• “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

Ghost Story

Well, it being Halloween—one of my favorite holidays—I thought I’d post something suitable. <g>

Now, you’d think that I’d meet a lot of ghosts, what with my habit of walking battlefields, handling historical artifacts, touring ancient castles and houses, etc., but noooooo.

In fact, I’ve only met two ghosts in my life (I did have one that haunted my house for awhile, but she wasn’t conscious of me, so no interaction there)—and the only strange thing about both occurrences is how utterly normal they both seemed. About fifteen years ago, though, a friend asked me to write up the first encounter for a newsletter published by the "Psychic Writers Network" (no, I haven’t the slightest idea), so I did. Later, a (now defunct) website called www.allaboutghosts.com asked for permission to use it as well. So some of you may have seen this piece before. But for all of you—

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

THE GHOST IN THE ALAMO

Copyright © 1994 by Diana Gabaldon. All Rights Reserved.

In May of 1990, I was at a writer’s conference in San Antonio, staying at the Menger Hotel, a rather charming old place built in the late 1800′s. It’s also located across the street from the Alamo, which now stands in a little botanical park, full of trees and shrubs, each with a little metal label bearing its name.

A friend had driven up from Houston to see me, and he suggested that we go walk through the Alamo, he being a botanist and therefore interested in the plants. He also thought I might find the building interesting. He said he’d been there several times as a child, and had found it "evocative." So we strolled through the garden, looking at plants, and then went inside.

The present memorial is the single main church building, which is essentially no more than a gutted masonry shell. There’s nothing at all in the church proper—stone floor and stone walls, bearing the marks of hundreds of thousands of bullets; the stone looks chewed. There are a couple of smaller semi open rooms at the front of the church where the baptismal font and a small chapel used to be originally separated from the main room by stone pillars and partial walls.

Around the edges of the main room are a few museum display cases, holding such artifacts of the defenders as the Daughters of Texas have managed to scrape together— rather a pitiful collection, including spoons, buttons, and (scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you ask me) a diploma certifying that one of the defenders had graduated from law school (this, like a number of other artifacts, wasn’t present in the Alamo, but was obtained later from the family of the man to whom it belonged).

The walls are lined with perfectly horrible oil paintings, showing various of the defenders in assorted "heroic" poses. I suspect them all of having been executed by the Daughters of Texas in a special arts and crafts class held for the purpose, though I admit that I might be maligning the D of T by this supposition. At any rate, as museums go, this one doesn’t.

It is quiet—owing to the presence of the woman waving the "Silence,Please! THIS IS A SHRINE!" sign in the middle of the room—but is not otherwise either spooky or reverent in atmosphere. It’s just a big, empty room. My friend and I cruised slowly around the room, making sotto voce remarks about the paintings and looking at the artifacts.

And then I walked into a ghost. He was near the front of the main room, about ten feet in from the wall, near the smaller room on the left (as you enter the church). I was very surprised by the encounter, since I hadn’t expected to meet a ghost, and if I had, he wasn’t what I would have expected.

I saw nothing, experienced no chill or feeling of oppression or malaise. The air felt slightly warmer where I stood, but not so much as to be really noticeable. The only really distinct feeling was one of…communication. Very distinct communication. I knew he was there—and he certainly knew I was. It was the feeling you get when you meet the eyes of a stranger and know at once this is someone you’d like.

I wasn’t frightened in the least; just intensely surprised. I had a strong urge to continue standing there, "talking" (as it were; there were no words exchanged then) to this man. Because it was a man; I could "feel" him distinctly, and had a strong sense of his personality. I rather naturally assumed that I was imagining this, and turned to find my friend, to re-establish a sense of reality. He was about six feet away, and I started to walk toward him. Within a couple of feet, I lost contact with the ghost; couldn’t feel him anymore. It was like leaving someone at a bus stop; a sense of broken communication.

Without speaking to my friend, I turned and went back to the spot where I had encountered the ghost. There he was. Again, he was quite conscious of me, too, though he didn’t say anything in words. It was a feeling of "Oh, there you are!" on both parts.

I tried the experiment two or three more times—stepping away and coming back—with similar results each time. If I moved away, I couldn’t feel him; if I moved back, I could. By this time, my friend was becoming understandably curious. He came over and whispered, "Is this what a writer does?," meaning to be funny. Since he evidently didn’t sense the ghost —he was standing approximately where I had been—I didn’t say anything about it, but merely smiled and went on outside with him, where we continued our botanical investigations.

