The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [187]
In the distant past of the Scottish Highlands, it was the custom for a chieftain bent on war to make a cross of two sticks of wood, which he would set on fire. Two clansmen would then carry this cross through the glens and corries, as a signal to the men of the clan to fetch their weapons and come to the gathering place, prepared for battle. (Naturally the cross didn’t stay on fire. Damp as the Scottish climate is, it probably went out within minutes of the clansmen stepping out into the downpour. However, the charred remains were still referred to as “the fiery cross.”)
Now, given that at this point in the story, the American Revolution is looming on the horizon, and the Scottish Highlanders had quite a bit to do with it (though mostly fighting on the wrong side, as usual), this seemed a very good title to me. Warlike foreshadowing aside, the word “cross” implies “double-cross,” which is always a good bet when you’re dealing with people named MacKenzie, and then there’s all the crisscrossing of storylines, too (by this point, there are enough of them to weave a basket). It also has those interesting Christ-like implications of betrayal and burning anguish, about which I will say no more because I haven’t finished writing the book yet.
An electronic friend, apprised of this title, objected to it on grounds that it reminded her of the Ku Klux Klan, and she thought a nice book should have a better title.
“Interesting you should mention that,” I said. “Er… where do you figure the KKK—many of whom just happened to be descendants of the original Scottish settlers in the American South—got the notion?” That is where they got it. However, I don’t write nice books anyway, so I don’t think there’s a problem.
I have—for contractual and reference purposes—been calling the sixth (and final) book of the series King, Farewell. That title comes from a very moving Jacobite song, in which the singer bids farewell to the Stuart dynasty (and, by implication, all that went with it, like the Highland clans themselves). However, no one seems able to remember it, which is always a Bad Sign. People keep asking me when Farewell to the King (or worse, Farewell to Arms) will be released. Now, I do get the occasional letter praising my excellent novel Butterfly in Amber, or asking when Drums of August will be out in some foreign edition, but it’s nothing like the confusion over King, Farewell.>>
I must therefore assume a) that King, Farewell is probably more memorable if set to music, but book publishing technology has not advanced that far yet, and b) the title of the sixth book should preferably be one word, to reduce the chances of people mangling it (of course, they call the first book Highlander all the time, and Voyager is commonly referred to as Voyageur [featuring that intrepid French trapper Jamie Frezeliere, and his wife, La Dame Blanche], but still…).
So I don’t know for sure what the title of the sixth book will be, but as slowly as I write, I figure I’ve got time to come up with something.
Oh, this book? Well, that title wasn’t mine. A longtime electronic friend named Marte Brengle suggested The Outlandish Companion many years ago, and I glommed on to it, not being one to pass up a good thing. (Since the UK publisher couldn’t call the first book Outlander, of course they couldn’t call this one The Outlandish Companion. Instead, it’s called Through the Stones: A Companion to the Novels of Diana Gabaldon. Very imposing.)
FOREIGN EDITIONS, OR “AUTRES TEMPS, AUTRES MOEURS”
Sometime after the sale of Outlander to Delacorte Press, I was surprised to get a call from a pleasant-voiced person who informed me that he was my foreign-rights agent (I didn’t know I had one), and that he was delighted to inform me that he had just sold the rights to my book to a Swedish publisher.
“You can do that?” I blurted. Evidently so. So far, various of the books have been sold to publishers in Sweden, France, Spain (and Latin America), Italy, Germany, Canada, the U.K., Russia,