be signing books (which will be available for sale) for a couple of hours afterward.

What will I be reading? No idea, but there _might_ be a few pieces of Book Eight, picking up cliffhangers from ECHO [g]—and/or bits from new short pieces featuring Roger MacKenzie’s parents, or Young Ian’s brother Michael. Or, just possibly, a few bits from LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER. Whatever it is, it’ll probably be interesting—or at least I hope so. [g]

See you there!

[For further information, see www.nachs.info, the website of the Northern Arizona Celtic Heritage Society, sponsor of the Festival.]

UK Mass-market edition of ECHO - Sept. 30

Now, let me note that the UK readers are not left out of the paperback ECHO celebrations! True, British/Australian/New Zealand fans don’t get the famous Green Slime trade paperback, nor do they get the EXILE eight-page full-color excerpt. Nor do you get THE EXILE itself, unless you can convince Orion Books that there is indeed a market for graphic novels on your side the pond. [g] On the other hand…

September 30th heralds the publication of the UK mass-market paperback edition (that’s the smaller size) of AN ECHO IN THE BONE! Besides the very snazzy cover shown above (it’s actually covered with gold flakes, not just yellow; very eye-catching, though not green [g]), you also get a nice chunk of what the UK publisher tantalizingly describes as “end-matter.” [cough]

This is stuff they put at the end of the book, in hopes of providing new purchasers with something special. In this case, UK fans will get:
1) Potted biographies of a number of prominent characters,
2) An essay on the Life and Times of Scotland in the 18th century (not written by me, but a nice job by whoever did write it),
3) _Beautiful_ (and geographically correct!) maps, both of the Scottish Highlands, and of the American Colonies, circa 1776. Aaaannnnddd…

4) An excerpt from Book Eight, which tells you What Happened to Jem in the Tunnel. Which I will give you a small taste of here….

Excerpt BOOK EIGHT
Copyright Diana Gabaldon 2010

He must be getting near the end of the tunnel. Jem could tell by the way the air pushed back against his face. All he could see was the little red light on the train's dashboard--did you call it a dashboard on a train? he wondered. He didn't want to stop, because that meant he'd have to get out of the train, into the dark. But the train was running out of track, so there wasn't much else he could do.


He pulled back a little bit on the lever that made the train go, and it slowed down. More. Just a little more, and the lever clicked into a kind of slot and the train stopped with a little jerk that made him stumble and grab the edge of the cab.


An electric train didn't make any engine noise, but the wheels rattled on the track and the train made squeaks and clunks as it moved. When it stopped, the noise stopped too. It was really quiet.


"Hey!" he said out loud, because he didn't want to listen to his heart beating. The sound echoed, and he looked up, startled. Mum had said the tunnel was really high, more than thirty feet, but he'd forgot that. The idea that there was a lot of empty space hanging over him that he couldn't see bothered him a lot. He swallowed, and stepped out of the tiny engine, holding on to the frame with one hand.


"Hey!" he shouted at the invisible ceiling. "Are there any bats up there?"


Silence. He'd kind of been hoping there were bats. He wasn't afraid of them--there were bats in the old broch, and he liked to sit and watch them come out to hunt in the summer evenings. But he was alone. Except for the dark.


His hands were sweating. He let go of the metal cab and scrubbed both hands on his jeans. Now he could hear himself breathing, too.




"Crap," he whispered under his breath. That made him feel better, so he said it again. Maybe he ought to be praying, instead, but he didn't feel like that, not yet.


There was a door, Mum said. At the end of the tunnel. It led into the service chamber, where the big turbines could be lifted up from the dam if they needed fixing. Would the door be locked?


Suddenly he realized that he'd stepped away from the train and he didn't know whether he was facing the end of the tunnel or back the way he'd come. In a panic, he blundered to and fro, hands out, looking for the train. He tripped over part of the track and fell sprawling. He lay there for a second saying "Crap-crap-crap-crap-crap!" because he'd skinned both knees and the palm of his hand, but he was OK, really, and now he knew where the track was, so he could follow it and not get lost.


He got up, wiped his nose, and shuffled slowly along, kicking the track every few steps to be sure he stayed with it. He thought he was in front of where the train had stopped, so it didn't really matter which way he was going--either he'd find the train or he'd find the end of the tunnel. And then the door. If it was locked, maybe--


Something like an electric shock ran right through him. He gasped and fell over backward. …

(You _were_ paying attention, weren’t you, when I told you I was really Black Jack Randall…?)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Echo-Bone-Outlander-7/dp/0752883992/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277250039&sr=8-1

or

www.poisonedpen.com or call them at 480-947-2974. Normally, they can get UK books without much trouble, and I’d be delighted to stop by the bookstore and sign them for you.

The GREEN SLIME thanks you!!

You know, what with knee surgery, new stories, travel, new website developments, etc., etc., etc.—I really hadn’t paid all that much attention to the new Green Slime edition of AN ECHO IN THE BONE, other than to briefly admire the cover. [g]

I find that y’all have been busy, though! I opened my email this morning to hear that the new Green Slime edition has hit the New York Times list—I _think_ that’s the first time one of my trade paperback editions has done that! It’s also #4 on BookScan’s bestseller list, mentioned in USAToday (today), and has stunned the publisher (in a happy way [g]) by selling lots more copies in its first week than the trade paper edition of A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES did—and they thought _that_ was good!

So anyway—MANY thanks to all of you who’ve been buying and (I hope) enjoying the Green Slime version of ECHO. And the publisher bids me tell you that in response to all this great news, they’ve done a deal with Borders and Walden’s bookstores, whereby if you buy one of the Green ECHO’s, you can get another for half off. In case any of you belong to book clubs. [g]

Oh—and do remember that the Green Slime edition has the eight-page excerpt from THE EXILE (the new graphic novel telling Jamie’s side of the story) in the back! Have any of you read that excerpt yet? I’d be Most Interested to hear what you think of it.

A Closer Look

OK—this is what it looks like on the inside. Just had my post-surgery checkup—all well—and the surgeon kindly presented me with a souvenir X-ray of my right leg, with unicompartmental knee in place. [g] (This is, if I’m not mistaken, a back view of my right leg (taken while I was unconscious following surgery). I _think_ that they flipped the negative while making the copy, thus making it look like my left leg.)

Many thanks to all the kind people who’ve sent me flowers, Starbucks cards, get-well cookies, and lovely cards and emails! Buoyed by so many positive vibes, I did get back to work after only a few days of blissful drug-induced stupor [g], and have been beavering away. Mostly on a story for an anthology, which is really due pretty much Right Now, but it’s nearly finished.

This one is for an anthology titled DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS, which has a sort of mystery/thriller-with-fantasy-elements theme. I’m not sure as to the title; I have been calling it “Terror Daemonium” (that’s Latin for “Terror of Demons”—it’s from the Catholic Litany of St. Joseph, in case you couldn’t quite place it), but for the last couple of days have been thinking of calling it “The Space Between.” I’ll know better when it’s finished.

Anyway, the story itself deals with Michael Murray—Young Ian’s elder brother, another of Jamie Fraser’s nephews—whom we saw briefly in AN ECHO IN THE BONE—and with Joan MacKimmie, Marsali’s younger sister, whom we also saw briefly in ECHO.

Joan has a vocation to be a nun, and—there not being many convents in the Highlands—is going to France in order to do so. Michael, junior partner in a flourishing wine business in Paris, has offered to see her safely there. The road to the convent may present a few challenges, though.
This bit takes place on the Channel ferry, taking them across to France. Joan has just gone up for air, leaving the passengers in the cabin.

“Terror Daemonium”
Copyright 2010 Diana Gabaldon

“What a waste of a wonderful arse,” Monsieur Brechin remarked in French, watching Joan’s ascent from the far side of the cabin. “And mon Dieu, those legs! Imagine those wrapped around your back, eh? Would you have her keep the striped stockings on? I would.”

It hadn’t occurred to Michael to imagine that, but he was now having a hard time dismissing the image. He coughed into his handkerchief to hide the reddening of his face.

Madame Brechin gave her husband a sharp elbow in the ribs. He grunted, but seemed undisturbed by what was evidently a normal form of marital communication.

“Beast,” she said, with no apparent heat. “Speaking so of a Bride of Christ. You will be lucky if God Himself doesn’t strike you dead with a lightning bolt.”

“Well, she isn’t His bride yet,” Monsieur protested. “And who created that arse in the first place? Surely God would be flattered to hear a little sincere appreciation of His handiwork. From one who is, after all, a connoisseur in such matters.” He leered affectionately at Madame, who snorted.