The whole occurrence struck me as so very odd—while at the same time feeling utterly "normal"—that I went back to the Alamo—alone, this time—on each of the next two days. Same thing; he was there, in the same spot, and he knew me. Each time, I would just stand there, engaged in what I can only call mental communication. As soon as I left the spot—it was an area maybe two to three feet square—I couldn’t sense him anymore.

I did wonder who he was, of course. There are brass plates at intervals around the walls of the church, listing the vital statistics of all the Alamo defenders, and I’d strolled along looking at these, trying to see if any of them "rang a bell," so to speak. None did.

Now, I did mention the occurrence to a few of the writers at the conference, all of whom were very interested. I don’t think any of them went to the Alamo themselves—if they did, they didn’t tell me—but more than one of them suggested that perhaps the ghost wanted me to tell his story, I being a writer and all. I said dubiously that I didn’t think that’s what he wanted, but the next—and last—time I went to the Alamo, I did ask him, in so many words.

I stood there and thought—consciously, in words "What do you want? I can’t really do anything for you. All I can give you is the knowledge that I know you’re there; I care that you lived and I care that you died here."

And he said—not out loud, but I heard the words distinctly inside my head; it was the only time he spoke—he said "That’s enough."

At once, I had a feeling of completion. It was enough; that’s all he wanted. I turned and went away. This time, I took a slightly different path out of the church, because there was a group of tourists in my way. Instead of leaving in a straight line to the door, I passed around the pillar dividing the main church from one of the smaller rooms. There was a small brass plate in the angle of the wall there, not visible from the main room.

The plate said that the smaller room had been used as a powder magazine during the defense of the fort. During the last hours of the siege, when it became apparent that the fort would fall, one of the defenders had made an effort to blow up the magazine, in order to destroy the fort and take as many of the attackers as possible with it. However, the man had been shot and killed just outside the smaller room, before he could succeed in his mission—more or less on the spot where I met the ghost.

So I don’t know for sure; he didn’t tell me his name, and I got no clear idea of his appearance—just a general impression that he was fairly tall; he spoke "down" to me, somehow. But for what it’s worth, the man who was killed trying to blow up the powder magazine was named Robert Evans; one of the survivors of the Alamo described him as being "black haired, blue eyed, nearly six feet tall, and always merry." That last bit sounds like the man I met, all right, but there’s no telling. I got this description, by the way, from a book titled ALAMO DEFENDERS, which I bought in the museum bookshop as I was leaving. I had never heard of Robert Evans or the powder magazine before.

And that’s the whole story.

-Diana

Posted on October 31, 2008 4:16 PM 22 Comments

Into THIN AIR!

THIN AIR – Appearance/book-signing in Flagstaff – November 14th!

Interviewers always ask, “How has your life changed, now that you’re a best-selling author instead of a scientist?” My impulse is usually to answer, “Well…now I write books instead of doing research or teaching classes. You know…duh.” Being a naturally polite person (no, really. I mean, usually…well, if I’m not worn to a frazz on a book tour, at least…) and understanding that thinking up good interview questions is not the easiest thing in the world to do, so far I haven’t done this.

In fact, my life has changed a lot (well, look, I’ve lived more than half a century; naturally it’s going to change; everybody’s does), but the details are by and large either too complicated or too boring to make a good answer.

One of the ways in which it’s changed, though, is that I now have the opportunity to consort with all kinds of Really Interesting People, and to be involved in all kinds of entertaining projects, beyond the limits of just the stuff I personally write.

One of these entertaining projects (staffed by Really Interesting People ) is Thin Air. This is the literary magazine produced, edited, and published by an enterprising (and most creative) group of students at Northern Arizona University. (NAU is my old alma mater, in Flagstaff—which is 7000 feet above sea level. “Thin air,” geddit?)

I have the honor to be “consulting editor” for this excellent magazine—which basically means that I help support their printing costs and drop by now and then to talk with the staff and hear all about the neat things they’re doing.

On one recent visit to NAU, I was invited to visit an advanced Creative Writing seminar to talk about graphic novels: what they are (this being a college class, they already knew that), how they’re put together, what a script looks like, how collaboration with the artist works, what the business side (contracts, etc.) is like, and so on. Well, the editor-in-chief of Thin Air was part of this class, and asked whether I’d be willing to do an interview for the magazine, covering some of the high points of this presentation. Sure, I said.

