I have a bit of an obsession.  With Books.  I can’t help it.  I’m a junkie when it comes to written words.  They offer me an escape, a way to fly into the mind of someone else, to journey through a world of black and white that bursts into a kaleidoscope of rich colorful hues in my mind.  They take me from loathing to respect, sorrow to joy, hate to love, angst to calm, and from agony to delight.  The characters come to life, attach themselves to my core, and walk around with me until I see them to the final chapter, the last page…the end. The End.  Gah!   And when the book ends, I’m blue.  I get ridiculous book hangovers and walk around for a few days missing these fictional people, the ones to whom I relate, the ones that I admire, the ones that I *gulp* picture…in my head.  The men…those alpha men…ahem.

I have a few favorites.  It’s grown over the years, my list of fictional boyfriends, but I only have one…just one fictional husband.  Let me introduce you.  Maybe you’ve met him….drum roll please.

James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser

Click on the link below to see a pic of him.  In his kilt.  What’s underneath?  Wouldn’t you like to know?  You see his ginger stubble?  Mmhmm.  Stand back, ladies…he’s all mine.

http://www.dianagabaldon.com/other-projects/outlander-tv-series/first-look-sam-h-as-jamie/

You can find Jamie Fraser in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, a novel written from Claire Randall’s point of view, an English field nurse in WWII, who finally after the war, takes an opportune honeymoon with husband and history scholar, Frank Randall, to Scotland where together they explore and secretly watch what seems to be a druid ritual around a circle of standing stones called Craigh na Dun.  When Claire goes back to the stones alone the next day, she falls through them and lands in 18^th century Scotland where she runs into English Dragoons and Scottish Highlanders and lots and lots of drama.  This to me is where the book gets interesting.  I mean, Frank is nice and all, but in 18^th Century Scotland, she meets…dun dun dun…Jamie Fraser, and he constantly comes to Claire’s rescue.  Seriously, this chic can’t walk two feet without finding some kind of trouble, and my fictional hubby comes riding in on his dark horse over fields of plush heather, auburn hair shining in the sunlight, kilt bouncing up and down flowing around his long sexy legs and rescues her.  Every. Single. Time.  And I’ve never even found myself attracted to gingers.  I won’t go into details about the story.  It’s a good one.  If you haven’t read this book, read this book, and the other six. Now, like right now, before the eighth book comes out in March.  You will not be disappointed.  Unless you are, and then you will be, but that’s your fault because even if you hate everything about this series, Diana Gabaldon generously gives you Jamie Fraser.  And that’s enough.

He’s been creeping into the hearts and fantasies of women all over the literary world for years, but since the news came out of the television series on Starz, and Sam Heughan was cast as The Jamie Fraser, women from 20 to 90 are google imaging him and drooling over their computer screens today, right this minute, this very second in the multitudes. Hop over to Twitter, and you’ll see the obsession that is everything Outlander, Jamie Fraser, and Sam Heughan.

Here are a few of my favorite lines he’s said in his sexy Scottish accent throughout this book series.  All written, of course, by the ridiculously talented Diana Gabaldon:

“When the day shall come that we do part…if my last words are not ‘I love you’, ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”  The Fiery Cross (Book 5)

“You are my courage, as I am your conscience…You are my heart and I your compassion.  We are neither of us whole, alone.”  Drums of Autumn (Book 4)

“Don’t be afraid.  There’s the two of us now.”  Outlander (Book 1)

“Your face is my heart, Sassenach, and the love of you is my soul.” Drums of Autumn (Book 4)

“…yet when I think of you wi’ my child at your breast…then I feel as though I’ve gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.” Dragonfly in Amber (Book 2)

“I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rutting bull.  I dinna understand myself.”  Dragonfly in Amber (Book 2)

“Oh aye, Sassenach.  I am your master…and you’re mine.  Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.”  Outlander (Book 1)

“It has always been forever for me, Sassenach.”  Voyager (Book 3)

“And I mean to hear ye groan like that again.  And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it.  I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I’ve served ye well.” Outlander (Book 1)

Sigh

See what I mean?  Pick up your panties, and go buy this book.  The television series premiers in August on Starz, and I have no doubt…this show will be epic (Geez, I really hate that word.), but for me, the challenge is set.  Will they portray the emotion, the heart, the soul that Diana Gabaldon writes into her novels?  Will they be able to transfer that onto a television screen?

Her words create the most elaborate and beautiful pictures that my mind can construct, and the romance between Claire and Jamie, builds slowly, and passionately, and grows so that my hearts swells in my chest ready to burst with love, and I want to wrap myself in their story over and over and over again and wear it like a cloak, like a kilt, with nothing underneath.  I will watch, and I will love it, but the series will never replace the absolute devotion in my heart for the novels that introduced me to my book husband, Jamie Fraser.

You’re welcome to look all you want, but in my mind, he’s mine.  All mine.

So speak to me…who’s your fictional husband, book boyfriend, major literary crush?  Come on…I’m sure I’ve met him, and if I haven’t, I want to…soon!