The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [185]
Well, Cross Stitch was my working title for the manuscript. It’s not a particularly good title; it’s a weak play on “a stitch in time,” with an (even weaker) reference to Claire’s occupation as a healer (doctor-wound-stitch… that sort of thing), but it was my first book, after all.
I’d also thought—as the book grew, and I could see something of the shape of the story—that Claire would return to the present at the end of the book (which in fact she didn’t do until the end of Dragonfly). If she had returned in the first book, though, that would have made the “cross”—crossing back to the past and then forth to the future, which gave me the mental shape of an “X”—which is, of course, the shape of a cross-stitch. And cross-stitch is made up of lots of little things that make an overall interesting pattern, and… well, look I said it wasn’t a good title. When we sold the book, the American publisher’s (tactful) response was, “Well, we can’t call it that, or people will think it’s about embroidery. Can you think of something else, maybe a little more… adventurous?”
Then ensued some eight months of reciprocating title suggestions, ranging from the bland to the ridiculous (Unicorns and Lions Wild and Tartan Temptation being a couple that I recall—along with every variation ever heard on the word “time”).
Along the way, I had suggested Sassenach, which I liked, but the general consensus was that this would not be a good title because no one could pronounce it. Coupled with the fact that no one could pronounce the author’s name either, this was thought to be too great a liability.
Thinking along these lines, though, I eventually came up with Outlander—which is, of course, what “Sassenach” means in Gaelic (though with a slightly more derogatory implication). This seemed quite suitable, given Claire’s situation. Since the book was going to press at any moment, the publisher was enthusiastic.
The result of this was that when the book was published and I began doing signings, a certain number of people would pick up the book, frown at it, and then ask, “Is this the book that Sean Connery movie was based on?” (Outland was released in 1981; Highlander in 1986—both starring Sean Connery, and neither one having anything whatever to do with my book.)
So.
A year or so after we sold the book to Delacorte Press in the United States, we sold the U.K. rights to a British publisher, Century Random. The British editor said, “Outlander? But we can’t call it that—to us, an outlander is specifically someone from Australia or South Africa! Do you have any other ideas?” I coughed modestly and said, well, the original title had been Cross Stitch, but…
“Perfect!” said the British editor, and Cross Stitch it was.
The result of this being that for some time, I got letters from readers in the U.K. saying, “You know, there’s a funny story about how I found your book. I was browsing through the needlework section in the local bookstore, and…”
ROCK-POLISHING AND OTHER PASTIMES FOR AN IDLE HOUR
As for the titles of the other books in the series—well, I have no real standard operating procedure for coming up with titles. Thinking them up is always a good means of procrastination, when you can’t think what to begin working on. The real process of titling, though, is essentially like rock-polishing; you drop vaguely interesting lumps of words into the machine, let them roll around banging into all the other stuff in there—and then you pull out a handful and see if they look pretty yet.
The working title for the second book was Firebringer. This was a reference to the Prometheus legend (the implication being that Claire’s advance knowledge of the future wasn’t an unalloyed blessing, either), and—I thought—made a nice echo of the “er” in Outlander (well, look, I never said titles were my strong point, okay?).
Having heard a few doubts expressed as to whether most readers would make the connection with Prometheus (my American editor is a very tactful person), I also thought of calling the book Pretender. This would be a bit more straightforward—I mean, the