Well, you know how one thing sort of leads to another? (Or at least it certainly does around here…) We ended up with what I think is probably an interesting interview, illustrated not only with a page of my working script, but with the “pencil page” (the preliminary sketch) of the artwork for that page, and the finished (not necessarily final; there’s always tweaking) full-color art of the same page (page 48, I think. It’s part of the scene where Claire tends Jamie’s shoulder on the road and he tells Dougal to find him a clean shirt and take the lassie off his chest). Many thanks to Hoang Nguyen, the artist, and Betsy Mitchell, the Ballantine editor, for letting us use these!

In addition to the interview, I’ll also be doing a fund-raising appearance for the magazine at Northern Arizona University on November 14th. This will be in the afternoon—3:00 PM—and I’ll be talking (about graphic novels, to start with, though I imagine other things will be talked about, and I’ll certainly be reading a few bits of this and that—excerpts from AN ECHO IN THE BONE, that sort of thing…) for a couple of hours and signing books. (Books will be available for sale there, but you’re certainly welcome to bring your own for signing, if you’d like.)

For more details—or to order tickets for the talk—or to order a copy of the magazine itself—
go to www.thinairmagazine.com . And I’ll see you in Flagstaff in two weeks!

Posted on October 29, 2008 9:48 AM 15 Comments

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Well, good news! I finally know what the shape of AN ECHO IN THE BONE is!

I think I’ve explained a little before, about how I write: to wit, not with an outline, and not in a straight line. [g] I write in bits and pieces, doing the research more or less concurrently with the writing (meaning that assorted bits of plot or new scenes may pop up unexpectedly as the result of my stumbling across something too entertaining to pass up).

As I work, some of these bits and pieces will begin to stick together, forming larger chunks. For example, I’ll write a scene, and realize that it explains why what happened in a scene written several months ago happened. Ergo, the later scene probably ought to precede the first, already-written scene. So I haul both scenes into the same document, read through this larger chunk, and at that point, sometimes will see what has to happen next. (Sometimes not.) If so, then I can proceed to write the next bit. If not, I go look for another kernel (what I call the bits of inspiration that offer me a foothold on a new scene), and write something else.

Anyway, this process of agglomeration continues, and I begin to see the underlying patterns of the book. I get larger chunks. And all the time, I’m evolving a rough timeline in my head, against which I can line up these chunks in rough order (E.g., the battle of Saratoga—which is in this book—was actually two battles, fought by the same armies on the same ground. But the dates of those battles are fixed: September 19th and October 7th, 1777. Some specific historical events occurred and specific historical persons were present in each of those two battles. Ergo, if I have assorted personal events that take place in the fictional characters’ lives, and various scenes dealing with those, I can tell that logically, X must have taken place after the first battle, because there’s a wounded man in that scene, while Y has to take place after the second battle, because the death of a particular person (who died in the second battle) precipitates Y. Meanwhile, Z clearly takes place between the battles, because there’s a field hospital involved, but there’s no fighting going on. Like that.)

Now, at a certain point in this chunking process (and I’ve been chunking for awhile now on ECHO; in fact, I’ve sent my German translator two largish chunks already, to begin translating), I discern the underlying “shape” of the book. This is Important.

All my books have a shape, and once I’ve seen what it is, the book comes together much more quickly, because I can then see approximately what-all is included, how it’s organized, and where the missing pieces (most of them, anyway) are.

OUTLANDER, for instance, is shaped like three overlapping triangles: the action rises naturally toward three climaxes: Claire’s decision at Craig na Dun to stay in the past, Claire’s rescue of Jamie from Wentworth, and her saving of his soul at the Abbey.

DRAGONFLY IN AMBER is shaped like a dumbbell (no, really [g]). The framing story, set in 1968 (or 1969; there’s a copyediting glitch in there that has to do with differences between the US and UK editions of OUTLANDER, but we won’t go into that now), forms the caps on the ends of the dumbbell. The first arc of the main story is the French background, the plots and intrigue (and personal complications) leading toward the Rising. Then there’s a relatively flat stretch of calm and domestic peace at Lallybroch, followed by the second major arc, the Rising itself. And the final end-cap of the framing story. All very symmetrical.

