Diana's "State of the Wicket" blog post

Check out Diana Gabaldon's latest blog post, The State of the Wicket -- February 2012. This is a very interesting and informative piece, explaining:

• What Diana has been working on lately
  
  
• When we might expect to see WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD in print (Diana says "the English and German-speaking readers will almost certainly get Written in My Own Heart’s Blood _sometime_ in 2013.")
  
  
• All the steps in the production process that have to happen between the time the manuscript is completed and the time the book is actually published. (It's exhausting just to read through all those steps!) Some of you may have seen this explanation before; Diana originally posted it on her old web site back in 2008, before ECHO came out, and I suggested to her that it might be time to repost it for the benefit of those who haven't seen it before, especially all those new followers on Twitter and Facebook.

I would definitely encourage all of you to read Diana's blog post, and please pass the link on to anyone else who may be interested.

[UPDATE 2/18/2012 8:16 am: Diana has just posted a follow-up blog post with more information on the shorter pieces, like "Virgins" and "The Space Between".]

Oh, and if you're wondering what the "state of the wicket" means, Diana explained it on Compuserve as follows:

Cricket term. You check the state of the wicket before, and at intervals during, play. "State of the wicket" is an idiom, meaning (roughly) "how things stand at the moment."