Gabaldon

Transcription

Tina Srebotnjak: Let's welcome, who? Diana Gabaldon. [applause] Diana Gabaldon: Goodness. Alright, to start with, can you all hear me? Okay. If at any point, you can't, start going like this, and I'll adjust things. Yeah, anyway, lovely to be introduced. I was supposed to be hovering inconspicuously off stage, until she got around to me. But, happy to see so many of you here today. It's a beautiful night, you could be home washing your cars, and yet here you are. I'm very flattered. And I do want to thank you all, because we are in fact number one on the Globe and Mail tomorrow. Which is wonderful, thank you. [applause] DG: Thank you. We are also number one on the New York Times list, but that pales by comparison. [laughter] [applause] DG: I appreciate it very much. Anyway, seeing so many of you here tonight, reminds me of my days as a university professor, when I used to teach human anatomy and physiology. And, I would walk in in the morning, and I would have huge groups, because it was a very popular science elective. Everyone took it, including the football team. [laughter] DG: Because, they thought it would be easy. I'd walk in in the morning. They always sat in the front row, and they'd be there sound asleep, these large, inanimate blobs of flesh. [laughter] DG: I would walk up to the edge of the podium and say, "Well, this morning, gentlemen, we're going to discuss the history of contraception." And, they'd all start blinking. [laughter] DG: I'd say, "In days of old, when nights were bold and condoms not invented, they'd wrap old socks around their cocks, and babies were prevented." [laughter] DG: Well, it worked on the football players too. [laughter] DG: You know, people usually say to me, "Well, how did you get from being a scientist to being a novelist?" I said, "Well, easy, I wrote a book." [laugher] DG: That's all you have to do. They don't make you get a license or anything. [laughter] DG: No, I'd known since I was eight years old or so, that I was supposed to be a novelist. That was the age of which I realized that people wrote books. They didn't just spring out of the library shelves, like toilet paper at the grocery store. You know, actual people wrote them, and I just realized that was what I was supposed to do. But I came from a very conservative family background. My father was fond of saying to me, "Well, you're such a poor judge of character, you are bound to marry some bum." He said, "So be sure you get a good education. So you can support your children." [laughter] DG: So, with this going on at home, I thought perhaps I'd not announce that I wanted to write novels. I understood this was kinda financially iffy, even at the age of eight. And so, I went into science. You know, I like science. I was good at it. I enjoyed research. I really liked teaching, but I knew I was supposed to be a novelist. And, when I turned 35, I said to myself, "Well, you know, Mozart was dead at 36, maybe you better get a move on here." [laughter] DG: And so, I said, "Alright. My next birthday, I will start writing a novel." And, up to this point, I had written all kinds of everything. I had written all the things that you have to write while getting a PhD in quantitative behavioural ecology. That's just animal behaviour with a lot of statistics, don't worry about it. So, that's what started with a 400-page doctoral dissertation entitled "Nest Site Selection in the Pinyon Jay [Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus]," or as my husband said "Why birds build bests where they do and who cares anyway." [laughter] DG: And moving on then, through scholarly journal articles, and you know, tutorials, and grant proposals, and text books, and all this sort of stuff. I had also sort of slid sideways, and become an expert in scientific computation. It's really easy to be an expert, if there's only six people in the world who do what you do. And, that was largely an accident. It was because I was hired at my university without a job description. What they said was, "Well, we have this soft money, and if we don't use it, the legislature will take it away again. So, you're hired." They said, "We don't actually have anything for you to do. So, would you design your own research program, and while you're doing that, would you maybe help Bob here, the assistant director, with his data?" Said "Bob's got 10 years of data in cardboard boxes in his back room, and since you have a background in computers, you can help him get it into the computer." This was the early 1980s. They still thought you unscrewed the lid and poured it in and... [laughter] DG: Anyway, I had one class in Fortran programming, but that was one more than any of them had. [laughter] So, I was the local expert immediately. So, I spent the next 18 months of my life writing Fortran programs to analyze the contents of bird gizzards. And, that was what Bob did. [laughter] The upshot of this was an 800-page monograph, you see the trend here. Entitled 'The Dietary Habits of the Birds of the Colorado River Valley.' And, 18 months worth of Fortran programs. And I said, "Well, there's maybe five other people in the entire world who are interested in bird gizzards. But, it would save all them 18 months worth of effort if they knew about these programs. Why is there no means by which I can share that?" DG: So, the end result of that was that I started my own scholarly journal, called "Science Software Quarterly," which was for scientists who used computers, and that kind of extended to international seminars, and data analysis and laboratory automation, and things like that, which is how I became an expert. Anyway, this actually has something to do with how I got published, which is why I'm telling it to you. [laughter] DG: There's a reason why I write long books, it's because I like digressions. [laughter] DG: Anyway, returning to the business of writing a novel. I had written all of these kind of things, and a lot more software reviews, comic book stories for Walt Disney, and so forth. And no one had ever shown me how to write any of those. I had just looked at few, and wrote one, and if it didn't look quite right, I poked it till it did. I said, "Well you've been reading novels for 30 odd years, surely if you write one, you will recognize it." I said, "Okay, I'm gonna write a novel." It seems the only way to learn how to write a novel and if I want to write a novel. DG: And so, I said, "Only two rules. I will write the whole thing no matter how bad I think it may be, because I need to know what the whole experience is like. I need to know what it takes in terms of daily commitment and mental discipline, and organization and research to write something as big and interesting as a novel, because I've never done that before". I said, "That's the first rules. Second rule is that I will do the absolute best I can with the writing every day. If I'm not doing my best, how will I know if I'm any good? How would I get any better?" So those were my only two rules. Okay, this was just for practise. I wasn't gonna show it to anyone. I wasn't gonna tell anyone I was doing it, including my husband because he would've tried to stop me. [laughter] DG: Not out of any fear that I would expose him to public view, though in fact I did. But... [laughter] DG: My children who are now 32, 30, and 28; they were six, four and two when I started this, but they have never read my books. As my eldest daughter said, "I don't want