VOYAGER looks like a braided horse-tail: the first third of the book consists of a three-part braided narrative: Jamie’s third-person narrative runs forward in time; Claire’s first-person narrative goes backward in time (as she explains things to Roger and Brianna), and Roger’s third-person narrative sections form the present-time turning points between Claire’s and Jamie’s stories. After Claire’s return to the past, though, the story then drops into the multi-stranded but linear first-person narrative (moving forward) that we’re used to.

DRUMS OF AUTUMN…well, that one’s a little more free-form, but it does have a shape. It’s shaped like a curving, leafy stem, with a big, showy rose at the end, but with two side-stems, each with a large bud (these being Roger and Brianna’s independent part of the story, and the Jocasta/Hector/Ulysses/Duncan/Phaedre part).

THE FIERY CROSS looks either like a rainbow or a shower of fireworks, depending how you want to look at it. [g] There are a number of separate storylines that arc through the book—but every single one of them has its origin and root in that Very Long Day at the Gathering where the book begins. Each storyline then has its own arc, which comes down at a different point toward the end of the book.

A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES…Well, probably you’ve seen that very well-known Hokusai print, titled “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.” (In case you haven’t, here’s a link.) When I happened to see this print while assembling the chunks for this book, I emailed my agent in great excitement, to tell him I’d seen the shape of the book. “It looks like the Great Wave,” I said. “Only there are two of them!” [g] Notice, if you will, the little boats full of people, about to be swamped by the wave—these are the characters whose fate is affected by the onrush of events. And in the middle of the print, we see Mt. Fuji in the distance, small but immovable, unaffected by the wave. That’s the love between Claire and Jamie, which endures through both physical and emotional upheaval. (The waves are the escalating tides of events/violence that remove Claire and Jamie from the Ridge.)

So that leads us to the current book. And, as I say, I’ve just recently seen the “shape” of AN ECHO IN THE BONE. It’s a caltrop.

[pause]

OK, normally I’d make y’all look it up [g], but the only person to whom I announced this revelation (husband, literary agents, editors, children) who already knew what a caltrop is, was my elder daughter (who is unusually well-read). So, all right—this is a caltrop (so’s this, which is very elegant, I think), and this is the definition thereof.

Nasty-looking little bugger, isn’t it? (And if you think this image presages something regarding the effect of this book, you are very likely right. Enjoy. [g])

Posted on October 20, 2008 7:08 PM 52 Comments

It’s their HEADS that are full of spackle…

I drove up from Scottsdale to my old family place in Flagstaff yesterday. On car trips where I’m driving, I usually listen either to CD’s or the radio—thanks to my husband, I have Sirius radio, and thus can choose from the BBC (love the accents, as well as the different world views you get), any kind of music one can think of, or the Usual Suspects in terms of domestic news. Given the hair-raising state of current affairs, I was mostly listening to the domestic channels. Which have advertising.

Now, I don’t really mind hearing guff about credit-counseling agencies, truck-driving companies, or male-enhancement products (the best was one I heard last week, while driving with my husband: a “lotion-based” enhancement “guaranteed to increase your size as soon as you rub it in!” My husband nearly died laughing). I do, however, draw the line at the ads for colon cleansers.

I don’t know if they’re all the same company under different product names, but they all have the same script. Their product, they assure you, will rid you of, “the ten to twenty-five pounds of UNDIGESTED WASTE that some experts say is stuck to the walls of your colon, like spackle or paste!”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this quaint theory; I once visited a massage therapist who earnestly showed me a “scientific booklet” showing cross-sectional illustrations of the large intestine, looking like a kitchen drain clogged by ever-increasing grease deposits.

Now, look…

Were y’all not paying attention in Junior High biology, when the gross anatomy and general function of the large intestine were explained? Evidently a lot of people weren’t.

For starters, stand in front of a mirror and open your mouth. You are looking at one end of your digestive system. Do you see food sticking to the back of your throat? I sincerely hope not. OK, do you know why food is not sticking to the back of your throat?

Because it is slippery! Yes, very good. And why is it slippery? Because the back of your throat (and the inside of your nose, just for good measure) is lined with a mucous membrane. That means the tissue there is equipped with a large number of cells that produce….yes, indeedy, mucus! Mucus is exceedingly slippery. Slimy, even. Stuff does not stick to it.