A faint snigger from the young man across the cabin indicated that Monsieur was not alone in his appreciation, and Madame turned a reproving glare on the young man. Michael wiped his lips carefully, trying not to catch Monsieur’s eye. His insides were quivering, and not entirely either from amusement or the shock of inadvertent lust. He felt very queer.

Monsieur sighed as Joan’s striped stockings disappeared through the hatchway.

“Christ will not warm her bed,” he said, shaking his head.

“Christ will not fart in her bed, either,” said Madame, taking out her knitting.

“Pardonnez-moi…” Michael said in a strangled voice, and clapping his handkerchief to his mouth, made hastily for the ladder, as though sea-sickness might be catching.

It wasn’t mal-de-mer that was surging up from his belly, though. He caught sight of Joan at the rail, and turned quickly aside, going to the other side, where he gripped the rail s though it were a life-raft, and let the overwhelming waves of grief wash through him. It was the only way he’d been able to manage, these last few weeks. Hold on as long as he could, keeping a cheerful face, until some small unexpected thing, some bit of emotional debris, struck him through the heart like a hunter’s arrow, and then hurry to find a place to hide, curling up on himself in mindless pain until he could get a grip of himself.

This time, it was Madame’s remark that had come like a dart out of the blue, and he grimaced painfully, laughing in spite of the tears that poured down his face, remembering Lili. She’d eaten eels in garlic sauce for dinner—those always made her fart with a silent deadliness, like poison swamp gas. As the ghastly miasma had risen up round him, he’d sat bolt upright in bed, only to find her staring at him, a look of indignant horror on her face.

“How dare you?” she’d said, in a voice of offended majesty. “Really, Michel.”

“You know it wasn’t me!”

Her mouth had dropped open, outrage added to horror and distaste.

“Oh!” she gasped, gathering her small pug-dog to her bosom. “You not only fart like a rotting whale, you attempt to blame it on my poor puppy! Cochon!” Whereupon she had begun to shake the bedsheets delicately, using her free hand to waft the noxious odors in his direction, addressing censorious remarks to Plonplon, who gave Michael a sanctimonious look before turning to lick his mistress’s face with great enthusiasm.

“Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, and sinking down, pressed his face against the rail. “Oh, God, lass, I love you!”

He shook, silently, head buried in his arms, aware of sailors passing now and then behind him, but none of them took notice of him. At last the agony eased a little, and he drew breath.

All right, then. He’d be all right now, for a time. And he thanked God, belatedy, that he had Joan—or Sister Gregory, if she liked—to look after for a bit. He didn’t know how he’d manage to walk through the streets of Paris to his house, alone. Go in, greet the servants, face their sorrow, order a meal, sit down…and all the time wanting to throw himself on the floor of their empty bedroom and howl like a lost soul. He’d have to face it, sooner or later—but not just yet. And right now, he’d take the grace of any respite that offered.

He blew his nose with resolution, tucked away his mangled handkerchief, and went downstairs to fetch the basket his mother had sent. He couldn’t swallow a thing, himself, but feeding Sister Joan would maybe keep his mind off things for that one minute more.

“That’s how ye do it,” his brother Ian had told him, as they leant together on the rail of their mother’s sheep pen, the winter’s wind cold on their faces, waiting for their Da to find his way through dying. “Ye find a way to live for just one more minute. And then another. And another.”

He ‘d wiped his face—he could weep before Ian, while he couldn’t, with his elder brother or the girls, certainly not in front of his mother—and asked, “And it gets better after a time, is that what ye’re telling me?”

His brother had looked at him straight on, the quiet in his eyes showing through the outlandish Mohawk tattoos.

“No,” he’d said softly. “But after a time, ye find ye’re in a different place than ye were. A different person than ye were. And then ye look about, and see what’s there with ye. Ye’ll maybe find a use for yourself. That helps.”

“Aye, fine,” he said, under his breath, and squared his shoulders. “We’ll see, then.”

Don't Look if You're Squeamish

I mean, it's not _that_ bad. But still mildly gross. [g]

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jog

Well, I’m home—and thrilled to be here, believe you me. [g] I actually got sprung late afternoon on Friday, earlier than expected. Possibly because I was standing beside my bed, dressed in my street clothes, when the surgeon came in to see me (very funny; there was an RN and a LPN in the room at the time, and he apparently thought I was one, too. He glanced at the empty bed, then—startled—at me, and blurted, “Oh, you’re the _patient_! I didn’t recognize you.” No reason why he should, after all—I look quite different when out cold with my head in a bag).

Anyway, all’s well so far, but I’m not going to write much because I _am_ significantly Under the Influence of pain meds and rat poison. The knee is hugely swollen, of course—and was wrapped in layers and layers and layers of cotton batting and Ace bandage, as seen in the accompanying photo (my other leg is wearing an elastic compression stocking, to assist with circulation).

I got to unwrap it this morning, which was a great relief, though the underlying flesh is a nasty sight. (My husband took a photo of the incision-plus-steri-strips, but says I ought not to post that, as being too gross and indicating a tendency to egomania, assuming that people would be interested in looking at my gross knee. Now, personally, I’m always interested in looking at gross things, but I’ll bow to his better judgement here, since he’s _not_ on pain pills.)

Good to be home, though—and many, many, many thanks to all the kind people who’ve kept me in their thoughts and prayers!

Meet My New Little Friend

Meet my new little friend. The reason I’m not going anywhere much in June and July is—aside from my needing to stay put and write books—that I’m having partial (or at least I _hope_ it’s partial) knee replacement surgery tomorrow.

I went to see an orthopedic specialist at the behest of Elder Daughter (an OR nurse), when what I thought was chronic tendinitis in my right knee got suddenly worse. She said a cortisone injection might clear tendinitis up entirely, and could certainly make it feel better. Worth a try, eh?

So I went, and they took X-rays of my knees. In comes the doctor, remarking, “You’re awfully young to have so much arthritis.” Then he glanced at my chart and said, “Oh! You’re 58!” (I suppose this is a more respectable age to have so much arthritis.) He then said, without preamble, “You need a partial knee replacement”—adding, somewhat more kindly, “It’s probably hereditary.” (My total lack of cartilage, he meant.)

So we’re doing that. In about eight hours. For the curious (and un-squeamish), here’s a link to the surgical manual for the operation.

I’ll probably be in the hospital only two days, if everything goes well. Will try to write again and describe events, as soon as I feel up to it, but if you want to, you can check in here, on the “Diana’s Knee” thread in my Compuserve Books and Writers Community folder; my assistant Susan will post brief updates there until I’m back.

Many, many thanks to all the kind people who’ve been praying for me and wishing me well—I appreciate it HUGELY!

See you in a couple of days! [g]

Yes, the Green Slime _will_ have THE EXILE excerpt

Image copyright 2010 Hoang Nguyen

Just a note to answer the question about the graphic novel excerpt (I have no idea why, but the blog won't let _me_ post comments now). Yes, the new (green) US trade paperback edition does indeed have an eight-page, full-color excerpt from THE EXILE.


THE EXILE, for anyone who wasn't plugged in over the last six months or so, is the official title for the graphic novel based on OUTLANDER. This is being billed as "Jamie's side of the story"--and it is that, though Jamie's is not the only viewpoint. The bulk of the story is told from Murtagh's viewpoint, but that's obviously a harder sell for the poor marketing people. [g] And we do indeed get to see all the things that Claire _didn't_ see, wasn't privy to, or didn't understand--which means that there's a whole new storyline weaving through the events that you'll recognize from OUTLANDER.


And all of it _gorgeously_ illustrated by the remarkable Hoang Nguyen.

Edited to add an image of one of the pages (now that I figured out how)--this is one of my favorite "takes" of Jamie, down in the last panel, and gives you some idea of how the dialogue is handled. (And no, Jamie doesn't have pointed ears; his hair is just overlying the top of his ear.)

BEWARE THE GREEN SLIME!!

BEWARE THE GREEN SLIME!

Back in the day, when I was sixteen, I won a speech contest. The contest was sponsored by the International Order of Oddfellows, and the prize was a three-week trip (by bus) to New York City, and a week at the UN, with other winners from all over the country.

I traveled on a chartered Greyhound bus with thirty-three other sixteen-year-olds, winners from California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and it was one of the big highlights of my teenage years, not only for the trip itself, but for the lasting friendships made there.

