The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [6]
“Really,” I said, swallowing. “And … er … how long do you think it might take to hear back?” I had, like most aspiring writers, read all the publishing information in Writer’s Market, and knew it often took six, nine, even twelve months to hear from an editor.
“Oh,” Perry said, even more casually, “I’ve told them I want an answer in thirty days.” At this point, I decided that I had probably picked the right agent.
So I went home to wait—as patiently as possible—for thirty days. Four days later, though, I came home to find a message waiting on my answering machine. “This is Perry,” said a calm voice. “I’ve just called to update you on your manuscript.”
Uh-oh, I said to myself. One of the five took one look at the box and said, “I’m not reading a ten-pound manuscript, take it back.” So I called Perry, expecting to hear this.
Instead, he said, “Well, of the five I sent it to, so far three of them have called back with offers.”
“Oh,” I said, and paused, feeling as though I’d been hit on the head with a blunt instrument. “Ah. That’s … uh … good. Isn’t it?”
Perry assured me that it was. He then negotiated among the various editors for two weeks, emerging at that point with comparable offers from two publishers. Everything else being equal, he said, it came down to a choice of editor—and he recommended that we go with Jackie Cantor, at Delacorte Press. Knowing absolutely nothing about editors, I said, “Okay, fine.” Which turned out to be the best choice I ever made—other than choosing my husband and my agent.
I had told Perry when I gave him the book that there seemed to be more to this story, but I thought that perhaps I should stop while I could still lift the manuscript. Being a good agent, Perry emerged with a three-book contract. After that… well, after that, things got out of hand, and here we are, eight years later.
So where are we, exactly? As I said above, I don’t write with an outline—if I knew what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be any fun to write the book, now, would it? However, as I go along, merrily gluing pieces together, I do sometimes get a vague idea as to some events that may take place in the story. So, as I finished Cross Stitch (my working title for what later became Outlander),13 I could see that there was more to the story.
With a three-book contract in hand, I started in on the second book, Dragonfly in Amber. A little over halfway through, though, I began to get this uneasy feeling that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to cram the entire American Revolution into one more book, and there would have to be four volumes. I confided this fear to Perry, who said, “Don’t tell them that. Not until the first one is on the shelves, anyway.”
Fortunately, by the time we decided to reveal the Awful Truth, the first books had come out and sold decently, and the publisher was happy to make us an offer for the fourth (and presumably final) book in the series. Feeling that this was perhaps the only chance I might get to induce someone to pay me to write a mystery, I got bold and said they could have the fourth book if they’d also give me a contract to write a contemporary mystery. Rather to my surprise, they gave me a contract for two mysteries—and the fourth of the Outlander books.
So I set in to write. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote, and after a year and a half of this, I said, I’ve got a quarter-million words here; why the heck am I not nearly done with this? A little thought revealed the answer; I had (once again) too much story to fit into one book.
Attending a writers’ conference at which my editor was also present, I leaned over during the awards banquet and hissed in her ear, “Guess what? There are five of them.” To which Jackie, a woman of great presence and equanimity, replied, “Why am I not surprised to hear this?”
Actually, it was worse than I thought. When I removed all the pieces that belonged in the fifth book, I finally realized that what I was looking at was a double trilogy