All right. Stop-press news here: your whole, entire intestinal system is lined by this same mucous membrane. If food isn’t sticking at the top of your alimentary canal, it isn’t sticking at the bottom, either. No spackle.

No twenty-five pounds of undigested food, either. Now, even if you take my word for it that “undigested waste” (which is a contradiction in terms; if it hasn’t been digested, it isn’t waste; it’s just chewed-up food. Believe me, you would notice if you were excreting undigested food) is not sticking to the walls of your large intestine, it might be argued that if your colon were especially sluggish, glop might be lollygagging around in there, making you weigh more.

It might be argued, but that isn’t true, either, and it’s pretty dang easy to prove it. You know the colonoscopy that you’re supposed to get when you turn 50, and every so often thereafter? Well, before a doctor goes sticking an endoscope up your rear end, he or she would like to make sure of having an unobstructed view. To this end, the preparation for a colonoscopy involves drinking a solution of a liquid containing magnesium, which is a powerful laxative. You can buy this stuff in any drug store; it’s called Fleet, and it’s utterly revolting. But effective. It will remove everything in your colon within a few hours. And if you—out of a spirit of scientific inquiry—should happen to weigh yourself before and after this process, you will note that you do not—alas—lose ten to twenty-five pounds. You might—temporarily—lose one. If you drink enough water to kill the taste, you’ll probably—temporarily—gain weight.

If you have any doubts, ask the medical personnel who do your colonoscopy if they noticed any spackle-like deposits clinging to the walls of your colon. If they did, I bet they’d mention it.

I haven’t looked at the ingredient list of any of these products—I’ve never even seen one in the flesh—but I’d bet money that magnesium is one of, if not the, main ingredient. Taking two 500 mg magnesium tablets (which will cost you about 6 cents) will do anything one of these colon-cleansers does, I assure you. (I take magnesium tablets for occasional migraines—along with three aspirin and a nice glass of white wine, plus a schmear of Tiger Balm on temples and under nose. Treatment for migraines is highly idiosyncratic; I don’t recommend this for anybody else, but it usually works for me. But that’s how I know about the other effects of magnesium tablets.)

Putting aside the question of their supposed physiological basis, which is utter nonsense, do these colon-cleansers actually work, in terms of weight loss?

Well, yeah, they probably do—if used as directed. My chiropractor (hey, writing for a living is physically destructive; I have major arthritis in my neck, and my spine looks like I’m playing Twister, even while sitting down) once tried one of these “cleanser” regimes, and was so enthused, he was recommending it to all his clients.

“Yeah?” I said. “What do you do?”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s easy! Three days a week, you just drink the cleanser crystals, in juice or water or whatever. I’ve lost ten pounds in a month!”
“Great!” I said. “And you eat normally while you do this?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “You don’t eat on the days you take the cleanser.”

[pause]

“Jeffrey,” I said, when he had stopped twisting my head, “you are losing weight because you’ve cut your caloric intake in half. You’d get the same effect if you just didn’t eat solid food every other day.”

He didn’t believe me, of course. But I hope you will. Drink water, eat less (but whatever you do eat should have fiber), and save your money, is my advice. And listen to the BBC. It’s soothing to realize that the world is bigger than Wall Street and Washington.

Posted on September 26, 2008 5:48 PM 58 Comments

JAMIE AND THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: MR. F. and Mr. A.

So….you really want to know what I think Jamie looks like, do you? [g]

Well, Hoang has been doing wonderful stuff on the artwork for the graphic novel; amazing action, terrific characters, beautiful color and composition—just marvelous. And I love what he’s done with Claire ( yes, her hair is somewhat wilder where it ought to be—as when freshly emergent from a gorse bush—but certainly not ringlets, good grief), Murtagh, Dougal, Jack Randall….

Now, Jamie has been a little more problematic, simply because everyone has such a well-defined (if not well-articulated) notion of what he looks like. The descriptions of him are more detailed than those of other characters in the books, because we’re looking at him through Claire’s eyes, and she’s paying close attention. [g] But to take those details and come up with a gestalt that embodies the whole…harder to do.

The consequence of this has been that Hoang’s been working with Jamie in different aspects, looking for a good “look” for him that can be used throughout the graphic novel.
And the poor artist, of course, has little to go on other than my rather fumbling feedback—”Well, this one is pretty good, but the jaw is too heavy…. that one’s nice, too, but he seems kind of thuggish…and that one’s a little too soft, too young-looking, but the hair’s great!” sort of thing.

