Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER Series to Debut on STARZ Cable Network, 8/9

After a red-carpet premiere in July at the San Diego Comic-Con and other events in New York, the new Outlander TV series debuts on August 9 in the U.S.A. on the STARZ cable network.

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting "Scrooge McDuck" comics."

The adventure began in 1991 with the classic OUTLANDER ("historical fiction with a Moebius twist"), has continued through seven more New York Times-bestselling novels- DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN, THE FIERY CROSS, A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, AN ECHO IN THE BONE, and WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD, with more than twenty-six million copies in print worldwide. Click to read a chronology of the Outlander series.

The series is published in 26 countries and 23 languages, and includes a nonfiction (well, relatively) companion volume, THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION, which provides details on the settings, background, characters, research, and writing of the first novels in the series. Gabaldon (it's pronounced "GAA-bull-dohn"-rhymes with "stone") has also written several books in a sub-series featuring Lord John Grey (a major minor character from the main series): LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER, LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE, LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS, and LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER.

Returning to her comic-book roots, she has also written a graphic novel titled THE EXILE (set within the OUTLANDER universe and featuring the main characters from OUTLANDER), but told from the viewpoint of Jamie Fraser and his godfather, Murtagh. The graphic novel is illustrated by Hoang Nguyen, and published by Del-Rey.

The eighth and most recent major novel in the OUTLANDER series, WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD, was released on June 10, 2014 in the U.S.A. and Canada. The book made its debut as number one on the New York Times bestseller list in the hardcover category and combined e-book and hardcover category! And the book is also a bestseller in Canada.

Diana's current writing projects include the ninth major novel in the OUTLANDER series, as yet untitled, and a second volume of THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION. She is also serving as a Co-Producer and advisor for the Outlander TV series produced by the Starz network and Tall Ship Productions, which is based on her novels.

Dr. Gabaldon holds three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and a Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology, (plus an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters, which entitles her to be "Diana Gabaldon, Ph.D., D.H.L." She supposes this is better than "Diana Gabaldon, Phd.X,") and spent a dozen years as a university professor with an expertise in scientific computation before beginning to write fiction. She has written scientific articles and textbooks, worked as a contributing editor on the MacMillan ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTERS, founded the scientific-computation journal SCIENCE SOFTWARE QUARTERLY, and has written numerous comic-book scripts for Walt Disney. None of this has anything whatever to do with her novels, but there it is.

Diana and her husband, Douglas Watkins, have three adult children and live mostly in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Photo Credit: Amanda Schwab, AP

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