A brief bio on our favorite author. Diana Gabaldon didn't start out to be the writer of a six-part historical time-travel novel. She had a very successful academic career, she has a masters in marine biology and a Ph.D. in quantitative behavioral ecology. When she started writing she was working full-time as a university professor, writing freelance for various magazines, companies, and even Disney and being a wife and mother of three. Knowing that she wanted to write, she originally began to write a mystery, but the thought of having to come up with a murder plot sent her to practice first. She figured that a historical novel would be easiest, since being a research professor with her access to libraries she had her pick of material.

The story. The location you ask. Well, Scotland came about thanks to a Dr. Who rerun. And the time-travel element. Was a necessity because Claire just wasn't a historical person. She keep doing modern things and turning her into a time-travel was the choice. Her writing style is quite unconventional. She writes in scenes, they are in no particular order and she later strings them together to form the story. It is often mistaken that she was found on the internet, but that's not exactly true. When she first started writing she posted her work on Compuserve's Literary Forum, not so much for critique but for audience reaction. The response was overwhelmingly good.

After getting an agent, she hadn't even finished "Outlander" yet, and her book was bought by Bantam Doubleday Dell, she was a hit. She had a surprise for B DD, there was originally suppose to be only three books in the "Outlander" series, when Diana informed everyone that Jamie and Claire's story would not be finished in three books but six. But her readers have been faithful since the beginning. Despite the fact that "Outlander" is unclassifiable, Jamie and Claire don't kiss until pg. 346, so it's not a romance, and fantasy readers state that there isn't any magic. But that's what Diana wanted a diverse book that everyone could read.

Diana lives in Scottsdale, Arizona and works on finishing the "Outlander" series. It's often said by readers that it was word of mouth that introduced them to Diana Gabaldon and Jamie and Claire, and that might be true but there's no mistaking her success now. I for one totally believe that if you tell enough people about "Outlander", they will read and love it as much as I do.

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