As groups do, we evolved all kinds of in-jokes and catch-phrases, one of which was “Beware the Green Slime!”—because there was a horror movie by that name (“The Green Slime”) playing at theaters in what seemed like every small town where we spent the night. So…all kinds of Green Slime jokes, and we later published The Green Slime Gazette—a newsletter for the group—etc., etc.

So the term “Green Slime” is one of affection and delight, to me. It’s also the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw the new cover for the trade paperback edition of AN ECHO IN THE BONE.

Yes, I hear you all shrieking “Whyyyyy?!?”—whether in shared delight or horror. Well, because The Publisher (a person, rather than the company overall) thought that the black version of the cover—striking as it is—would be “lost” on a bookstore table in the scrum of trade paperbacks, and suggested that we change the color to something more vivid.


It…IS…vivid, you have to admit that much. [g] And I did say I liked green, and I do.

Anyway, this new US trade paperback will be released This Month, on June 22nd.

No, I’m not doing a book-tour for it. For one thing, one usually doesn’t tour for a paperback release, only for the initial hardcover publication. For another, I’m doing only two appearances in the early part of this summer, both local:

June 26th – I’ll be doing a multi-author event sponsored by The Poisoned Pen bookstore, held at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. See here for details!


July 17th – I’ll be appearing at the Arizona Highland Celtic Festival, which is in Flagstaff, Arizona. I usually do a public reading at this event (will be reading excerpts from Book Eight, as I now have a few!—in case you want to know how some of those cliffhangers turn out…), and will be signing books much of the day. More details anon, but the basics of the Festival are here. ]

See you there—and if I don’t, I hope you’ll enjoy the vivid new addition to the jewel-toned US covers!

WALKING BATTLEFIELDS

Walking Battlefields

I had a wonderful time last week in North Carolina. I talked at the Literary Symposium in honor of New Bern’s 300th anniversary—the city was covered in decorated bears (Bears being a symbol of Switzerland, and New Bern being named after…well, old Berne, which is _in_ Switzerland. [g])—and to the New Bern Scottish Heritage Society.

Yes, I hear you all muttering, “Why is she running around talking to symposia instead of staying home and writing BOOKS?” (My husband keeps saying this out loud, adding, “And what’s a symposium, anyway?”) Well, in all honesty, lovely as New Bern is and nice as all the kindly folk I met in North Carolina are, I probably _wouldn’t_ have gone to do this, save that it _was_ in North Carolina. And so is a part of Book Eight.

Everybody knows about Valley Forge and Washington Crossing the Delaware (you do know, I hope, that artists of the period took considerable license, and were not, in fact, present at most of the stirring scenes they painted—including the one of General Washington standing up like a ninnyhammer in a boat making its way through a surging river full of ice-floes), and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia—1776 and all that.

Not so many people know about the Battle of Alamance—the first tax revolt in the American Colonies—or the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge—the first battle of the Revolution. Or at least they probably didn’t until they read THE FIERY CROSS and A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES. Bet a lot of you have heard of the Battle of Saratoga—maybe not so many,of Guilford Courthouse, Waxhaws, and Cowpens. (Unless you live in the Carolinas, of course.)

The battle of Guilford Courthouse, which was—oddly enough—fought in the general vicinity of the Guilford County Courthouse in Guilford County, North Carolina—was the high point of British achievement in what was called “the Southern Campaign,” this being what the British tried next, following the shattering defeat at Saratoga. In other words, they decided to try to cut the Colonies in two, occupy and subdue the southern colonies, and thus be able eventually to attack the northern colonies from two sides, as well as to more effectively throttle trade by controlling all the southern ports.

It might have worked. In fact, the British won the battle at Guilford Courthouse. But it cost them dearly. In the words of General Cornwallis (whom you met earlier, when William Ransom joined his staff in New York—and who you’ll meet again in the course of the war): “I never saw such fighting since God made me. The Americans fought like demons.” And General Lord Charles Cornwallis was a gentleman who’d seen his share of fighting at this point.

The British army won the ground, but sacrificed a great many men to do so—what we call a Pyrrhic victory—and the war began to go downhill for them from this point.

Right. So much, I could get from books. That, and a lot more—biographies of the major people involved (Major Banastre Tarleton, for one. You met him briefly at the Mischianza in Philadelphia, though many of you will likely know him better as the blueprint for the sadistic villain in Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot”), order of battle, names of regiments involved, the regimental books with muster rolls, sutlers’ and victuallers’ lists, the commanders’ despatches, etc., etc. But I’m not a historian—I’m a novelist. I want to know all the things you can find in books—but I still want to see where it happened. So, if you’re a historical novelist, exactly what are you looking for, when you walk a battlefield?

Well, you’re looking for the soul of that particular battle. Battles are different, one from another, and not only because of the arrangement of troops, the movement of cavalry, and the array of artillery.

The personalities of the officers—and often, of individual soldiers—affect a battle, as does the condition of the two armies when it takes place. More important than any other factor, though, is the mood of the men when they come together—and the mood of the place where they meet.

Places do have moods. Sometimes, the mood that strikes you is a function of the place itself; something in the rock, in the air and water. Sometimes, it’s a mood that’s sunk into the place as the result of something that happened there.

I’ve walked a number of battlefields, and while all of them are extremely interesting, they aren’t all haunted, by any means. I’ve been in places where I knew something terrible had happened, and yet there was no psychic trace of it left in the fabric of the place. In others, there _is_.

The battlefield at Gettysburg is huge; many separate engagements took place there that day, many of them bitterly fought, and much blood shed. The whole of the battlefield is quiet, dotted with monuments and explanatory plaques. But only one place there is haunted—the long field where Pickett’s charge took place. It’s haunted in the same way that the field at Culloden is haunted—and for the same reason. Someone who had no idea what had happened there would still know that _something_ happened.

What happened is that hundreds of men stood still on a field for a long time, knowing they were going to die.

You walk the ground. You don’t want to know that it was a hundred yards from the first American line to the second, which was on a rise of ground; you want to walk uphill and feel the pull of your thigh muscles and the sweat running down the crease of your backbone and look over your shoulder down the slope to see the thicket that the enemy came out of—running, were they? Or slower, cautious? No, running for sure, because at the top of the slope are two of the cannon that were there that day and nobody walks toward manned artillery. So, running, jostling, zig-zagging, bayonets fixed—because they would have fired from the shelter of the wood, not to much effect because the distance is too far, but there’d be smoke from the firing hanging over that slope and drifting through the trees, and if I had to charge a cannon-crew, I’d sure as heck do it coming out of the smoke if I could…

You look at what’s growing now, and you think about what might have been growing then. Landscape changes; some battlefields are conserved, so that the ground is maintained in an approximation of the vegetation at the time of the battle—Saratoga is, for one—but others are not (Alamance, for instance), some are in the process of being revised (Culloden has been substantially revised over the last 10-15 years, with the assistance of a small herd of Highland sheep, who eat the birch saplings on the moor), and you have to meld the accounts you’ve read of the battle with your impressions of what’s now there. And you make mental adjustments for the time of year.

The battle of Cowpens was fought in January of 1781; Guilford Courthouse in March of that year. I was walking those fields in mid-May, surrounded by soft green leaves and the smell of blooming grass (yes, grass blooms [g]; the blooms just don’t _look_ like what you think of as flowers], so was automatically thinking of what the meadow at Cowpens (and it _was_ a meadown then, too; it was called “cowpens,” because that’s what it was—the place where cattle-drovers gathered their beasts and fed them on the abundant grass before driving them to market in Charleston) would be like in winter: trampled brown grass, the gravel of the Green River Road (its trace is still there, edging the field) glinting with ice crystals in the still early morning (I know it was still, because several of the eyewitness accounts of the battle mention the unusual stillness).

Two wild turkeys tiptoed out of the forest at different points in my walk and peered at me suspiciously before going about their business. They wouldn’t have been obvious or plentiful in winter, but good to know they live in that neck of the woods—and one of them left me an iridescent breast feather for inspiration (most writers I know have feathers somewhere in their offices. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true).

And by the road was a small tree, completely covered with blue-green lichens. Now, lichens would have been there, no matter what the time of year. And that’s the sort of image that you use, as a novelist, to invoke a specific sense of place. So I paused for a minute to rest my hand on the trunk and look up, to see the lichens growing all the way to the upper branches, ten feet above my head. I don’t take pictures when I go looking—if I’m constantly worrying about composing a picture or snapping something, then I’m not actually _looking_ at it. And if I _am_ looking…I won’t forget.

