At The Poisoned Pen with P.F. Chisholm and Diana Gabaldon!

A word to the wise: if you're going to The Poisoned Pen to see Diana Gabaldon, show up extra early (like 2½ hours) so you can reserve decent seats. There are plenty of restaurants within walking distance if you don't feel like browsing the shelves that long. 

Personally, I wasn't going there to see Diana Gabaldon, it was the second name on the bill that had me doing a happy dance. P.F. Chisholm writes the Sir Robert Carey novels, one of my favorite historical mystery series, and since she's British and living in Hungary at the moment, she doesn't get over here all that often.

Yes, Diana tends to pack fans in whenever she appears, and I can certainly understand why. She writes fantastic books, and she's an absolutely fascinating speaker. P.F. Chisholm is one of Gabaldon's favorite writers, and Diana had asked Barbara Peters if she could be the one to talk with Patricia. (The "P.F." stands for Patricia Finney.) Would you say no? I didn't think so. Neither would I!

I thought I would get some reading done before the event started, but I thought wrong. I'd forgotten that Gabaldon tends to bring in very interesting fans-- like the woman who opened an email from The Poisoned Pen, read that Gabaldon was going to be appearing, and decided to hop in her car and drive here. From Texas. We were soon joined by a mother and daughter and a husband and wife, and we all nattered away quite happily. It's getting easier to pick each other out in the crowd, since the wife asked me, "Have you been to Scotland yet?" as they took their seats.

Since both women were busy signing books in the mail order room, host and bookstore owner Barbara Peters sat down to talk with us for a few minutes. Chisholm is a particular favorite of several authors who visit The Poisoned Pen-- Dana Stabenow, Diana Gabaldon, and Sharon Kay Penman have loved her books for years. 

Available October 27!

Barbara also told us that The Official Outlander Coloring Book and The Outlandish Companion Volume II would both be available on October 27, and although Diana wouldn't be able to appear at The Poisoned Pen to launch these two books, she would be signing them. Contact The Poisoned Pen for details! 

One of my favorite moments of the evening then followed, and I'm going to warn you in advance-- Diana and Patricia are both marvelous speakers, and the two of them should take their show on the road, but since I can't write as fast as they can talk, I couldn't get every bit of wit and wisdom down for this recap. I advise you all if you can to see and hear this event on The Poisoned Pen's Livestream channel. You'll get every last drop of brilliance that way! 

"Back in about 1988 or 1989," Barbara told us, "we had this woman who was ordering all sorts of weird books about Scotland, and we didn't know why." She stopped for a moment to tell us that they called each other "B" and "D." "One day D walked up to me holding a large book with 'Cross Stitch' on the cover and told me, 'B, I'm going to be published!' My first thought was, 'Oh my God, it's a book about embroidery!' but Cross Stitch is the British title for Outlander. When I asked her, 'What's it about?' the poor woman couldn't tell me. At that time there was no vocabulary for the type of book she'd written. No 'time jump.' No 'time slip.' Can you imagine?"

Barbara then told us something that had happened recently. "D emailed me to say that she'd been asked to write a short story. I clicked on the attached PDF file to open it, and it was 75,000 words. I wrote her back saying, 'D, you wouldn't recognize it, but it's a novel!'"

"Bad to the Bone!"

L to R: Diana Gabaldon, P.F. Chisholm and behind the table top, Barbara Peters.

Gabaldon began the evening by letting us know the correct way to pronounce her name. It rhymes with "bad to the bone." Ah well, I had it right except for that long O at the end. She really didn't want to spend a lot of time talking about herself; however, she wanted to know what Patricia has been up to.

Finney quickly obliged. "My mother is Hungarian and a Jew, so she had a very interesting war. I'm now living in Hungary, trying to figure out which of my mother's stories are true and which ones she's told to her advantage." Finney has a very expressive voice and face, and it became clear very quickly that she was going to make us laugh. A lot. (While I remember, I'd better tell you that you should also read her blog. I love it!)

"I'm also learning to speak Hungarian. It is a very different language. The word order makes your mind boggle; the language works more like Korean or Japanese."

At a prompting question from Gabaldon, Finney went on to tell us that she's busy writing the next two Sir Robert Carey books. She's finishing one of her Elizabethan spy thrillers, and is putting the finishing touches on the second James Enys mystery, which she referred to as a bit of "Elizabethan noir." Having read a short story she wrote featuring Enys, I'm looking forward to reading the first Enys novel, Do We Not Bleed? Enys is a very interesting Elizabethan lawyer, and if you listen closely to the Livestream event, Finney makes a tiny, tiny slip that may give you a clue as to one reason why Enys is so interesting. 