to read sex scenes written by my mother." [laughter] DG: "No that's fine darling. I don't think I want you to read them either." [laughter] DG: But they are the more hesitant and that Jamie Frazer. They know Jamie Frazer is 6 foot 4 with red hair and so was their father. So they're not touching it. [laughter] DG: Yeah, we're not going there... No, he would've tried to stop me out of fear that I would drop dead, because... Well, I did not marry a bum, I married a very nice man whom I still have 42 years later, but he did quit work three months after our first child was born in order to start his own business. And I do have to say that in terms of financial stability, there's not much to choose between an entrepreneur and a bum. So for our first few years while his business was getting its feet under, I was our sole support, and they don't pay assistant professors all that much. So I was obliged to look for other sources of income that didn't involve prostitution in the home. [laughter] DG: I once told at writer's conference, I said, "You know, writing is the second oldest profession. And the advantage that we have over the first oldest profession is that you can do it to a lot of people at once." [laughter] DG: So anyway, what I did was to send a query letter to bite in for world in the other computer magazines, and with it I enclosed a copy of my 'Science Software Quarterly' journal and a copy of a comic book that I had written for Walt Disney and titled 'Nutrition adventures with orange bird.' It was a real short letter, I said, "Dear sirs, as you can see from the enclosed, you won't find anyone who knows more about scientific and technical software than I do, and at the same time can write so as to appeal to a broad popular audience." So this got immediate results and within a year I was making as much freelancing for the computer press as I was at the university, which as I say just goes to show how badly they pay the biological sciences faculty. DG: So anyway, at this point I had two full time jobs and three children under the age of six, and don't ask me why I thought this was the ideal time to begin writing a novel. But I did and I knew my husband would try to say, "Well, wait until the kids are in school, wait until my business is doing better and you can quit one of your jobs." And I knew if I didn't do it right then, I might just never do it. And so, I didn't tell him. And so, the next question of course was, "Well, what am I gonna write?" This was for practice, it doesn't really matter. I read everything and lots of it, and I thought, "Well, I read maybe more mysteries than anything else. Maybe I should write a mystery." And I thought, "No, mysteries have plots. I'm not sure I can do that." [laughter] DG: So I said, "What's the easiest thing I could write? There's no point making it hard here." And so, after a bit of thought I concluded that historical fiction might be the easiest thing for me to write. I was a research professor. I knew my way around the library. I said, "It seems easier to look things up than to make them up, and if I turn out to have no imagination, I can steal things from the historical record." [laughter] DG: So I said, "Okay, historical fiction. That's good. Where shall I set this? Because I've got no background in history, just the six hours of western civilization they make you take as an undergrad. So I'd have to look it all up anyway." So I was looking for a useful time and place; American civil war, Italian renaissance, what seems interesting. And in this frame of mind I happened to see a really old Dr. Who re-run on public television. Yes, I see some of you are familiar with Dr. Who. [laughter] DG: Yes. Who was your favourite Doctor? Mine's David Tennant. Yeah. [laughter] [applause] DG: Oh, thanks. Yeah. I'm fond of Tom Baker and Chris Eccleston too, but David Tennant's the best. Anyway, for those who don't know what Dr. Who is. It's this really old, really long running British TV show which was first done 65 years ago, and it's been running pretty continuously since. It was originally done as a kids show, but has gotten much more adult in tone, and much more worth watching. The premise of the, yeah along with the actors, the premise of the story is that the doctor is a timelord from the planet Gallifrey, who travels through space and time having adventures, and along the way he picks up companions from different periods of Earth's history. And in this very old show was the second doctor Patrick Troughton. The doctor had picked up a young Scotsman from 1745, and this was a young man 18-19 who appeared in his kilt. And I said, "Well, that's kind of fetching." [laughter] DG: And I found myself still thinking about this the next day... [laughter] DG: In church. And I said... [laughter] DG: I said, "Well, you wanna write a book. It doesn't really matter where you set it. The important thing is pick a point and get started." So I said, "Fine. Scotland, 18th century." So that's where I began, knowing nothing about Scotland or the 18th century. Having no plot, no outline and no characters. Nothing, but the rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in a kilt. [laughter] DG: Which is of course a very powerful and compelling image. [laughter] DG: Yeah, speaking of that, and the Bestseller list and things like that, my sixth book, 'A Breath of Snow and Ashes,' was a very lucky book for me. It also opened at number one on several national bestseller lists, and it also won me several awards, including a Quill Award, which was given to me in the category of, and I quote, "Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror." [laughter] Now I truly have seen my books sold as everything, [chuckle] and what was neat about that award was that I beat out George RR Martin and Stephen King. [laughter] [applause] DG: Thank you. And I will just note for the record that I just pushed Stephen King off the top of the New York Times list. [laughter] [applause] DG: Yeah, we'll see what I can do to George if he ever gets around to writing another book. [laughter] Yeah, no, anyway 'A Breath of Snow and Ashes,' it also won me the Corine International Prize for Fiction, which was very cool, and I got to go to Germany to accept it; which was an adventure in itself. It was on Bavarian Television and they held the ceremony in this antique theater that had been renovated. It had the original seats, which were wooden, and the seats folded up. So both the seat and the back were wood, and you pulled it down to sit on it like an old-fashioned one. Well, they had outfitted me not only with the usual sort of lapel mike, which has its own little transmitter box, which you hook on, but also with another box for a translation because the ceremony was in German, so I had a little ear bud like the newscasters so I could hear what was being said. DG: So I had these two boxes hooked on and I was wearing this very soigne outfit, which was black chiffon pants and a black silk coat thing over it with big, huge, coral-coloured poppies and bead work and so forth, very sophisticated. So anyway, they managed to hook the boxes onto the back of my pants and the coat covered them very neatly. Well, I was the last awardee on the ceremony's agenda. DG: So I was sitting there wiggling to and fro on this hard wooden seat for an hour and a half, and finally, they called my name, and the television dolly comes swooping in toward me. I stand up to walk up on stage, realized that one of my