THE METHADONE LIST: The Tome of the Undergates

I don’t know that one could really say that any author or book is the “opposite” of any other author or book—but by contrast to A.S. Byatt’s THE CHILDREN’S BOOK, a literary novel by an old master at the height of her craft…here’s an epic fantasy by a young debut author—though equally crafty, it couldn’t be much more different in either style or structure.

Sam Sykes’s TOME OF THE UNDERGATES _is_ what’s called “epic fantasy.” It’s not, however, anything like the classic “You know…boy/scroll/prophecy/dragon/sword…” description I once heard from a fan at a con. [g] In fact, one way in which Sykes’s work resembles Byatt’s is that nobody would _ever_ mistake either one of them for someone else.

Now, TOME is definitely not for the faint of heart or stomach. One review of it I saw described it (approximately) as “a slaughter-fest that makes “300” look weak.” It does feature head-eating fish-demons, and it had one scene (involving thumbs, and that’s all I’m going to say about it) that even _I_ thought was disturbing. You have been warned.

On the other hand, it’s absolutely hilarious, with some of the most engaging—if obnoxious—characters I’ve ever met, and that rarest thing in literature, a unique voice. The basic story is a quest, involving the aforesaid Tome—a mysterious volume that can (or so it’s said) open the doors to heaven or hell. Not that any of the characters can agree on just which heaven—or hell—that might be; all of them are followers of different gods. But they’re being paid to find the book, so it’s all good.

I won’t even try to describe the plot, other than to say there’s plenty of it, but I can give you a brief look at the book’s voice:

THE TOME OF THE UNDERGATES
Copyright 2010 Sam Sykes
‘So,’ Denaos spoke loudly to be heard over the sound of hammering, ‘why the sudden interest in the fairer sex?’
Lenk paused and looked up from his duty of nailing wood over their wrecked boat’s wound, casting his companion a curious stare.
‘Sudden?’ he asked.
‘Oh, apologies.’ The rogue laughed, holding up a hand. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you liked raisins in your curry, if you catch my meaning.’
‘I . . . really don’t.’
‘Well, I just meant you happened to be all duty and grimness and agonising about bloodshed up until this point.’ Denaos took a swig from a waterskin as he leaned on the vessel’s railing. ‘You know, like Gariath.’
‘Does . . . Gariath like raisins in his curry?’
‘I have no idea if he even eats curry.’ Denaos scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘I suppose he’d probably like it hot, though.’
‘Yeah, probably.’ Lenk furrowed his brow. ‘Wait, what does that mean?’
‘Let’s forget it. Anyway, I’m thrilled to advise you on the subject, but why choose now, in the prime of your imminent death, to start worrying about women?’
‘Not “women”, exactly, but “woman”.’
‘A noble endeavour,’ Denaos replied, taking another swig.
‘Kataria.’
There was a choked sputter as Denaos dropped the skin and put his hands on his knees, hacking out the droplets of water. Lenk frowned, picking up another half-log and placing it upon the companion vessel’s hole.
‘Is it that shocking?’ the young man asked, plucking up a nail.
‘Shocking? It’s immoral, man.’ The rogue gestured wildly off to some direction in which the aforementioned female might be. ‘She’s a shict! A bloodthirsty, leather-clad savage! She views humanity,’ he paused to nudge Lenk, ‘of which you are a part, I should add, as a disease! You know she threatened to kill me back in Irontide?’
‘Yeah, she told me.’ Lenk began to pound the nail.
‘And?’
‘And what?’ He glanced up and shrugged. ‘She didn’t actually kill you, so what’s the harm?’
‘Point taken,’ the rogue said, nodding glumly. ‘Still, that’s the sort of thing you’re lusting after here, my friend. Say the Gods get riotously drunk and favour your union, say you’re wed. What happens when you leave the jam out overnight or don’t wear the pants she’s laid out for you? Do you really want to risk her making a necklace out of your sack and stones every time she’s in a mood?’
‘Kat doesn’t seem like the type to lay out pants,’ Lenk said, looking thoughtful. ‘I think that might be why I . . .’ He scratched his chin. ‘Approve of her.’
‘Well, listen to you and your ballads, you romantic devil.’ The rogue sighed, resting his head on folded arms. ‘Still, I might have known this would happen.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, you’ve both got so much in common,’ he continued. ‘You, a grim-faced runt with hair the colour of a man thrice your age. And her . . .’ Denaos shuddered. ‘Her, a woman with a lack of bosom so severe it should be considered a crime, a woman who thinks it’s perfectly fine to smear herself with various fluids and break wind wherever she pleases.’ His shudder became an unrestrained, horrified cringe. ‘And that laugh of hers—’
‘She has her good points,’ Lenk replied. ‘She’s independent, she’s stubborn when she needs to be, doesn’t bother me too much . . . I’ll concede the laugh, though.’
‘You just described a mule,’ Denaos pointed out. ‘Though you grew up on a farm, didn’t you? I suppose that explains a lot. Still, perhaps this particular match was meant to be.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
I mean you’re both vile, bloodthirsty, completely uncivilised and callous people and you both have the physiques of prepubescent thirteen-year-old boys.’ The rogue shrugged. ‘The sole difference between you is that you choose to expel your reeking foulness from your mouth and she from the other end.’
‘Glad to have your blessing, then,’ Lenk muttered, hefting up another log. ‘So, what do you think I should do?’
‘Well, a shict is barely a step above a beast, so you might as well just rut her and get it over with before she tries to assert her dominance over you.’
‘Uh . . . all right.’ Lenk looked up, frowning. ‘How do I do that?’
‘How’d you do it the first time you did it?’
‘What, with Kat?’
‘No, with whatever milkmaid or dung-shovelstress you happened to roll with when you first discovered you were a man, imbecile.’
Lenk turned back to the boat, blinking. He stared at the half-patched wound for a moment, though his eyes were vacant and distant.
‘I . . . can’t remember.’
‘Ah, one of those encounters, eh?’ Denaos laughed, plucking up the waterskin from the sand. ‘No worries, then. You might as well be starting fresh, aye?’ He brushed the dirt from its lip and took a swig. ‘Really, there’s not much to it. Just choose a manoeuvre and go through with it.’
‘What, there’s manoeuvres?’
‘Granted, the technique might be lost on her . . . and you, but if you’ve any hope of pleasing a woman, you’ll have to learn a few of the famous arts.’ A lewd grin crossed his face. ‘Like the Six-Fingered Sultana.’
‘And . . .’ Lenk’s expression seemed to suggest a severe moral dilemma in continuing. ‘How does that go?’
‘It’s not too hard.’ The rogue set down the waterskin, then folded the third finger of each hand under it, knotting the two appendages over themselves. ‘First, you take your fingers like this. Then, you drop a gold piece on the ground and ask the woman if she wants to see a magic trick, then you—’ He paused, regarding Lenk’s horrified expression, and smiled. ‘Oh, almost got me to say it, didn’t you? No, no . . . that one’s a secret, and for good reason. If you tried it, you’d probably break something.’

&&&

[Sykes is doing a signing for TOME OF THE UNDERGATES at 7:00 PM on May 12th at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale (www.poisonedpen.com). The PP says they’re happy to take and ship orders to anywhere—which I mention because they told me the book was just released in the UK and will be out in the US later this year, but they will have UK copies in stock. Further information at www.samsykes.com.]

The "Dr. Who" Connection

Frazer Hines (the actor who played Jamie MacCrimmon, a companion to the second Doctor, on “Dr. Who”) sent me these photos this morning—they were taken last summer in Edinburgh (by a nice journalist named Jean Brittain—thanks, Jean!) while I was appearing at the Gathering there. You can’t see any of it, alas, but we’re on the grounds of Holyrood Palace here, talking with fans who’d come to my reading.

Now, I’ve known Frazer on paper for years; when my first book was published, I sent him a couple of copies, with a letter explaining that it was a “Dr. Who” episode in which he’d appeared that caused me to set the book in eighteenth century Scotland, and he’d kindly replied to me. But we’d never met in person. (The long version of the story is (or shortly will be) posted on my website – www.dianagabaldon.com.)

Last summer, though, a BBC reporter, seeing my name on the list of guests for the Gathering, had a brainstorm, and called to ask whether I’d be willing to do an interview with Frazer for a radio program. I said I’d love to, and was expecting to meet him at the hotel that evening. As I was working my way toward the end of the enormous signing line, though, I looked up and smiled at the next person, thinking, “Well, he looks familiar; did I see him in the bar…oh. Oh!”

Oh, indeed. [g] Anyway, we had a lovely chat, with each other and with a few fans, and then did our main interview the next day as planned (more or less interviewing each other while watching snippets of “War Games”—the episode in which Frazer---er…well, Frazer’s kilt, at least [cough]—had caught my attention).

