The Outlandish Companion

by Diana Gabaldon

  “Yes,” the woman answered, “just a minute, I’m telling someone else about it.” She proceeded to put me on hold, and I could hear her telling somebody else all the details. Then she came back, brightly saying, “Yes! We’re having a signing tonight for Diana Gabaldon at seven P.M.!”

  “Actually, I don’t think so,” I said, staring out at the defunct plane on the runway.

  Now, the Ladies of Lallybroch had arranged to come to this signing, then back to the hotel for a convivial evening. I didn’t know most of their last names, so didn’t try to call the hotel; they’d hear from the bookstore that I was delayed.

  Which I was. More, I mean. The flight left at 6:30, not 6:00—but it only got as far as the middle of the runway, where it sat until 7:30 before taking off.

  Okay. I got there, at last. I met the kind person who always comes to get me—a good friend named Elva Stoelers. We got to the hotel at 11:30 or so, and she asked whether I needed a drink or something, after this ordeal. I replied that I did, indeed, but perhaps we ought to go up to the Ladies’ penthouse suite and see if any of them were still awake, if only to assure them that I had finally arrived.

  So we did, they were (awake, I mean), and a fine time was being had by all, when suddenly there came a knock on the door. Well, we weren’t having such a fine time as to have attracted the attention of hotel security, I didn’t think, but it was quite late. The door opened, and in swaggered a long-haired young man attired in a … kilt.

  Um …

  Ever seen a Highland stripper?

  Elva hadn’t, evidently. (Neither had I, if you get right down to it. I mean, I saw The Full Monty, but it’s sort of more immediate in person.) The hostess rapidly handed out dollar bills to the assembled ladies, and the gentleman … er … set about earning them.

  At the conclusion of the performance, when he’d reassumed a few basic garments, I said to him, “And what do you really do for a living?“ He said he was a personal trainer, but did a bit of modeling on the side.

  “I bet you do,” I said, trying not to stare at his nipples, which were precisely at my eye level. I figured he must; the only men I know who remove the hair from their chests are models.5 Anyway, he was quite nice (though Elva kept muttering in my ear, “Does his mother know he’s doing this?!“), and stayed for a while to chat. After he left, the Ladies very kindly presented me with all sorts of nice presents, and I signed their books, and tottered off to bed at last around 2:00 A.M. (I had to get up at 6:00, to go talk to the “lads” at the local prison, where I was presenting a writing seminar.)

  Oh, the dollar bills. No, I didn’t. (The Ladies did, though! It must have been really uncomfortable, having crinkly paper crammed into one’s sweaty crevices while gyrating.) I waited until he was finished, then stepped forward and handed him my own small wad of bills, saying, “As one exhibitionist to another …”

  Anyway, I can’t promise that you’ll find entertainment of that caliber on the LOL Web site, but you likely will find a number of very nice people interested in… er … things Scottish.

  THROUGH THE STONES

  DCS-Web-Designs.webjump.com/stones/Through_the_Stones.html

  This is a really interesting site, of long standing. When I visited recently, it featured (among other things) voting sites, for people to cast ballots for assorted actors and actresses to star in the hypothetical movie. This was much more interesting than most such discussions, as it featured actual pictures of all the potential candidates, noting the number of votes cast so far for each one. It also went well beyond the “Who should play Jamie/Claire?” stage, presenting candidates for Black Jack Randall, Frank, Jenny, and Ian Murray, Young Ian, Colum, Dougal, and even Murtagh (Danny DeVito? Um … no, I don’t think so).

  Through the Stones is not only a site unto itself, but also the originating site of an extensive Web ring: related sites that can be accessed through links to this site. A number of the Web ring sites also deal at least peripherally with the books, though some are principally devoted to Celtic culture, rather than to the Outlander novels specifically.

  My name is Diane Schlichting and I am a teacher living outside of Toronto, Canada. I am an avid Web enthusiast and have been designing Web sites for the last three years. I created “Through the Stones” as a tribute to Ms. Gabaldon and her wonderful books. I first read Outlander two years ago and was instantly hooked. I was captivated by Jamie and Claire and their romance; Ms. Gabaldon’s characters are so true to life, you feel you know them personally. Her idea of time travel through the standing stones has become so plausible that I feel that if I went to Scotland and laid my hand on a standing stone that I, too, might be whisked back to the past.

  THE OUTLANDISH TIME LINE

  members.aol.com/sassenak/timeline.html

  This Web site has been constructed (over at least two years) by a reader whose screen name is Sassenak@aol.com. It features a time line for the novels noting which events happened when—something that I frequently don’t recall (or didn’t know in the first place) myself! An enormous labor, it’s still in progress, though I believe the time line is complete through Dragonfly in Amber, and may exist through the later books by now.

  In addition to the time line, interesting graphics, and the like, one of the features of this site that I found most entertaining was one called “The Body Count.” Created by another reader (screen name BoDiva@aol.com), this is a table of all the people who have died in the novels, including who (or what) killed them, where, and why.

