CityView Magazine

arts A PLACE IN TIME BY REBEKAH SANDERLIN D Diana Gabaldon's best-selling novels are set in our region in the late 1700s BY REBEKAH SANDERLIN more than 18 million copies in print worldwide. A writer for Salon magazine once described her books as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting "Scrooge McDuck" comics." Gabaldon says that's probably the most accurate description she's seen of her work, which is based on the premise that a modern British woman time-travels to 18th century Scotland, where she falls in love and gets a first row seat to both the Scots Uprising and the American Revolution. Much of the action in her books takes place right here, in the Cape Fear River region of North Carolina, in the middle-to-late 1700s. Gabaldon is also a sought-aſter lec- turer on Scottish history. With a new Outlander novel set to be re- leased next year and a television mini-series in the works, CityView talked with Gabaldon to learn more about her work and what our region has meant to her stories. iana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, number one New York Times-bestselling Outlander novels — a series that includes some 18 books, with Q: How do you research your books? A: "Research is an organic sort of thing. You look for a loose end and pull and see where it leads. Normally I look for an overview book or two to find major events and people and then I go from there. Now I have 1,500 books on Highland 66 | October • 2012 culture and language. The internet is an excellent source. The research is in support of the story. The point is not to know everything about Scotland in the 18th Century, it's to write a novel. I do the research concurrently with the novel, they generally feed off each other." Q: What made you want to write about Scotland in the 18th Century? A: "I chose Scotland pretty much on a whim. I've known since I was eight years old that I was sup- posed to be a novelist — I just didn't know how. I decided a historical novel would be the easiest to start with and one time would have done as well an another. I saw a "Dr. Who" rerun and the doctor had a young companion from the 18th Century, a fetching young man in his kilt. [laughs] I found myself still think- ing about it the next day in church." A: "I followed Scottish history and found that about half went to Nova Scotia and the other half went right up the Cape Fear River. They went to the Cape Fear Riv- er area because they had kin there. Having survived horror in Scotland, life in the new land was better for them, there was good land and nobody was trying to kill them." Q: Why did you have your characters im- migrate to North Carolina? Q: What have you learned about our area in your research? A: "Fayetteville/Cross Creek was not a political hotbed when they settled there. Scots, in general, had a lot to do with

• Cover