BY: BOOKMANS

There's a bibliography in THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION - sources (just book sources; not online resources, experts, museum collections, etc.) consulted during the writing of the first four novels. I think there are some 600-plus volumes in that list alone. (The present research collection - the books I actually own and keep on hand - numbers something upwards of 2000 books right now - and it keeps getting worse.) So, no. 

Late last year it was announced that you were collaborating with illustrator Hoang Nguyen on an Outlander graphic novel that would be its own story rather than an adaptation of an existing Outlander novel. How did the project come about, and how did you link with Nguyen?  

Well, I'd written comics before, and enjoy the form. So when graphic novels - beyond the superhero action/adventure type - began to be a viable book form in the market, I told my literary agent that if/when the opportunity occurred to write one, I'd love to do it. And a few months later, it did; Ballantine put together a special editorial unit specifically to do graphic novels, and decided to begin by soliciting several of the Random House (Ballantine being one of the publishing entities within Random House) bestselling novelists, to see if they'd be interested. I was, so here we are. 

Once I'd expressed interest in the project, I met with the editorial team, and we looked at a lot of comics and discussed what I liked in terms of style. They very kindly put together a choice selection of ten excellent artists whose work had the characteristics I was most interested in - and  I chose Hoang from the samples of his work that were included in that selection. (By the way, if any of your readers are interested in seeing such samples, his own website is www.liquidbrush.com. Fabulous stuff!) 

You wrote comic scripts for Walt Disney early in your career - what do you enjoy about the format? Are you a fan of comics in general? 

Sure. It's a fascinating form. You formulate the story in images (the script-writer - that's me - decides what those images are, by the way. The artist implements the writer's vision/instructions), so each image needs to be carefully crafted both to carry information and to convey character.  Dialogue is important - it's the only way of conveying plot points that can't be shown visually, and it's still an important method of character development - but it has to be minimal. It's a very condensed form of story-telling.

Were you surprised that Lord John Grey became such a popular character amongst fans of the Outlander series? Did fan response play any part in your decision to write Lord John Grey and the Private Matter, the first book in the Lord John Grey novels? 

Not surprised, no. He's a very interesting and appealing person; why wouldn't other people like him as much as I do?

But no, the Lord John books were a total accident. I'd been invited - some ten years ago - to write a short story for a British anthology of historical crime. I was flattered to be invited to join the project, as there were a number of very well-known writers of historical mystery involved: Anne Perry, Steven Saylor and the like. At the same time, "short" is not my natural form.

So I said I'd do it, but had to think just what to write. I didn’t want to do a short piece involving the main characters from the OUTLANDER series, because - as I said above - I don't plan the books out and never know exactly what will happen. A good short story has significant incident and high moral stakes, though; if I wrote a decent short story involving Claire and Jamie, I'd then have to take account of whatever events took place therein, when writing future books - and I didn't want to cause pointless complications of that sort. 

But…there was Lord John Grey. He's an important, though minor, character in the main novels; he's an appealing character - and because of who and what he is (a very honorable, courageous soldier - who happens to be homosexual in a culture where that particular predilection was a capital offense), he has very interesting conflicts. He also talks to me easily. And while he's an important part of the OUTLANDER novels, he's not onstage all the time - plainly when he's not, he's leading an interesting life elsewhere.  So fine, I thought; I'd write about some adventure in his offstage life.  Hence, "Lord John and the Hellfire Club." 

Anyway - this is the short form here - people were very entertained by this story, wanted more…and I figured that I'd do two or three more Lord John short stories as time and inspiration offered, and when I had enough material, I'd publish them together in book form.   

So I wrote LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER, under the delusion that it was a short story (well, what the heck; it's only 80,000 words!) - only to be otherwise informed by my literary agents. ("No," they said, "that's the size normal books are!") So they took it off and sold it all over the place as a novel, and all the publishers said, "That's great! A new Gabaldon book we weren't expecting - and it's short!" (they have issues with the big books; something about paper costs). "Can she do that again?" they asked. "Oh, I'm sure she could," said the agents - whereupon they came back with a number of three-book contracts from publishers from Germany to New Zealand, and…here we are.