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Here is a new interview Diana Gabaldon did with Nerdist

From Nerdist:

Saturday night’s Outlander finale went where television has never gone before. And in the process stirred up quite an interesting conversation about sexual violence. But Ronald D. Moore wasn’t the one who created the story, it was author Diana Gabaldon back in 1991.

On Sunday we had the immense pleasure of chatting up Gabaldon prior to a Q&A and signing at the Barnes & Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles (where several of the show’s iconic costumes were also on display), where we dished about the subversive nature of the story, the public’s reaction to sexual violence, and what she’s looking forward to in season two. Here’s an edited and truncated version of our chat:

Read the Q&A after the jump!

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The Nerdist: So, the first season is over. What do you think about how they adapted your first book?

Diana Gabaldon: Oh, they did a wonderful job you know, given that it’s a three-hundred thousand- word book and they had sixteen hours to do it, they did a fabulous job, absolutely.

N: And a lot of stuff happens in that finale…

DG: Yes it does. [laughs]

N: And you wrote this source material first, so the subversiveness of this scene came from you. Usually it’s a damsel in distress situation but here, Jamie is the one in this position. So what was it like, seeing that translated to television?

DG: Well I wrote Outlander for practice; I never intended for anyone to read it. Let alone publish it, let alone have it appear on television finally! I can’t say I wasn’t intending being subversive because I always am, but I was just sort of born with a “says who” gene, you know? [laughs] It wasn’t intended to be any particular kind of book — I read everything and lots of it — I just used elements from everything that I like. At one point I had, I think, posted a love scene and they said, “Oh, is it a historical romance maybe?” and I said, “I don’t know, I’ve never read one.” So I went to the grocery store and bought three New York Times bestselling romances figuring these would be a representative sample. I read all three and I said, “No, that’s not what I’m writing, [laughs] but that’s interesting.” I’m sure this was purely by coincidence, mind you, [but] it was the mid-1980’s when styles where different, and the heroine was raped in every single one of these three books. In one of them she was raped by the one who eventually turns out to be the quote-unquote hero. In the others, she was raped by somebody else, but having sex with the hero “fixed her up.” It was like, come on!

N: Oh, god.

DG: Exactly. So having realized that what I wrote was, well, it wasn’t that sort of book — All of these were virgins. Of course: 18 year old virgins with 34 year old men, this was the style then — [so] I said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” I knew who Claire was — I had been working with her for a while then — and I knew who Jamie was as well, so I said let him be the virgin bride-groom. I take decisions sort of on the, not exactly the whim of the moment, but the revelation of the moment. Just “Oh, it’s this way.” And having done that, I didn’t shirk the ramifications of the developments that come from that. So everything grew out of that.

Something drastic was going to happen: this isn’t the sort of book where the leads foil evil at the last minute and escape harm and sail off into the sunset. The connection with Captain Randall was evolving: It wasn’t Claire he was after; she was sort of incidental. He would take anybody that he thought he could get alone and helpless — but he was fascinated with Jamie for various reasons.

I did in fact, write a little essay — which I’m sure is all over the web by this time — about Jaime and the rule of three and why I did that.

N: Obviously there was a big discussion when the book came out, but now that it’s aired on TV, what is it like having that discussion play out with the new meaning people are couching into it in terms of the why and how this story played out the way it did?

DG: Well everyone is going to have their opinions, and the thing is, the culture has changed considerably since I wrote the first book. It was quite controversial at the time, but in different ways. People tended to get much more excited about the spanking than the rape — and even that went in waves. I would have these little outbreaks of rage and fist waving and it then would all die down and I wouldn’t hear anything for five years and suddenly it’s big again. I’m not quite sure what controls this wave; it’s just something to do with media and the culture and so forth. In part, it’s the search for content. The media is always looking for a story of one kind or another. You won’t have a story unless you have conflict, which means if there’s no conflict in a situation, people look for a way to make some.

Read the rest of the Q&A at the source