• “The smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting 'Scrooge McDuck' comics.”—Salon.com
  • A time-hopping, continent-spanning salmagundi of genres.”
    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
  • “These books have to be word-of-mouth books because they're too weird to describe to anybody.”
    —Jackie Cantor, Diana's first editor

Jamie, or John?

Oookay, then!

Sorry to be so late in getting this post up; I’ve been in New Mexico for the last week, and the internet connection there was Just Abysmal; could barely keep it open long enough to tweet, let alone upload anything longer.
First things first: Upcoming appearances.

I’m flying to New York on Monday, and will be appearing (briefly) at the RWA convention, held at the Marriott Marquis. Appearances will be:

The Literacy Signing, where most of the published authors taking part will be available to sell/sign books—this is from 5:30-7:30 on June 28th, at the Marriott Marquis. This event _is_ open to the public, and I _believe_ that you’re allowed to bring in up to three of your own books from home to be signed, if you like.
The opening panel of the convention, where I’ll be taking part in a discussion with two other Random House authors, Steve Berry and Tess Gerritsen. This is part of the convention and open only to convention attendees. It’ll be from 8:30-10:00 AM on June 29th.

Then on July 5th—publication date for the cool new 20th-anniversary OUTLANDER edition!—I fly to Laramie Wyoming, where I’ll be doing the keynote speech for the Sir Walter Scott conference at the University of Wyoming. The conference program is here http://www.uwyo.edu/scottconf2011/program.html , but I don’t yet have a detailed personal schedule. I _will_ be doing at least one public book-signing, though; will post time and place as soon as I get them.

On July 8th, I fly _back_ to New York, for ThrillerFest, at the Hyatt. There, I’ll be doing a Livestream event with James Rollins (Powell’s Books is supplying books to be sold during this event—and I certainly _hope_ they’ll have the 20th-anniversary edition!) from 2-4:00 PM on July 8th.

On the evening of July 8th, I’ll be doing a joint signing with several other authors for a collaborative mystery novel called NO REST FOR THE DEAD. (This is one of those for-charity efforts—proceeds for this one go to cancer research—where a number of well-known authors take turns writing chapters, and the editor then goes through and kind of smooths things out so the story is coherent. Or so we hope, anyway.)

The signing will be held at 7:00 PM at the Center for Fiction, (17 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017), and authors attending will include Peter James, Marcia Talley, John Lescroart, RL Stine, Diana Gabaldon,Jeffery Deaver, Gayle Lynds and Andrew Gulli. (Just for my own part, I’m fine with people bringing their own books to be signed, too.) This is open to the public.

Aaaand, on July 9th, I’ll do a Spotlight Interview (at the Hyatt) for ThrillerFest, Kathleen Antrim being the interviewer. That’s from 1:00-1:50 PM. And then I’ll do a book-signing for the convention (open only to convention attendees) from 5:00-6:00 PM at the convention bookstore in the hotel.

Then I rush home on the 10th {g}, and do the Official Launch Party for the 20th-anniversary OUTLANDER on July 11th, at The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale. 7:00 PM!

Righto. Now, I had promised to show you the two openings I have for SCOTTISH PRISONER. As it stands, I’m opening the book with Jamie’s point of view—but I _could_ open with Lord John’s first chapter instead, and do Jamie’s second.  I did it this way because I’d like people to realize right away that this is Jamie’s book, as much as Lord John’s—but it _is_ a Rather Unusual {cough} way to open a book.

So—those of you who don’t read excerpts should stop Right Here.

Those of you who _do_…here you go, and hope you enjoy them! Let me know what you think: Jamie first, or Lord John?

THE SCOTTISH PRISONER
(Copyright 2011 Diana Gabaldon)
Chapter 1:

Helwater, the Lake District
April 1, 1760

It was so cold out, he thought his cock might break off in his hand. If he could find it. The thought passed through his sleep-mazed mind like one of the small, icy drafts that darted through the loft, making him open his eyes.
He could find it now; had waked with his fist wrapped round it and desire shuddering and twitching over his skin like a cloud of midges. The dream was wrapped just as tightly round his mind, but he knew it would fray in seconds, shredded by the snores and farts of the other grooms. He needed her, needed to spill himself with the feel of her touch still on him.
Hanks stirred in his sleep, chuckled loudly, said something incoherent, and fell back into the void, murmuring, “Bugger, bugger, bugger…”
Jamie said something similar under his breath in the Gaelic, and flung back his blanket. Damn the cold.
He made his way down the ladder into the half-warm, horse-smelling fug of the barn, nearly falling in his haste, ignoring a splinter in his bare foot. He hesitated in the dark, still urgent. The horses wouldn’t care, but if they noticed him, they’d make enough noise, perhaps, to wake the others.