"I always said that I would never write a serial killer book, but I did." [Referring to the second Enys book.]

"It's the most unusual reason for a serial killer that I've ever read," remarked Diana.

Legends

A fan wanted to know more about Finney's mother, who didn't know she was Jewish until she was seven years old. "The servants told her," Finney replied, "and I wasn't told until 1998 when my father was dying."

Diana Gabaldon and her Diet Coke

"There's always been a legend in my family that they were converso Jews in Spain," Gabaldon said. "I was appearing on a book program for Radio Shalom in Canada and happened to mention that when I was asked about my background. A man in the room said, 'It's more than a legend. My family is from the next village over, and they're all Jews up there!'"

"I've always wanted to tell my mother's story," Patricia said. "She turned twelve on April 12, 1945 in Budapest."

"Tell us a bit about A Chorus of Innocents," said Gabaldon.

"The latest Sir Robert Carey book is more about Elizabeth Widdrington, who was in fact Robert Carey's wife," Finney said, "but only after her bloody annoying husband died."

"That's what we're all waiting for!" said Diana.

"I can assure you he will have a very unpleasant death," Finney continued. "I haven't exactly decided what yet, but I do know that it will be very nasty."

Once our laughter had died down, Diana told us, "I am very much in love with Sergeant Dodd [another character in the Carey books]," and some heads nodded in agreement. Gabaldon also referred to Carey as "the world's first fashion victim." Finney agreed wholeheartedly and mentioned that the debts Carey ran up-- a good portion of which were for all the latest fashions-- amounted to $3-4 million dollars in today's money. Can you imagine? For clothes? (And yes-- Sir Robert Carey was a real person.)

"Forsoothly Writing"

Finney then gave us a little information on Carey's background. His grandmother was Mary Boleyn, more compliant sister of Anne Boleyn, and his grandfather was Henry VIII. Carey's father was Henry Lord Hunsdon, who was Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth I-- a position that was only given to family. Carey's royal connections may have been on the wrong side of the blanket, but they were acknowledged. Carey was Hunsdon's seventh son, so he didn't inherit a bean-- one of the reasons why he was constantly in debt. The toothache he has in A Chorus of Innocents is based on one Finney herself had while on vacation in Greece.

Gabaldon praised Finney for avoiding the flowery prose of the times in her books. "I call that 'forsoothly writing,'" Finney said. "One of the things that drew me to Sir Robert Carey was reading his journal and discovering that his own prose style was simple and conversational. No forsooths in sight."

Finney stumbled when asked about a book that had been published several years ago. "I have four books in my head right now, and it's driving me nuts. I have to admit that I'm more interested in the books that I'm writing than in books I've already written [a common refrain I've heard from authors], so I have to  be reminded by someone who's actually read them!"

Patricia Finney AKA P.F. Chisholm

She then told us about "a brilliant idea I had in the middle of a double roundabout in Truro," which led Gabaldon to share a story of driving somewhere and "I just realized that Jocasta Cameron is blind!" Gabaldon's daughter replied, "I don't care. You just missed our turn."

"Books can be very dangerous!" Finney exclaimed.

Gabaldon asked Finney about how she writes. "I tend to take my characters out for a test run draft to see what works and if it's something I want to do. Once I've actually begun a book, I write in a linear fashion." 

Children and Writing

Talk then turned to combining motherhood and writing. "They say you lose two books for a child," Finney told us, "and I think it's true. At least two books! My second book, A Season of Knives, was written in desperate haste in my car around the corner from where my son was with his play group." After receiving permission from her son who was in the audience, Patricia told us that he really didn't like one of the play group workers, who was very bossy. Even though Patricia told him that he had to get along with her, the day arrived when enough was enough. The little boy backed himself into a corner and laid into the bossy worker with a plastic boat. "It took a lot of fast talking to keep Bill in the play group so I could keep writing my book," Finney said. "I'm sorry about that, Bill! Thankfully that worker tended to steer clear of Bill the rest of the time he was there!"

Available Now!