boxes has come loose and slipped down between the back and the seat, and I am tethered to my seat. So I'm standing there smiling, I managed to get it out at last, but I wasn't gonna stuff it back in my pants on camera, so I was obliged to run up on stage, clutching it in my hand in hopes that people would think it was a stylish evening purse. [laughter] Nobody said anything about it, so maybe they did. DG: Anyway, while I was there in Germany, the German publisher took the opportunity to have me interviewed by absolutely everyone in the German press. I'll talk a little slower so your fingers don't fall off. I get carried away, speed up. But anyway, it was everyone from the tabloid newspapers up to their equivalent of Vanity Fair, and at the end of a week of being interviewed every half hour all day, everyday, I was sort of going like this with my eyes crossing. DG: But I was talking to a nice gentleman from a literary magazine, and he was saying, "Oh, I've read all of your work, it's so wonderful; your narrative drive is tremendous. Your characters are so real; they're so three-dimensional. Your imagery is just magic," and I'm thinking, "Yes, yes, go on." [laughter] Instead he stopped and said, "There's just this one thing I wonder, "Could you explain to me what is the appeal of a man in a kilt?" [laughter] Well, he was a German. [laughter] Anyway, I was really tired or I might not have said it, but I just looked at him for a minute and I said, "Well, I suppose it's the idea that you could be up against a wall with him in a minute... " [laughter] [applause] DG: Yeah, I told that story to Sam Heughan and he turned white, [laughter] and then he turned red, and then he started wearing his kilt everywhere. [laughter] DG: Yeah, so I told that story at an event a few days ago and I got this tweet, it says, "Gabs! What are you telling people about me?" I said, "Oh, it's nothing you haven't heard before." A very nice guy. Yeah, so anyway, the appeal of a man in a kilt. When I got back from this little junket there was a pile of these press clippings from this German appearance, and that interview was on top, I recognized the man's name. I can read German, but very slowly. But the publisher had put a Post-it in English on top, and she said, "I don't know what you told this man, but I think he's in love with you." [laughter] DG: So anyway, this is how I started writing a book. I began doing research immediately because I knew nothing about Scotland or the 18th century, but I said to myself, "Well, the point here is not to learn everything about Scotland or the 18th century, the point is to learn how to write a book." So I said, "I'm gonna start doing the writing immediately along with the research, and along the way, if I discover that something I've written is wrong, I'll change it; it's words on the page, easy enough." So that's the premise I proceeded with. DG: Now, the only thing I knew about novels was that they should have conflict. So I was looking for conflict in Scotland in the 18th century. It was pretty easy to find and of course, the first thing you run into is Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rising, and so I said, "Well, that looks like conflict. Fine, we'll use them." And so I said, "Well, now obviously I must have a lot of Scotsmen because of the kilt factor, but I think it would be a good idea if I had a female character to play off these guys, and we'll have sexual tension, that's conflict, that's good." And I said, "Then on the basis of three day's research, it looks like the Scots versus the English, so if I have make her an English woman, we will have lots of conflict." DG: So the third day of writing, I loose this English woman into a cottage full of Scotsmen to see what she'd do, I had no idea who she was, how she got in the plot or what she was doing there, but you know, she walked in. And they all turned around and stared at her, and I'm thinking, why, does she look funny? What's going on? But one of them drew himself up, and he said, "My name's Dougal Mckenzie, and who might you be?" And without my stopping to think, I just typed, "My name's Claire Elizabeth Beecham, and who the hell are you?" DG: And I said, "Well, you don't sound at all like an 18th century person." So I fought with her for several pages, trying to beat her into shape and make her talk like an 18th century person. She wasn't having any; she just kept making smart-ass modern remarks, and she also took over and started telling the story herself. And I said, "Well, I'm not gonna fight with you all the way through this book." I said, "No one's ever going to see this. It doesn't matter what bizarre thing I do. Go ahead and be modern; I'll figure out how you got there later." So it's all her fault that there's time travel in these books. [laughter] DG: Yes, that part actually had nothing to do with Dr. Who. But anyway, the next question is of course, how did this bizarre book which had no genre and yet totally unconventional characters, and that I was keeping secret even from my nearest and dearest, how did I get that published? Well, that's why I told you about the computer stuff because one day Byte Magazine sent me software package to review and with it a trial membership to CompuServe. Now this was the mid 1980s. The World Wide Web did not exist. America Online did not exist. DG: What we had back then were three information services as they were called. There was GEnie, Delphi, and CompuServe. And some of you may be old enough to remember those. But I basically have been in social media since 1984. I have a lot of publicists say, "Oh, you handle it so well." And I say, "Well, it did just kind of grew up around me." Wherever there's a new wrinkle I just say, "Can I use that?" Yeah, sure, why not? DG: Anyway, what they, why they sent it to me, they said, "This software vendor has an online support forum, which is just like the newest, hottest, sexiest cutting edge technology ever, and they want you to mention it in your review. So, you know, log on and find out what it's all about." So I did, and I had four hours of free connect time left. And I said... This was when they charged you 30 bucks an hour to be connected. And so, I said, "Well, I'm not wasting 120 bucks. What else is in here?" And so, I began poking around, and I stumbled into a group of people called the Literary Forum. These were people who liked books. It wasn't a writers group as such, but there were a few writers there. But it was mostly just people who liked books and to talk about books and writing and so forth. And for someone with two full-time jobs and three small children, it was the ideal social life. [laughter] DG: So I, you know, signed up and got some automated software, so I could dodge in and out for a few minutes each day and pick up messages and began hanging around there. Well, I'd been there for a year or so before I made up my mind to start writing a book, and when I did I was definitely not telling the people that I knew online. Because I had seen a lot of people come through there talking about something they were intending to write, and then they'd never write a word. And you could just see the professional writers all roll their eyes when this happened. DG: So I said, "Well, I'm gonna wait till I've actually written the book, and then I'll see if I tell anyone." So I didn't. I just kept quiet and was writing away by myself. Well, I write, I have always written in the middle of the night. I