Warning: This article contains spoilers forGo Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, by Diana Gabaldon.
After seven years of a bookish droughtlander, the newest entry in theOutlandersaga is finally here.
Why do you think this one took longer than all the others?
Diana Gabaldon is the author of ‘Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone’.Michael Kovac/Getty Images
DIANA GABALDON:Multiple reasons.
The other thing was that the show started right when the eighth book was published.
I read the season outlines.
This means that there’s just a lot of really interesting stuff to look at.
But that’s nine months at a time, and we’ve done five seasons in that time.
That’s 45 months I was engaged in doing that as well as everything else that I do.
How has that evolved for you, and how do you decide whose voice to include and use where?
I hadn’t actually realized that consciously.
But in fact, I did.
So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are at least nine points of view in this.
As to who it is, some people are just obviously there.
Jamie and Claire have very well-developed points of view that I can slip into easily.
Likewise Lord John, and William is turning into one of those people.
It’s just really easy to hear what he’s thinking and see what he says.
Was there one whose voice you found you enjoyed writing most this time?
I enjoy them all.
Luckily enough she said, “Boy, it really does.
That’s just how you feel in this particular circumstance.”
She gave me some really useful anecdotes of her own calling, which I used.
It wasn’t that I chose that so much as it was intrinsic to the situation.
Jamie founded Fraser’s Ridge.
He attracted a lot of people because he was offering them a good deal on land and so forth.
And he’s got a naturally charismatic and fair personality.
He’s a born leader.
People gravitate to him.
So he’s got this nicely settled ridge.
On the other hand, he has never messed with people’s political beliefs.
Up to this point it hasn’t been necessary to even ask anybody what they think.
He does have people who are not devoted to him personally, and who do have different beliefs.
This sets up this immediate embedded conflict, because he is fair-minded.
He wouldn’t push people off or evict them for having different political beliefs.
When they start out trying to kill him, then it’s a different question.
Amy’s death by bear mauling is so brutal.
What compelled you to include that and end her life in such a bleak way?
I don’t plan the books out ahead of time.
I had no idea anybody was going to be eaten by a bear.
I had Brianna and Amy out gathering grapes, and it was just atmospheric.
They’re brushing ants off the grapes and so forth.
After that it just unspooled as you would expect it to, so to speak.
But no, I didn’t plan that.
You also re-introduce a figure readers were probably surprised to see return, Ulysses.
Now him I planned for.
I knew he was coming back.
I just didn’t know what his circumstances were.
But then I ran into His Majesty’s Company of Black Pioneers.
I’m thinking, “Aha, okay, that’s where he went.”
A lot of these things are just fortuitous; they come out of the research.
How long has that been in the works, and were you tempted to ever reveal it before?
What implications might that have for Bree and Roger and everyone going forward?
I don’t really know.
He only knows what Percy was able to tell him.
And that’s as much as he can tell Jamie and Claire.
Brianna and Roger may be able to deduce more from what they personally know as Bree and Roger do.
But I don’t know.
We’ll just have to see.
As I said, I don’t plan the books ahead of time.
But he is in play, you might say.
William arrives on the last page asking for Jamie’s help.
Is it safe to assume that’s about Richardson and Lord John?
Because this was a razor’s edge for quite a long time.
They wouldn’t have lasted another six months.
But with support cut off, the British Army immediately starts to wither and make mistakes and so forth.
Even though they engaged with the rebels at Yorktown.
And suddenly the Americans were able to win.
That’s one of the few things I know.
I know this is going to happen.
I don’t know where, I don’t know why, but it’ll reveal itself to me.
Bree has another child in the past in the book.
One of those is what Mandy said to him about her little brother.
He’s not the same color.
She remarks that the little baby is the same color as Jamie.
It only takes one, and both Jemmy and Mandy got either one or two.
We don’t know.
But it doesn’t matter because one would be enough.
But baby apparently got the non-traveling alleles from both parents, and therefore is not a time traveler.
In other words, he can’t go to the future even though his parents and his siblings can.
So there’s not going to be that kind of conflict.
Bree is determined to figure out why some people can travel through the stones and others cannot.
Do you already have that all worked out for yourself?
I know a little bit more than Bree does.
But yeah, we’re just working out as we go along.
There is no authority on time travel.
Bree is as close to one as there is with her note-making and so forth.
We may return to time travel in a more detailed form.
We certainly learn more about it in book 10, but we do not explicate the whole thing there.
They just have bits of information here and there.
They’re putting them together and making hypotheses.
And add to their store of knowledge.
That one is something that I’ve known for a couple of books was there.
Why was now the time for her to reach this place in her journey?
Is that a reflection of your own belief of women coming into their own more as they age?
To a certain extent, yes.
You reach a certain age and there are certain respects in which you become socially untouchable.
You lose your respect for society, I guess.
You’re not afraid of what people think about you any more.
And the older you get, the less you think that’s true.
Is that something we’ll see her continue to develop and get a handle on in book 10?
Yes, you will.
That one I can answer because I know what she does with her power in book 10.
You probably won’t notice the connection immediately directly from this end.
You’ll see it clearly when I actually do tell Master Raymond’s story.
You’ve teased that you have started book 10.
Do you still think it will be the last of the Jamie and Claire saga?
Because I can see various things dovetailing together.
We don’t have to actually wrap everything up withthis person’s dead, this one’s buried.
But it has to come to what you might call a dramatically satisfying close.
I know what the very end scene of what book 10 is.
I just have no idea how we get there.