Three months after the birth of their first child, Gabaldon's husband left his job to start his own business. This left Diana as the sole support of the family for a time. "I had two full-time jobs and three children under the age of six, so I don't want to hear anyone telling me they don't have time to write a book!

"One thing that was to my benefit was that my husband had set up an office in our converted garage that had an outside door so his clients could come and go without entering the house.

"In the mornings, I would go out the outer door and around to the office very quietly. Yes, there was a garage door, but the lock was on their side and if they heard me they'd be all over me like a shot. The only bad thing was that at some point in the morning, I would have to sneak out, get into the car, and drive to the mall so I could go to the bathroom!" 

This and That

When asked about writers who have influenced her, Patricia mentioned (more than once) The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser, the man who wrote the Flashman novels. "It's about the Border Reivers and one of the funniest historical non-fiction books I've ever read," Finney told us. She also listed Robert Louis Stevenson, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy L. Sayer, and John D. MacDonald as other writers who have influenced her.

Diana told us that she'd been asked about the possibility of large print editions of her books. "You couldn't lift them," she told us amid gales of laughter. "I have one word for you: eReader!" She also let us know that she'd writing a script for season two of "Outlander" just the night before. "Now that I think of it, I've finished writing two books in the Algonquin Hotel at 6 AM!"

As Barbara Peters had mentioned earlier, adult coloring books are the latest fad, and George R.R. Martin and Diana Gabaldon are going to have their very own coloring books. Gabaldon really liked the cover of George's book, but has had difficulties with Random House over the cover of hers. Sony owns the images of Sam and Catriona, the actors who portray Jamie and Claire, and Random House hasn't chosen well with their substitutes. Let's just say Diana knows how to stand her ground! (And if you really want to know what she said, watch that Livestream video!)

Speaking of George R.R. Martin, if there's any other author alive who knows what that man goes through as he's writing, it's Diana Gabaldon. When opened up for questions, one person in the audience asked the inevitable, cringeworthy, question: "When will your next book be out?"

Diana Gabaldon has the nicest, politest, putdowns I've heard in a long, long time. "If it follows the usual procedure, it will be out six weeks after I've finished writing it."

But the fan wasn't backing down. "Are you in the process of writing it now?"

Neither was Diana. "No, I'm sitting here talking with you."

To end the proceedings and start forming some very long signing lines, Diana asked Patricia, "Why Sir Robert Carey? Why did you choose him as your main character?"

"I've always loved Elizabethan clothes, but as for Carey, when I read that, at the age of 42, Sir Robert Carey rode from London to Edinburgh in two days to tell James VI that Elizabeth was dead and he was King of England, I was hooked! As George MacDonald Fraser once said, Carey was 'the quintessence of Elizabethan England.'"

As we folded chairs and looked at the numbers on our slips to find our places in the signing lines, I looked around. Yes, the signing line for Diana Gabaldon was massive. I expected no less. What made me happy was the length of Finney's line-- and several standing in it were holding more than one of her books. As I waited, I asked some of those standing behind me if they'd read any of the Sir Robert Carey books before. None of them had, but all of them said that the books did look good, and-- after all-- Diana had recommended them herself.  I added my recommendation to hers even though I knew it meant little to them. 

But I smiled all the way home, knowing how much enjoyment they had in store for them!

Susanna Kearsley and Diana Gabaldon at The Poisoned Pen!

If I had to catch a gut-wrenching virus, at least I'd done it and had time to recuperate fully before going to The Poisoned Pen. I hate even the slightest possibility of spreading such nasty germs. It did seem rather strange to be going without Denis, but I was glad he was at work. Historical fiction really isn't the man's style!

Knowing that bookstore owner Barbara Peters was off traveling the world and that Diana Gabaldon was the evening's "celebrity pinch hitter" interviewing Susanna Kearsley, I made certain to get to my favorite bookstore in plenty of time to reserve my seat... and to do a little browse-buy.

The chairs hadn't been put up yet, so I sat at the back to read a bit. i was soon joined by another woman who wanted to reserve a seat before going to a nearby restaurant. The usually well-oiled machine of The Poisoned Pen experienced a slight hitch, and the other woman and I helped the staff get plenty of seats out. Neither of us minded a bit because we had an absolutely wonderful time talking books and Scotland. (Such a wonderful time in fact that we neglected to ask each other's name!)

"What if...?"