mean you do this if you have small children and you write for a living. But I'm naturally a night owl anyway, and even though my children are now flown luckily, I still write in the middle of the night. I might tuck my husband into bed around 9:30 or 10:00, then I lie on the couch with the dogs and a book, and if no one needs me, which they mostly don't these days, I fall asleep in 10 minutes, but I wake up again around midnight or 1 AM, and we'll stagger off to my office. The dogs get a bone; and I get a Diet Coke, and we go to work. And I go back to bed around 4:30 and get up again at 9:00. I do work during the day too, but the middle of the night is my primetime. DG: So in the middle of this one night, I was working on, you know, software review and scenes from the novel and a grant proposal, all in sequence 'cause I find that I stick two thirds of the way down the page no matter what I'm writing. So if I'm doing that, sometimes it's helpful to switch to something else and then something else, and then one of the earlier ones will have come unstuck. But it keeps you sitting there rather than getting up and going off to get a cup of coffee and never coming back, which is why some people never finish their books is 'cause they don't come back. DG: And so, I was sitting there, but what I was doing instead was to take a break, I would log on to CompuServe and pick up whatever messages were waiting. And so, I found that I was having this intermittent argument with a man online about what it feels like to be pregnant. And he said, "Oh I know what that's like. My wife's had three children." And I laughed. [laughter] DG: And I said, "I've had three children, busted." And he said, "Well, can you tell me what it's like?" I said, "I can, yes, but it's sort of complex. I don't think I could fit it in a 30-line message slot," which is all we had. I said, "I'll tell you what, though, I have this thing that I wrote a few months ago in which a young woman explains in some detail to her brother what it's like to be pregnant." I said "I'll put it in the library here, and you can read it." So I did, and everyone who had been following the argument went and read this piece. And they all came rushing back and said, "Well, this is great. What is it?" I said, "I don't know." [laughter] DG: And they said, "Where's the beginning?" And I said, "I haven't written that yet." And they said, "Well, put up some more." Well, you know, this was the first time I had ever exposed any of my fiction to anyone, and to have people respond in this way, it was just, you know, it's not even catnip, it's heroin. [laughter] DG: So I was of course happy to do that. Now I don't plan my books out ahead of time, I don't write in an outline, and I don't write in a straight line, I write where I can see things happening. So I don't actually have chapters until the last thing before I send a book to my editor. But I do have scenes. And so, whenever I had like 5 or 10 pages that would stand alone without a lot of explanation, you know, every two or three months I would put up this piece for them. And they got more and more interested and they were saying, "Oh, Diana has a new chunk. Have you read it?" And they'd all go read it and come back and talk about it. And people began saying to me, "Well, this is cool. You should try and publish it... " DG: And I said, "I don't even know what book it is, but eventually, I will write a book that I want to try to publish. What should I do?" By this time, I knew quite a few of the professional writers and they knew me. They were very kind about sharing their stories and advice and so forth. They all said, "Get a literary agent." Said, "An agent can do two things for you. He or she can get the manuscript read much more quickly than if you're just sending it into a slush pile." This is totally true. This is because 99% of what is in the slush pile is in fact slush, but there's a lot of it. And this means it may take an editor two years to dig her way down to your great American or Canadian, as of the case may be, novel. DG: Whereas if it comes from a agent that he or she is familiar with, they'll jump on it immediately because it's been pre-screened. They'll know that it's legible, literate and it might even be something they want, so they'll read it immediately. They said, "And the second thing an agent can do is, if the book sells, he or she can negotiate a much better contract for you than you can do by yourself." Also true. My first contract ran 12 pages of subclauses, and it's only owing to the skill of my first agent that I ended up still owning my t-shirt rights and my action figure rights. [laughter] DG: My husband says he can't wait to see the 'Black Jack' Randall action figure. [laughter] DG: Well, actually I owned those rights until just about a year ago because when we signed the contract for the TV show, the merchandising rights were part of that. So now the Sony Corporation owns Black Jack and his propensities. [laughter] DG: Lets see what they do with him. [chuckle] Anyway, I said, "Well, sounds reasonable. How would I find an agent?" And so, they said, "Well, lots of different ways. You can go to writers conferences, talk to agents. Writer's Digest magazine has lists of agents. You can join one of the writers groups like the Romance Writers of America, the Rocky Mountain Science Fiction Writers. They keep genre-specific lists of reputable agents. You can read Writer's Market, which has a whole section of agents and explains what they all want and what their requirements are." I said, "Or you could just talk to people who have agents." I said, "That seems the easiest, I'll do that." DG: So, whenever I found myself talking to a professional writer, I'd say, "Would you mind telling me about your agent? Is it the same one you started with? If not, why not? How does the relationship work? How much do you pay them? What's the standard and how do they tell you when you get rejected? And so forth so on." They were very good about sharing advice, and I began to zero in gradually on this one gentlemen that I heard a lot of good things about named Perry Knowlton. All the people I know who knew him thought he walked on water. He lived in New York, he had lunch with editors, which is what I wanted. Very reputable man. DG: Also they said he was not afraid of very long books or of unorthodox books, both of which had struck me I had. And so, I thought he might be a good match, but I didn't know how to get at him 'cause he only... He didn't take unsolicited queries. So I thought, "Well, you're not done writing the book, just go on asking questions. Either you'll figure out how to get at him or you'll find someone else who's easier." DG: So I did and one day I was talking to a friend named John Stith, that's S-T-I-T-H, and who writes science fiction mysteries. And I said, "Well, I'm asking everyone about agents, John, do you have one?" And he said, "Well, yeah, I do. By coincidence, it's the same as so and so's his names Perry Knowlton." He said, "I know you're almost ready to look for an agent. Would you like me to introduce you to him?" I said, "Well, yes, John, that would be very nice." [laughter] DG: I was afraid that John would be run over by a bus or leave CompuServe before I finished the book. So I said, "Yes, go ahead ask him." And so, John wrote just a regular typed note to Perry, who god rest his soul is a much older gentlemen, who never touched a computer in his entire life. So, from