Outlander's Diana Gabaldon opens Glasgow showcase event

Now in its seventh series, one actor has already been cast for the prequel but she's not giving anything else away.

The 71-year-old author says she was reliant on a Gaelic-to-English dictionary for the first two books before a native speaker "wrote me a nice letter" and offered to assist.

She now has the help of Mòd Gold medalist Cathy-Ann McPhee and trad singer Gillebrìde MacMillan, who helps Scots actor Sam Heughan master his Gaelic diphthongs and Highland dialect. 

"It became clear to me more or less as soon as I set the books in Highland Scotland [that Gaelic would be included] because that's what they spoke in the Highlands in the 18th century," she says.

"I live in Phoenix Arizona and it was 1988 and the internet as such did not exist.

"Being an academic [She has a PhD in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology] I went to the library first and found nothing and then I started poking around for a Gaelic English dictionary and was calling up bookstores in different cities.

"Finally I found a place in Boston that specialised in books by non-American publishers. 

"Somewhere in the midst of the third book I got this lovely letter from a gentleman named Iain Mackinnon Taylor, a civil engineer who was working in New Hampshire at the time but was born on the Isle of Harris and he wrote to me saying how wonderful it was to see the history and language of Scotland so well depicted but he said, 'I was born on the Isle of Harris and I'm a native speaker and I think you must be getting your Gaelic from a dictionary.'

"Iain was able to help me through the next three books."

The author will be the honorary guest and speaker at a five-day conference, getting under way today at the University of Glasgow, which is dedicated to the Outlander phenomenon.

Around 90 speakers will explore the history, politics, culture, languages, clothes and music featured in the series with dedicated fan events also lined up. The university doubles as Harvard in the TV series.

"It's kind of staggering," said the author. "I wrote Outlander for practice.

"I'm gobsmacked and very, very flattered. The University of Glasgow has done a wonderful thing in hosting it."

She says she didn't have a particular interest in Scotland when she embarked on her first novel - Cross Stitch -  but was looking for a time and place to set a historical drama.

"I thought, what's the easiest thing to write and for me that was historical fiction probably," she said.

"I was a research professor and I knew my way around a library so I thought, fine, it doesn't matter that I know nothing at the moment.

"In this malleable frame of mind I happened to see a really old Doctor Who re-run from the 1950s - War Games - and a young Scotsman appeared in his kilt.

READ MORE: Gaelic singer says Outlander appearance led to 'life changing' opportunities 

"I was thinking about it in church the next day (she is Catholic) and thought to myself, it doesn't really matter where I set it because no one is going to see it."

She says it was relatively easy to research 18th-century Scotland because of the strong oral tradition. She read books by Scottish authors including Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin and listened to Corries records to learn different dialects.

The secret of depicting historical characters like Bonnie Prince Charlie, she says, is "never write anything worse than they would have done."

She says most of the accounts of Charles Edward Stuart are third-hand because he didn't write much himself.

The author, who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow last year, also revealed during a talk at the conference that her career as a published author nearly finished before it began.

She said her first book almost got cancelled due to the difficulty in how to categorise it, adding: “It took the publishers 18 months to figure out what to do with it. I learned later that they came very close to cancelling the contract and giving me back the book because they couldn’t decide how to sell it.

"My agent finally called me up and said they had decided to publish it but sell it as a romance. I said, ‘What?’ that isn’t what I wrote. He pointed out that a best seller in fantasy fiction was 50,000 copies in paperback while in romance it is 500,000 copies. So we sold it as romance."

Since the first novel was published in 1991, Outlander has become one of the world’s most popular fiction series and in 2014 the launch of the TV series added legions of new fans. 

It is rumoured that former Prime Minister David Cameron asked Sony to delay the TV premiere of Outlander in August 2014 until after the independence referendum vote on September 18 because he was concerned it might fuel a groundswell of support for the yes vote.

The current TV series is focussed on the American Wars of Independence when patriot forces under George Washington's command defeated the British.

Her books have championed Scottish history, culture and identity but the author says she doesn't feel that she has the right to voice an opinion on independence.

"It's not my country," she explains.

"On the other hand I'm an American and you know Americans, by and large, are in favour of people being independent of England."

READ MORE: The biggest myth about the Jacobites as new Glasgow show reveals propaganda war 

She says the area around Inverness is her favourite place to visit when she comes to Scotland with her husband of 51 years, Douglas, who is tall with red hair like her main protagonist.

Her own life has lots of unexpected parallels with her books.

Her daughter Jenny is married to Iain (like Jamie Fraser's sister ) and her other daughter Laura is a nurse like main character Claire. She also has a son Sam, who writes fantasy fiction.

The author is delighted that both Heughan and Irish actress Caitríona Balfe have enjoyed success in other major film and TV roles. Balfe starred in the Oscar-winner Belfast while her co-star has been mentioned as a contender for the next Bond.

"I could see him in that role," she says. "He's a bit younger than the Bond we are accustomed to seeing.

"They are both wonderful actors so anything they are in is worth seeing."

In news that will surely delight her fans, she says she doesn't have a plan or timescale for the last book.

"I am working on the tenth book and after that we will see," she says.

"I don't plan the books out ahead of time so I've got no idea how or when they are going to end."