  CLAN OUTLANDISH ON AOL

  While it is not, strictly speaking, a Web site, I thought I should really mention this reading group, located in Cafe Booka on America Online. Some six hundred members strong, “Clan Outlandish” is dedicated to book discussions, chats, and general outlandish camaraderie. There being neither world enough nor time for me to visit all the online venues regularly, I asked the present leader of the group, Tara Bernard, to describe its various activities, which she kindly did, as follows:

  Topic Discussions

  Topic discussions are run in a semi-formal way with a great deal of preparation. Study questions are posted in the Main Outlander Reading Group topic board. The chat will normally include about ten minutes of hellos and open chat, forty minutes of topic, and then end with open chat.

  Some topics will run longer and some shorter: we’re flexible. But… we are a topic driven discussion group—that is why we are in the Reading Group section instead of a public chat area.

  (Note: The topic chats are usually based on a section [or partial section] of the book we are currently discussing. For example, next week’s topic is Drums of Autumn, part 8 “Beaucoup,” chapters 30 through 34. Ten to fifteen “study questions” are prepared and posted to the topic board in advance [or that’s the plan, sometimes it’s in arrears!] of the chat. Occasionally we’ll throw in a different topic, such as “secondary characters” or some such.)

  Open Chats

  Girls Night Outlandish … aka Open Chat… meets every other Thursday night at Book Central. We have Open Chat in the BC Salon II on the “other” (nontopic) Thursdays. Open Chats may be hosted by one or two of our coleaders but they are much more informal than our Topic Chats. Although we try to control spoilage in Topics, Open Chat is more of an anything goes … so be forewarned if you haven’t read all the books yet!

  (Note: This is a free-for-all chat where members obsess to their hearts’ content about the books, Scottish Festivals, Men in Kilts, well… you get the general idea.)

  Transcripts

  Message Boards/Reading Groups/Live Events Library

  Keyword: CAFE BOOKA Chat Log Library

  Contains chat logs, message boards, and old log archives.

  (Note: These are fairly self-explanatory)

  Message Boards

  Keyword: CAFE BOOKA Click 3 (Current Reading Groups) Outlander Reading Group.

  Outlander Message Board—the primary message board for the Outlander Group is located in the Reading Group Boar
ds at Cafe Booka. It includes the main postings for both the topic board and the open board. The topic board should be used for topic-related postings, postings about the books in general, and postings about group activities. The open board is for all other postings.

  Keyword: CAFE BOOKA Reading Group Message Boards M-R Outlander Reading Group

  Internet Message Board

  www.insidetheweb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi/mb61976

  The Group Web Sites

  Outlandish Central http://members.aol.com/Outlandish1/index.html

  Chat Clan Outlandish

  http://members.aol.com/tabbak/index.html

  All Things Outlandish

  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/

  Aegean/5471/

  Outlandish Timeline

  http://members.aol.com/sassenak/timeline.html

  Questions and Comments

  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to E-mail or leave a message at our Outlander message boards. Check our message board and use it to communicate with the group. Topic ideas are always welcome!

  Okay, a word about the topic vs. open stuff. At last count, there were 569 members in the Outlander Reading Group (by far the largest reading group online). As you can imagine, keeping everyone happy is … difficult! One of the ways we’ve responded is to divide the “activities” into topic and open activities. Topic activities tend to focus more on the books … plots, characters, development, time travel, etc. Open activities are much looser. This has seemed to keep most members happy most of the time. There seems to be an almost equal amount of activity on both message boards. There are a far greater number of participants in the topic chats than in the open chats.

  We try to keep this group enjoyable and entertaining. … If for any reason it is not, please feel free to contact us. Please understand that this is a large group with some history to it, but we always welcome new members! Tabbak … Leader

  Sassenak, Hsdss. Website Communications BkCnRed, JksRead, JaneE2059, BkCnLaurel, ZanzibarBl… Chat Coleaders

  THE FREE GALLERY OF AUTHORS’ VOICES

  http://fregalry.interspeed.net

  And for Something Completely Different … Fay Zachary offers the Free Gallery of Authors’ Voices, a site that features brief audio (RealPlayer Audio) readings by novelists and poets, reading from their own work, in several different “halls”: The Mystery Hall, the Fiction Hall, the Poetry Hall, the Science Fiction Hall, the Vampire Hall, and so on. Fay asked me to do readings for her from Drums of Autumn, and from the short story “Hellfire,” for her Fiction Hall.

  The site does change its content from time to time, with new authors being added, but since Fay lives near me, it’s easy for me to dart over to her house to record a new sound bite or two, and she’s promised to keep at least one of my readings “live.” (Frankly, I sound just like Donald Duck on speed, but if you’re really curious …)

  In addition to the readings, the Free Gallery offers many other fascinating features, like free digital postcards, online book-ordering, links to e-publishing sites, and (I’m told) will soon feature “virtual book-signings” as well.

  COMPUSERVE: READERS AND WRITERS INK GROUP

  [Back to DG, here:]

  This is my normal electronic haunt. CompuServe is another of the giant online services (recently acquired by AOL, but still run as a separate service), containing a large number of “forums,” or special-interest groups. The forums operate on a bulletin board basis, though most forums do also sponsor regular live chats,6 special live conferences with guests, and maintain libraries of files and transcripts.