this point on the story really has nothing to do with the online community at all, it proceeded just as it would for anybody. DG: But I followed that with my own query letter, and I said, "Dear, Mr. Knowlton, I've been writing and selling non-fiction by myself for several years, but now that I'm writing a novel, I understand I need good literary representation. You've been recommended to me by John and Judy and Carol and all these people who's opinions I respect." I said, "I have this very long historical novel, I don't want to waste your time. Would you be willing to read excerpts from it?" I didn't tell him I wasn't through writing it, excerpts were all I had. [laughter] DG: But... He very kindly called back and said, "Yes," he'd be happy to read my excerpts. And so, I hastily typed up a 26-page single space synopsis and sent it with my pile of excerpts, and he took me on on the basis of an unfinished first novel. Which is not usual now, and wasn't usual then either, but I was very lucky. Well, six months later I finally finished the book, I sent it to Perry and called to tell him it was coming, and I said, "I could tell as I finished this book that I knew there's more to this story, but I thought I should stop while I could still lift it." [laughter] DG: I said, "But if anybody expresses interest, you can tell them there's more." And so, I also told him I was going to be in New York the next week myself for a scientific conference, and he said, as I had hoped, "Well, come up to the office, we can meet." 'Cause I had never had met him face-to-face. So the next week I'm going up to Perry's office in some trepidation of mind because at this point, he was the only person in the world who had read the whole book, and I didn't yet know what he thought of it. DG: So, he turned out as I say to be a charming older gentlemen, took me back to his office, got me a Diet Coke and was trying to put me at my ease by talking about some of his other clients. His conversation was not as reassuring as he probably thought it was, because at this point I realized that in addition to my CompuServe friends, he also represented Tony Hillerman, Frederick Forsyth, and Robertson Davies. [laughter] DG: And the estate of Ayn Rand, though he had fortunately just inherited her, he didn't pick her. And I was sitting there thinking, "If you have the nerve to call Robertson Davies, Robbie." Which he was doing, I... "You're a better man than I am." But what was most unnerving was that he had my manuscript sitting on the desk in front of him in the huge orange box in which I had shipped it, and I was sure that at some point he was going to say, "Well, having read the whole thing, I think it's just too weird, there's nothing I can do with it. But if you keep me in mind if you write anything else." DG: And so, I was expecting to hear this at any minute, instead he said, "Well, you know the thing about Freddy Forsyth and Robbie Davies and those guys is that their all great story tellers." And then he laid a hand on the box and smiled at me and said, "And you're another one." [laughter] [applause] DG: Well, thank you. Yeah, I was so gratified at that point that I didn't care what he did with it. But I gathered enough wits to ask, and he said, "Well, I am sending it out today to five editors who I think might like it" and explained who they all were, and I said, "Well, that's great. How long do you think we might have to wait for an answer." Because I'd been reading Writer's Market and reading 18 months two years. And he said, "Oh, I've told them all I want an answer in 30 days." And I'm thinking, "Well, you picked the right agent." [laughter] DG: So I went home to wait for 30 days. Four days later, I got a call on my answering machine. It said, "This is Perry. I've just called to update you about your manuscript. Give me a call back." So I called expecting to hear that of the five he sent it to, at least one of them had said, "Here, I am not reading a 10-pound book, take it back." And instead he said, "Well, of the five I sent it to, so far three of them have called back with offers to buy it." So he negotiated amongst them for two weeks, emerged with the three-book contract and bing, I was a novelist! [laughter] [applause] DG: Well, thank you very much. Yeah. We are about right for time, and I do want you to have time to ask any questions that you might have. So this is good time for me to pause for breath and give this poor lady a little rest as well. [laughter] But if any of you have any questions, be sure to stand up so that I can see who you are. S?: I'm curious from when you first wrote your same book all the way till now... I wanna ask about your emotional involvement with the characters in the story. Do you feel like you've experienced the same process emotionally from the first book until your most recent book? DG: Oh, yes. Yeah. No, when I write from a person's view point, I am actually living inside their head and their skin. I can't write what they are experiencing without experiencing it myself. S?: And you experienced that all the way through? DG: Oh, yeah. [chuckle] Yeah, it's a very intense experience writing a book. Especially toward the end of a book which is what I call the final frenzy. The last two or three months when I know everything about a book, and I'm not doing any research. I am writing 14, 15 hours a day and just sleeping and eating and nothing else. It's... The book is... I mean, it's me and the book and there's nothing else. And it's just coming through me. It's like being plugged into an electric socket. DG: Yeah, it's very intoxicating. But at the same time it's totally calm, because there's all this frenzy going on. Publishers tend to get really excited if you get way down toward... If, well, well past what they consider a suitable deadline. And I'm just not worried about it at all. It's me and the book and there's nothing else. Yes, next question. [laughter] S?: Okay. Hi, Diana. My question is, do you have an idea of how the Outlander series is going to end? DG: No. S?: You don't have an idea? DG: No. S?: Okay. [chuckle] DG: No. I really don't plan the books that ahead of time. I have the last scene of the last book, because it bubbled up for me a number of years ago. And when stuff bubbles up, I write it down. But it's more in the way of an epilogue than a plot ending, so I have no idea how it actually ends. I won't know until I get there. Yeah, as for... Now, there obviously is another book because I was not finished when I hit the end of MOBY. So there is a book nine, but I would like to point out that I never said... Well, my agent, he told the editors who wanted it, "She says there is more." And they said, "Well, trilogies are very popular. Do you think she could write three." [laughter] DG: And being a good agent, he said, "Oh, I'm sure she could." So that's why they gave me a three book contract. Now, I would just like to point out that I never said it was a trilogy. I said, "There's more." [laughter] S?: Hi, Diana, my name is Jennifer. I have heard you say in other talks how the characters are really a part of you. You have talked about being in the room with the ladies having tea and them not realizing that they were talking to 'Black Jack' Randall. [laughter] DG: Nobody ever realizes that. Not in time anyway. S?: I am wondering specifically about Jamie and Claire and what characters or attributes of them would represent... Would come from you the most? DG: Oh, well, lets see. Any character is, if not a reflection of an author, at least a refraction from some bit of their personality. So Claire has the scientist's mind that I have, an acuteness of observation. She always observes the details of what she's looking at even in times of extreme emotional stress, which I also do. Especially in times of emotional stress, I tend to seek very tiny details. And she has my sense of smell, as you may have noticed, she always notices what Jamie smells like when she embraces him. 