The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [87]
I was therefore astonished and delighted when, in the course of my research into Scottish weaponry, I came upon a mention of the historical Simpsons—a father and son team of sword makers, operating in Scotland during the mid-eighteenth century, and famed for the quality of their blades. Both, coincidentally, named John. I therefore wrote a small piece for Dragonfly in Amber featuring the sword makers, but giving them—with John’s permission— the approximate physical characteristics of the contemporary Simpsons.
Labhriunn MacIan
Labhriunn MacIan was an early electronic acquaintance, who helpfully supplied my first lesson in Gaelic pronunciation, with regard to his name: Lay-vree-AHN. While I didn’t know Labhriunn well, have never met him, and have long since lost all contact with him, we shared one very long telephone conversation, in which he told me a great deal about Celtic heritage, the Shetland Islands (from which he hailed), and other things that proved indirectly inspirational in the writing of the books. He also told me the story of his grandfather, a blind piper who practiced on the seashore, bouncing the sound of his pipes off the sea cliffs. I therefore wrote Labhriunn himself into Dragonfly in Amber in a small walk-on role as a piper, incorporating the story of his grandfather in the process.
Margaret Campbell
As is evident, this process of character cannibalization began with online conversations. In one such conversation, Margaret Campbell (a longtime friend and duct-tape dilettante)2 confided that she had harbored a childhood ambition to be a carnival geek—the person in old-time carnival sideshows whose “act” was to bite the heads off live chickens.
Someone jokingly responded that— given the SPCA and modern attitudes toward performance art—her only chance of achieving this particular ambition was likely to be “if Diana writes you into one of her books that way.”
Now, I wish to state for the record that I am, too, capable of resisting insidious random suggestions. Just not all of them.
Well, I did intend to write a section of the book located in the West Indies. Ergo, I might quite reasonably have a small voodoo ceremony, at which it would be entirely appropriate to have the sacrifice of a black cock, and so … enter the Scottish voodoo oracle, Miss Margaret Campbell, sweetheart of Captain Ewan Cameron, and sister to the Edinburgh Fiend.
Barry Fogden
Likewise, another electronic friend, Barry Fogden, made the mistake of mentioning in casual conversation that his grandfather had been a shepherd, and that he, Barry, had often helped with lambing and other chores in his wanton youth. Human nature being what it is, this revelation led to a predictable outbreak of sheep jokes among the inhabitants of the CompuServe Literary Forum.
Consequently—a writer’s mind being what it is—the notion of sheep led to the notion of “flock,” which in turn suggested a priest. And I did need some way for Fergus and Marsali to get married. Thus B. Fogden, erstwhile shepherd, reputable and eminent British poet, became the disreputable and outcast Father Fogden, accompanied into the pages of Voyager by his dog, Ludo, and his … er … flock (Ludo is real; the sheep are fictional).
John (Quincy) Myers
One of my oldest electronic friends is the novelist John L. Myers, who—among his other notable attributes—possesses a striking physical appearance, being six-feet-seven in height. John also hails from North Carolina, and was most helpful in supplying incidental information, ghost stories, and other arcana having to do with his home territory (I am indebted to John for the story of the Brown Mountain Lights, which loosely inspired the ghost story in Drums).
I repaid