Wind struck the barn and went booming round the roof. A strong chilly draft with a scent of snow stirred the somnolence, and two or three of the horses shifted, grunting and whickering. Overhead, a murmured “‘ugger” drifted down, accompanied by the sound of someone turning over and pulling the blanket up round his ears, defying reality.

Claire was still with him, vivid in his mind, solid in his hands. He could imagine that he smelled her hair in the scent of fresh hay. The memory of her mouth, those sharp white teeth …he rubbed his nipple, hard and itching beneath his shirt, and swallowed.

His eyes were long accustomed to the dark; he found the vacant loose-box at the end of the row and leaned against its boards, cock already in his fist, body and mind yearning for his wife.
He’d have made it last if he could, but he was fearful lest the dream go altogether and he surged into the memory, groaning. His knees gave way in the aftermath and he slid slowly down the boards of the box into the loose piled hay, shirt rucked round his thighs and his heart pounding like a kettle drum.

[end section]

(more stuff in this chapter, of course)

Chapter 2: The Fate of Fuses

London
Argus House

Lord John Grey eyed the ribbon-tied packet on his knee as though it were a bomb. In fact, it couldn’t have been more explosive had it been filled with black powder and equipped with a fuse.
His attitude as he handed it to his brother must have reflected this knowledge, for Hal fixed him with a gimlet eye and raised one brow. He said nothing, though, flicking loose both ribbon and wrapping with an impatient gesture and bending his head at once over the thick sheaf of densely-written sheets that emerged.

Grey couldn’t stand to watch him read through Charles Carruthers’s post-mortem denunciation, recalling each damning page as Hal read it. He stood up and went to the window of the study that looked out into the back garden of Argus House, ignoring the swish of turning pages and the occasional blasphemous mutterings behind him.

Hal’s three boys were playing a game of tigers and hunters, leaping out at each other from behind the shrubbery with shrill roars, followed by shrieks of delight and yells of “Bang! Take that, you striped son of a bitch!”

The nurse seated on the edge of the fish-pool, keeping a tight grip on baby Dottie’s gown, looked up at this, but merely rolled her eyes with a martyred expression. Flesh and blood has its limits, her expression said clearly, and she resumed paddling a hand in the water, luring one of the big goldfish close so that Dottie could drop bits of bread to it.

John longed to be down there with them. It was a rare day for early April, and he felt the pulse of it in his blood, urging him to be outside, running bare-foot through young grass. Running naked down into the water… The sun was high, flooding warm through the glass of the French windows, and he closed his eyes and turned his face up to it.

Siverly. The name floated in the darkness behind his eyes, pasted across the blank face of an imagined cartoon major, drawn in uniform, an outsized sword brandished in his hand, and bags of money stuffed into the back of his breeches, obscene bulges under the skirt of his coat. One or two had fallen to the ground, bursting open so that you could see the contents–coin in one, the other filled with what looked like poppets, small wooden doll-like things. Each one with a tiny knife through its heart.

Hal swore in German behind him. He must have reached the part about the rifles; German oaths were reserved for the most stringent occasions, French being used for minor things like a burnt dinner, and Latin for formal insults committed to paper. Minnie wouldn’t let either Hal or John swear in English in the house, not wanting the boys to acquire low habits. John could have told her it was too late for such caution, but didn’t.

He turned round to see Hal on his feet, pale with rage, a sheet of paper crumpled in one hand.

“How dare he? How dare he?”

A small knot he hadn’t known was there dissolved under John’s ribs.

“You believe Carruthers, then?”

Hal glared at him.

“Don’t you? You knew the man.”

He had known Charles Carruthers–in more than one sense.

“Yes, I believed him when he told me about Siverly in Canada–and that–” he nodded at the papers, thrown in a sprawl across Hal’s desk, “–is even more convincing. You’d think he’d been a lawyer.”
He could still see Carruthers’s face, pale in the dimness of his attic room in [town], drawn with ill-health but set with grim determination to live long enough to see justice done. Charlie hadn’t lived that long, but long enough to write down every detail of the case against Major Gerald Siverly, and to entrust it to him.

He was the fuse that would detonate this particular bomb. And he was all too familiar with what happened to fuses, once lit.

[end section]

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364 Responses »

  1. I vote for Jamie. I love his character and love learning and reading more about him and Claire!!
    Keep the great books coming!!!!