'Cause you hug a man, you naturally know what he smells like. Yeah, anyway somebody asked me what Sam Heughan smells like? [laughter] 35:07 S5: And? And what does he smell like? [laughter] DG: No. She said, "I bet he smells like rainbows and marshmallows." [laughter] DG: And I said, "No, he doesn't smell like that." No, we have a deal. I said, "I won't tell anyone what you smell like and you don't tell them what I smell like." [laughter] S?: Are there any attributes of Jamie that are particularly yours? DG: Mine, yes. Yeah, let's see. He has my sense of Catholicism, spirituality, et cetera, and my sense of responsibility, and my sense of family. He comes from your clan and family and that's important. My dad was the 13th child of a poor New Mexican dirt farmer and when my grandmother on that side died on my 11th birthday, he was going to her funeral, and he asked my sister and me to see if we could figure out at that point how many descendants his mother had. DG: So we sat down and figured out everybody that we knew of personally and many of his elder siblings likewise had huge families and some of them had had children and even grandchildren. At that point, my grandmother had over 600 descendants. DG: Yeah. So, and that was when I was 11. [chuckle] 50 years on, there's a heck of a lot more of them and they would all kind of wash through the southwest. We lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. Part of them lived in Los Angles, the other part lived in New Mexico, so whenever there was a birth or death or christening, one batch would go to wherever the event was happening. So they all stopped at our house overnight and the living room would always be full of all these people speaking Spanglish and drinking beer and so forth, so it was the sense of very easy, we're related to everybody that we can see [chuckle] sort of thing that I have, yeah. S?: Thank you. S?: Hi, Diana. DG: Hi! S?: Thanks very much for the books, number one. DG: Oh, thank you. S?: And the other question I have is really have you seen the shoutout that Orange is the New black gave to Outlander at the end of the second season 'cause it's brilliant? DG: Yeah. I have not seen it, but several hundred people have called it to my attention, yes. [laughter] DG: That was very kind of them. [chuckle] S?: Apparently, I'm a lot shorter than everybody else. DG: Yeah. S?: But, anyway really quick show off hands who is from the Outlanders in Ontario group. DG: Whoa, yay! S?: Yay! We love you representing. I've a question though. Jamie and John without giving away spoilers, I would assume everybody has at least read the first four books, but anyway... With what happened to Jamie and everything that John is, at what point in your head did they reconcile and become best friends? DG: That would probably... Well, have you read 'The Scottish Prisoner?' S?: Yes, but it's still John represents a lot of the bad that happened to Jamie. DG: Well, that's true, but Jamie has now been with John enough to realize what sort of man he is. You know that he is a honourable man, but in terms of where an actual friendship was forged between them, that actually happens in the middle of 'Voyager' when Jamie makes up his mind to leave Hellwater and William and John essentially says, "I'll take care of him for you." And this is when Jamie actually kisses John and says, "I suppose I'm not actually poisoned." [chuckle] But that's his gesture of acceptance, I know what you are, but I know what you've just done for me. S?: Thank you. S?: Hi, Diana. I have a question, it's kinda like two part of your Master Raymond, I found him to be one of the most fascinating characters. DG: It's a very, very fascinating character. S?: Yeah. I was wondering, part one, when did you realize that he was... I read that he was one of Claire's ancestors and the second part is how much more will we learn about him? DG: Oh, well, in the fullness of time, he'll get his own series. [laughter] S?: That's wonderful. DG: Yeah. I do know where it came from, but I have known that for a very long time. I don't remember exactly when I realized that he was Claire's ancestor, but I've known just for years and years. S?: Alright, that's wonderful. Thank you. DG: Good, thanks. S?: Welcome to Toronto, Diana. Thank you. Actually I also have one comment and then one question. My first comment is, "I actually started this wonderful journey with Outlander, with The Scottish Prisoner and at the end of that I kind of thought to myself I'm 42 and I'm in love with a gay literary character." How does that happen? [laughter] DG: Why not? S?: But I did get to know Jamie and that kinda got me started 'cause I needed to know what kind of man would just basically come apart for his woman, for his Claire. So that's what got me there. DG: Oh good. S?: But my question is this and I know you've said in the past that like someone else said that, "The characters are within you and that you try to push people to an extreme to see where... Characters to an extreme." My question is where on earth did Black Jack come from? [laughter] DG: Well, as I say, "Every character is a refraction if not a reflection of a part of the author's personality." I suppose Black Jack is what I might have been were I born without a sense of empathy or a conscience and luckily for the world I have both. [laughter] DG: No, so far as putting characters in a tough place, I don't know how many of you saw the YouTube video of the LA Fan Event and so forth, at which someone asked me which scene from the TV show I was looking forward to seeing filmed and I leaned forward to Sam and I said, "Well, I hope you'll take this in the spirit intended, but I really wanna see you raped and tortured." [laughter] DG: I had a number of people say, "Why did you say that to him? !" [laughter] DG: Well, he does know me for one thing, but... And I said, "I've told you that you're putting people in a difficult circumstances, how you see what they're made of, so did you see what he did when I did that to him." He didn't get up and stomp out, he didn't use bad language, he didn't act mad at me or anything. He took 20 seconds. First, he looked gobsmacked for five seconds, but then you could see him gather himself 20 seconds and then he came back with a very graceful reply, and he said very mildly, "Oh, I'm quite looking forward to that too." [laughter] DG: Yeah, my husband said "Had it been him, he would have said, 'Well, that makes one of us.'" [laughter] DG: Anyway I said, "Look, see this raised your opinion of Sam and he's aplomb and he's grace under pressure and so forth. Now you know much more what he's made of than if I had not said that." In fact, I asked him afterwards was that okay and he laughed. Said, "Yeah, that was great." So I'll see what I can do to him next time. [laughter] S?: Looking forward to that. [laughter] S?: Thank you. DG: Thank you. S?: Hi Diana, my name is Erica. DG: Hi. S?: I just wanted to say thank you so much for the