Well, in the preliminary shufflings to and fro, I’d collected a few photos of assorted actors and models who had slanted eyes of an appropriate sort—and many thanks to all the kind people who sent me their favorites (and isn’t it a good thing for the men of the world that women have such diverse tastes…)—which I’d sent on to Hoang to add to his mental compost pile.

Among these was a photo of Gabriel Aubrey, and I’d mentioned in re this photo that Mr. A. did in fact have a strong resemblance to Mr. Fraser, in terms of facial physiognomy. So yesterday, an enterprising person named Grace who inhabits one of the “Outlander” discussion boards evidently came across my idle remarks and decided to see if she could make something of them. So she dragged Mr. Aubrey into her PhotoShop for a little revision, and….

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v514/aag567/Role%20Playing/?action=view&current=Jamie7.jpg

(sorry; I tried to make a link for this, but it wouldn’t show up in the post, don’t know why. You’ll have to cut and paste the URL, unless somebody else can fix it for me.)

OK. Yeah. That’s very much what he looks like. In case you were wondering. [g]

[I’ll venture out on a limb and make a small prediction here: to wit, that half the comments made here will be along the lines of, “Well, that’s not what I thought he looked like! I thought he looked like Josh Holloway/Sean Bean/David Cassidy/etc.!” [wry g] To each her own, as I said. But do remember that I can see him.]

Posted on September 10, 2008 9:24 PM 115 Comments

DRAGONS anthology

DRAGONS

And this is the last item on the list of “What I’m Working On Now” (or have just finished working on, since both “The Custom of the Army” and “Dirty Scottsdale” are done, though not yet published.

OK, follow me carefully here (because I think, from comments on other entries, that some of y’all are perhaps becoming confused by the plethora of information here):

1. “DRAGONS” is the title of a proposed anthology.

A. An anthology is a collection of short pieces, contributed by lots of different authors.

B. This particular anthology is meant to include short pieces on the subject of….well, dragons.

2. I was invited to contribute a piece to this anthology. All clear so far? Good.

3. I told the editors of the anthology that I have Way Too Much work to do, to write a short story or novella for this anthology myself—BUT that my son, who is also a writer, would be willing to coauthor a story with me.

A. He’s a fantasy writer, and thus more qualified to handle dragons in the first place.

B. We’ve coauthored a couple of fantasy short stories before, with good results:

i. Mirror Image , in an anthology titled MOTHERS AND SONS, edited by Jill Morgan, and

ii. The Castellan, in OUT OF AVALON, edited by Jennifer Roberson.

4. The editors said that would be cool, and so did my son, so we accepted.

5. My son is doing the major writing on this piece, with me providing brainstorming and editing.

6. No, we don’t have a projected publication date for this one yet, but most likely sometime in 2009.

7. Here (in the next blog entry) is a selected snippet of this (so far untitled) short piece.

8. And that’s what-all I’m doing/have done these days! Hope y’all will enjoy the various bits and pieces as they come available!

Posted on September 07, 2008 6:37 PM 8 Comments

Untitled Story for DRAGONS anthology – excerpt

“Untitled” (for DRAGONS, editors Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann)
Copyright 2008 Sam Watkins and Diana Gabaldon

“We…I…am not a man without mercy.” He regarded the man before him evenly. “Am I?”

Nitz’s first thought was that the glittering spiked mace hanging from the man’s sash would beg to differ. Whatever other terrifying features the priest might have, his scarred scalp, his clenched jaw, his huge, brutish arms, ceased to have any effect in the presence of the ominous weapon. Its crimson was far deeper than that wrought by the sunlight; it had seen many heathen skulls caved, countless barbarian bones broken, untold numbers of false priest’s faces smashed.

The blood would never fully wash off of it.

“Am I?”

“N-no, Father,” Nitz replied, straining to hide the quaver in his voice.

To have even a foot touched by the shadow of Father Scheitzen, the shadow of a Crusader so famed and noble, would make a fully-grown man quiver. When half of the priest’s long shadow was enough to engulf a man such as Nitz, it took all he had to keep his legs from twisting together in an unconscious attempt to control his bladder.

“I am not,” Father Scheitzen nodded in reply, his neck creaking. “Nor are you.” He cast a glance over the smaller man’s head, toward the towering figure behind him. “Nor, I suspect, is she.”