The BBC has finally finished all its editing—boiling down three or four hours of material to half an hour—and is broadcasting the interview this week. There are two scheduled broadcasts on the BBC proper, but they also have a podcast version, available for listening anytime during the next seven days. So I thought I’d put up a link for those who don’t want to try to figure out the time changes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00sb9x2

And for those who are interested, the Whole Story of the Dr. Who connection is available on the website.

THE METHADONE LIST: The Children's Book

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK

I love A.S. Byatt’s work. She writes “literary fiction”--this being on one hand a catchall phrase for any book that doesn’t fit conveniently into a genre designation, and on the other, a term that generally implies particularly good writing, often accompanied by unique insight and acute perception. Byatt’s got all of this, in spades. (Some of you might remember her earlier book, POSSESSION: A Romance. (One British friend told me he’d picked up a copy of this in the library, to find that an earlier reader had penciled a helpful message on the title page: “They finally do it on page 572.” I mention this in case you too might find it helpful.))

She also writes books in which terrifically interesting things happen—not always a hallmark of literary fiction [g]. THE CHILDREN’S BOOK is a wonderful creation, set during the transition between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, which encompasses the flowering romanticism of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England (I found this part particularly fascinating, as my great-great-grandfather was an artist who was part of this movement), the political upheavals of suffragism, socialism, and anarchy, and the onrush of the First World War.

Now, whatever the theme, setting, and plot of a book, the really important thing is the character(s) who carry it out. And I tell you what: few people do better characters than Byatt does. Her people are remarkably multi-faceted, complex, interesting, and _real_. She knows what artists are like, and captures a range of them—the central egotism and ruthlessness of character that makes a good one, the helplessness of a failed artist, the mutual jealousy between the commercially successful and the unsuccessful but “pure” artist.

The story—or stories; there are many of them—center on an unorthodox family and its friends. [ ] is a writer—a very successful writer, whose huge family provides her with both impetus and material. The “children’s book” of the title refers not to a single book, but to the private stories—one for each child—that she maintains in notebooks, adding to each one as inspiration comes. The way in which love works—supportive, exploitative, pragmatic, idealistic, romantic, familial, jealousy, selflessness, free love, marriage—is at the core of the novel (as it is at the core of most great books).

At the same time, it’s a wonderful exploration and dissection of a society—the British middle-class—in a time of intellectual ferment and unprecedented political change. AND written with an exquisite eye for detail and tremendous lyrical energy. Here’s a brief excerpt of the text:

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK
Copyright 2009 A.S. Byatt

“ Hedda lay in the long grass, with her skirt rucked up above her knickers, and her lengthening brown legs stretched out. She was fortunate not to have hay fever, as Phyllis did. She was not exactly reading _The Golden Age_. I am a snake in the grass, she thought, a secret snake. Violet was sitting on the roughly mown grass in the orchard, at some distance, in a low wicker armchair, sewing. Hedda spent a lot of time spying on Violet, as a revenge for the fact that Violet spied on her, going through her private drawers and notebooks. Hedda, like Phyllis, was perpetually agitated by being left out of the group of older children, Tom and Dorothy, Charles and Griselda, and now Geraint. But whereas Phyllis was plaintive, Hedda was enraged. She was the traitor in all tales of chivalry and in myths. She was Vivien, she was Morgan Le Fay, she was Loki. She despised the cow-eyed and the gentle, Elaine the lily maid, faithful Psyche, Baldur’s weeping wife, Nanna. She was a detective, who saw through appearances. No one was as nice as they seemed, was her rule of judging characters. She was the darkest of the children, with long black hair and very solid black brows, drawn in a frown more often than not, and long, black lashes which in themselves were beautiful, especially when she was asleep. She had no one to talk to about her investigations. Phyllis was an idiot. Florian was a baby. She had had hopes of Pomona, but Pomona was an idiot, too, of the same kind as Phyllis. Dorothy was who she hated, because she was older, and in the way, and got things Hedda didn’t get. And because she had Griselda, and they were together, and Hedda had no one. But Dorothy didn’t know what Hedda knew, or partly knew. “

Much as I love series, with the possibilities of ever-evolving characters and the charm of renewed acquaintance, I love one-of-a-kind treasures like this just as much. Highly engrossing, highly recommended!

THE METHADONE LIST: DANA STABENOW

For those who like series, mysteries, books with rich, idiosyncratic settings, engaging characters, Strong Women (which frankly, I think is getting to be something of a cliché’—not the women themselves, of course, but the mention of them as a talking point for a book. I mean, who recommends a book by saying, “The heroine is a weak, whiny, wilted piece of toast—but it’s a great book!”) and reasonably hot sex on occasion….let me recommend Dana Stabenow.
Dana is one of those amazing people who actually produces a book a year (I gasp in envy), and develops her characters and plots beautifully as the series progresses, though each book is a complete stand-alone mystery, and can be read on its own. The personal lives of the characters—particularly the main character, Kate Shugak—definitely would repay the effort of starting from the beginning, with A COLD DAY FOR MURDER.


Dana’s Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Stabenow ) gives the following description of the series, and since they do it a lot more succinctly than I can [g], I’ll let them:

Kate Shugak is a Native Alaskan, an Aleut, living in a fictional national park in Alaska, based loosely on the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve. Formerly an investigator for the Anchorage District Attorney's office, an incident during which she is badly injured on the job causes her to quit and return home to live on her own. Regular characters in the Shugak series include:
Mutt, Kate's part-wolf dog.
Jack Morgan, Anchorage District Attorney, and Kate's lover for the first nine books.
Ekatarina Shugak, Kate's grandmother
Bobby Clark, Vietnam vet and ham operator
Dan O'Brien, Ranger assigned to the Park
Sgt. Jim Chopin, a State Trooper assigned to the Park
Shugak stories:

• A Cold Day for Murder (1992) (the first in the Kate Shugak series) - A park ranger is missing, and so is the investigator the Anchorage police sent in to look for him. Kate's ex-boss and ex-lover, Jack Morgan, convinces her to investigate their disappearances on her own terms, beginning her new career as a private investigator. This book introduces us to main characters that will remain constants in the books to come and sets the tone for the coming books. The storyline establishes the relationship between Kate and Jack and gives some background information and insight into their relationship.

• A Fatal Thaw (1992) - A killer claims eight victims but nine bodies were found lying in the snow.

• Dead in the Water (1993) - Kate hires on as a deckhand on a crabber where two former deckhands mysteriously disappeared. This novel talks about life on a crab fishing boat and the dangers on the sea.

• A Cold-blooded Business (1994) - A novel that talks about life in the oil fields above the Arctic Circle has Kate looking into drug smuggling and finding other illegal situations as well.

• Play With Fire (1995) - While picking mushrooms, Kate and her friends stumble upon the body of the son of the leader of a religious sect.

• Blood Will Tell (1996) - Mostly set at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention, which Kate attends at the insistence of her grandmother, Kate looks into the death of one of the local village's board members.

• Breakup (1997) - Breakup is the season of early Spring, when the rivers and ground starts to thaw and people can start spending more time outdoors again. Kate looks into the death of a woman by a bear that doesn't quite add up.

• Killing Grounds (1998) - Set in the summer fishing season of salmon, Kate investigates the death of a fellow fisherman while working as a deckhand on a tender.

• Hunter's Moon (1999) - Kate and Jack take on a job to escort a group of business men and woman into the park trophy hunting.

• Midnight Come Again (2000) - After the events in the previous novel, Kate has gone missing from her home and friends.

• The Singing of the Dead (2001) - Kate hires on to protect the life of a candidate for Alaskan State Senator.

• A Fine and Bitter Snow (2002) - A novel that talks about oil drilling in a wildlife preserve, Kate looks into an attack on two friends of her late grandmother.

• A Grave Denied (2003) - Some students on a field trip discover a body in the mouth of a glacier.

• A Taint in the Blood (2004) - A woman hires Kate to clear her mother of a thirty year old murder, but the mother doesn't want to be cleared.

• A Deeper Sleep (2007) - Kate tries to get a conviction on a repeat offender while her tribal elders try to get her to take a more solid role in the tribe.

• Whisper to the Blood (February, 2009) - A world-class gold mine is discovered in the Park at almost the same moment Kate is whipsawed by the Aunties into a seat on the local Native association board of directors.