books. DG: Thank you. S?: I wanted to let you know that throughout university I wrote three papers on the Battle of Culloden thanks to you, and my professors had never seen anything like that. They thought they were wonderful. DG: Wonderful. S?: My question to you is actually very book specific. Talking about Dragonfly. Was there ever a point when you had introduced Bree, at the very very end of the Battle of Culloden when Jamie and Claire have to separate, and he told her, "Name him Brian after my father," was there ever a point where Bree was going to be Brian, or was she always Bree? DG: Oh no, she was always Bree, 'cause when Jamie said that, I said, "Boy, you've got a shock coming." [laughter] DG: No, I always knew she was a girl. S?: Okay. Thank you very much. DG: You're welcome. S?: Hi, Diana. DG: Hi. S?: A blogger I know wrote some thoughts on Outlander a couple of months ago, and you actually went on her blog and commented to just clarify on some of the points that she made. And I just wondered, do you often try to interact with fans on either blogs or Twitter or anything like that? Or maybe that particular moment just struck you and you felt like you had to respond? DG: Anybody who's been on Twitter could answer that for you. [laughter] Yes, I do. Yeah, there's 300,000 people who subscribe to my Facebook page, and I don't know how many Twitter followers I have 'cause I don't check it, but there's a lot of them, and you know with favourites and re-tweets it kind of spreads and ripples. But, like I said, I've been doing social media on the CompuServe forums since mid-1980s, and as these other new wrinkles came along, I just kind of adapted to them. One of the first things Sam Heughan said to me after he met the fans, so to speak online, they were all going nuts, he said, "Your fans are crazy." [laughter] He said, "How do you handle this?" And I said, "Well, they're entirely harmless." I said, "There is actually an algorithm for handling this, and I will teach you how to do it." DG: So, I did, and he does it very, very well. But no, I have always interacted with the people who read my stuff, first as friends and many of them are my friends. And anybody who reads my books, I'm more than happy to talk to, whether they have something nice to say or not. Often, people who are upset about something in one of the books, either have read it inaccurately or have misinterpreted it, and if I can clear that up for them, I'm happy to do that. I don't normally go on people's blogs unless specifically invited and if I have time, but some of the blog stuff does seep into Twitter. People will re-tweet links to a blog, and repeat something that was said there, and if that catches my attention, I'll go and look, and sometimes I will say something. S?: Great. Thanks. DG: Sometimes, like the "That's Normal" blog, I just think they're hilarious, and so will sometimes leave a comment saying so, but... S?: Thank you. S?: Hi, Diana. DG: Oh so do we have a "That's Normal" here? A couple of them. Yeah, you guys do a great job. S?: Hi, Diana. My question is, do you have a favourite scene or storyline from any of the books that sticks out for you, or do you just enjoy the whole story altogether? DG: Well, for me, I think in shapes, and each scene has a shape of its own. And as I write, these little shapes begin to stick together, and I'll get larger chunks, and be able eventually to line those up against sort of historical timeline that I'm evolving in my head as I do research. And with luck, when I've put those chunks out there 60 or 70 pages each that's contiguous, I will be able to see the shape of the entire book. DG: So for me, it's being built up like this. It doesn't proceed in story lines. I don't plot them. I can see what the shape is, and in some cases it's obviously leading to a particular conclusion, and that's fine. In other cases, I may think it's going there, but I'm not trying to drive it, and often it doubles back on itself and does something else. But it fits into this shape, and so, what I'm doing is I'm watching the shape evolve rather than following a line. DG: Now there are always scenes that I think, "Oh, this is great. I'm really enjoying this." And there's other scenes that are like pushing rocks uphill with your nose, but they turn out really well in the end. So, it's not a matter of enjoyment. But there's just this sense of joy in creation overall, and people say, "Well, is it like giving birth to a baby and so forth?" And I say, "Well, not really." It's like building something with your bare hands, and as you place the final brick, you sort of step back and you go, "Ah!" So yeah, there's a sense of relief and satisfaction. It's done and it's solid. S?: Excellent, thanks. S?: Hi, thank you for hours of delight and pleasure. DG: Well, my pleasure. S?: As magnetic and compelling as Jamie Fraser is, I find Lord John Grey equally interesting, and I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit more on what it was about him that drew you to give him his own storyline. DG: Well, I can, but before I do that, let me say, we should stop the question line with the people who are in it now, because we will have to move on to the book signing, but I will answer all of your questions, those of you who are standing. DG: Yeah, no, Lord John is a mushroom. My characters are either onions, mushrooms, or heart nuts. An onion is somebody whose essence I understand immediately, but the more I work with them, the more layers they develop and the more pungent and rounded they are. Jamie and Claire are onions. A mushroom is someone who pops up out of nowhere, had no intention of using someone like this, they're just there, and they immediately walk off with any scene they're in. DG: Lord John was a mushroom. He popped up for me in 'Dragonfly in Amber,' wasn't expecting him at all. I really wasn't expecting him to come back in 'Voyager,' but there he was. And he just kind of evolved. He's the one character who... He's the easiest character for me to write, because all I have to do is listen to him. He's a born blurter, and he just says stuff, I don't have to try and figure out what he's going to say next, and frequently, I'm surprised at what he does say. S?: Thank you. S?: Hi. DG: Hi there. S?: I am Denise, and I'm thrilled to be here and I've enjoyed all of your books. DG: Well, thank you. S?: What I wanted to ask about is when you described how you chose this genre and timeframe, et cetera, you didn't have a background in being Scottish or anything like that? DG: No. S?: And the thing that I want to know about is the Gaelic. Because I love the fact that the Gaelic is all in there and it's very important and so forth, but I have had so much trouble trying to pronounce it [laughter] and feeling like I need to say it right, but I don't know how. I've written to friends on Facebook and all sorts of things to find somebody who knows Gaelic to help me and nobody can. So how did you do it? DG: I don't speak Gaelic. I have friends who do. [chuckle] No, for the first book I got a Gaelic-English dictionary. It was a very small one and I had to write to Schoenhof's Foreign Books in Boston to get it 'cause you just couldn't find things like that. So I used that through 'Outlander,' and then I said to my husband when I sold the book, I said "I really must go and see Scotland." And so, we went and I got a much bigger and more sophisticated Gaelic dictionary. DG: And after 'Dragonfly in Amber,' I got