  2. Diana, in your previous blog post you said, “At the moment, it begins with Jamie’s story, with a scene that caused my husband to write, ‘Can you even _print_ this?’ in the margin when he read it.” After all the scenes you’ve written (Black Jack at Wentworth, for example), I was expecting something a lot more, ahem {cough}, than what this scene actually depicts. That being said, I think Jamie’s scene draws the reader’s emotions into the story right away. Lord John’s chapter is more intellectual in nature. I appreciate both elements in your stories, but the emotion wins me over almost every time. Please start with Jamie.

  3. A tentative vote for the LJG opening. Even though this is a departure from the “LJ and the…” series, a sort of hybrid, I think the scene with Hal and LJ sets up the story a bit better. But then the Jamie scene is kind of a jolt, with that first paragraph, cracking the whip (or lighting the fuse), starting off with a bang. Heck, won’t really know till I read the Whole Book.

    Even having read all the fragments and snippets that you’ve so generously doled out to us greedy readers, I can’t quite discern yet if the primary focus is: 1) to tell a rollicking good mystery/adventure story or 2) a character study of two wildly different, complex, and bloody men who share a strong sense of honor and responsibility, as they move from prickly animosity toward friendship and trust. It will be both, of course, and infinitely more, but which is the more important to the Author? If the former, perhaps the LJ scene, and if the latter, Jamie’s.

    Wishing and hoping that this is a wee bit larger than the average LJG book,

    Chris Anne

  4. Well, odds are we will all read both passages many times over so I would say it doesn’t really matter to me as long as the book gets here soon!!!

  5. It should be Lord John since the title gives him primary focus.

  6. Another vote for LJG, thanks for letting us be involved in the decision!

  7. I vote for Jamie.
    I honestly don’t like Lord John and I’ll read this book because of Jamie … I know it’s not a plausible view … but I hope this helps.

    (sorry my bad bad english)

    Abraços do Brasil,

    Vanessa

  8. I love the Jamie part, so provocative and heartrending, but I do think the John opener sets up the storyline better and tells us where the story is going. Even as an avid reader of both Outlander and the Lord John series, I was a little confused about the direction of the story until I read the John opener and then went, Oh, Yeah.

  9. Jamie! It got my attention!

  10. My humble opinion would be to open with Lord John. After just finishing the Lord John based books, I see that we are at the turning point of their relationship, where they rejoin (figuratively speaking, bien sur) as life long friends. So that being said, Lord John is all about Jamie, and Claire is all about Jamie. Jamie is the common thread. He is the subject matter of the speaker, in this case, Lord John.

  11. I love Jamie; I absolutely adore Lord John. How to choose? The Jamie passage is more immediately compelling. I vote for Jamie. Meanwhile, am counting the days till this book comes out…

  12. The “Jamie”one had me hooked and I think anyone new to the series would also want to read more. It just pulls at you emotionally so quickly.

    I really enjoy how you paint your scenes.
    “Wind struck the barn and went booming round the roof. A strong chilly draft with a scent of snow stirred the somnolence, and two or three of the horses shifted, grunting and whickering. Overhead, a murmured “‘ugger” drifted down, accompanied by the sound of someone turning over and pulling the blanket up round his ears, defying reality.”

    Takes me there….

    The “Jamie” opening is cleaner with less moving parts so I think it would definitely hook more readers – new and fans and fanatics.

  13. I adore your writing – Outlander and Voyager rank in my top 5 books of all time (and thats a lot of books to compete with!). I think Jamie is the obvious choice….which makes me feel that maybe Lord John’s chapter should be first. We ALL love Jamie/Claire so much (notice that I can’t even write them as separate names!) and I am so glad this will be as much Jamie’s book as Lord John’s.
    You really cannot go wrong with this – you have two great characters and I will be first in line regardless of whose chapter is first! Thank you so much for letting all of us share our opinions!

  14. Definitely Jamie.

  15. Please start with Jamie! I can’t get enough of him.

  16. Definitely Jamie’s opening! Can’t wait for the book!!!

  17. Jamie – for sure

  18. I think Jaime first, no LJ first, no Jaime first…. Whatever, so you can get on with book 8! I want to read book 8 NOW! Good series. Thanks.

  19. I’m afraid I’m in favor of Lord John first. I say it that way because I’m not a big LJ fan. However, putting LJ’s first sets up the rest of the book; Jamie’s is heartwrenching but doesn’t say where we’re going. Just my 2 cents worth. I’ll read anything and everything by DG (got a shopping list to hold us over?).

  20. Jamie. There could not be a more potent opening.

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