At one point, some years ago, a nice gentleman had it in mind to do 'Outlander The Musical.'

I grew up in Flagstaff, and I still own my old family house up there, so I go up there a couple of times a month just to sit for a day or two and work without any kind of interruption, and I usually take a dinner break, and I'll watch two hours of DVD.

Partly because of the way I write - I don't work with an outline or in a straight line. I work where I can see things happening, and so I get lots and lots of little bits to start with, and I'm doing the research at the same time.

You see one scene shot 25 times in one day, which is totally fascinating, but while you're watching it, you're remembering, 'This is what I was thinking when I was writing that part of the book,' and so it brings it all back very gradually as you're working.

I read Tolkien when I was 11. I read 'The Hobbit' and the trilogy on a road trip with my family. I identified with the nonhumans in those books, and it never occurred to me why that was.

The thought that you ought not to drink while pregnant came much, much later. In fact, I had my first child in 1982, and I was still told by nurses and so forth, 'Have a glass of wine with dinner. It'll help you relax.'

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction.

How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together. I do have the final scene, but that really is an epilogue. It's not part of the plot.

I don't plan the books ahead of time. It's not like Harry Potter. I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel.

I have never seen a script that hasn't gone through at least eight different iterations before they even begin filming, and frequently what is filmed is not what's in the script, because things change on the ground. An actor can't say a particular line. An actor will have a brainstorm and ad lib something utterly brilliant.

When' Voyager', the third book of the series, hit the 'New York Times' bestseller list, they very honorably redesigned the covers and started calling them fiction.

If you call it a romance, it will never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other respectable literary venue. And that's okay. I can live with that.

Back in the day, years ago, in 1988, the only TV I watched was 'Doctor Who' because I had children and two full-time jobs, and 'Doctor Who' was the exact length of time it took to do my nails, so I would watch 'Doctor Who' once a week!

In a great many stories that deal with time travel, there's usually somebody who knows how time travel works. They lay out the rules.

I've had no fewer than three young women on separate occasions come up to me at book signings and unzip their pants, turn around, and drop them to show me that they had 'Bonnie lassie' tattooed across their rumpuses!

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction. There's always a temptation, I think, among some historical writers to shade things toward the modern point of view. You know, they won't show someone doing something that would have been perfectly normal for the time but that is considered reprehensible today.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

Normally, it takes me about three years to write one of the big books. It is usually four years between releases because of the huge amount of travel and PR and just nuisance going on around them. I have a lot of pressure from publishers and agents.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel. How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

I've never seen anyone deal in a literary way with what it takes to stay married for more than 50 years, and that seemed like a worthy goal.

Whenever you're dealing with something that's difficult to describe, that you can't get across to someone in a sound bite, it sounds like the normal default is to pick what's easiest, and in the case of fiction written by women, fiction involving women, fiction involving any sort of relationship, the word that comes to mind is 'romance.'

At one point, some years ago, a nice gentleman had it in mind to do 'Outlander' the musical. His idea was to start with a CD of what you call a song cycle, with a dozen high points of the projected show. It turned out very well, though we had to stop doing it when the TV show came along.