I keep seeing gif sets for Outlander going past my dash and getting excited to see Sam Heughan in a kilt again (the man has excellent legs and I am weak, weak, trash) and then I saw a picture of Diana Gabaldon and had this weird transportive memory moment where suddenly I am 18 years old again working in the tea house on Sauchiehall Street and I’m taking the order of this really polite American couple who keep telling me about all the tourist things they have done here and asking me if I have been up to Inverness and visited XYZ. And I’m just there for the tip man, Americans tip so good I am just giving it my all, laughing along and chattering away, I’m one step away from doing a jig for them if it will get me a tenner I can keep to myself.
And then the husband goes off somewhere, and it’s just the dark haired lady sitting up by the window seat watching the Glasgow world go by, and I refill her cup several more times and talk her into trying the freshly baked shortbread and soon she’s my only table left and I’m just sort of lingering nearby polishing cutlery. And then this dark haired woman with bright eyes turns to me and says “you said you’re going to college for literature, right?”
I confirm, yes, that is what I said, but then for some reason I say “I figure I should try and teach or something. There’s not much stable work for writers.”
And there’s this frozen in time moment where she turns to me and says “oh you’re a writer? what do you write?” and 18 -year-old me only has half-baked ideas and is too embarrassed to say, so I just sort of shrug and say “nothing yet, some sci fi I suppose…” and then I get asked “have you read a book series called Outlander?”
It’s only my customer service facade that saves me, because yes, I had read Outlander, everyone and their nan, has read some of Outlander, because everyone and their nan wants to commit several types of sin with Jamie Fraser but other than that I think the book is awful. It was like the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time but without the stalking and the psychosis. So I say, “yea, I’ve read it” and she sort of half laughs and says “You don’t sound that enthused.” and I sort of shrug and say “it was all right, it waffled a bit for me. You can tell the author has never been to Scotland either.”
And on the conversation goes for several more moments before this lady turns the conversation back to what I want to write and I admit I really don’t know but I just want to write eventually and she smiles and nods and then she hands me a business card along with my ten pound tip and tells me “when you’re published let me know” while I smile, nod and glance briefly at the card—remembering vaguely the name Watkins and an address in Arizona—then move on with my life.
Until this very moment in time, over a decade later, I am sat frozen on my couch watching this dark haired woman speak about how she came to write Outlander, and then an image of her husband comes up and I’m just like no, no, no so I look up her website and his last name is Watkins and they live in Arizona guys…guys I’m not 100% sure, but I think past me might have told Diana Gabaldon her book was shit.