Celebrating 17 years -- and 2000 posts!

I'm celebrating TWO blogging milestones today! August 28th is the 17th anniversary of Outlandish Observations, and by coincidence, this happens to be my 2000th blog post!! (Believe it or not, on both counts!)



Seventeen years....wow, that's amazing, even to me! Really hard to believe I've kept it up that long! I'm delighted, as always, to see that people are still enjoying it.

I started Outlandish Observations on August 28, 2008. That was about a year before AN ECHO IN THE BONE was published, long before anyone knew there would be a TV series. In the beginning, I had two goals in mind. The first was simply to learn about blogging. The second was to create a central repository for news and information for OUTLANDER fans, a place where people could go to find answers to commonly asked questions, links to other OUTLANDER-related sites, and the latest information on Diana Gabaldon's new and upcoming releases.

So much has changed in the OUTLANDER fan community in recent years, as the OUTLANDER TV series has exploded in popularity, and now with the prequel TV series, OUTLANDER: BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, airing on STARZ. It often seems impossible to keep up with everything that's going on! I think that's one reason that Outlandish Observations has lasted so long. There's always something new to talk about!

Looking back over the past 17 years, here are some of the highlights:



Friday Fun Facts - From 2012-2014, I had a weekly "Friday Fun Facts" feature, where I posted five interesting or unusual facts or bits of trivia from the OUTLANDER books. (You can see the index of topics here.) It was very popular, but I opted to stop when MOHB and the TV series came out in 2014, because I just didn't have the time to do the research those weekly posts required.

My interview with Diana Gabaldon in 2018 - That was the first and only interview I've ever done. I was delighted with Diana's responses and with the reaction from the fans! Maybe I'll do another one sometime.



My OUTLANDER episode recaps! I've received so many positive comments about those recaps over the years, and I'm glad you're finding them useful! It takes a lot of time and effort to put those detailed posts together, but it's worth it. I definitely intend to continue these detailed recaps for OUTLANDER Season 8 when the time comes. In the meantime, check out my reactions to BLOOD OF MY BLOOD here.

Someone asked me recently if I still get a thrill whenever Diana Gabaldon puts the link to one of my blog posts up on her Facebook page. The answer to that is a definite YES! (Always.) I was especially pleased by her reaction to my March 2025 post about Jamie and Roger's relationship, which she called a "fantastic exegesis" -- high praise indeed!

Outlandish Observations was one of the first successful OUTLANDER-related blogs. These days there are innumerable fan-sites and Facebook groups, and of course a great many people sharing their love of All Things OUTLANDER on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media sites. The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned! <g> I'm proud to be a part of such a thriving, creative, and enthusiastic worldwide community of fans, united in our passion for these books and characters and this amazing story Diana Gabaldon has created, that is now being brought to life on TV.

Special thanks to all of my followers on the Outlandish Observations Facebook page! I now have almost 16,300 followers! I'm delighted that so many new people have found my site over the past year. Welcome! I hope you take some time to look around and see what else is available here.

Finally, let me just say this: If anyone had told me when I started Outlandish Observations that I'd still be blogging about All Things OUTLANDER seventeen years and 2000 posts later, I'm sure I would have said they were insane! <g> But I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. At a time when "OUTLANDER burnout" is affecting some of the more well-known fan-sites, I'm still here, and I intend to keep this site going for the foreseeable future. There's still a lot to look forward to, including OUTLANDER Season 8, A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT (aka Book 10), and more!

Many, many thanks to all of you who've visited Outlandish Observations over the past seventeen years! It's been an amazing journey, and I'm so glad you've come along for the ride.

THANK YOU ALL!!