‘Outlander’ Scribe Diana Gabaldon Reveals Her Father Did Not Want Her To Write, Plus Season 1 Comes To Amazon Prime

Outlander author Diana Gabaldon recently revealed some surprising facts about her family and career as a writer. In fact, in an interview with the Daily Record, Gabaldon stated that when she was growing up, her father was not very supportive in her decision to pursue a writing career, which is something she wanted to do since a very young age.

“From the age of eight I wanted to be a novelist but I came from a very conservative family background… My father would say to me, ‘You’re such a poor judge of character you’ll probably marry some bum, so be sure to get a good education so you can support your children.’ “

Gabaldon took her father’s advice about education to heart and went on to receive a Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology. In pursuing her degree, Gabaldon was able to further hone and shape her writing abilities.

“When you do that you write a great deal for academic purposes, textbooks, articles and all kinds of things so I had done a great deal of writing,” she stated in regards to her education. “I had started my own journal and worked almost full time freelance writing software reviews and tutorials.”

Luckily for fans of the hit series, which stars Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe, her writing did not end there, as her education and writing practice influenced Gabaldon to write the first book in the Outlander series. After giving her agent a copy of the first Outlander book, her agent sent it off to a few editors, where it was quickly accepted with enthusiasm.

“When I finished it, my agent sent it to five editors he thought might like it. Within four days three of them had called back with offers to buy it so it was off to the races,” she explained. “He was able to negotiate amongst them and got me a three book contract.”

Gabaldon added that her book deal was something that went beyond her wildest expectations and came as quite a surprise. Furthermore, she stated that she wasn’t sure how to react to her newfound success in the publishing world.

“It was beyond exciting and rather numbing because I hadn’t expected that in a million years,” she said in the interview. “I didn’t know how to react so I asked my agent, ‘What do I do?’ He laughed and said, ‘Open a bottle of champagne because what happens now is out of your hands.’ ”

Meanwhile, with the hit time-traveling series currently in production for its second season, fans will be excited to learn that the show is soon to be available to stream online. According to Scotsman, the series is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime, and is one of a number of new shows to hit the streaming service in recent months.

With Outlander being the most viewed show on U.K. Prime, its addition to Amazon Prime will certainly add to the website’s traffic. However, although the series is fairly mild concerning its content, its release on U.K. Prime was not without a bit of controversy. In fact, the first season of the show had a delayed premiere in the U.K. after Prime Minister David Cameron asked the studio to air the show after the independence referendum that was held last year.

While the addition of Outlander to Amazon Prime will undoubtedly add more fans to its growing following, it isn’t likely to include any controversy outside of the U.K. Furthermore, it should give fans plenty of time to catch up before the new season is released.

The second season of Outlander is expected to premiere in March of 2016 on Starz.

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