Nitz followed the priest’s gaze to his companion. Father Scheitzen’s shadow did not yet extend so far as to engulf Madeline. Nitz doubted there was a man yet who had grown tall enough to do that. She did not cast a shadow, but rose as one, towering and swaddled in the ominous blackness of her nun’s habit, her head so high as to scrape against the torch ensconced in the pillar she stood alongside.

“Maddy,” Nitz caught himself, “Sister Madeline…is not without mercy, no, Father.” He flashed a smile, painfully aware of the stark whiteness of his teeth in the church’s gloom. “After all, she owes her life to the mercy of others. Who else would have a…creature such as her?”

Nitz took private pleasure in the shudder Father Scheitzen spared for her as Madeline stepped forward.

The torchlight was decidedly unsympathetic. All her face was bared, from the manly square curve of her jaw, to the jagged scar running down her cheek, to the milky discolored eye set in the right of her skull and the grim darkness of her left. The jagged yellow of her smile-bared teeth was nothing more than a sigh, a comma at the end of the cruel joke that was a woman’s visage.

“I suspect you may have inadvertently stumbled upon a solution to a problem that has long plagued the order,” Father Scheitzen murmured, bringing his lips close to Nitz. “There are rumors, complaints of lesser men accompanied by lesser women thinking themselves and each other worthy servants of God. Their mutual weakness feeds off of each other, men raise illegitimate children by tainted nuns.” He spared a glancing shudder for the woman behind them. “I trust you and your companion have no such temptations.”

Nitz hesitated a moment to answer, allowing the image of temptation to fill his mind. He had seen what lay beneath the layers of black cloth: the rolling musculature, the scarred, pale flesh, the biceps that could break ribs with an embrace. The thought of succumbing to “temptation” had not, until this moment, crossed his mind; the foreplay alone could shatter his pelvis.

Posted on September 07, 2008 6:35 PM 6 Comments

Something Different – "Dirty Scottsdale"

PHOENIX NOIR – “Dirty Scottsdale”

And for Something Completely Different…I know I’ve been talking about this contemporary crime novel I have in progress for a long time—and I really do have it in progress, too [g], though it’s on hold ’til I finish ECHO—but the opportunity offered to do a short story (no, really) for a new anthology titled PHOENIX NOIR. This is part of a large series of “noir” crime anthologies, each centered on a different city. (See www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm for a listing of all the anthologies in the series.) The story, “Dirty Scottsdale,” will be the print debut of Thomas Kolodzi, who’s the protagonist for the (eventual [cough]) contemporary crime novel. Here’s a brief glimpse of him in action:

” The time/temperature display outside the McDonald’s where I got coffee in the mornings said it was 100 degrees at 8 AM. Now it was high noon, and the half-cup of coffee I’d left in the car would sear the panties off any granny unwary enough to drive down the street with it tucked between her legs. The cops were in shirt-sleeves, the home-owner was wearing plaid bermuda shorts and a wtf? expression. The body floating face-down in the swimming-pool was wearing a navy blue wool suit, which was even more remarkable than the veil of blood hanging like shark-bait in the water.”

Posted on September 06, 2008 6:17 PM 6 Comments

Excerpt from "Dirty Scottsdale"

“Dirty Scottsdale” (in the PHOENIX NOIR anthology, editor Patrick Millikin)
Copyright 2008 Diana Gabaldon

[Excerpts may not be reposted, copied, or otherwise published without the express permission of the author. It's fine if you want to link to one, though.]

“What. The. F***. Is. Going. On. Here?” said a voice behind me. Whoever it was had a pretty good Voice of Doom, too; it cut through the argument like a hot wire through ice-cream.

I turned around to see a tall blond woman in a sunhat, a Hawaiian shirt flapping open over a white bikini. Chloe and Tyrone’s mother; the breast implants must be hereditary.

“Cooney!” she barked. “What are you doing? What’s–” She caught sight of the guy in the pool and stopped dead, her mouth hanging open far enough for me to see that one of her molars was gold. I wondered if she had a diamond in it.

Cooney, hearing his master’s voice, came trundling over, sweating and apologetic.

“It’s OK, Pammy–”

“Don’t call me Pammy! Who are you?” she demanded, swiveling a laser eye on me. “Are you in charge here? Who’s that in my swimming pool?”

“Tom Kolodzi, Ma’am,” I said, offering her a hand. “Do you know the man in the pool?”