  Readers and Writers Ink is a group of affiliated Forums: the Writers Forum, the Literary Forum, the Authors Forum, the Romance Forum, the Poetry Forum, the Erotica Forum,7 and the Book Review Forum. All have something to do—surprise—with reading, writing, or both, and there is a certain amount of overlap among the subject matter of the Forums, though each has its own particular flavor.

  While it is a subscription service, Compuserve can be accessed (free) from the Web, at www.compuserve.com. I can’t say for sure which services are available to a person coming in from the Web, since this changes fairly frequently. Worth looking at, though.

  I mostly “hang” in Writers, where I co-lead a section called Section 8,8 “Research and the Craft of Writing,” and in the Literary Forum and Authors Forum.

  1 I am not nearly so prompt, but I do answer most of my E-mail—eventually. Bear in mind, though, that at the moment, the urgent E-mail is about a year in arrears.

  2I will occasionally post chunks that I’ve written or am writing in the CompuServe Writers Forum, but this is a temporary venue; messages remain on the board only a few days. Web pages are at least semipermanent. Publishers of the books and stories may occasionally have a small piece of work posted on their Web sites, but these excerpts are limited to one small sample, in order to publicize a new book.

  31 got an E-mail from someone a few days ago, telling me that there was a rumor that the Companion would be published in January; her bookstore was havingto cope with “hordes of angry Gabaldon fans” looking for the book. “You might want to do something about this,” my correspondent finished helpfully. Well, Rosana and I do our best.

  4No, the “prequel” volume does not deal with “Claire Frasers life before she passed through the stones,” as I read on one newsgroup, nor does it deal with “the life of Jamie Fraser as a young man.” These subjects would both be Really Interesting material for future reference, perhaps, but the fact is that the prequel book I have under contract deals with Jamie’s parents, Brian and Ellen Fraser, and the 1715 Rising. If Jamie appears in it at all, he’ll be a really young man—that is, about three months.

  5 Hearing that I wrote novels, he asked whether I might be inclined to use him as a cover model sometime—to which I hastily replied, “Oh, I don’t write that kind of book!”

  6I don’t “do” chat, myself.

  7Er, no. See the hit about world and time. Not enough.

  8Yeah, yeah, I know; very apt.

  PART SIX

  RESEARCH

  RESEARCHING HISTORICAL FICTION: HOT DOGS AND BEANS

  ethods of doing research for a novel are as idiosyncratic as are the methods of writing one. That is, there are general principles that are helpful, and basic skills that apply, but exactly how one goes about the process depends on the style and preference of the individual writer.

  There’s no question that historical novels take lots of research. When I give talks on historical fiction, or the use of details in writing fiction, I usually take along a set of books to use as props: 1) a mystery by Agatha Christie, 2) a contemporary suspense thriller by Martin Cruz Smith, set in the Soviet Union; 3) a contemporary mystery by Elizabeth George, set in England; and 4) a historical novel by Gary Jennings, James Clavell, Colleen McCullough, or one of my own books.

  I then display these books one by one and ask the audience whether they notice anything. Since the books are increasing in thickness by roughly one-half inch with each volume, they generally do—and laugh.

  Okay. The first type of book—the Agatha Christie—is basically all plot. Setting is familiar, characters are stereotypical, and both are sketchy. Very little descriptive detail is included in an Agatha Christie mystery, because you don’t need to describe an English village, a vicar, or a train—everyone’s seen them often enough (at least in the movies) that you can get away with a bare minimum, and concentrate on the plot.

  The thriller set in the Soviet Union is thicker, not only because the plot is more complicated and the characters drawn in more detail, but because the setting is unusual—the average reader has no idea what the streets smell like in Moscow, or what a black-market trading ground looks like, or what a Zil is. Since the setting and social background (also unfamiliar) are necessary elements of the story, a good bit of detail is necessary, in order for the story both to live and to make intuitive sense to the reader.

  Elizabeth Ge
orge books are about the same size as the Russian mysteries; not so much because of an unfamiliar setting— English country and cityscapes are not really offbeat—but because these books are essentially a combination of plot and relationships. There has to be a great deal of detail in the description of character and in the interactions between them, be cause the relationships among the characters and the development of their personal lives are as important as the overt “mystery” plot.

  And then you hit historical novels; sub-genre BF “Big Fat”). These books tend to be huge, not only because they normally cover a substantial span of time and event (i.e., they have a lot of plot and a large number of characters), but because virtually everything in them will be unfamiliar to the average reader, and has to be “drawn”—setting, physical description of city, countryside, homes, details of daily life, social customs, and—most important—the characters. Historical characters are not the same as contemporary characters; they will have unusual (and sometimes incomprehensible, unless the author has been skillful) attitudes and relationships, and these too must be detailed carefully, so the reader will understand what’s going on.

  Aside from the necessity of crafting a convincing historical milieu for the sake of the novel itself, many readers of historical novels are fascinated by historical trivia, and read such books in good part for the tidbits of information and insights they may gain into another time.