this nice letter from a gentleman named Ian MacKinnon-Taylor who said, "I've been loving your books, it's so nice to see Scottish history so accurately represented and you treat everything so beautifully and love your characters." He said "There's just this one thing which I hesitate to mention, I think you must be getting your Gaelic from a dictionary." [laughter] DG: He said "It's not that the words you use are wrong, but they're not used grammatically or idiomatically the way that a native speaker would use them. Could I offer you my services?" And I said "That would be wonderful, Mr. Taylor." So Ian helped me with the next two books and with the 'Outlandish Companion,' there is actually a pronunciation guide in there though I'm afraid it's not a very good one. S?: No. DG: He was not talented to add pronunciation guides. But anyway then Ian had health issues and couldn't help me anymore. But I have a good Canadian friend named Cathy MacGregor who is what they call a Gaelic learner. She's actually very accomplished, but she's not a native speaker. She is however best friends with Catherine-Ann MacPhee who is a native speaker from the Isle of Barra, and a very well-known Canadian and Scottish TV presenter and singer in Gaelic. DG: And so, the two Cathys have done most of the Gaelic translations for me for the last few books. They do a very nice, sophisticated job. Now in the fullness of time I hope to be able to have online a set of sound files of Cathy-Ann pronouncing them. We have a few, but we haven't got them organized to the point where I could put them up on Facebook or whatever, but that would be the best. Beyond that I'd recommend getting hold of the audio books read by Davina Porter because Davina works with first Ian and then with the Cathys to get the pronunciation right, and so, the way she's pronouncing it in the books is correct. S?: Thank you. DG: You're welcome. S?: There's some YouTube videos too to help pronounce them. S?: Hi Diana. DG: Hi. S?: I'm... Actually my sister way back in '91 tried to convince me to read your book and saw the size of it in university and said no. And a friend recently had me in, and so, in the past two months, I've read six of them. DG: Great. [laughter] [applause] S?: They were awesome! And a friend of mine and I are reading them together and I'm always asking, "Why does she hate Roger? Why does she hate Roger? What have you got against Roger?" So Diana my question to you is, why do you not like Roger? [laughter] DG: I love Roger. Roger's a ministry. You might ask him that question and he would quote scripture to you, "Whom the Lord loves, he chasteneth." [laughter] It goes back to what I said about Sam Heughan and so forth. Putting a person in that kind of situation shows you what he's made of. You have a real good idea of what Roger is made of. He has a tough time with assorted things. Does he give up? No, he perseveres, and if you've read 'MOBY,' which I guess you haven't got to yet, you will like Roger in that. S?: I wondered if he represented him someone... DG: I'm not telling you what he's doing, he's just in it. S?: I wondered if he represented someone in your past that you... DG: Oh no, no. S?: No, okay, good. DG: Not at all. No. Roger is me just like all of them, he's what I might have been if I had a religious calling. Yeah. S?: Hi. So I'm a recent, a newlywed. DG: Wow! S?: And in the past couple of months I've been reading your books to get ready for 'MOBY' and in a heated argument with my husband I just around, and I'm like, "You're not Jamie!" [laughter] S?: To which he replied, "Well, Jamie doesn't exist. He was created to be a fantasy for women." [laughter] So I would like to set the record straight and ask you, as you were developing Jamie as a character did you purposely make him super gallant and lovable and faithful and all of the wonderful things that he is, or was your fans' love for him just a side effect of the story? DG: I might have noted that my husband is 6'4" with red hair [laughter] and that we've been together for 42 years. There's a reason. [laughter] [applause] DG: No when my husband finally did find out what I was doing he didn't read the book until we got it back as a bound galley. It's like a cheap paper back that publishers send to reviewers. And he was reading something and he was half way through it, and he said, "Well, I love this story." He says, "This is great. I can't help noticing that your hero is very tall with red hair." [laughter] DG: And I said, "Well, it's true. You're Jamie Frasers' body model from the neck down." [laughter] DG: He said, "Oh good, now the whole world knows what I look like with no clothes on Page 323." [laughter] DG: I said, "That's okay. He's lying on his face in that scene." [laughter] DG: No, my husband is where Jamie gets a lot of his better lines from. In fact the very last line of Fiery Cross, something my husband said to me one morning, he was reading the Wall Street Journal and he just looked up out of no where, and he said, "When I die, if my last words aren't I love you, you'll know it was because I didn't have time." [applause] DG: Let's see. Do we have one more question here? S?: I was gonna ask if you told your husband yet, but obviously you have. DG: I have yes. No my husband is the only one who sees what I'm writing while I'm writing it. When I finish a scene, I'll take it down and leave it on his sink when I go to bed. He gets up very early, so he'll take it out and read it over coffee and then he'll bring it back at lunch and tell me what he thought about it. He luckily has a very good literary eye and if there's something and that's not quite working, he can tell me where it is and why it is. [chuckle] He has given two humorous marginal comments. My favourite is where he had written, "Nipples again." [laughter] S?: So when did you tell him? DG: Oh, let's see. Well, he discovered it by accident, as I say he had started his own business in our converted garage, but then it had become successful and he was able to move out and rent a regular office premises. And I inherited the garage and our IBM XD computer, but he would come at night sometimes to print things off from that computer and 'cause he would do contracts and things at home sometimes. DG: So he came in one night and said, "Well, I need to print out a contract, can I use the computer?" And I was sitting on it and I said "Yeah sure, yeah, go right ahead." Anyway those of you who remember those days of DOS and so forth remember that there was one key you pressed and it brought up the directory of everything in the computer. So he pressed the directory key because he couldn't remember what the contract was called and up came 80 files named Jamie. [laughter] DG: And he looks at that, and he looks at me and he said, "Who's Jamie?" [laughter] DG: And I said, "It's this book I'm writing, alright." [laughter] DG: But he could tell from my tone I was not to be trifled with so he backed off, but he doesn't stay backed off for long. He's just as stubborn as Jamie, and so, he after a while was standing behind me reading over my shoulder. And what he fondly considers to be a Scottish accent, and saying things like, "Well, if this is set in Scotland why doesn't anybody say hoot mon." [laughter] DG: But as I say he didn't actually read the book until it was finished and we had sold it. Anyway I think the time has come for us to start signing books. You've been a lovely audience, thank you so much. [applause]