L to R: Diana Gabaldon, Susanna Kearsley

The bookstore quickly filled with chattering, excited women (and a few men). One couple had come down from Utah especially for the event, and another was from Nova Scotia. We were all a bit stunned when Susanna limped in on crutches, one foot firmly shielded in a protective boot. Never once saying what put her on the disabled list, Kearsley just smiled and said that a "skydiving accident" was tops on the list of guesses.

Diana said she was the choice to fill in for Barbara because "Not only are Susanna and I friends, I also like her books, and her latest book is about the Scottish Jacobites." This raised such a cheer in the room that I think Scotland would've gained its independence if we'd all been allowed to vote last year.

"This book deals with the first unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion," Diana went on to say, "and there's a tall, mysterious Highlander in it, too! There's also a contemporary story that winds in and out of the historical story, and Susanna will tell us a bit about what joins the two."

Susanna Kearsley

"My books aren't written as any sort of series," Susanna said, "but they all inhabit this world I've created, and sometimes you'll see the same characters appear. As part of my research for The Firebird-- the book before A Desperate Fortune-- I was reading a letter book that had originally belonged to Admiral Thomas Gordon, and I came across an old numerical Jacobite cypher. Since it contained drafts of his letters, I could see how he changed the wording in some letters and how he decoded the various letters he received from King James and King James' secretary. 

"I like code-breaking and cypher stories anyway, so I thought I'd like to include some sort of code in this book. Usually I use a light paranormal thread to bind the past and the present together in my books, but this time I wondered... what if there's a journal that needs to be decoded? So this time we have Sara who is deciphering the journal and Mary, the person who wrote it."

Serendipity & Spanking

Diana has long been a fan of Susanna's detailed research-- like the cypher in A Desperate Fortune-- but many times, she's attracted by the objects that Kearsley adds to her stories. Sometimes these objects have a real purpose in the plot; sometimes they don't, but they always add to the verisimilitude. She pointed to the large piece of jewelry Susanna was wearing on her tartan, part of which you can see in the photo above. It is called an "equipage," a collection of articles for personal ornament. 

"It's actually meant to be worn at your waist," Susanna told us. "It would clip on your skirt. It's the earlier version of a chatelaine [a hooklike clasp or a chain for suspending keys, trinkets, scissors, a watch, etc., worn at the waist by women]. This one was made by a local jeweler when they found out about the story I was writing. It's very special to me and is a sort of good luck charm for me while I'm doing this tour."

Diana Gabaldon

After talking for a minute or two about the sort of pencils used in the eighteenth century (very similar to the mechanical pencils of today), Diana asked Kearsley about the cost of an antique chatelaine or equipage. "They cost a lot more than I can afford right now. I just give them to my characters, and I dream!"

"These objects often play a part in the plot, like the watch on Mary's equipage which falls off and breaks, leading to our mysterious Highlander who is a watchmaker's apprentice!" Gabaldon said. "This is one of those woo-woo moments for writers. It's nothing you prepared for, it's nothing you expected, it just happens. Historical serendipity. The more you learn about a time period, the more you learn how the people thought, and the more these types of things can happen.

"It always helps when you have proof in the historical record. That way, if someone tells you something couldn't possibly have happened, you can whip out your proof and tell them, 'Oh yes, it can!' You wouldn't believe how many times I've been asked about spanking in the eighteenth century!" (Slight pause to give us all time to stop laughing and compose ourselves.)

A Desperate Fortune

Available Now!

Putting her latest book in historical context with Gabaldon's bestselling series, Kearsley told us, "A Desperate Fortune takes place during Jamie Fraser's father's generation. I always told myself that I would never never never never never write a Highlander because Diana's already put her stamp on that. When Hugh my Highlander walked in, I said, 'No! He's going to be shorter. He's going to have dark hair. He's going to be a Lowlander...' all the time thinking 'I can't believe I'm writing a Highlander!'

"There's always a lot of research that never makes it into the book, but you need it to create your characters. I went looking into the watchmakers of Inverness at the time, and you can get into the guild books. You can see who was practicing, what the ages of their apprentices were, what sort of life they had, and this is how I created Hugh." 

Diana then wanted to know about Sara Thomas, the character in the contemporary storyline who works to crack the code in the Jacobite journal.

"I have a few people in my life who are very close to me, and they have Asperger's," Susanna said. "Asperger's has almost become 'hip' now, but I've wanted to portray a character with this syndrome for a while now. One of the people close to me is female, and one of the things I learned in my research is that Asperger's is harder to diagnose in females because they tend to be much better mimics.