“Of course not!” she snapped, taking my hand by reflex. Hers was cold and damp and covered by a transparent latex glove. She let go fast, peeling the glove off with a snap. “Oh, sorry. I was drowning squirrels in the garage.”

“Squirrels?” I tried to keep a pleasant tone of inquiry, but it seemed to dawn on her that a mention of drowning things might not be the best thing she could have started off with.

“Ground squirrels,” she said through her teeth. “They eat the g*dd*mn plantings. Are they going to get that—him—out of the pool?” Her eyes kept sliding toward the water, where the body had resumed its peaceful dead-man’s float. Another siren coming down the street–police, this time.

Slamming car-doors and the crackle of a radio, and the brass was with us. I heard the word, “Lieutenant…” and froze for a millisecond. But of course it wasn’t my lieutenant–she was Phoenix PD, and we were on the Scottsdale side of Shea. That was luck; Lieutenant Griego would have had me locked in a squad car in three seconds, and if I died of heatstroke before she came back…well, accidents happen, especially in the summertime.

Posted on September 06, 2008 6:15 PM 12 Comments

Excerpt from "The Custom of the Army"

“The Custom of the Army”
Copyright 2008 Diana Gabaldon

[Once again, please note that excerpts may NOT be copied, cut-and-pasted, or reposted anywhere without the author's express permission—though it's totally fine if you'd like to link to one from your own website(s)!]

It was small, but packaged with care, wrapped in oilcloth and tied about with twine, the knot sealed with his brother’s crest. That was unlike Hal, whose usual communiques consisted of hastily dashed notes, generally employing slightly fewer than the minimum number of words necessary to convey his message. They were seldom signed, let alone sealed.
Tom Byrd appeared to think the package slightly ominous, too; he had set it by itself, apart from the other mail, and weighted it down with a large bottle of brandy, apparently to prevent it escaping. That, or he suspected Grey might require the brandy to sustain him in the arduous effort of reading a letter consisting of more than one page.
“Very thoughtful of you, Tom,” he murmured, smiling to himself and reaching for his pen-knife.
In fact, the letter within occupied less than a page, bore neither salutation nor signature, and was completely Hal-like.

“Minnie wishes to know whether you are starving, though I don’t know what she proposes to do about it, should the answer be yes. The boys wish to know whether you have taken any scalps–they are confident that no Red Indian would succeed in taking yours; I share this opinion. You had better bring three tommyhawks when you come home.
Here is your new ring; the jeweler was most impressed by the quality of the stone. The other thing is a copy of Adams’s confession. They hanged him yesterday.”

The other contents of the parcel consisted of a small wash-leather pouch, and an official-looking document on several sheets of good parchment, this folded and sealed–this time with the seal of George II. Grey left it lying on the table, fetched one of the pewter cups from his campaign chest, and filled it to the brim with brandy, wondering anew at his valet’s perspicacity.
Thus fortified, he sat down and took up the little pouch, from which he decanted a gold ring into his hand. It was set with a faceted–and very large–sapphire, that glowed like flame in the palm of his hand. Where had Fraser acquired such a thing? he wondered.
He turned it in his hand, admiring the workmanship, but didn’t put it on. Not yet. Instead, he put it back into its pouch, and tucked this carefully into the inner pocket of his coat. He sipped his brandy for a bit, watching the official document as though it might explode. He was reasonably sure it would.
He weighed the document in his hand, and felt the wind [through the window, from the tent flap] lift it a little, like the flap of a sail, just before it fills and bellies with a snap.
Waiting wouldn’t help. And Hal plainly knew what it said, anyway; he’d tell Grey, whether he wanted to know or not. Sighing, he put by his brandy and broke the seal.

I, Bernard Donald Adams, do make this confession of my own free will…

Was it? he wondered. He did not know Adams’s handwriting, could not tell whether the document had been written or dictated–no, wait. He flipped over the sheets and examined the signature. Same hand. All right, he had written it himself.
He squinted at the writing. It seemed firm. Probably not extracted under torture, then. Perhaps it was the truth.
“Idiot,” he said under his breath. “Read the god-damned thing and have done with it!”
He drank the rest of his brandy at a gulp, flattened the pages upon the stone of the parapet and read, at last, the story of his father’s death.

[end section]

Posted on September 05, 2008 9:40 PM 14 Comments