“Well, THIS oughta take your minds off the election for a little while….(don’t forget to vote, though!)….
Tag Archive for ‘Diana Gabaldon’ 
7-Book E-book Bundle!
Random House announces a Halloween Treat! They’re offering all seven of the extant OUTLANDER novels AS E-BOOKS, in a 7-book bundle for $49.99. Which is pretty good, I think. Here’s the link for the Nook version at barnesandnoble.com and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-outlander-series-7-book-bundle-diana-gabaldon/1112927368?ean=9780345541109 Here’s the link for the Kindle version at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Outlander-Series-7-Book-Bundle-ebook/dp/B009C9C77E/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351598745&sr=1-9&keywords=outlander
THE METHADONE LIST – THE SKYBOUND SEA
THE METHADONE LIST: THE SKYBOUND SEA To answer a frequently-asked question of late: No, I’m not going to DragonCon. (I got home from Younger Daughter’s wedding and a short recuperative stay in the UK just day before yesterday. I have to stay home and write!) BUT….Sam Sykes, epic fantasy author (and brother of the bride) came home from the wedding much earlier, has already recovered from the festivities (in spite of being struck in the face with a handful of rice thrown by an inebriated guest shouting “Viva los Novios!”), and _will_ be attending DragonCon, at which he’s launching his third novel, THE SKYBOUND SEA (published in the US by Pyr Books; UK publication happens a little later this fall, published by Orion/Gollancz). [Pyr booth, #709 at DragonCon, Marriott Marquis Hotel] Scott Lynch says of Sam’s books: “Sam Sykes does blood and noise in the liveliest tradition of contemporary fantasy, with all the brash vigor of youth, and with a sly, penetrating sensitivity all his own. Not many writers can […]
HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES
Copyright © 2012 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved/ I wrote the short piece below on request for a Canadian magazine called Chatelaine, in 2012. I have the reprint rights back, though, and since a Twitter acquaintance recently expressed a desire to “write smut”—I thought I’d at least provide him with the basics. This short piece has also been expanded into an ebook titled I GIVE YOU MY BODY (HOW I WRITE SEX SCENES), which was released in 2016. Click on the cover image at right for more information. Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation to exultation, tenderness, or surprise. Lust is not an emotion; it’s a one-dimensional hormonal response. Ergo, while you can mention lust in a sex-scene, describing it at any great length is like going on about […]
Deal with Sony Pictures for Adaptation of OUTLANDER for Cable TV Series
Look here and here and here etc., etc., etc., as the King of Siam might put it. [g] Really, if you Google “Ron D. Moore OUTLANDER”, you’ll find a _lot_ of announcements like these. most of them reasonably accurate.
A Brief Footnote on Tidiness
I’m as fascinated by y’all’s responses to my bookshelves as y’all are by the books, etc. [g] It seems to be about 20:1 in terms of “OMG, this looks just like my shelves!/I love it!” vs. “What a mess!/How can you FIND anything!/Let me come and organize that for you!” I appreciate both schools of thought—and my sincere thanks to the kind souls who think I would do better (in some undefined way), if my books were alphabetized, sorted by color, arranged by height, or generally tidied into a visually pleasing (to them) formation that has nothing to do with what’s actually _in_ the books. Now, putting aside any of my private opinions regarding the psychology that causes people to value Tidiness Uber Alles, tidiness _qua_ tidiness has two possible aspects that recommend it as a virtue: aesthetics and/or function. As to aesthetics, I’ll just note that there are people who like Gustav Klimt and there are people who like Mondrian, and leave it at that. [g] Aesthetics rests on […]
A Guided Tour of Diana’s Bookshelves…
I get a lot of questions about what I read, what resources I find "useful," how much research I do, etc., etc. And when interviewers come to talk to me at home, they always want to see my office, and frequently spend half an hour or more browsing my bookshelves in fascination. So I thought y’all might want to have a peek, too. (One question I often get is about how I organize my material. It is to larf, as John Lennon so eloquently put it. I have two—no, three—ways of organizing research material. The books live in bookshelves. Loose papers, maps, reprinted emails, etc. go into one of three zippered… things. (I can’t really describe them; they’re about the size of small briefcases, but made of nylon fabric, mesh on one side, and they zip on three sides.) The red one holds all the printed miscellanea for the contemporary mystery that I’ll eventually get round to finishing, the black one has stuff about the Lord John stories’ background—maps of […]
THE BACKSIDE OF BEYOND, and other ways of describing nowhere
When you start wondering where a figure of speech came from, you sometimes find yourself on dark literary backroads, if not actually in BF Egypt. It was during a search for the town of Waldo, New Mexico that my husband described our extremely rural surroundings as “BF Egypt.” And such is the nature of our car conversations on these occasions, I was shortly whipping out my iPhone in an effort to discover just why “B*** F*** Egypt” (to use the full (more or less) expression) should be a common idiom for the backside of beyond. It was an entertaining search, during which we discovered that all kinds of cultures have an idiom that pretty much means, “Out in the sticks,” if not absolutely, “Farther away than nowhere.” The British do not use “BF Egypt,” which seemed odd in light of their expeditionary and exploratory history in the desert regions. Still, they do seem aware of their adventurous heritage: current British idiom is “in the bundu”—“bundu” being an African word (specific […]