I didn’t learn this until much later, but they mostly didn’t cancel because my editor said she would quit if they did. So they very nearly came close to actually giving me back the book and canceling the contract. They were afraid that if they put it out as general fiction, no one would be able to understand what it is, and it would fall flat. So the publisher sat on the book for 18 months. Fabio.” And she said, “Oh no, it’s also got time travel and it’s a historical novel …” The historical aspect is accurate, but you don’t want to market it like a Ken Follett novel. There’s a wonderful love story …” And they’re like, “Oh! That’s romance. And then the publisher asked her, “Well, now what kind of book is it? We have to think about marketing.” And she stared at it and said, “Well, I really couldn’t tell you. When I first wrote the books, we sold them to an editor who just loved the story. But in the 20th century, that term changed, and now it’s deemed only a love story, specifically a courtship story. In the 19th century, the definition of the romance genre was an escape from daily life that included adventure and love and battle. Because it is, and it isn’t …Ī romance is a courtship story. Hopefully this season, with all its battles, politics, and court intrigue, helped Outlander shed some of the stigma that comes associated with being a romance story. Gabaldon chatted with Vulture about how Outlander isn’t really a romance, why she shot Rupert in the eye, and how much of her script she had to change on set. Moore likely picked episode 11 for Gabaldon because it matches its source material pretty well in terms of chronology, which would make it relatively easy for her to transform it into a script, “without doing violence to my sense of composition,” she laughed. And while the author has served as a consultant on the show, helping shape what you see onscreen and even making the odd cameo, Saturday’s episode was the first one actually scripted by her.

Outlander, the television series, is based on a series of books by Diana Gabaldon (season two is adapted from Dragonfly in Amber). Spoilers ahead for the most recent episode of Outlander.

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