• A Night Too Dark (scheduled for 2010)

I’ve just read the new A NIGHT TOO DARK, and it’s every bit as good as the rest of the series; I’ve seldom met a more dependable author, in term both of productivity and quality. [g]

I like Dana’s Liam Campbell series even better (the German translator who has worked on both our books, and has read all Dana’s mysteries, says that Liam Campbell is the closest thing she’s seen to a modern-day Jamie Fraser—and the sex is particularly good in those), but the three Campbell books are unfortunately out of print at the moment (totally worth finding on eBay, alibris, or abebooks, though), and no more under contract, which is a shame.

Anyway, I thought that when recommending books, when possible, I might include a small bit of text so as to give a taste of an author’s style (NB: An author’s works are copyrighted, but quoting a short passage for review purposes is considered “fair use”). So here’s a tiny bit of A NIGHT TOO DARK (Copyright 2010 Dana Stabenow):

She heaved a martyr’s sigh. ”All right,” she said, as they had both known she would. “I’ll find him and talk to him for you. I’d like to see this Lothario for myself, anyway.”
She came around the counter and sauntered toward him. He admired her while she did so. Yeah, maybe she didn’t have the figure Laurel had, but when she wanted to, Kate could telegraph her intentions in a way that was little less than incitement to riot. Jim had watched plenty of women walk in his lifetime, both toward him and away, and he had never appreciated the amalgamation of brain and bone, muscle and flesh the way he did when it came wrapped in this particular package.
“Beat it,” she said to Mutt.
Mutt flounced over to the fireplace, scratched the aunties’ quilt into a pile, turned around three times, and curled up with her back most pointedly toward them.
Kate smiled down at Jim. Just like that, Jim got hard. And she knew it, he could tell by the deepening indentations at the corners of that wide, full-lipped mouth. “Jesus, woman,” he said. If he wasn’t flustered, it was as close as he ever got.
“What can I say,” she said. “I have special powers.” He was pulled to a sitting position with a fistful of shirt and she climbed aboard.


(My husband caught sight of one of Dana’s books on the kitchen table, asked me what it was, and upon being told that it was a murder mystery set in Alaska, exclaimed, “And her name is Stab-‘em-now”?! What a _great_ name for a mystery writer!” Alas, it’s really pronounced STAB-uh-no, but still great books.)
See more about Dana at

http://www.stabenow.com/

(And I think the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale still has a few autographed copies from the event that Dana, Laurie King, and I did together a couple of months ago. www.poisonedpen.com . )

April Appearances

April Appearances

I’ve mostly been staying home and writing this month. Yes, am definitely working on both SCOTTISH PRISONER and Book Eight [g]—though this week, most of my work time has been devoted to reading/correcting the galleys for THE EXILE—for which the cover art has just been released! (Yes, yes, yes, Claire should indeed be wearing her shoes here [g], and with luck, that will be fixed along with a number of other small things. And the flashes among the rocks are musket-fire.)

I’m doing a few appearances/jobs this month, but most of them are not public functions (I’ll be giving the keynote speech at the Glyph Awards banquet, for instance—this is the annual dinner for the Arizona Publishers Association—and judging undergraduate science presentations for Northern Arizona University’s UGRAD program; also meeting with the committee of judges for the Agassiz Prize for Science Writing, which I (and a couple of like-minded scientists) fund and support).

The one thing that _is_ public is a book-signing held as part of the local RWA chapter’s “Desert Dreams” conference (I’m doing a workshop for them, too, but that’s open only to conference attendees). That’s this Saturday—April 17th—at the Chaparral Suites hotel, and the mass book-signing (attended by _all_ the published authors at the conference, not just me) will be open to the public.

Owing to the large number of people participating, the bookseller can’t bring _all_ the titles for everyone, so they asked me which of my books I’d like to have available for sale. They’ll have OUTLANDER in hardcover and trade paperback, ECHO in hardcover, and THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION (hardcover), but if you would like to bring your own books to be signed, too, that’s totally OK by me.

The book-signing runs from 5:45 – 7:00 PM. See you there!

Auf Wiedersehn...

I'm back! Amazingly enough, so is my luggage. [g]

I think I've been to Germany five or six times now—and my luggage has never once reached the place when I did. It's always showed up eventually, after one, two, three, or even four days, but I'm probably one of the few Americans who knows exactly where the British Airways lost-luggage office is in the Duesseldorf airport. Mind, the first time I went to Germany, Things Happened en route, and I ended up in Amsterdam rather than Frankfort, so it was no wonder that the luggage ended up somewhere in the bowels of Gatwick airport and I was obliged to attend my German god-daughter's christening in the jeans and T-shirt in which I'd been traveling.

(That was the four-day delay, which led to my being Really Tired of those jeans and T-shirt by the time I arrived in London two days after the christening, which in turn led to my washing said clothes in the bathtub of my borrowed flat with a bottle of shampoo (I'd arrived on a Sunday evening, nothing was open save the little shop down the road, and I had only two pounds in English money on me; all I could afford was a tiny bottle of shampoo and a carton of milk) and hanging them out the window to dry, only to discover that the humidity of a summer night in London is about 92%. I eventually resorted to drying my jeans in the oven, though I was still pretty damp when I squelched off to Selfridge's in the morning to buy a fresh shirt and a pair of earrings before my first interview.)

You'd think I'd learn. But nooooo….I entrusted my luggage this time to USAirways (my current candidate for Worst Airline Ever, and I speak from vast experience), to be handed over to Lufthansa when I changed planes in Chicago. Not that I really had much choice; you can't carry the Necessary for a week-long book-tour in a book-satchel, after all. I was not really surprised, though, to eventually reach Cologne and discover that my luggage hadn't.

Well, one gets philosophical about this sort of thing, and the Lufthansa lost-luggage people kindly gave me an emergency overnight kit, with toothbrush, toothpaste, and a size XL white cotton T-shirt in which to sleep. I had my book-satchel with me, containing Kindle, takeoff/landing book (because they won't let you read your Kindle during those periods), chocolate, and essential meds, after all—what else did I really need?

Granted, there was a photoshoot scheduled for the next morning, during which the German publisher proposed to get a new dust-jacket author photo. And while I could do interviews perfectly well in jeans, turquoise Uggs, and a turquoise plaid shirt (my travel ensemble), that seemed a little casual for the evening event at LitCologne, the city's very elegant literary festival, for which I was meant to address the multitudes—in company with Cologne's Vice-Mayor for Culture (Cologne has seven or eight vice-mayors, I'm told. And there is evidently quite a bit of vice, too; I was told that the new Metro was constructed by the German equivalent of the Mafia, who stole so much material from the project that a new underground station had recently collapsed—taking with it the state Archives (which was sitting on top of it) and destroying the biggest collection of medieval manuscripts in northern Europe) and Daniela Hoffman, the actress who reads the German audiobook version of my work, this event to be held on a ship cruising up and down the Rhine.

The resourceful publicist who'd met me at the airport checked me into the Hotel im Wasserturm (Hotel in the Watertower, and it is. Built inside an ex-water-tower, I mean. Interesting place. Wedge-shaped rooms. http://www.hotel-im-wasserturm.de/), then asked the desk clerk where to find a department store likely to be open in the evening, and we charged down the street in the rain (propelled by the enormous umbrella helpfully supplied by said desk clerk, which acted as a wind-sail) to Kaufhof, a monstrous store with acres of clothes, shoes, luggage, jewelry, etc.

One hour of frantic shopping, and I was hastily but respectably equipped with black short-sleeved sweater, black long-sleeved sweater, black pants, colorful scarf, a rudimentary makeup kit, gold earrings, and what my husband described upon seeing them as "fetish boots." (see above).

Got up early the next morning and dressed in my new finery, went off to be photo-shot. The art director from the publishing company had chosen two locales for this: the basement of the City Hall, and the ruins of a bombed-out church. (Don't ask me; I'm not an art director.)

The entourage included said art director, the publicist with me, the photographer, the photographer's assistant (the hapless person whose job it is to hold immense reflectors and carry the tripod), and a nice young stylist named Xenia, who plied her art subtly enough that while I did look older than I do unadorned (_vide_ the less formal snapshots, which were taken that evening in a café with some local readers, after the LitCologne event, and the lovely rain-soaked one taken by my German translator coming down into the Moser Valley). I did not look like a prostitute, I'm happy to say.

I did nearly freeze to death. It had stopped raining, but spring had not yet sprung, and I tell you what, old stone buildings are C-O-L-D, especially if you have to stand very still on said stones for very long. The photoshoot took abour four hours, all told, and Xenia and the publicist took turns leaping forward to swathe me in coats and shawls whenever the photographer paused to change equipment.

