Okaay…. I just had to breathe deeply into a paper bag to stop hyperventilating with excitement!! This June Diana Gabaldon is finally releasing the highly anticipated next volume in the Outlander series. “Written in My Own Heart’s Blood” will be book 8 in the saga which first started with “Cross Stitch” in 1991. I was totally addicted, right from the start. A good friend put me onto the series and I have LOVED it ever since. I know everyone is mad for Game of Thrones at the moment, but this series really is awesome and it’s been evolving for just as long. It’s a must-read.

For those uninitiated: In 1945 in Scotland, a young nurse Claire Randall walks through a stone circle and ends up in 1743. Claire finds herself under the protection of a handsome highland warrior, torn between two lives….Yes, this is a time travel romance, but don’t roll your eyes people! I am the most retentive critic of historical fiction, time travel paradoxes and of cheesy bare-chested chick reads, but this series is just not like that, I swear. It’s sexy, but it is also well-researched, intelligent and gripping. Gabaldon’s gift for narrative and characterisation is beautifully executed and thoroughly compelling. And as for her hero Jamie Fraser, well girls, you have never met finer.
He is the perfect, imperfect man: the reluctant but courageous hero, the accomplished but modest scholar, the tender heart, the generous soul and sometimes just plain funny. My other half hates him….heh heh. In fact, most boyfriends or husbands of Gabaldon fans are jealous of Jamie. He’s hard to live up to…and if that doesn’t get you reading it, nothing will.

As for those of you like me who HAVE read and re-read them all jumping in circles in anticipation – how cool is the news that they are making the first book for Starz TV?!! Production is well under way and with Gabaldon as an Executive Producer, there should be very few departures from the story we love. The director has done a lot of sci-fi (Battlestar Galactica reboot) but I saw he and Gabaldon interviewed at New York Comic Con and he admitted that his wife (who is Costume Director) made him read it and if he gets it wrong he will be divorced and killed in that order…. Of course the big question is the casting. Caitriona Balfe will be Claire and Sam Heughan will be Jamie. We all seem to have our own idea of what Jamie looks like, but this unknown seems to have that IT factor. We shall see…