I particularly like the bookshops at National Parks and battlefields; they often have very unusual and helpful things.

I was writing 'Outlander' for practise and didn't want anyone to know I was doing it. So I couldn't very well announce to my husband that I was quitting my job and abandoning him with three small children to visit Scotland to do research for a novel that I hadn't told him I was writing.

I have friends who are writers who have had movies made of their books, and they are almost uniformly horrified about what's been done - or, at least, dissatisfied.

Eight was about the age I was when I realized that people actually produced books, they didn't just spring out of the library shelves.

'The Exile' covers approximately the first third of 'Outlander'.

My husband gets up at around 5.30 A.M., so I'll tuck him in around 9.30 P.M. or 10 P.M., and then I'll go and lie down on the couch with a book and my two dachshunds.

Every time I'd read about the stone circles, it would describe how they worked as an astronomical observance. For example, some of the circles are oriented so that at the winter solstice, the sun will strike a standing stone.

I stagger out of bed, take the dogs outside, and then I'll get a Diet Coke and a couple of dog biscuits and go upstairs. By the time I've consumed my Diet Coke and had a quick run through the morning email and Twitter feed, I will probably be compos mentis enough to work.

When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.

Part of my purpose in my books has been to tell the complete story of a relationship and a marriage, not just to end with 'happily ever after,' leaving the protagonists at the altar or in bed... I wanted to show some of the complicated business of actually living a successful marriage.