The locales were actually very picturesque; the basement of the City Hall is open to the sky, and is the oldest part of the building, with arches and twining vines; they told me that it's a popular site for weddings (preferably in warmer weather). The church is St. Alban's, and the ruins enclose a very moving war memorial called "Grieving Parents", which I think you can see here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schroeer-heiermann/4124722676/

and in more detail here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alt_St._Alban_-_Trauerndes_Elternpaar_%289127-29%29.jpg


(We were naturally not shooting near the sculpture, but off to either side.)

Cologne is also where I made rendezvous with my friend and translator, Barbara Schnell—who is also a photojournalist. You can see some of the pictures she took of the German tour here (click on one of the pictures to enter the site, then click on "blog" and you'll see the entry for March 20th there is of the German tour):

www.bschnell.de

I had a wonderful time in Germany, but am glad to be back—and so is my luggage. [g]

Tournament of Audiobooks!

Well, here's a quickie: some kind person just notified me that AN ECHO IN THE BONE is one of the entrants in Audible.com's "Tournament of the Audiobooks." [g] I'm very flattered!

Should you be an Audible.com member—or just feel like voting—the first round of voting is open until (I think) March 15. This

http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/template/toa/FlashBracket.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes


is the page for the "Customer Favorites" category, which is where ECHO is (there are also several other categories, all accessible from this page. Have fun!

BRAVO PEORIA!

You know, I'd have gone to the Tucson Book Festival this coming weekend (I went to the first one last year, and had a wonderful time—heartily recommend it to all of you who live in the Tucson area!), save that I'm leaving for Germany on Sunday, and didn't want to be gone all of Saturday, rolling home after midnight and then having to rush around packing and watering plants and all the stuff one does when leaving home for a week. So I declined with regrets.

However, late last week, I got a request from the Peoria Book Festival, through the Poisoned Pen, asking whether I might be able to come just for a couple of hours on Saturday. Well…Peoria is a lot closer to where I live than Tucson is, and a couple of hours is do-able, so I said OK, sure.

So, I didn't want those of your connected with the Tucson Book Festival to feel I was snootering you if you heard I'd been in Peoria on Saturday. But I do want those of you who might be closer to Peoria and might be interested, to know about their book festival—which actually is titled "Bravo Peoria!" [g] For those who might be interested, here are the details:


Event: Bravo Peoria!
Date: Saturday, March 13th
Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm
Location: Sunrise Mountain Library
Description: A community event to celebrate Culture and the Arts. Sunrise Mountain Library will host a day long event with entertainment, artists, antiques, book sale and more. The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Sunrise mountain Library 21200 N 98th Ave., Peoria, AZ 85382.
Contact Person: Library Staff
Contact Phone: 623-773-8650



OK, now please note that I'll be there only between 1 and 3 PM. (I will be talking for about half an hour, then signing books.) But the Poisoned Pen will be there all day, and will have what the manager refers to as "Gabaldoniana" in quantity. If you plan to come to the festival, but won't be there when I am, feel free to buy a book at the Poisoned Pen booth, and leave it with a note as to how you'd like it signed. You can pick it up later in the day, or ask the store to mail it to you.

(Also, if you'd like to buy a particular book to have signed there, you might want to call the Poisoned Pen ahead of time; I know they'll have a lot of OUTLANDER and ECHO, because the first and most recent titles always sell best—but I'm sure they'd bring any of the other books you like, if you let them know. The PP phone number is 480-947-2974.)

THE METHADONE LIST: Christopher Brookmyre

THE METHADONE LIST: Christopher Brookmyre

I seldom write fan letters to other authors. Not that I don't want to; there are lots of wonderful books that move me to admiration, laughter, tears, etc., and I'd love to let the authors of them know that. In some cases, the authors in question are dead, though, which kind of renders a fan letter moot (though I do Say a Word during my evening rosary—that's my Lenten devotion this year, saying the rosary every night (provided I don't fall asleep in the middle, but I haven't yet; lovely, peaceful meditation)). In most cases, though, I just don't get around to it. You know, busy life, obligations, family, dogs, book-tours, saying the rosary [g], answering the nice messages people send me, etc., etc.

Which is why I particular appreciate the letters and emails people send me; I know just how much effort it takes to actually do something like that, rather than just think about it. So it's all the more remarkable that upon reading Christopher Brookmyre's PANDAEMONIUM recently, I put down the book and actually wrote him a fan letter. Which said:


Dear Christopher--

I've just finished wallowing in PANDAEMONIUM, pausing occasionally to gasp with admiration at your sheer technical brilliance (we'll take the tremendous energy, amazing ear for dialogue and eye for social dynamics, and your talent for chronic hilarity (ranging from subtle to belly-laugh) as read). All of which is _nothing_ to my enjoyment of the way your mind works. [g] I couldn't have done a clearer explanation of just what science _is_ (and how it works) myself--and I do it frequently, what with the appalling state of prevalent ignorance and the many practitioners thereof. And the sheer bloody brilliance, not only of the concept, but the _ending_...!


I've been enjoying your books for years, and you've been getting better and better, juggling the ideas so deftly with the satire and the plot (speaking of juggling, I adore your magician from THE SACRED ART OF STEALING and SNOWBALL IN HELL, too). This one is Just Great. Thanks so much.


--Diana


So anyway, still in the grip of this unaccustomed burst of energy [g], I thought I'd mention Chris as the latest recommendation on The Methadone List, and an excellent one he is, too—not only for the quality of his books, but the quantity as well; he produces something close to a book a year (a feat which excites my envious admiration).


Brookmyre's books are all violent, bloody, and absolutely hilarious. They're not a series; some of the books feature a recurring main character, the journalist Jack Parlabane, two of them have a wonderful, emotionally vulnerable, light-fingered magician as the hero (I fell in love with him, and I have high standards in that department [cough]), and some are one-off standalones. ALL of them are wonderfully plotted, deeply satirical, and done with a distinctly Scottish sense of humor.


The only real drawback to Brookmyre's books is that they aren't all published yet in the US (US publishers in these parlous times fight shy of anything offbeat, like stories written with Scots vernacular—but I sort of don't think that would be a problem for most of you guys [g]). Still, Amazon.com does have all of them for sale at least in paperback

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_8?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=brookmyre+christopher&sprefix=Brookmyr

though I'm displeased to note that they only have PANDAEMONIUM listed in the Kindle edition. (I bought mine in hardcover—I grab Brookmyre on sight—from The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale; they import a lot of British authors, and routinely carry all of Brookmyre's books. If you'd like a hard copy (undeniably expensive, but worth it), see

http://www.poisonedpen.com/search?SearchableText=Christopher+Brookmyre .) I'm sure you could get them all from amazon.co.uk, but then there's the shipping to pay, so it's pretty much a wash.


Hope you enjoy him as much as I have!


(And here's his website, too, which has brief excerpts from some of his books:

http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/ .)

WARRIORS on the way!

Just got word from the editor of the WARRIORS anthology that it will be released March 10! (In case you're beginning to cast round for new things to read.)

This is an anthology, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, with short stories and novellas by a lot of very talented people. I have a novella in this book, a Lord John story titled "The Custom of the Army" (and before a lot of you write, demanding that I stop wasting time writing about Lord John...I wrote this novella last year, _while_ finishing AN ECHO IN THE BONE. I normally do work on multiple projects at once; I get a lot farther, a lot faster that way). There's a longish excerpt from this story on my website (www.dianagabaldon.com ), and here's a further short one.

"The Custom of the Army" (in WARRIORS)
Copyright 2010 Diana Gabaldon

A month later, Grey found himself, Tom Byrd at his side, climbing off the Harwood and into one of the small boats that would land them and the battalion of Louisbourg grenadiers with whom they had been traveling on a large island near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

He had never seen anything like it. The river itself was larger than any he had ever seen, nearly half a mile across, running wide and deep, a dark blue-black under the sun. Great cliffs and undulating hills rose on either side of the river, so thickly forested that the underlying stone was nearly invisible. It was hot, and the sky arched brilliant overhead, much brighter and much wider than any sky he had seen before. A loud hum echoed from the lush growth—insects, he supposed, birds, and the rush of the water, though it felt as though the wilderness were singing to itself, in a voice heard only in his blood. Beside him, Tom was fairly vibrating with excitement, his eyes out on stalks, not to miss anything.

"Cor, is that a Red Indian?" he whispered, leaning close to Grey in the boat.