"All the Aspys in my life like The Big Bang Theory, but they don't like the fact that Sheldon Cooper is always the punchline. I wanted to portray a much more realistic picture of people with Asperger's syndrome."

"Well, Sam, you can..."

After Kearsley mentioned that she sees "a book like a film in my mind while I'm writing," Diana remarked that A Desperate Fortune is "a very deeply emotional book, but you don't realize it until you get to the end."

"I like to use real people whenever possible in my books," Susanna said, "but I'm more interested in the common people because they're the ones who really made the history. There's a quote at the end of Henry V-- and I'll probably start crying-- where Henry is brought the news of the victory at Agincourt, and he asks for the names of the dead. Three or four lords' names are given, but [catch in her voice] those aren't the names Henry wants. He wants the names of the common soldiers who fought and died.

Susanna Kearsley

"I love to be able to bring these voices back. I feel a great responsibility to these forgotten voices-- to make them right."

The only historical character Susanna feels a deep connection to is James VIII of Scotland (James III of England, Bonnie Prince Charlie's father) because she's been writing about him since he was fifteen. "I have watched him age, and I have read all his letters. He was a phenomenal man, a great soul. He has been so maligned by historians that I get very angry. When I write him, I use his own words."

It was wonderful to see how knowledgeable Kearlsey is about the history of the time and how much it matters to her. A couple of minutes later, Diana Gabaldon had her own catch-in-the-throat moment in telling us about her then fifteen-year-old son Sam who at that age read fantasy exclusively. Diana was busy at her keyboard when Sam looked up from his book and rather wistfully said, "I wish I could really do magic, Mom." Diana stopped typing, looked over at him and said, "Well, Sam, you can. It's just much harder than most people think." Wise words spoken by a woman who creates magic at her keyboard.

The Writing Life

Both writers agreed that good-bye scenes are the hardest to write. Kearlsey told us of one such scene she was writing. When her husband came home, he discovered her at her keyboard, her neck wet because she'd been crying so much. Without missing a beat, he called out to the children, "Come on, kids, we're going to McDonald's!"

Both women also tend to write in a more or less linear fashion-- from the beginning to the end-- unless "something's broken." Kearsley said, "I'm a former museum curator, so I'm used to working linearly. And music has started playing a part in my writing when it never has before. I also don't think I'm through with Hugh and Mary [two main characters in A Desperate Fortune] yet!"

Diana Gabaldon

Diana told Susanna that she's often been asked what her writing space looks like. "I don't have a writing space," Gabaldon said. "It's all inside my head. What about yours?"

"I do love organization, but my writing space looks like an episode of Hoarders," Kearsley admitted to much  sympathetic laughter in the audience.

She continued, "I also find that I need the physical things around me-- like rocks from various castles that I've written about." Looking at us all, "Don't tell Customs!"

Diana laughed and said, "If the beagles can't smell it, you can bring it in!" (Which made me wonder if beagles were going to out me in the fall when I return from Scotland with a bunch of sea shells....)

As a museum curator, Kearlsey was involved in the repatriation of many Native American artifacts, and as she spoke, I realized that I could listen to her talk about this one facet of her life for hours.

Both women are passionate about the accuracy that can be found in historical fiction. "History is not what happened. It's what was written down," Gabaldon said. Kearsley nodded in agreement, saying, "Historical fiction writers are just as careful-- if not more so-- than historians."

When asked what inspired them to write about the Jacobites, Gabaldon said that "It was a really old Dr. Who episode where the doctor picked up a young Jacobite in a kilt." When we all stopped laughing, Susanna told us that it was a true history book, Playing the Scottish Card by John S. Gibson.

As the evening drew to a reluctant close, one fan told Kearsley how much she'd enjoyed one of her books because she was completely thrown by the twists and turns of the plot. Did Kearsley always know how the story was going to turn out before she started writing?

"No, I really didn't know how that book was going to turn out," Kearsley admitted, "which horrifies my engineer father. How can you write a mystery and not know who the villain is? Oh well, you know, Dad.... I had a book once where I thought I knew the bad guy, but the dog liked him, so I knew that wasn't going to work!"

What a fantastic evening! Although I tried to include as many of the best bits that I possibly could, I didn't want to write something the size of War and Peace, so please head on over to Livestream if you'd like to watch the entire event!