Saturday, January 17, 2026
Nothing like having good friends…
Came home from dog-walking this morning and found a box of birthday presents from my good friend Michelle… Michelle is a recreational gifter; i.e., she does it for entertainment (and is Very Good at it…).
I have NO idea where she found this—but it’s an Orange Bird hat (if you hadn’t already guessed that). Lest you never have heard of Orange Bird…. he’s the eponymous hero of a Disney educational comic (yes, there are—or were—such things…), which I wrote (for Disney) lo, these many years ago. (Like… 1976 or so…)
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The comic was called “Nutrition Adventures with Orange Bird” (produced by the Educational Media department at Disney—no idea whether this still exists—and was supposed to brain-wash small children into wanting to eat fruit.
Orange Bird himself (no, I didn’t name him, Disney did) is—as you see—a bird who is actually an orange, with leaves for wings. (He was, I was given to understand, the invention of the California Fruit Council, or some similar body…). Being an orange (and the Educational Media people not wanting to confuse small children by putting too many words in the book <cough>, they told me that Orange Bird is mute—he communicates through word balloons (this being a comic book, aye?) that contain pictures.
Fortunately, he also had two sidekicks named Toucan and (I think) Macaw, who did talk in words, so they interpreted what the heck OB was trying to communicate.
On the up side, Disney paid twice the normal per-page price for Orange Bird, as compared to Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge. On the down side, I couldn’t have any of the three birds throw fruit at anybody, thus impairing my ability to communicate conflict…
Still. So THANKS, MICHELLE!!!
And in celebration of being able to write a story with words… here’s a Minnie tidbit to tide you over for the present…. (those of you who have read the short novel, A FUGITIVE GREEN, will be familiar with the O’Higgins brothers, who Minnie hires for occasional help “with things that might not be strictly legal”…)
EXCERPT from A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT, Copyright © 2026 Diana Gabaldon.
The O’Higginses were adept at not being where they should be—but equally adept at being where they shouldn’t, which was one of their most useful talents.
Mick O’Higgins definitely shouldn’t have been sitting on the foot of Minnie’s bed at—she squinted at the carriage-clock on the mantelpiece, which showed, she thought, half-past three. In the bloody morning.
“Beggin’ your pardon, your Grace,” he said, seeing she was awake. “I’ve a pebble in my boot.” The curtains were open and there was enough diffuse moonlight not only to read the clock, but also to show that he was indeed holding a boot in one hand, which he now turned upside down and shook. Something fell out, though it made no sound on the carpet.
“What have you found out?” she asked, sitting up and pulling off her nightcap.
“Well, a good number o’ things, includin’ what the divil fish balls are. They’re not what ye’d think,” he assured her. “They put onions in ‘em, ‘round here.”
“Oh, so that’s what that smell is.” She yawned, involuntarily, and shook her head, dispelling the last remnants of sleep. “What else?”
“Well, we were sittin’ in a shebeen of sorts, down by the docks, and Rafe was tellin’ a lady about how he lost his finger. The spalpeen she was with took offense, but Rafe was quick enough to ask the lad how he—the lad, I mean—had come by the scar on his face, and admired the job the surgeon had done. And I bought another bottle, and so ‘twas quite civil after a bit.”
“Yes,” she said obligingly. Rafe would tell you things straight out, but Mick enjoyed the details.
“So after a bit o’ this and that, we got back round to what happened to the spalpeen’s face. Have ye by chance heard of a fight what happened in a place called Guilford?” he asked.
“No.”
“Ah. Well, I’ve no idea where it is myself, but there was a fight there, see—”
“Yes, I remember, you told me,” she assured him.
“And our friend ran into the wrong end of a bayonet in the midst of things, but he had the luck to be taken along to a sort of place where there was a doctor, before he bled to death.”
“Well, that was fortunate.” Minnie yawned again. “I don’t suppose you have the rest of that bottle on you, do you?”
“Ah, no, we finished that one. Bottle o’ beer do ye, your Grace?” He took a bottle out of his capacious pocket, pulled the cork neatly with his teeth and handed the beer across.
It smelled better than the lingering aroma of fish balls, and she took a trial sip, and then a healthy swallow.
“So the doctor stitched up his jaw, neat as a tailor, and him—not the doctor, the feller with the wound—with half his teeth stickin’ out through his cheek, and then not, if ye take my meanin’.”
“I do.” It was actually quite good beer, and she was beginning to wish she had something to wash down with it. “You don’t have anything edible in your pocket, do you?”
“Ah, ye wound me, your Grace,” he said, laughing. “Here.”
It was a good-sized hunk of cheese, wrapped in his handkerchief. It smelled divine, and her stomach rumbled.
“Doctor,” she reminded him, through a crumbling mouthful.
“To be sure. Your man was tellin’ us about the battle, mixed in with tellin’ about the doctor, and I lost track a bit when I got up to have a piss outside, but when I came back in, he was sayin’, I mean, all the Thees and Thous get up your nose a bit, but after a day or two, you don’t notice so much, and by the time I got out o’ there, damned if I wasn’t callin’ the Doctor “Thee” as well!”
Minnie choked on the cheese and coughed ‘til Mick got up and pounded her helpfully on the back.
“Quakers,” she said hoarsely. “A Quaker doctor.”
“Indeed and he was.” He sat down beside her, held the bottle for her to drink from, and gently added, “A Quaker doctor, name of Hunter, your Grace.”
[end scene]
Thanks, Michelle!!
Please visit my official webpage for A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT (Book Ten of my Outlander series of major novels) to access more excerpts from this book, and information about it.
On Saturday, January 17, 2026, this excerpt was also posted on my official Facebook page.