"I don't suppose he can be anything else," Grey replied, as the gentleman loitering by the landing was naked save for a breech-clout, a striped blanket slung over one shoulder, and a coating of what—from the shimmer of his limbs—appeared to be grease of some kind.

"I thought they'd be redder," Tom said, echoing Grey's own thought. The Indian's skin was considerably darker than Grey's own, to be sure, but a rather pleasant soft brown in color, something like dried oak leaves. The Indian appeared to find them nearly as interesting as they had found him; he was eyeing Grey in particular with intent consideration.

"It's your hair, me lord," Tom hissed in Grey's ear. "I told you you ought to have worn a wig."

"Nonsense, Tom." At the same time, Grey experienced an odd frisson up the back of the neck, constricting his scalp. Vain of his hair, which was blond and thick, he didn't commonly wear a wig, choosing instead to bind and powder his own for formal occasions. The present occasion wasn't formal in the least. With the advent of fresh water aboard, Tom had insisted upon washing his hair that morning, and it was still spread loose upon his shoulders, though it had long since dried.

The boat crunched on the shingle, and the Indian flung aside his blanket and came to help the men run it up the shore. Grey found himself next the man, close enough to smell him. He smelt quite unlike anyone Grey had ever encountered; gamy, certainly—he wondered, with a small thrill, whether the grease the man wore might be bear-fat—but with the tang of herbs and a sweat like fresh-sheared copper.

Straightening up from the gunwale, the Indian caught Grey's eye and smiled.

"You be careful, Englishman," he said, in a voice with a noticeable French accent, and reaching out, ran his fingers quite casually through Grey's loose hair. "Your scalp would look good on an Huron's belt."

This made the soldiers from the boat all laugh, and the Indian, still smiling, turned to them.

"They are not so particular, the Abenaki who work for the French. A scalp is a scalp—and the French pay well for one, no matter what color." He nodded genially to the grenadiers, who had stopped laughing. "You come with me."


[end section]



You can pre-order the book at amazon.com, though if you'd like a signed copy, you can also order it from The Poisoned Pen (www.poisonedpen.com); I go by the store every week or so to sign their orders.

February Appearances

Hi, all!

I'm BACK (at long last) from the UK and New York (where I was food-poisoned the night before our return to Arizona. All I'll say about that is that it's marginally better to be deathly ill in Business Class than coach; no one notices if you pass out in your seat, and it's much easier to get into the lavatories). Now dealing with all the Stuff that accumulates when I'm gone, plus some urgent Stuff for the German book-tour _next_ month. But thought I should at least post the appearance schedule for February (all in Arizona). Stay tuned, though, for my riveting account of the UK book-tour in three parts: "The Highheidyins," "The Big Wheel," and "Goose Poop and Candlelight." Coming soon!

I'm trying really hard not to go anywhere or do anything, so I can sit still and write books. Believe me, 2010 is already completely booked, in terms of appearances (yes, I'll be in Germany next month, and yes, I'm doing a short –five cities, they said—tour for the graphic novel when it's released in the US this September—and yes, I'll be at Comics-Con in New York. I'll do the whole-year schedule (as now known) a little later this week). I'll mostly be at home in February, but will be visible at five events (all in-state) this month:

FEBRUARY, 2010

February 13th -- 11 AM-1 PM
ARIZONA RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL – Apache Junction

http://www.royalfaires.com/arizona/

I'll be signing books from 11-1 at Ann Chamberlin's bookshop, located (I'm told) in a particularly desirable location near the jousting (desirable—I'm told--because it's opposite the privies).


February 16th -- 7 PM at the Arizona Biltmore
The Poisoned Pen sponsors an event for Dana Stabenow

http://www.poisonedpen.com/event-calendar

My friend Dana has a new Kate Shugak novel out on the 16th, and will be doing the launch party at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel (http://www.arizonabiltmore.com/ ). Laurie R. King (who also has a new book out—GOD OF THE HIVE, a Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel) will be there, too! Free admission, and you're welcome to have books signed by any of us.


February 19th – noon-2 PM
NAU Bookstore signing
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&source=hp&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=northern+arizona+university+bookstore&fb=1&gl=us&hq=northern+arizona+university+bookstore&hnear=Flagstaff,+AZ&cid=2306869829449448178&ei=7llpS5_TEI7ysQOXtKz4BA&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQnQIwAw

I'll be signing all my books (which the bookstore presumably will have in stock). Feel free to bring your older books from home, if you like, too; just be sure to let the bookstore personnel know when you come in.


February 20th – noon-2PM
Northern Arizona Celtic Heritage Society Celtic Tea
Thornager's Kilted Cat, Flagstaff, AZ
Call Jude McKenzie at 928-556-3161 for tickets and information.

http://www.thornagers.com/

This is a fun event that usually runs between 2-3 hours. I'll be speaking, reading, and showing off some of the art from the new graphic novel. In addition, the Heritage Society ladies also serve high tea (sandwiches, pastries, and scones, with tea), have a hat contest, a silent auction, and other small entertainments. Books will be available for sale, but you're also welcome to bring your older books from home.


February 26th
Brandeis Books and Authors Luncheon
At the J.W. Marriott Resort and Spa at Desert Ridge

I'll be a speaker (one of several) at this fund-raising luncheon on behalf of Brandeis University. I'll be speaking for about fifteen minutes, and there will be books available for sale and signing. This event is open to the public, with a ticket price of $100 for the day's events, including a gourmet luncheon.

The other speakers are:
Lisa See
Christopher Reich
Joseph Kanon
Allegra Huston
Christopher Kennedy Lawford

The moderator is Andrei Cherney, the honorary chairman is Al McCoy and Clive Cussler will also be there to sign books and present the first Clive Cussler Award for Literature. (Which they are, very kindly, awarding to me. )

Please contact mskbflo@aol.com for details and/or tickets.


Hope to see many of you at one or the other of these events!

[That's Violet up top. She hasn't got anything to do with the subject of this post, but she doesn't get a lot of face time, up against the photogenic Dachshund Brothers.]

The COMPANION, Volume II

Well, now--here's a question to keep you entertained while I'm gearing up to visit the UK: What sorts of things might you like to see in THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION, Volume II?

I'll be working on this book during 2010 (yes, yes, along with Book Eight, and a few other things, no doubt), but am just beginning to form up an idea of the potential contents. There will of course be

Detailed synopses of
THE FIERY CROSS
A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES
AN ECHO IN THE BONE
and
LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER
LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE
LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS

"Cast of Characters" listings for all the aforementioned books. These lists note which books each character appears in, and give a thumbnail description of each character (for those readers who have trouble remembering who's who).

A Comprehensive, Alphabetized and Phonetic Glossary of All the Gaelic in All the Books (so far). [g]

Interesting Features on Writing in General (chunk writing vs. outlines, how to organize scenes so you can find them again, the Fine Art of Backing Up, etc.) and Writing These Books in Particular (the "shape" of each book, internal structure, and interconnections)

Reader's Guides (book-club discussion questions and commentary)

Features on Costume and Cookery of the 18th Century

A Truly Massive (but well-organized!) Bibliography, of allllll the References used in writing the more recent Books.

Many Inspiring and Beautiful Photographs of the Scottish Highlands (and perhaps a few less inspiring ones of the author) taken by Barbara Schnell, the German translator for the books.

A Selection of the most Piquant, Poignant, Offensive, and/or Hilarious (whether deliberately or inadvertently) Letters received--and the Author's Unexpurgated Responses to Same.

Controversy: Commentary and discussion on the more controversial scenes, themes, or incidents in the various books.

So....what else? All suggestions welcome!

Diana in Sheffield!

Sheffield Hallam University in association with Off the Shelf

An evening with Diana Gabaldon
Monday 18 January 2010 at 6.30 for 7pm, Pennine Theatre, Sheffield Hallam University

Top selling American novelist Diana Gabaldon is our first New Year speaker. Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, New York Times bestselling, Outlander novels. She will launch the latest book in the series in Europe by making a trip to Sheffield.
Diana is the great, great granddaughter of Sheffield artist Godfrey Sykes, who in 1856 was deputy principal of the Sheffield College of Design which is now part of Sheffield Hallam University. His famous Minerva Frieze has been restored by Sheffield Hallam University and Museums Sheffield, which is currently on display in the Furnival building, City Campus, and Diana will be giving a lecture as part of the University's retrospective on his work.
Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.
To book, please click the link Diana Gabaldon or visit www.shu.ac.uk/events/



[Just in case that first link isn't hot--it's

http://arum.lits.shu.ac.uk/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1530 ]